by Nancy Kress
“Yes, sir.” My sergeant told me just that, in her strongest words, which were pretty fucking strong. And she must of told the Committee that she told me.
Clementi says, “How badly do you want to join the army, Private Walders?”
“More than anything in the world, sir. My father was army. I don’t know who he was, but I know that much. Mom told me before she died.”
“So is it fair to say that you have absolutely no motive to lie to the NS, or to this committee, about what you saw? In fact, finding out that you did lie would wreck your chances of getting your heart’s desire?”
“Sir, I am not lying. I am not lying.”
The chairman was scowling. “Dr. Clementi, I’m afraid we have a bit of misunderstanding here. You were asked to join us in order to share your scientific expertise, not to establish a subpoenaed witness’s motives and credibility. The committee requests you to confine yourself to your own scientific area. Do you have any more descriptive questions to ask Private Walders?”
“No, I do not.”
“Fine. Then, Private Walders, the marshall will escort you back to your NS base. He will also explain to you your obligation to repeat nothing you heard in this room, and the penalties for any violation of that obligation.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“Thank you, Private Walders.”
The federal marshall stands next to my elbow. I stand up, my face hot, and tell myself to leave quietly. They’re a Congressional committee, for chrissake—big shots. There’s more power in this room than I’ll probably ever talk to again. I should leave quietly, not say nothing else, just leave even if I’m boiling over inside.…
I can’t do it. At the doorway I turn back. “If you old farts do anything to fuck up my chances of going regular army, you’ll regret it. Every one of you. No matter how long it takes me!”
From his seat Clementi shakes his head at me, but it’s too late. The marshall grabs my arm and hauls me out of the room. But not before I see the smirk on the bitch who was riding me. She got what she wanted: proof that I’m an unrestrained disrespectful hothead nobody should never listen to. And I gave that to her, damn it all to fuck.…
I just screwed myself.
5
NICK CLEMENTI
By the time I arrived at the advisory committee meeting, the battle lines were drawn. The old, old lines—even now, when so many of us are old, and you think we would have grown tired of it. The struggle on opposite ends of the tug-of-rope, the barnyard pecking order. I could smell it the minute I walked into the committee room. Fair enough—I, too, have done it all my life. Modern science requires its Metternichs no less than its Kochs.
But the girl, the child in quasi-military uniform, hadn’t a clue. They were going to sacrifice her without a qualm, sending her unarmed and ignorant in front of charging cavalry. I did what I could to prevent it, until, with the passionate obstinacy of the young, she dashed out and flung herself in the path of the onrushing horses and was trampled.
When she’d gone, trembling and red-faced and defiant and pathetic, we got down to the real fight.
“I think,” began Congressman John Leonard, committee chair, relatively young and politically ambitious. A Bible Belt Republican, his constituency believed passionately in shared responsibility, including the responsibility to regulate godless tampering with the human genome. They also believed passionately in family, including children, which meant a cure for the world’s falling sperm count.
Congressman Leonard balanced delicately between these two beliefs. Regularly he assured the folks back home that the “sterile-intellectual forces subverting true humanity” were being well and manfully held in check by the United States government. He also regularly assured them that this same government was bravely exploring for a sterility cure. But despite this precarious fence-walking, Leonard’s statement was true—he did think. Constantly, craftily, narrowly. He said, “I think we’ve established that Private Walders’s testimony is not reliable.”
“I agree,” said Leah Janson, of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association, which spent billions yearly to convince the public that the gene-therapy drugs they manufactured had no connection whatsoever—none, not in a million years—with any technique that could be used to create any “inhuman monsters.” “This girl has a history of lying and attention-grabbing.”
“I think we’re all in substantial agreement here,” said Satish Gupta, National Institutes of Health, an honorable man deeply interested in the sperm-count crisis. His work, which focused on reversing poor sperm motility through manipulating in utero conditions, was one of the few lights of hope in the current darkness. I’d worked with him at the Nielson Institute. Gupta was rigidly truthful, with the genuine scientist’s contempt for those who falsify data—even data about curfew violations.
“I’m not really so sure—” began Congressman Paul Letine, but he was a freshman, only thirty-two years old, from an unimportant state, and nobody listened.
I, however, am a personal appointee to this committee by the Vice President, courtesy of Vanderbilt Grant, one of the most powerful men in Washington. Grant headed the Food and Drug Administration, which had evolved great power since the Haxilent tragedy. Haxilent, a genetically engineered medicine remarkably effective against hypertension, had ended up killing 7,243 people through a freak, selective side effect. Now the FDA, according to its own PR, was all that stood between innocent Americans and a recurrence of that kind of recombinant roulette. To much of the public, Grant and his FDA army were a thin red line of heroes.
“I’m not really so sure—” freshman Letine said, and I broke in with, “I’m not so sure, either.” The committee looked at me through that opaque distance that a challenge to power always creates. Eyes, turned to me respectfully, nonetheless narrowed.
“Private Walders may or may not be telling the truth,” I said diplomatically, although I believed she was. That kind of stupid, youthful, self-destructive passion almost always meant truth. Liars are more self-protective; sociopaths less stupid. “But there’s a strong chance that she saw exactly what she said she saw. Created not through germ-line manipulation, but through vivifacture.”
No one looked surprised; they’d all expected this. Vivifacture was what I once did, why I’m now a member of this committee. Vivifacture, the engineering of human tissue, was the back door into changing a living body. Not inheritable, and so not illegal. Not contagious, and so not illegal. But not exactly religious or responsible, either.
Vivifacture doesn’t alter DNA. But neither does it require pharmaceutical gene therapy, so drug companies aren’t crazy about it. It competes for funding with basic research like Gupta’s. And to many people, it’s creepy. The public wanted replacement knees and fingers and tracheae and other cartilage-based parts—oh, how they wanted them! Not to mention how badly the rich desired replacement skin for aging faces and necks and upper arms. But they didn’t like to think about how and where those parts were grown.
Over a biodegradable polymer “scaffold” on the soft underbelly of a dog bred without an immune system, nourished by the animal’s blood nutrients. Under the skin of a rat. On the back of a lamb held motionless in restraints its whole immuno-compromised life.
Thus, despite its widespread medical and cosmetic uses, vivifacture wasn’t discussed too openly in any official proceeding. After all, such meetings were recorded. Not too openly discussed, not too openly acted on, not too openly set out in the political arena against the lions of public opinion. This was one social responsibility that didn’t get shared.
The wall screen still held the computer drawing of Private Walders’s chimps, three hairy bodies with the same adorable human-child face. Glossy black child-hair, blond curls, spiky red hair with light freckles.
“Dr. Clementi, much as we appreciate your scientific contribution to this situation, it’s paramount that we keep in mind the—”
“—possibilities that could have created this s
ituation, yes,” I said, smiling, unstoppable. They all knew I was here because Vanderbilt Grant put me here. “Let me just develop those possibilities a little. Vivifacture, as you all know, doesn’t involve sperm or eggs. It doesn’t involve the host’s DNA at all. Rather, the needed organ—a human ear, a knee joint, a liver—is grown from samples of the recipient’s own damaged organ, on or in a lab animal bred without—”
Chairman Leonard interrupted. “I’m sure we’re all familiar with this level of explanation, Doctor. The medical advantages of vivifacture are well known.”
They should be. This committee has had me force the details on them often enough. Although lately they might even welcome such vivifacture details, in preference to what else I’ve taken to forcing on them.
Leonard continued, “But as you yourself have testified for this committee, a brain—a whole head—is simply not possible to vivifacture. Computer software couldn’t even design such a complex thing, let alone specify the needed scaffolding to grow it … that’s what you’ve told us.”
“And it’s still true,” I said.
“Then what Ms. Walders claimed to have noticed is impossible!” The chairman suddenly noticed that the drawing was still displayed on the wall screen. He said irritably, “Terminal off.” The image disappeared.
I said, “It would be impossible if those chimps really did have human heads on simian bodies. But it would not be impossible if what they have is merely human faces, transplanted on top of their own, with the monkey skull surgically altered to human contours. Then they would merely look human. The brain, vocal cords, olfactory and hearing organs—all still simian. Only the optical nerves would need rewiring, and that’s a common operation.”
The freshman, Paul Letine, burst out, “And the hands?” I didn’t even have to answer him. The entire world had been following the newsvid stories about Rashid Brown, third baseman for the Dallas Dodgers, who had lost his hand in a stupid accident and had it replaced with a new one of vivifactured skin over motor-powered plastic bones.
Susan O’Connor, CDC Genetic Integrity Task Force, frowned. “Let me be sure I understand this, Doctor. The chimps are—could be—real chimps, but covered with vivifactured human skin to resemble human children, but not on their bodies, which still look like monkeys—”
“—at least until they’re dressed in little overalls and shoes,” I said. I could see where she wanted to go.
“—and all this vivifacture, with its complex medical steps and need for bio-sealed areas for non-immune animals—all this was done in a warehouse? By unknown people, presumably scientists, without even a dossier on file with the FBI? I checked, Doctor—there is no dossier. So this secret, highly technical operation was carried out just a dozen miles from the Hill, from the Justice Department, at great expense, with superbly trained personnel … I’m sorry. I can’t accept that premise. It just doesn’t seem plausible.”
“And why would anybody do it?” asked Letine.
Ah, freshmen. They never know what questions should not be asked because no one wants the answer in the record. I smiled at him.
“You’re new to this committee, Congressman. Preliminary reports from the Nielson Institute were distributed over two years ago to everyone here, with speculative scenarios in the discipline of vivifacture. One such speculation concerned various ways to create pets that would lend themselves to even more anthropomorphism than the usual pet owner already indulges in.”
He still didn’t see it. “But why?”
I was getting tired. Rosaria, the attack by her mother, setting my fractured fingers … I tired much more easily these days. I expected it. Usually I could pace myself well enough that no one noticed, although it couldn’t be long before Maggie did. Congressman Letine knew the answer to his own question, if he only thought about it.
The average artificial insemination was only effective for eighteen percent of couples seeking to have a child, and then only if they could afford the procedure in the first place. In vitro fertilization, which had a twenty-four percent success rate, cost even more. The average couple needed 2.6 tries at either to achieve pregnancy. The National Gene Pool Act limited a single sperm donor to successfully fertilizing a maximum of forty-two women; there were so few men left with viable sperm that any more inbreeding than that will have dire genetic consequences a few generations down the line. Equations proved this.
The result was that some people, of the millions who couldn’t have children, would do anything to acquire a child. Anything.
Legally take one from the poor, through Child Protection.
Steal one.
Buy one, domestic or imported. Although Third-World children, for scientifically logical reasons no one would let me mention, were even scarcer than homegrown.
Or, if the prospective parents couldn’t or wouldn’t do any of that, they turned their pets into child substitutes. All over the country dogs ate in high chairs, cats inherited entire estates. A woman in Los Angeles, sad and lonely soul, killed herself when her pet rabbit died.
I said wearily to Letine, “There would be a huge market for chimps that looked like babies. Among people who can’t have children, and are desperate for what substitute they can get.” With a light tan skin and hazel eyes and androgynous features that could be anything—Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, Asian, male or female—through just a little variation in hair and freckles. And you wouldn’t even have to come up with college costs.
Letine sat very still. Then he mottled maroon, and dropped his eyes to hide their expression. So he and his wife were among the infertile; no surprise. And one of them—judging from his face, it was her—lavished parental frustration on something, although not a pet (what?). I felt sorry for him, which of course he would have hated.
Leah Janson said primly, to have it on the record, “Of course, there are laws against putting human parts into lesser species.”
The record might as well be complete. I said, “The black market doesn’t often regard the law.”
“I really think,” Chairman Leonard said, “that we’ve wandered pretty far from the point. All this is interesting, Dr. Clementi, and if you say it’s theoretically possible, then of course we accept that. But the concern of this committee is to find out what is actually occurring—not theory, but fact. And there are no facts to back up Shana Walders’s assertions. No trace left of the building she allegedly saw the man come out of. No trace of the man, or of the alleged animal experiments. And no reason to assume that Ms. Walders has been any more credible this time than during previous incidents in her official Service record.”
“I agree,” said Leah Janson.
“And I,” said Satish Gupta, and Susan O’Connor, and everyone else around the table except James Letine, freshman, who said nothing.
“Then I think our report can conclude that this unsubstantiated, probably fabricated report does not merit additional follow-through,” Leonard said. “Let the record show this as a unanimous committee decision.”
Swept under the rug. And once more the Committee had avoided even touching on the larger problem. There was no more I could do, unless I wanted to file an official protest with Congress. That would involve conferences, media, power struggles, lawyers, turf wars. In the end, would anyone except the doctors and scientists believe me? And did it really matter if there were child-looking chimpanzees being put to bed in cribs and carried in Snuglis by desperate couples who would never have their own child? I had fathered three children. What right did I have to fight against the consolations of those born too late to have any?
And I just did not have the strength.
We cannot yet vivifacture a complex organ like a liver, let alone a brain. Not with our present level of knowledge and technology. Not even a lobe of the brain; it is simply too complex. We can shut down selective tissues in the brain, as is done to starve a tumor, or to induce such conditions as retrograde amnesia. We can wall off, cut out, or burn down other diseased areas. But none of that was go
ing to help me. By the time it was detected, the mucormycosis fungus had already grown through both my nasal passages and the fragile skull bones behind, outstripping my aged immune system’s ability to contain it. Long, slender, untouchable filaments of it penetrated the brain. I had, my doctors told me, perhaps another three months of mostly normal functioning, and then a few more months of dying.
I wanted to do it well.
Who, nowadays, cares for a well-crafted death? wrote Rainer Maria Rilke over a century ago. Nobody.… it is rare to find anyone who wishes to have a death of his own. Long ago one carried death within oneself the way the fruit carries the pit within itself. The children had a small one inside and the adults a big one. The women carried it in their wombs and the men in their chests. One possessed it and there was a peculiar dignity and a quiet pride in that possession.…
My fruit pit, carried in the right side of the brain, caused headaches, nasal infections, and periodic drooping of my right eye, especially when I was tired. I was tired now. I needed to go home, lie on the bed with Maggie in my arms, and tell her that I was fatally sick. That I wanted, above all, a well-crafted death, with dignity and pride. That I wanted to die quietly, wrapped in her tart and unfailing love, in our cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. With the woods behind me and the mountain below and the sky above, to await the distant but inevitable day when the death of the sun returned my atoms to the stars in which they were forged. I am neither a melodramatic nor a religious man, but this thought nonetheless comforted me; it was part of the thoughts I was collecting into myself for my serene death, even as I prepared to give up everything else I have loved. What I didn’t want was to die in the midst of a media blitz about vivifacture, evil science, political incompetence, social responsibility, funding wars, religious hysteria, and politicians’ rating polls.
The committee was watching me. Chairman Leonard said, “Dr. Clementi? Do you have anything to add?”