Half Brother

by Kenneth Oppel

  “Borroway has a baby they don’t want!”

  He’d talked about this place lots before. Borroway was an Air Force base in New Mexico. They had lots of chimps. In the fifties and sixties they brought a whole bunch into the country to use them for the American space program. But that was twenty years ago, and now it seemed like they didn’t need as many. One of their adult females was about to have another baby and they didn’t want to take care of it.

  It was perfect for Dad. He needed a baby chimp that could be taken away from its mother, days after birth.

  He wanted a baby he could raise like a human.

  We ordered in pizza that night, and ate it in the living room, on the orange shag carpet. We had our sofas now, but it seemed more relaxing—and kind of decadent—to sprawl out on the floor with our shoes and socks off, like hippies. Mom especially looked like a hippie, with her long hair, bell-bottoms, fringed vest, and the Native medallion hanging from a leather necklace.

  Dad was pretty straitlaced. I’d seen some of the other professors in Toronto wear jeans, but Dad always liked a proper suit and tie for work. His hair was short. He didn’t go in for all this touchy-feely stuff; he preferred facts. Like Mom, though, he was good-looking, even though he was getting close to forty. They were certainly a lot younger than most of the other parents I knew, because they got married so early, when Dad was a grad student and Mom was still in undergrad. Mom was just twenty-one when she had me.

  And now she had another baby.

  I looked over at the little bassinet, where the baby chimp was fast asleep, his tiny fingers twitching every now and then. I’d never even had a pet before. No cats or dogs in our house. Dad hated the idea of pets.

  “What’re you going to call it?” I asked.

  “Well,” said Mom, pouring herself some more red wine, “they’d already named him Chuck at the base, after Chuck Yeager.”

  “The guy who broke the sound barrier?” I said. She nodded. “But I don’t think he looks much like a Chuck.” “The name’s not important,” Dad said. “He just needs one.” “Well, I think the name’s important,” said Mom. “How about naming him after where he came from?” “New Mexico?” I asked.

  “No, the place he would’ve been born in the wild.”

  “A bit sentimental, don’t you think?” said Dad. He hated sentimentality. He said it got in the way of the truth. It was the enemy of science. He wanted to strip it all away and show things and people as they really were. It was better that way, he said. Healthier and more honest.

  “Congo,” said Mom.

  I frowned, trying to remember my map of Africa. “Isn’t the country called something else now? Zaire?”

  She nodded. “But the Congo’s also the river that runs through central Africa. There’s a theory that the river separated two different groups of chimps. And that’s why they evolved into different species.”

  Dad shook his head. “Congo sounds a bit too much like Bonzo—the chimp in that awful Ronald Reagan movie. I don’t want the association.”

  “How about Kong?” I suggested. It was sort of fun, thinking up names.

  Mom chuckled. “King Kong? For this tiny little thing?” “Tarzan, then!” I said.

  This time Dad laughed. “Keep in mind, I have to use this name in all the scientific papers. It’s a bit hard to take Tarzan seriously.”

  “For someone who said the name didn’t matter, you’re being awfully picky!” Mom said, giving Dad a playful jab with her finger.

  I thought some more. “Just the last bit, then. Zan!”

  “I like it,” said Mom right away. “Does that meet with your approval, Richard?”

  “Sounds like something out of Star Trek,” said Dad, “but sure, I can live with Zan.”

  I wonder if can, I thought, looking at the sleeping chimp.

  Mom poured a little splash of wine into my empty cup.

  “You’re old enough to have a sip,” she said. She raised her glass. “To our new teenager.”

  We all clinked glasses and drank. It was probably the worst thing I’d ever tasted.

  “Sorry we didn’t get you to the lake or the pizza place,” Dad said.

  “It’s okay,” I lied. It had been a crazy day, with the movers and Mom arriving all at once, and getting the house in order, and making sure the chimpanzee had everything he needed. At least Dad had remembered to get me the bike—he’d been keeping it hidden in the garage. And it really was an excellent bike.

  “Let me get you some more ginger ale,” Mom said, after I’d choked down another sip of wine.

  She went to the kitchen and when she came back she was holding a birthday cake, thirteen candles lit up. She and Dad launched into “Happy Birthday to You.” Normally it made me kind of embarrassed when they sang, but this time I couldn’t help smiling, because I honestly hadn’t thought there’d be cake. Mom must have made a special trip earlier to get one.

  I blew out the candles and made a wish. I wished that we’d be happy in our new home.

  Then I looked over at baby Zan, all swaddled in his bassinet, and thought:

  We are the weirdest family in the world.

  TWO

  FREAKY LITTLE BROTHER

  Over the next few days Zan mostly slept, and Mom kept him in his little bassinet while we unpacked boxes and shifted furniture and put our books on the shelves. I could tell that Mom wasn’t thrilled with the house. She said things like: “Well, it’s no beauty, but it’s very spacious.” She liked the backyard (even if it was enclosed with a high chain-link fence) and the trees, and the farms all around.

  I was pretty excited about setting up my new room with my posters and big floor cushions. Even better, the walk-in closet was big enough for a table to hold my enlarger and trays, so I had my own personal darkroom.

  When Zan wasn’t sleeping he wanted to be held. He needed bottles every two hours. Mom carried him everywhere with her in one of those colorful African slings. She changed Zan’s diapers and bathed him and dressed him—I didn’t think I’d ever seen her so happy.

  “Would you like to hold him?” she sometimes asked me.

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to touch him.

  When Mom held Zan it looked completely natural; when Dad held him it never looked quite right, even when he made cooing sounds and rocked him. Usually Zan would start whimpering, and Dad would look at Mom and go, “Am I doing something wrong?” and she’d say, “No, no, he’s probably just hungry or wet. Let me see.” And Dad would hand him over, looking relieved.

  I rode my bike a lot.

  Dad spent most of the time on the university campus, getting his office ready, and preparing for the courses he had to teach in the fall. And Mom was busy taking care of Zan and, when he was asleep, working on her thesis. Unlike Dad, she still had to get her PhD, and to do that, she had to write a thesis—a really long book. She was going to write it on Zan, while running the research project with Dad.

  My favourite time to go for a ride was in the evening right after supper, with the sun slanting through the tops of the trees and the shadows all long on the road. Toronto got so hot and humid in the summer sometimes, you just felt soaked stepping outside, no matter what time of day it was. Here, there always seemed to be a breeze, and in the mornings and evenings, the air cooled down so you didn’t get hot or thirsty.

  The road smelled like tar and dust and cut grass. It smelled like a promise. Whenever I passed a cluster of houses I’d slow down, hoping to see some other kids hanging out in the front yards. I guess I was hoping they’d wave me over and we’d all go tooling around on our bikes and buy Freezies at the local corner store. So far, no luck.

  Not far from our house was a construction site and a big sign facing the road, showing what the houses in the new sub-divison would look like. Right now it was just big machines perched crookedly on piles of rubble and lots of concrete cylinders. One evening I thought I saw a couple kids moving around near the machinery, but it was dusk by then, and I didn’t
feel like wandering out there.

  So I headed for home. In the distance I saw the lights of the city, and felt a hunger to be down there, to be a part of that light. Back home in Toronto, Mom and Dad had just started letting me go downtown with my friends on the streetcar. I wondered how long it would be until I had someone to do that with here.

  A few days ago, Mom had let me call up Will and Blake on the phone. It was good to hear their voices, but sometimes it got awkward and we didn’t know what to say. Sometimes the line was crackly and there were delays in our voices and it made them seem even farther away. I’d probably never see them again, thanks to Dad.

  “I think we should start using sign language with Zan now,” Dad said over breakfast one morning in mid-July.

  I looked at him over my spoonful of cornflakes. “He’s only, like, three weeks old.”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” said Mom. “Just so he gets used to seeing the signs.”

  “We’ll have the whole team of research students by fall,” said Dad, “and that’s when we’ll start teaching him properly. But for now I’ve drawn up a short list of high-frequency words. These’ll be his first words, so if we can give him a head start, so much the better.” He nodded at the big kitchen bulletin board, where he’d tacked up a list.

  Up. Drink. Give. More. Eat. You. Me.

  “Hang on,” I said. “I’m supposed to learn sign language, too?”

  “It’s pretty easy, Ben,” said Dad. “And it would really help Zan. And the project.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not my project.” I shovelled more cornflakes into my mouth, staring down into my bowl. Mom and Dad didn’t say anything, but from the corner of my eye I saw them glance at each other, then back at me. Dad had his calm, psychologist expression on.

  “I know all this change has been tough on you, Ben,” he said, “and it’s perfectly normal to feel jealous of—”

  “I’m not jealous of Zan!” I said, looking at him, sucking happily on a bottle in Mom’s arms. Zan was fine: I didn’t feel much about him, one way or another. But I was sick to death of the project. I’d been hearing about it for months and months back in Toronto and, for the past two weeks, it was pretty much all Mom and Dad talked about. They’d dragged me across the country for it, I had no friends—and now I was supposed to help them out?

  “I don’t ask you guys to do my homework,” I muttered.

  Mom laughed. “He’s got a point,” she said to Dad.

  Dad nodded patiently. “It is an unusual project, Ben, I know. But Mom and I wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think it was going to be something truly remarkable. Think about it,” he said, and I couldn’t help looking up from my cereal to meet his gaze. “This isn’t a typical animal behaviour study. This is the first proper human attempt to talk, actually talk, with another species. Chimps are our closest relatives, and they’re extremely smart, but we’ve never had a conversation with them! If we can give them the tools of language, imagine what they might tell us, teach us! It’s incredible.”

  Some of this I’d heard before, but it did sound exciting. It was like something from a sci-fi movie. One day people would read about it in Popular Science, and I could be a part of it. I caught myself nodding as Dad carried on, his eyes bright, his hands grasping at the air for emphasis.

  “And that’s why the project’s whole design is so radical,” he said. “We’re trying to teach another species our language. Human language. So we need to raise Zan like a human baby, so he can learn language just like a human would. No cages. No labs. He’s one of us now. He has a crib and clothes and toys. And most important he has a family. He has a mother and a father—and a big brother too.”

  “Ben,” Mom called up the stairs, later that morning. “There’s someone here for you.”

  “Who?” I asked as I went down.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs and looked out through the open front door. A kid about my age was riding around on his bike in the driveway.

  I went to the door. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hey. You just moved in, right?” the kid asked.

  “Yeah, about a month ago.”

  “I live up the road,” he said. “I’ve seen you cycle by.”

  He coasted a bit closer to the door, keeping his bike balanced without putting down his feet. He was pretty good. He had shaggy blond hair and was fairly big without being huge. He smiled a lot.

  “So, you coming out?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure, hang on.”

  I went and told Mom I was going out. She seemed pleased.

  “I’m Ben,” I said as I wheeled my bike out from the garage.

  “Tim,” he said. “What grade are you in?”

  “Going into eight. You?”

  “Same. Are you going to Brentwood?”

  “Yeah.” That was the local public school. “Is it pretty good?”

  “Awful,” he said, grinning.

  We charged around on our bikes. I let him lead the way, pumping hard to keep up. We went past where they were building the new subdivision, and Tim slowed down so we were alongside each other.

  “It’s really cool in there,” he said. “We go there sometimes when they’re not working.”

  I remembered the figures I’d seen once at dusk. Then Tim sped up again and took me down some roads I didn’t know, and we ended up at a little plaza where there was a bakery that had a big cooler with all different kinds of pop.

  We sat outside on the edge of the sidewalk and drank from the sweaty bottles.

  “You play soccer?” Tim asked.

  “Not much.”

  “Football?”

  I shook my head.

  “Any sports?”

  “I run. Cross-country,” I said.

  He grimaced, like that didn’t count.

  “I do a lot of photography,” I said, feeling I needed to make myself look better. “I wouldn’t mind making movies one day maybe.”

  “That’s cool,” he said. “Where you from?” “Toronto.”

  “What’d you come here for?” “A stupid monkey,” I said. He laughed and sprayed out some pop. “What?” “Well, a chimp actually,” I said, and told him about the project.

  “That’s crazy,” he said. “You like pinball?” “Yeah!”

  “We’ve got a pinball machine in our rec room.” I looked at him in amazement. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Dad got it used from one of his customers. It’s pretty good. You’ve got a second set of flippers up the ramp. C’mon.”

  It turned out Tim lived just a couple of minutes up the road from us, in a small blue house. I’d passed it lots of times on my bike but never seen him. We went in the side door, straight down to the basement. The rec room had a low ceiling, and wood panelling. The carpet was dingy. There was a TV and a couple beat-up sofas and some coffee tables and a floor lamp. On the wall was a truck calendar. The whole room smelled like old shoes.

  Blinking quietly in one corner was a Planet of the Apes pinball machine. On the back panel were pictures of angry-looking gorillas in helmets and armour and rifles, chasing humans in tattered rags. I’d seen the movie, and it was pretty exciting.

  I’d never known anyone who had a pinball machine in their house. In Toronto there was an Italian coffee place near the school where we sometimes played at lunchtime, and it cost a quarter. Tim just pushed the red start button on the side, and the machine burbled to life, popping out the first ball. Tim was excellent, no surprise, since he had the thing in his house. He played the first ball for about ten minutes before losing it. Then it was my turn.

  We talked a bit as we played. He loved soccer and was on a local rep team. His dad was a plumber. He had a brother two years older than him. His favourite subject at school was gym. He liked Charlton Heston movies. He liked Led Zeppelin and hated the Osmonds, especially Donny.

  “Want to see something?” he asked after we’d been playing for about half an hour.

>   “Sure,” I said.

  He took me through a doorway into the unfinished part of the basement. There were a couple of bashed-up deep freezes, only one of which was humming. Tim went to the quiet one and hefted up the lid. A musty smell of paper wafted out and I looked down at pile after pile of magazines with naked women on the covers. The sheer number of them, and all that skin, stunned me. The sudden heat in my cheeks travelled all the way down between my legs.

  “Wow,” I said, swallowing and looking over at Tim. Even he looked kind of awestruck, gazing at them like the contents of a treasure chest.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Overhead we heard his mother’s footsteps in the kitchen. “We’d better not look at them now,” he said, letting the lid drop.

  Walking back to the rec room, I saw a wall rack with four rifles in it.

  “Those are Dad’s,” he said. “He goes hunting. I’d let you hold one, but he keeps them locked up.”

  I’d never held a gun, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. “That’s okay.”

  “I’ve got a BB gun,” Tim told me, as though this would cheer me up. He grabbed a lightweight rifle tipped against the wall and held it up for me to see. “Model 105 Buck. Come on.”

  In the backyard he set up some paper cups along the fence that bordered the fields and we took turns shooting at them. The ammunition was these tiny steel balls. To load, you pumped a lever, then held the gun to your eye to aim through the crosshairs. Tim was a good shot. He could knock the paper cups off the fence almost every time. By the end, I’d gotten a couple. It was fun, actually.

  Towards the end, I went to put the cups back on the fence and felt a sharp pain in the back of my jeans. It was like getting stung by a wasp.

  I swore and gripped my bum and looked around. Tim was laughing. He was holding the gun.

  “Geez,” I said. “That hurt!”

  “Yeah, it does,” he said. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

  I looked at my hand to see if there was any blood, but there wasn’t. It hadn’t even torn my jeans. It just stung like heck. I was kind of angry with him, but he was smiling and laughing so good-naturedly it was hard to stay mad.