susceptible to it; I mean, we were strictly carriers—we never got sick
from what we carried. But then, somehow, something happened in monkeys, a
negative genetic change that made them not only carriers but victims of the AIDS
virus. Monkeys began to die of the disease. Then, when the virus passed to
humans, it brought with it this new genetic material specifying susceptibility
to AIDS, so before long human beings were also capable of contracting the
disease. That’s how it works in nature. It’s done even more efficiently in the
lab.”
As creeping condensation fogged the side windows, Walt said, “So Weatherby
really succeeded in breeding a dog with human intelligence?”
“It was a long, slow process, but gradually he made advancements. And a little
over a year ago, the miracle pup was born.”
“Thinks like a human being?”
“Not like a human being, but maybe as well as.”
“Yet it looks like an ordinary dog?”
“That was what the Pentagon wanted. Which made Weatherby’s job a lot harder, I
guess. Apparently, brain size has at least a little bit to do with intelligence,
and Weatherby might have made his breakthrough a lot sooner if he’d been able to
develop a retriever with a larger brain. But a larger brain would have meant a
reconfigured and much larger skull, so the dog would have looked damned
unusual.”
All the windows were fogged over now. Neither Walt nor Lem tried to clear the
misted glass. Unable to see out of the car, confined to its humid and
claustrophobic interior, they seemed to be cut off from the real world, adrift
in time and space, a condition that was oddly conducive to the consideration of
the wondrous and outrageous acts of creation that genetic engineering made
possible.
Walt said, “The Pentagon wanted a dog that looked like a dog but could think
like a man? Why?”
“Imagine the possibilities for espionage,” Lem said. “In times of war, dogs
would have no trouble getting deep into enemy territory, scouting installations
and troop strength. Intelligent dogs, with whom we could somehow communicate,
would then return and tell us what they had seen and what they’d overheard the
enemy talking about.”
“Tell us? Are you saying dogs could be made to talk, like canine versions of
Francis the Mule or Mr. Ed? Shit, Lem, be serious!”
Lem sympathized with his friend’s difficulty in absorbing these astounding
possibilities. Modern science was advancing so rapidly, with so many
revolutionary discoveries to be explored every year, that to laymen there was
going to be increasingly less difference between the application of that science
and magic. Few nonscientists had any appreciation for how different the world of
the next twenty years was going to be from the world of the present, as
different as the 1980s were from the 1780s. Change was occurring at an
Incomprehensible rate, and when you got a glimpse of what might be coming— as
Walt just had—it was both inspiring and daunting, exhilarating and scary.
Lem said, “In fact, a dog probably could be genetically altered to be able to
speak. Might even be easy, I don’t know. But to give it the necessary vocal
apparatus, the right kind of tongue and lips . . . that’d mean drastically
altering its appearance, which is no good for the Pentagon’s purposes. So these
dogs wouldn’t speak. Communication would no doubt have to be through an
elaborate sign language.”
“You’re not laughing,” Walt said. “This has got to be a fucking joke, so why
aren’t you laughing?”
“Think about it,” Lem said patiently. “In peacetime . . . imagine the president
of the United States presenting the Soviet premier with a one-year-old golden
retriever as a gift from the American people. Imagine the dog living in the
premier’s home and office, privy to the most secret talks of the USSR’s highest
Party officials. Once in a while, every few weeks or months, the dog might
manage to slip out at night, to meet with a U.S. agent in Moscow and be
debriefed.”
“Debriefed? This is insane!” Walt said, and he laughed. But his laughter had a
sharp, hollow, decidedly nervous quality which, to Lem, indicated that the