Half Brother

by Kenneth Oppel

  Peter grinned. “So after I finish up the term here, I’m heading down to Reno.”

  My throat suddenly felt thick. “You’ll look after him,” I said.

  Peter looked me straight in the eye. “Why do you think I’m going down there? You think I’m crazy about Nevada? It’s desert.”

  “You love him too, right?”

  He exhaled through his nose and nodded. “I sure do.”

  I hugged him hard, pressed my face into his musty jean jacket so he couldn’t see my face get all red and snotty and crumpled.

  “Thanks, Peter,” I said, and when I could talk properly again, I added, “I wish I could come too.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Things are going to be all right.”

  Three days before Zan had to go, he learned his last sign from us.

  It was the sign for his own name. He’d always understood it when we made it. He knew it meant we were talking about him, or to him. But it was a tricky sign to form—probably a bad choice on our part.

  But that day, in the sandbox, he made it.

  He took his hand and zigzagged it across his chest and made the Z.

  Zan, he said.

  I smiled and nodded and signed it back to him several times, and he seemed very pleased with himself and started using it in all sorts of phrases.

  Zan eat. Zan drink. Zan play.

  It was like we’d just given him his name—and now we were taking it away from him.

  PART THREE

  The sign for love is very similar to hug. You just cross your wrists and place them over your heart.

  That was not a word on our teaching lists. It never got written on the big wall chart in our kitchen.

  We dressed Zan in our clothes, and fed him our food, and let him sleep in our beds. We told him to call us Mom and Dad and brother.

  He lived with us and trusted us, and we lied to him every day. We fooled him into thinking we were his real family, and that we would always love him and take care of him. We did this so he’d perform all his tricks for us.

  But later, when his tricks weren’t useful any more, we locked him in a cage, and got rid of him.

  NINETEEN

  DR. HELSON

  Trying to pack for Zan when he was around was hopeless. I’d put some of his favourite things in a suitcase, and he’d come and grab them out and run off, wanting me to catch him and tickle him.

  In the end we had to wait till he was asleep and then I moved through his room like a thief, selecting things. On his bed he was all wrapped up in his favourite blanket, with his pig and his cow and his G.I. Joe action figure. For a few seconds I tried to wiggle them away so I could pack them, but in the end, I just gave up and settled down beside him and slept the night there.

  The next day at lunchtime, when Mom put the tranquilizer in Zan’s milk she started to cry, and she couldn’t stop. Dad was worried she might upset Zan and he wouldn’t drink the bottle, so he told her to go upstairs.

  Nearly two years ago they’d tranquilized Zan’s mother so Mom could take Zan. Now she was putting him to sleep so she could abandon him.

  Dad finished pouring the milk into the bottle, gave it a good shake, and passed it to me. “Why don’t you give it to him, Ben.”

  “You do it,” I said. “It’s your show, Doctor.”

  His eyes had so little warmth. He offered the bottle and Zan took it and drank eagerly, pausing only right at the beginning, probably because he noticed the taste.

  He must have thought it was weird we hadn’t put him in his high chair first, so he climbed up onto me and drank his bottle on my lap. I held him close, looked over the top of his head, and felt like a traitor.

  I held him till he’d finished, and held him as he got very quiet and still. He fell asleep in my arms.

  The doctor had given him a big dose. It was supposed to be totally safe, and would keep him asleep for eight hours. Just to make sure, we had a backup dose packed for the flight.

  “Let’s go,” Dad said.

  Mom came down, her eyes all red and swollen, and we got into the Mercedes. We’d packed our own bags the night before too, and they were already in the back. The drive to the airport didn’t take long. No public airline wanted a chimp bouncing around, so the university had paid for a private plane. The last of the Project Zan money.

  The plane was waiting on the tarmac. It was little, with two propellers and not much room in the cabin. A little door separated us from the pilots in the cockpit. Mom held Zan in her arms, wrapped in a blanket. No one talked much.

  It was my first time on an airplane, and I should’ve been excited, checking everything out, but I didn’t enjoy it. After we took off I looked out the window and saw the island and then the water and then we climbed above the clouds and it was like we were in some nowhere land.

  About an hour into the flight it got really bumpy, and though I was scared, part of me thought it would be good if we crashed, because at least we’d be all together. And then I wouldn’t have to hand over Zan and say goodbye, and see the look in his eyes as he realized we were leaving him behind.

  My mind kept shutting down then. I couldn’t think beyond that moment. It was like nothing could possibly exist afterwards.

  The plane didn’t crash, and a couple of hours later, we landed in Nevada. I carried Zan down the steps to where Peter was waiting for us beside a station wagon.

  It was really good to see Peter. He’d arrived the week before and was getting settled.

  “Dr. Tomlin,” he said, shaking Dad’s hand. “Sarah. Hey, Ben, how’s sleepyhead?”

  “He’s all right,” I said.

  “Still out cold, eh? Okay, let’s take you guys out to the ranch.”

  Ranch sounded good: big and clean and wholesome. The people who worked there would all love animals and just want to take care of them as best they could.

  “So, it’s going to be a bit of a change for Zan,” Peter said as he pulled onto the highway. “I just want to warn you. It’s certainly been a change for me.”

  It was sunny and hot, but I didn’t care about what was outside the car windows. Didn’t care about the desert or the cactuses or the birdsong.

  Zan, warm in my arms.

  “This will go easier for Zan if we act as normally as possible,” Dad said.

  In the back seat I shook my head in disgust. Maybe Dad could do it, because he didn’t feel as much as me—he never had. Mom looked out the window, silent.

  The plan was, we were going to stay five days to help Zan settle in. Dr. Helson had been against it. He’d said a clean break, cold turkey, was the best way to do it. Don’t drag it out. But Mom had insisted, and Dad had backed her up. We’d booked a motel on the outskirts of town and would spend the days at the ranch with Zan. I got to miss a week of school.

  “How do you find working with Dr. Helson?” Dad asked Peter.

  “He’s very …” Peter paused. “He knows a lot about chimps; he’s been working with them a long time. And Zan will have company here, which is really good. Chimps form pretty close bonds.”

  All I could think about was how we’d torn apart the only bonds Zan had ever formed in his life. Twice.

  Outside: a long country road lined with power poles, going on forever. The land looked hard and dry but there were a few trees and shrubs, close to the ground and kind of scraggly-looking.

  “We’re just coming up on it here,” Peter said, and turned onto a dirt road. There was a little rise and then I could see the chain-link fencing, topped with tilted rows of razor wire. I felt a lump form in my throat.

  “There’s a lot of land,” said Peter, “so Zan’ll have plenty of space outside. I’ve been talking to Dr. Helson about building a kind of elevated playground for them, you know, poles with rope bridges, and platforms they can climb, like a more natural forest environment.”

  There were more trees and bushes now, and we were coming up on what looked like a farm. I saw a couple of barns, then a large concrete building w
ith high barred windows on all sides. Beyond that was a pretty farmhouse with a white veranda and picture windows. It looked like something from a storybook. Old Macdonald had a farm.

  It was late afternoon, the light starting to slant beautifully on the buildings and trees, making long shadows across the ground.

  We parked on the gravel drive, and the moment I opened the car door I heard the chimps.

  “That’s the main colony,” Peter said, nodding at the big concrete building. “There’re thirteen of them right now. Feeding time, by the sound of it.”

  I’d heard Zan make a ruckus when he was having a temper tantrum, but he was one little chimp. The sound of so many chimpanzees together made my knees weak. They sounded big, and they sounded powerful, and suddenly I felt like I didn’t know anything about chimps at all. I didn’t want to go in there.

  Luckily, from out of the pretty farmhouse, an entire family was coming to meet us. A man and a woman and two kids, a girl about my age and a boy about ten or so.

  Mom was carrying Zan now, still fast asleep. I grabbed his suitcase. I saw Peter glance at it and look kind of sick, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Richard,” said the man, striding towards Dad with his hand outstretched. “Jack Helson, welcome.”

  Helson was tall and thin, but broad shouldered. With his sleeves rolled back, his forearms seemed way bigger than they should have been, all bulgy muscle and vein. He had close-cropped hair, a high forehead, and very intense green eyes. He didn’t look much like a professor to me; he looked like a soldier.

  Introductions were made out there on the gravel drive, and then he asked us to come inside and have dinner.

  “What a little sweetheart,” said Dr. Helson’s wife, Barbara, looking at Zan. “He’s a good size.”

  “He’s a good eater,” Mom said.

  “Bring him inside,” Dr. Helson said. “Lord knows, our house is no stranger to baby chimps.”

  I liked the way he called Zan a baby. Like he was something vulnerable and worth taking special care of.

  Mrs. Helson said, “He’ll probably start to rouse in an hour or two, and then we’ll get him settled. The other chimps will be sleeping by then.” She was big boned and had a pleasant face. I knew from Peter that she was a vet, so she was a doctor too, really. The boy, Winston, looked like a miniature version of his dad, with a near shaved head and piercing eyes. Sue-Ellen, the girl, was sort of pretty—blonde and curvy, with a sunny smile.

  The Helsons’ house was nice. Their dining table was already set for us, and there were all sorts of prints hanging on the walls, historical etchings of apes and chimps. I saw Mom and Dad look at them appreciatively and could tell they thought Helson was a cultivated man.

  Sue-Ellen brought out a playpen for Zan, set it up in a corner of the dining room, and expertly took Zan from Mom’s arms and laid him down so he could sleep comfortably while we ate. I remembered that very first barbecue in Victoria, when Zan was just days old, and everyone had wanted to hold him and coo over him. For a weird moment I felt like we were safe and all together, but I knew it was a lie.

  It was a good meal—Dr. Helson liked to cook apparently—but I couldn’t eat much. I kept glancing at Zan sleeping in his playpen, wondering where he was going to be spending the night.

  “They’re fabulous creatures, chimps,” Dr. Helson was saying. “Intelligent. Empathetic. Murderous too. They’re no angels.”

  “Neither are we,” said Mom.

  “That’s why we have so much in common,” said Helson, nodding. “But we’re much, much smarter. The mistake is when we allow our human sentimentality to contaminate the experiments.”

  “I would agree,” said Dad.

  Helson tapped his fork at the air. “Our craving to anthropomorphize them is remarkable.”

  Anthropomorphize. I’d heard Dad use that word before. “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “Pretending animals are human,” said Sue-Ellen, giving me a smile. “That they’ll act just like us.”

  Her father chuckled. “And I can promise you, they don’t. But people have a great deal of trouble realizing this, especially with the young ones. Even the people who work with them. Fascinating psychological process, to watch it happen. The delusion can be therapeutic for some. I do quite a bit of work in that area.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, and he didn’t elaborate. He seemed to like looking at Mom an awful lot. He addressed most of his comments to her, and once I thought he was looking down her blouse.

  “But of course, all babies grow up, and that’s when the problems begin.” Helson turned his gaze on me now. “You’ve seen the movie 101 Dalmations?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, the movie was popular, and the dogs were adorable. All those little puppies. And apparently, after the movie came out, everyone wanted a Dalmatian. Now, as it turns out, these dogs have superabundant energy, and they’re not ideal house pets. They destroy houses. So people started getting rid of them in the droves. Pounds were glutted with them. I suspect many were put down. Fantasy can be a dangerous thing.”

  I moved food around my plate. I got the point of Helson’s stories, and I also got the sense he thought we’d messed up Zan.

  “Have you spent any time with mature chimps?” Helson asked us.

  “Briefly, at Borroway, when I got Zan,” Mom said.

  “Ah-ha, and you?” he asked my father.

  “Unfortunately not,” said Dad.

  “Well, you’re in for an education after dinner.”

  I could tell Dad didn’t like to be talked to like this. He probably thought he’d had more education than Helson, down here on his ranch in Nowheresville, Nevada.

  “Excellent meal,” he said. “Thank you so much for your hospitality.”

  “Not at all,” said Helson. “It’s been a trying day for you. Now, Sue-Ellen and Winston, help your mother clean up while I take the Tomlins out to the colony.”

  The night air was warm. Bugs pulsed over the fields. As we neared the big, ugly concrete building, I could still hear some hoots and pants and wails, but it was much quieter than when we’d arrived.

  We reached a door. Not steel, not like a bank vault or anything. Just normal. Inside we went, Zan still asleep in Mom’s arms, though starting to stir. I carried his suitcase.

  The smell came first: humid, intense. Nothing as bad as the pigpen I’d visited once on a class trip. But right away you knew you were in the presence of big animals.

  Helson switched on a single, very dim light.

  All around the perimeter of the room were big cages, separate but connected to each other with tunnels. I was aware of dark shapes within the cages.

  An incredible noise suddenly came at us, hoots and shrieks and barks and cries, rising to a crescendo that hurt my ears.

  “Not too used to visitors after dinner,” said Helson.

  Inside the cages the great shapes stirred. Some stood on two legs, some pressed their bodies right against the bars, arms raised; and a few of them howled, their vast mouths all teeth and red gums. They were massive. Their faces and hands and fur were much darker than Zan’s. They were not beautiful. Zan was just a baby and I was terrified for him.

  Peter was beside me, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” he whispered in my ear. “They just like making noise. They’re not so bad. I’ll introduce you properly tomorrow.”

  “We’ll put Zan in here for now,” said Helson, leading us to one of the smaller cages in the corner of the building. “It’s sealed off.”

  A cage.

  Not a room, but a cage.

  There was a concrete floor with a drain in the middle, nothing else.

  Helson unlocked the door and swung it wide. I looked at Mom, who held Zan swaddled in his favourite blanket.

  “Bring him in,” said Helson. He smiled, but sounded impatient.

  Reluctantly Mom went inside. I followed her with my little suitcase. The moment I walked through the cage door,
I felt queasy. The cage was about ten feet by ten. I could see there was a tunnel, but the gate was locked for now.

  In the next cage over were two big chimps. One sat very still, watching. The other was banging against the bars and hollering.

  Helson nodded at Zan. “Take his clothes off,” he told Mom. “Why?” she asked.

  Helson chuckled and waved a hand to the next cage. “Do you see any of the others wearing clothes?”

  “He’s grown up with clothes,” Mom said, frowning.

  “The other chimps won’t accept him,” said Helson simply. “Take them off.”

  Zan was still asleep, and I helped Mom gently lift his T-shirt over his limp arms. I pulled his shorts down over his legs. That left only the diaper. I undid the clasps and pulled it off. It was warm and damp. Zan looked so much smaller now, so much more vulnerable, and I kept swallowing so I wouldn’t cry.

  I opened Zan’s suitcase and started taking out some of his things.

  “No,” said Helson, fixing me with those piercing eyes of his. I’d been in the middle of spreading Zan’s favourite fleecy blankets on the floor. “There won’t be any of that here. Do you think chimps use blankets in the wild?”

  “But Zan wasn’t raised in the wild,” said Mom. “He grew up with blankets and a bed.”

  “So I understand,” said Helson. “But that’s not the way my chimps live. We don’t pretend they’re humans here. They’re chimps and they live like chimps, and there’s a lot more dignity in that than dressing them up in children’s clothes. The sooner Zan realizes he’s a chimp, the better. Now lay him down on the floor.”

  I looked at all the things I’d packed for Zan in his suitcase. His G.I. Joe and his duck and chimp and cow: his babies. He loved these things. I looked at Mom, wanting to hear her protest.

  Mom said, “Dr. Helson, surely, for the sake of easing his transition, he can have a couple of his favourite blankets.”