by Kathryn Hoff
“Whoa!” Charles leaped in and sat on Rico’s back. “Settle down, Rico!”
Reyna came to the door, Gabe on her hip. “What’s going on? Are you fighting?”
I stepped back and did my innocent act again. “Oh, no. Just a misunderstanding. Rico thought I’d picked up something that belonged to him. Let him up, Charles. I’m sorry, Rico. I don’t have anything that belongs to you.”
Hoping he was smart enough to take the hint, I added, “I’ll look for it next time I’m in the primate lab.”
Charles got up, eying us both suspiciously. “What’d you lose, Rico?”
Rico sullenly straightened his jumpsuit. “Nothing. No concern of anybody else.”
“Then you better go,” Reyna said, her chin high.
Rico paused long enough to say, “This isn’t over, Kennedy.”
If looks could kill, I’d have been pushing up daisies. Rico shoved past Reyna and stomped down the hall.
Reyna put her free hand on her hip. “What’d you take, Jackie?”
“He misunderstood something. I don’t have anything of his.”
Reyna snorted. Both my statements were true, but orphans are hard to fool. She knew I wasn’t telling them everything.
Charles shook his head. “We don’t need this. Straighten it out, Kennedy.”
When they were gone, I sat on my bed in my cubby and stared at the whited-out window.
Rico had misunderstood. “Troglodyte” meant caveman, that was true. But I’d seen the words pan troglodytes every day when I worked at the zoo, on the sign that gave the scientific species name for Jayjay Chimp.
Just to be sure, I looked in my third book, the one on primate behavior. Chapter four had my favorite photo of a male chimp in full dominance display, standing upright, mouth open, lips drawn back to show impressive teeth. The label said, “Chimpanzee, pan troglodytes.”
Quinn and Mendez had put chimp genes into humans. Into Gabe and Deedee.
Paula had lied.
Not kept something private. Not omitted to tell me something I didn’t need to know. I had asked her directly whether Quinn had put chimp genes into Gabe and Deedee and she had lied.
Chimp genes in humans.
It was dangerous and wrong and illegal as hell.
CHAPTER 25
Flushed
Lie: falsehood, untruth, deception, fib.
Paula had lied to me.
I felt like the world had taken a sudden shift. Like I’d seen the sun rise in the north, and no one else had noticed.
Keep your head, call for help, use your knowledge of behavior.
Keeping my head was a good idea: getting mad had never gotten me anything but trouble. Now was the time to keep my emotions under control.
Call for help? The person who could help was Paula. I needed to talk to her, not right then while I was upset, but soon, at a time and place where she’d be able to speak honestly.
Knowledge of behavior? I would know if she was telling me the truth.
And if not? Well, it was time to think about my future in a world where I couldn’t count on anyone else.
I spent the afternoon reading the chapter on the Cold War—the baby boom and missiles and fallout shelters and assassinations. President John F. Kennedy and the other Jackie Kennedy, pink suit and all, smiling for the camera on the day he was about to be shot in the head. I hated history, but if I didn’t want to be the janitor cleaning up aisle three, I needed to rack up enough units to get a diploma.
Paula buzzed me to help her dress, but the prep room wasn’t the time or place for a serious discussion. In the red zone, Deedee was wailing her I-want-to-get-out-of-the-crib-and-play cry, punctuated by coughs. Molly joined in with eeks and acks. They sounded like a little troop of apes. Was Molly imitating Deedee, or was part-chimp Deedee learning to speak Molly’s language?
I kept my mouth shut and did my job, checking all the seams twice. Then, I made Paula wait while I checked them again, just in case I’d been too distracted to do it right. “All sealed. You’re ready.” I clipped her badge onto the suit and handed her the carrier with the day’s supply of food and milk for the inmates.
At four o’clock, I went to the nursery so Charles could put in some hours with Stonehouse. I wore the white suit and helmet, which didn’t bother Gabe at all anymore. I changed his diaper and played with him and read him a toddler book, and he pointed to the cow and made a “moo” sound and to the dog and said “Arney,” just like a regular human kid would.
I went to supper and ate something, I suppose, although afterward I couldn’t remember what. Rico sat, alone, at the end of the scientists’ table, as if nothing had changed.
After supper, Westerly announced that the infant Delta was doing well. That was another lie—I’d heard Deedee coughing.
“In view of the expected spread of strain seven,” Westerly said, “we must accelerate our research as quickly as possible. We will move Gamma to the iso lab the day after tomorrow.”
The look Reyna sent Charles was cruel. His turn to suffer. Charles blinked and turned away. Gabe thwacked his spoon on his tray, oblivious to the drama.
And after supper, I walked up to Paula and said, politely and calmly, “If you have time, I’d like to ask you about something,” and she smiled and said sure, she had a few minutes. As if nothing was wrong.
Rico glanced at me nervously, but Quinn called and Rico trailed out after him.
I was very, very calm, when we got to Paula’s room. I sat on her bed and said, very calmly, “You lied to me.”
She didn’t say anything, she just waited.
I nodded, like she’d agreed with me. “I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see. ‘Transspecies genetic insertion, pan troglodytes.’ Gabe and Deedee have chimp genes.”
After a moment, she asked, “Who else saw it?”
Damn. I’d been hoping she’d somehow convince me I’d misread the page, that it was all a mistake.
“Nobody,” I said. She lies, I lie.
Paula sighed. “The amount of genetic material inserted was minimal. It affects only their digestive system, to provide a habitat that will allow the chimp phages to thrive. Mendez thought that without that step, it would take years longer to adapt the chimp phages to humans. We don’t have years.”
I started to say something about that not being the point, but she held up her hand.
“I understand. When we first met, I promised I wouldn’t lie to you, and now I have lied. Now you don’t trust me. I’m sorry for that, but if I had to make the same choice again, I would do the same.”
“So, lying’s all right now?” I was mad enough to spit.
She touched my hand, just for a moment. “You’re smart enough to know that not everything is black and white. Lying to keep yourself out of trouble is wrong, but when the truth will hurt some innocent person, sometimes you have to weigh one wrong against another.”
My breath caught, but this time I wasn’t going to fly off the handle. I waited.
“Jackie, Gamma and Delta—Gabe and Deedee—are children, human children. That tiny bit of DNA doesn’t change that, any more than the random mutations that occur in every generation make someone not human. But if those babies are going to have any kind of normal life, that particular detail of their medical histories can’t become known. How do you think it would be for them to grow up knowing they were even the most minuscule part chimp? How do you think it would be if everyone knew?”
Monkey girl. Monkey boy.
I bit my lip and nodded. “I can see that. But Quinn wrote that paper so everybody would know. So he can be recognized as a genius, get the Nobel Prize, even if what he did is illegal and just plain wrong.”
“No. Avery Quinn and Dr. Mendez drafted that paper for history. It’s classified as secret, not to be published for a hundred years, not until after all of us are dead and gone. Avery knows he’ll never be rewarded for what he’s doing. He knows that if the details of what he and Mendez have done are discove
red, he might even go to prison. He’s a brilliant scientist who has sacrificed his career to stop Eclipse. Right or wrong, Avery Quinn is the bravest man I know.”
“I think it’s terrible!”
“Yes. It is. I left here originally because I thought Avery and Mendez were pushing into dangerous areas, unethical areas. They decided to insert those genes into humans after I was gone, and I would never have done it. But now it has been done. Those children exist. We can only move forward from here. By using their unique traits, we may be able to stop Eclipse. If we fail—”
She took a breath. “If we fail, there will be a strain eight of Eclipse, and nine, and ten, until humans acquire a natural immunity—which might take generations—or humans cease to exist.”
Paula blinked. Paula, who I’d never seen cry, had tears in her eyes. “I’m not sorry I lied to you. I would do it again to protect those children. If you feel you can’t trust me like you used to, I understand. But I trust you. You’ve impressed me so much with your courage, your maturity, and your concern for the children—and for Molly and Barney too. I didn’t want you to know about this, but now you do know. I’ve told you much more than I’m supposed to, because it’s important for you to understand what’s at stake.”
She placed a hand on my shoulder. “You have a very adult decision to make. Now that you know, you need to think very, very hard about what you do with this information.”
She stood. “Come help me dress now—I need to check on Delta.”
That night, I did a lot more tossing and turning than usual.
Telling the truth is the right thing, but it’s also right to keep private information quiet. Not telling a lie wasn’t the same as being honest. Telling half a truth could still be deceptive. Telling the whole truth could be destructive.
I gave up trying to sleep and turned on the light, using a piece of scrap paper to plot it out like a math problem. If x is the truth and y is a lie…But it got complicated real fast with half-truths and not-lies.
I crossed out the x’s and y’s and tried the thesaurus.
Truth: facts, reality, veracity, accuracy, integrity, trustworthiness.
I’d trusted Paula because she told the truth, even when the truth hurt.
Lie: falsehood, untruth, fib, fiction, deceit.
Paula had lied to me, deliberately deceived me. How could I ever trust her again?
And how could she trust me? She’d caught me in lies, little ones, lots of times, but she’d never made a big deal about it, just saying next time tell me or something like that. I’d never made her any promises to tell the truth—for orphans, lying was a necessary skill, like learning to shoplift. And everyone expected orphans to lie, just like they expected us to steal.
So how could Paula say she trusted me?
I put the book away. Maybe it wasn’t a vocabulary problem or a math problem, it was a biology problem. People were animals, and in biology you always had to take into account individual variations and environmental conditions.
Lying to keep yourself out of trouble is wrong, but when the truth will hurt some innocent person, sometimes you have to weigh one wrong against another.
As far as I was concerned, Quinn was a criminal who deserved punishment, but the ones the truth might hurt most were Gabe and Deedee, innocent orphans who needed protection.
Once I thought about it that way, about weighing one wrong against another, it really wasn’t a hard decision after all.
The next morning, I dawdled in the primate lab until Rico slipped in.
“Where is it?” he demanded.
“In a safe place.” Earlier, after Paula had gone into the red zone, I’d placed the draft article at the bottom of a stack of feeding records in the prep room. It would be safe there until I decided what to do with it.
“Did you tell Bardo about it?”
“No. I had to ask her about something else.”
He let go a relieved breath. “Good. I need it back.”
“Why? Quinn hasn’t noticed it’s gone yet, has he? He’ll just think he misplaced it.”
“You don’t understand! I need it!”
“Quinn can print out another one if he wants a hard copy.”
“It’s not for Quinn,” he grumbled. “I need it for someone else.”
“Who?” I looked closer: Rico’s eyes were red again, like his night had been worse than mine.
“None of your business!”
Barney whined, upset by Rico’s tone.
“It’s all right, Barney,” I soothed. “Rico, I’m trying to keep you out of trouble. That paper says it’s supposed to be secret. Who were you going to give it to?”
He beat his fingertips on the food prep table. “Bert. Bert Rasmussen.”
“Bert? Why? Is he still hanging around?”
“You don’t understand. When they fired Bert and Tilly, they made them leave right away. They didn’t even have a chance to pack—some soldier threw all their clothes and stuff in a box for them. So Bert didn’t have the chance to get any of his work from the lab, nothing that would help him get another job. Bert didn’t agree with everything Quinn did, but he should get credit for being a good researcher, shouldn’t he? That paper—the one about using caveman genes to help make the phages—was something that Bert helped with. It’s not a secret from him, because he helped with the work, right? His name is even in the acknowledgements at the end. Anyway, he called me and said he needs a copy of the paper to prove he has experience. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
I caught my breath. More likely Bert wanted to use the paper to blackmail Quinn into giving him his job back. Or worse, make the paper public to expose Quinn for doing something illegal and ungodly.
I nodded like everything was copacetic. “You were trying to help him out.”
“That’s right! See, my dad was on the school board and Bert knew my parents, back when he was a teacher. After my parents were gone, Bert helped me get this job, see? He recommended me to Quinn to get me out of teen home. So I owe him.”
“I understand. You want to help him. But stealing a paper out of Quinn’s files—that’s too much. You have to tell Bert you couldn’t find it. I won’t tell anybody about it, and you’ll be fine.”
And Bert wouldn’t get his hands on something that was supposed to be a secret for a hundred years.
“No! I have to give it to him.”
I waited.
Rico rubbed his temples. “Ay, mierda. If I don’t come up with this paper, Bert’s going to get me fired. He knows…he knows about something I did. If he tells Quinn, I’m history. Out on the street with no job, no family, no home, nothing. You have to give it to me.”
Damn. The son of a baboon was blackmailing poor old Rico.
I shook my head. “I don’t have it anymore. I flushed it.”
Rico was speechless for a moment.
He turned away. “Screwed. You’ve screwed me big time, Kennedy.”
“Look, find something else to give him…”
“Get out,” he said. He was facing the wall, but I could tell by the catch in his throat that he was crying or was about to.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
As I walked out the door, he whispered, “I hate you.”
Like Paula had said, I was sorry he hated me, but that didn’t change anything. Rico was in a bad spot, but there was no way I was going to let Bert get his hands on that paper.
Rico might be a pompous ass, a jerk, and a royal pain in the butt, but he also was an orphan like me. He didn’t deserve to be in the mess he was in.
Neither did I, for that matter. I had a secret, a big one. A secret I didn’t want to have. It made me feel different, like I’d crossed into a new country and couldn’t go back. Like I was carrying a weight I could never put down. Like I was getting older and couldn’t be a kid anymore.
I had lunch in the nursery like usual, although nobody had much to say to me. Charles asked if I’d straightened things out with Rico. I told him
everything was fine. Even so, Charles stayed chilly toward me and Reyna treated both of us like we’d dirtied the carpet. That made me sad, but there was no going back. They were in the old country. I was someplace new, where the sun rose in the cold north.
After lunch, I studied in my room instead of with the others. I wasn’t a kid anymore, I needed to get serious with my studies.
The next time Paula called me to the iso lab, I decided there was one secret I didn’t need to carry. After Paula was suited up and had gone to the red zone, I retrieved the draft article, took it to the john, and stayed in a stall for a long time, ripping it into tiny pieces and flushing it away. Now no one would find it and ask awkward questions, and Bert would never get his hands on it.
For the last time, I did my four-to-six shift with Gabe, wearing the white suit. He’d go into the red zone the next morning. Gabe gurgled and played just like a kid who wasn’t part chimpanzee and who wasn’t about to be abducted and stuck in a weird laboratory to be experimented on.
At supper, Rico didn’t look at me and I didn’t look at him. At least, whatever threat Bert held over him didn’t seem to have hit him yet. Westerly gave another status report that Deedee was doing well, which I knew was a lie, and that preparations were complete for Gamma to enter isolation. Charles picked at his food with a grim expression.
Sergeant Stonehouse stood up and said he had some good news—the rioting had quieted.
“Folks have been plumb terrified, watching the news from places where strain seven has hit, but the ECA is taking steps to settle everyone down. There’s new quarantine rules for cases of strain seven, and the ECA promised to aggressively isolate any carriers. They’re opening more treatment centers and assuring everyone that quarantined families will be cared for properly.”
Great. My family had been cared for “properly” and they were all dead. How was that supposed to keep everyone calm?
That evening, leaving the prep room after helping Paula dress, I ran into Rico outside the phage lab. He looked like he was on the short list for a firing squad, but he followed me into the primate lab.