perceived as enemies.
“Yarbeck’s first task in the physical alteration of the baboon was to make it
larger, big enough to threaten a grown man,” Lem said. “She decided that it
would have to stand at least five feet and weigh one hundred to a hundred and
ten pounds.”
“That’s not so big,” Walt protested.
“Big enough.”
“I could swat down a man that size.”
“A man, yes. But not this thing. It’s solid muscle, no fat at all, and far
quicker than a man. Stop and think of how a fifty-pound pit bull can make
mincemeat of a grown man, and you’ll realize what a threat Yarbeck’s warrior
Could be at a hundred and ten.”
The patrol car’s steam-silvered windshield seemed like a movie screen on Which
Walt saw projected images of brutally murdered men: Wes Dalberg,
Teel Porter . . . He closed his eyes but still saw cadavers. “Okay, yeah, I get
your point. A hundred and ten pounds would be enough if we’re talking about
something designed to fight and kill.”
“So Yarbeck created a breed of baboons that would grow to greater size. Then she
set to work altering the sperm and ova of her giant primates in other ways,
sometimes by editing the baboon’s own genetic material, sometimes by introducing
genes from other species.”
Walt said, “The same sort of cross-species patch-and-stitch that led to the
smart dog.”
“I wouldn’t call it patch-and-stitch . . . but yeah, essentially the same
techniques. Yarbeck wanted a large, vicious jaw on her warrior, something more
like that of a German shepherd, even a jackal, so there would be room for more
teeth, and she wanted the teeth to be larger and sharper and perhaps slightly
hooked, which meant she had to enlarge the baboon’s head and totally alter its
facial structure to accommodate all of this. The skull had to be greatly
enlarged, anyway, to allow for a bigger brain. Dr. Yarbeck wasn’t working under
the constraints that required Davis Weatherby to leave his dog’s appearance
unchanged. In fact, Yarbeck figured that if her creation was hideous, if it was
alien, it would be an even more effective warrior because it would serve not
only to stalk and kill our enemies but terrorize them.”
In spite of the warm, muggy air, Walt Gaines felt a coldness in his belly, as if
he had swallowed big chunks of ice. “Didn’t Yarbeck or anyone else consider the
immorality of this, for Christ’s sake? Didn’t any of them ever read The Island
of Doctor Moreau? Lem, you have a goddamn moral obligation to let the public
know about this, to blow it wide open. And so do I.”
“No such thing,” Lem said. “The idea that there’s good and evil knowledge . . .
well, that’s strictly a religious point of view. Actions can be either moral or
immoral, yes, but knowledge can’t be labeled that way. To a scientist, to any
educated man or woman, all knowledge is morally neutral.”
“But, shit, application of the knowledge, in Yarbeck’s case, wasn’t morally
neutral.”
Sitting on one or the other’s patio on weekends, drinking Corona, dealing with
the weighty problems of the world, they loved to talk about this sort of thing.
Backyard philosophers. Beery sages taking smug pleasure in their wisdom. And
sometimes the moral dilemmas they discussed on weekends were those that later
arose in the course of their police work; however, Walt could not remember any
discussion that had had as urgent a bearing on their work as this one.
“Applying knowledge is part of the process of learning more,” Lem said. “The
scientist has to apply his discoveries to see where each application leads.
Moral responsibility is on the shoulders of those who take the technology out of
the lab and use it to immoral ends.”
“Do you believe that bullshit?”
Lem thought a moment. “Yeah, I guess I do. I guess, if we held scientists
responsible for the bad things that flowed from their work, they’d never go
to work in the first place, and there’d be no progress at all. We’d still be
living in caves.”
Walt pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and blotted his face, giving