The Murder in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  It was the words he used and the way he reached for a fresh cigarette with one burning in the ashtray and caught himself just in time that made me think, with a flash of genuine horror, that he was lying. He insisted on seeing what he called “the original documents.” I refused. I told him that they had been sent to me in confidence and that it would take a court order to pry them loose. I think it was the word court that brought blood to his face. He is a tall, pale man with short-cropped graying blond hair, eyes the color of ice, and the kind of loose lower lip given easily to disdain. I do not think he is used to having people disagree with or refuse him. His agitation reached such a pitch that for a moment I actually thought he might strike me.

  “Professor Gottling,” I said, “it doesn’t make any sense not to be frank with me. I need to know in detail the extent of your experiments, how long you have been doing them, and the results to date, insofar as a layperson such as myself can comprehend them.”

  “What do you need to know for?” he asked, exuding so much smoke he might have been a volcano about to erupt.

  I repeated that I was Director of the museum and might be for some time. As such, I said, “it is my responsibility to know what is happening in all departments of the museum so that I am able to report with competence and completeness to the Board of Governors. “Furthermore,” I continued, “the person who is sending me these reports will surely start giving them to the newspapers in the belief there may be some connection between what’s going on in the Genetics Lab and the murdered deans.”

  In retrospect, I find it difficult to describe the nearly satanic glower that lit his cold eyes when I mentioned the deans. I could almost think him insane, and did think the unthinkable: it was he who had dispatched Fessing and Scrabbe or had some devoted underling do it for him when they started asking the same questions. Despite a shiver of fear, I pressed on. I told him I needed to know the exact arrangements and conditions under which he was using chimpanzees from the Primate Pavilion for his work. I needed to know the number of animals involved, what he was doing with them, and for how long. I pointed out that state regulations in this regard were very strict, involving not merely fines for infractions but criminal prosecution.

  Again he blustered, demanding to see the reports I had received, saying the lab had nothing to hide, that they were “serious and very busy people.” He went on in that vein, but I did not relent. I told him I needed “a detailed accounting of all monies paid to the Primate Pavilion for services rendered.” He denied that the Genetics Lab had paid anything “for the few specimens we have collected from time to time from a few of the animals.” What about the funding of programs in the Primate Pavilion from the Onoyoko Institute? He waved his cigarette at me. He denied he had anything to do with the institute’s funding policies. It was an outright lie. I took out another document I had had the foresight to obtain before coming to the meeting: the last annual report of the institute, which, while vague about where most of its monies went, listed its officers and the members of its disbursement committee, the chair of which is Professor Gottling. Presented with that, he belched more smoke and said that “out of heuristic considerations” he might have sanctioned funding a project or two in the pavilion, but these were details others attended to. The baldness of his lie embarrassed both of us; if department heads pay attention to anything in academia, it is to who and what gets funded.

  He stood up and sat down, snubbed out his cigarette and lit another. “Why is this so important to you?”

  “Because I am responsible ultimately for what goes on in the Museum of Man.”

  “Why don’t you ask Drex about where he gets his funding?” he asked in a sneer.

  “To be perfectly frank, I am not convinced that Mr. Drex is altogether sane.”

  The man’s laugh and smile were not pleasant, but for a knowing moment we were in some agreement. I persisted, however. I repeated that if he were not forthcoming in all necessary details I would convene a Board of Inquiry. I also said that while I was loath to have the press meddle in any affairs of the museum, I was not above using the media if it came to that.

  The man’s expression was such that for a moment once again I could believe he had something personally to do with the deaths of Fessing and Scrabbe. His suppressed rage, his clenched jaw and clenching fists were such as to suggest madness barely under control. “Who told you about the chimpanzees?” he demanded to know with a fury that belied his assertion that the lab used “animal material” from the pavilion merely as a convenience. “Listen, Mr.…”

  “De Ratour.”

  “De Ratour, the animals happen to be right here. We can get the same thing from other sources on a routine basis.”

  I ignored this lie and began to get specific. “I have heard, Professor Gottling, that you are planning to grow a couple of chimp fetuses modified with human genes in a glass box. It’s code-named Mary Shelley.”

  His face blanched, his lower lip trembled. Again he demanded that I show him the original documents. He wanted to know who had sent them. “There has been a major breach in security,” he said, catching himself to amend it to “I mean, a breach in confidence, in the kind of trust we need for our work.” He went on, as though speaking to himself, expostulating about human frailty, about how he already had enough problems with the death of Onoyoko, about how he couldn’t even get a call through to Onoyoko’s son, “a playboy who has taken to decadence with typical Japanese diligence.” I interrupted him finally to say that, unless he wanted to speak to me now in an open and candid way about his operations, I would immediately begin an internal investigation in a very thorough manner. When he hesitated, I stood up and turned toward the door.

  I don’t think I have ever seen a person change personalities so abruptly and radically. “Mr. de Ratour,” he began, in a quiet, nearly humble tone, “please sit down.” He indulged in some preambulatory flattery about how he knew I was a man of culture and vision and how I had the best interests of the museum and the labs at heart. I imagine he had used the same applied charm on Lieutenant Tracy. I complied with his request, sitting down, while he paced, smoking continuously. “Mr. de Ratour,” he repeated, as though my name pleased him, “I am going to tell you some things in the strictest confidence, and you must promise not to tell anyone else.” I told him I could not make that promise. He smiled. “Good,” he said. “I know I can trust you.” I think now that it was a streak of hubris that made him confide as much as he did. He told me first, however, that any announcement or public discussion of what they had done and were doing would have to be couched in the most careful terms. He conceded that there could be “major repercussions” if what they were doing was misconstrued by a public “wary of science.” I waited, not committing myself in any way to an implicit collusion.

  “First tell me, Professor Gottling,” I said, “have you been using chimpanzees for experiments?”

  “We are pushing to the limits the concept of gene therapy. We are using pongid zygotes to —”

  “Then you admit to using chimps experimentally.”

  “Well, it’s against state and federal law to use human fetuses.”

  “But,” I insisted, “the protocols for using animals like chimpanzees are also very strict.”

  “Drex has been most understanding … for a price.”

  “So you have been dealing with Damon Drex?”

  “Drex and his minions. They’re all batty if you ask me.”

  “Is that what those restricted areas are all about?”

  “Of course. Who do you think is paying for all of those renovations in the pavilion and for those inane experiments? The man belongs in an asylum.”

  The pot calling the kettle black, I thought, but said, “The Stein Foundation?”

  He very nearly laughed at me. “They provide a mere pittance.” He remained silent for a moment and then glanced at me with a look meant to convey significance. I think he was just on the point of confessing something horrendous, but
he veered away. “We can say,” he said, as though composing a news release, “that our work is right on the cutting edge of applicable genetics, perhaps even over the edge here and there. We have from time to time made a few speculative forays …” His voice trailed off and his eyes grew distant.

  “Is there any truth whatsoever,” I asked, “in the notion that you are tinkering with the human genotype?”

  His distant gaze refocused on the present with what might be called a wry smile. “Self-speciation? Not yet. I’m afraid we’re years from that, Mr. de Ratour. People have no idea how complicated we are. It’s going to take years and billions of dollars just to sequence the human genome. How can you start making alterations unless you have the blueprint? We’ve … pushed the envelope, but …”

  “With the chimpanzees?” I asked.

  “With the chimps, with the … the little monsters …”

  “Then you’ve tried?”

  “Not really. A few shots in the dark, a few hunches. I was hoping we could at least initiate some basic procedures, areas of intervention, a beginning of the beginning …”

  “Then you are talking about eugenics,” I said, scarcely reassured by the note of disappointment in his voice.

  “Eugenics?” He nearly spit the word back at me. “Eugenics is old hat. It’s farmyard stuff. Tinkering. No, Mr. de Ratour, when we get the tools, and we will, there’s going to be nothing less than a long overdue restructuring of the human genotype, perhaps a whole new species, Homo superbus.”

  I sat there utterly dumbfounded. I kept expecting him to sound a cynical laugh, signaling that he had been joking. “You’re serious?” I said.

  “Of course I’m serious.”

  “But that’s monstrous.” I said. “It’s …” I could not find words to describe how I felt about what he was telling me.

  “Oh, but think about it, Mr. de Ratour. Do we really want to leave human evolution to mere chance? Or worse, to a committee?”

  “Chance hasn’t done that badly so far,” I said, but without a whole lot of conviction.

  “Come, come, Mr. de Ratour. Look at us as a species. We are never satisfied, are we? We murder, we lie, we cheat, we covet, and we steal. How much farther up the evolutionary ladder do you really think we are from Mr. Drex’s friends? We don’t even kill each other for food. Oh, no, we kill each other for sport, Mr. de Ratour, for sport. Nothing fascinates us as much as a good murder unless it’s a good mass murder. We like to think that Hitler and Stalin and their less efficacious imitators are the exceptions, Mr. de Ratour, but they are the rule. We can’t admit to ourselves that human history is one long bloodbath. We rage in our hearts and smile at those we would destroy. We lust after each other like goats. We whine and bitch and want what cannot be. We work and sweat and build for what? To die miserable, lingering, tortured deaths. Toads live happier lives, Mr. de Ratour.

  “And quite aside from what we do to ourselves, look at what we are doing as a species to the planet. We are overrunning it at a prodigious rate, and the only hope, a massive nuclear war, is now receding with the end of the Soviet empire. But the very nature we would despoil with our greed and technology answers us with AIDS and Ebola, and AIDS and other viruses, Mr. de Ratour, are only the beginning. We are going on six billion people, each one of us a little laboratory for the evolution of diseases that will make AIDS and Ebola seem like the common cold. And if we don’t, in the meantime, melt the ice locked up on Antarctica and flood most of the world’s coastal cities, we will strip the atmosphere of ozone and wreak havoc with crop production. Thus is man, the paragon of animals …”

  “What will you make us into?” I asked. With credulity came a horror I could scarcely contain. In that man’s presence I felt threatened not only personally but as a species. “How,” I asked him, “do you see man as man would re-create him?”

  The man’s caution had given way to enthusiasm. He leaned forward, his cold eyes warming like sunstruck ice. “Homo superbus,” he said, “will be smaller, perhaps much smaller, darkly complected for protection from ultraviolet light, probably hermaphroditic, more fuel efficient, with each individual perfect in his own way. She/he will be healthier, with individual differences reduced to the incidental. We will all be perfect. And perfectly happy.”

  “How can you be perfect unless you know imperfection?” I asked. “How can you be happy unless you’ve been unhappy?”

  “We will find the panoply of genes that affect our happiness and alter them accordingly.”

  “Professor Gottling, please understand that if there is any truth in anything you are telling me, I will not cease until this whole operation is exposed and brought to a halt.”

  His smile sent a chill through my whole being. “You are being naive, Mr. de Ratour. I can and will deny everything other than bending the rules a little perhaps on using chimp gametes for research. Everything else is standard research on gene therapies. You will turn yourself into a laughingstock.” Then, bringing himself closer to where I had sat down, he grew chummy in a way that made my innards crawl. “Think about the possibilities, Mr. de Ratour. We can save the planet without resort to disease, starvation, and war. Everyone would be intelligent, disease resistant, long lived. Think of what a perfect human being would be: the same as others, yet different, self-confident without being arrogant, spontaneous but not flighty, sensual but not depraved, proud but not smug, daring but not foolhardy, kind but not weak, respectful but not groveling, cautious without being timid, well informed but not pedantic, spiritual but not superstitious, artistic without being arty, discriminating but not finicky, amusing but not silly, witty but not cruel, genial but not fawning. Think about it, Mr. de Ratour, no more crime, no more disease, no more death. We will all be perfect.”

  “No, no,” I cried. “Perfection is death. Without our pains and our imperfections and our struggles to overcome them, we will be less than human.”

  “No, Mr. de Ratour, we will be more than human. We will re-create ourselves in our own best image. We will finally become our own Gods.”

  I had so many questions, so many objections, I sat mute. Because what could I say in rebuttal to this brave new world? That most of us live lives that are a series of mistakes out of which we try to make the best? That our imperfections, the knots and barbs embedded in the thickening years of existence, are precious because, for most of us, they are, finally, more our own, more us, than anything else we have or will have?

  I got up finally to leave, having promised nothing about what I was going to do. I reiterated that I expected a complete report from his office regarding the expenses and activities of the lab, especially its dealings with the pavilion. I was nearly in a state of shock as I made my way up through the collections. Never had they seemed more threatened to me. Never had the divinity I have always found here seemed so spurious. Beauty, I had said in desperation to Gottling when he finished detailing the monster he wanted to create, what about beauty? Oh, he said, beauty. Yes, we’ll find the genes for that as well. Everything will be beautiful. Beautiful. God is dead. Nature is dying. Are we next?

  I have been sitting here for a long time. I might have succumbed to the worst kind of depression. But Elsbeth arrives in just a few days, and that prospect has me filled with hope and trepidation. Love, I wanted to shout at the professor, what about love? But he probably thinks he can find genes for that as well.

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2

  I have begun “packing” my father’s revolver in a shoulder holster smelling pleasantly of new leather. It is snug against the left side of my rib cage, weighty and reassuring. And right now I need all the reassurance I can get because I have, I think, quite inadvertently, set a trap with myself as the bait.

  It began late this morning when Damon Drex came into my office and started that obsequious fawning he passes off as Old World charm. “Norman, I bring you again our pressed release,” he said. “How does it come that you neglect me? No words about news conference you promised.” He waved that
absurd “pressed release” in my face. “Frans publishes this in Trog.” As he spoke, his mask of geniality tightened into a strange fanaticism.

  I was actually prevaricating when I said, “Before we discuss anything at all, Mr. Drex —”

  “You are pleased to call me Damon.”

  “As I was saying, Mr. Drex, before we discuss anything to do with anything, I need to know what arrangements the pavilion has had with the Genetics Lab regarding the provision of chimpanzees and any other animals for experimentation.”

  His smile was toothy and false. “That is professional confidentials.… Little potatoes for you. We will talk big things.”

  “Mr. Drex —”

  He waved a sheaf of papers in his hand. “We talk pressed release —”

  “No.”

  “What you mean, no? You promise —”

  “The fact is, Mr. Drex, I never once promised I would sponsor a news conference regarding your experiments in the Primate Pavilion. Any interest I might have evinced in your ‘work’ was in large part professional courtesy that one colleague shows another. And simply because the material you have produced for the press conference is to be published in some in-house publication in no way gives it the legitimacy of having research ‘published.’ ” I went on to tell him that rather than being awestruck by the material he had sent me, I had been convinced that he was either the perpetrator or the victim of a huge hoax, perhaps by someone who knew about his “program” or by someone with access to the codes in the mainframe memory. “I think, Mr. Drex, you should check on your assistants Frank or Frans or whatever they call themselves.”

  “Frank! Frans!” he screamed at me. “Frank and Frans like sons!”

  I watched as his face went blank except for his yellowish eyes, which stared out from under his heavy brows with the most malignant expression I have ever seen on a human face. But I was not to be intimidated. Indeed, I got my back up enough to tell him that not only would I not sponsor a news conference but, as Director, I would prevent his holding anything like a news conference on the premises of the MOM and that, should he hold one elsewhere, I would issue a statement disavowing any museum involvement with his “experiments.” I began to enjoy my indignation, which is always dangerous, because I got carried away and dropped, as they say, my bombshell. While he was sitting there regarding me with an expression I can only describe as homicidal, I told him that, given the museum’s uncertain financial condition following the death of Mr. Onoyoko, my own predispositions, and the falloff in experimentation with primates because of new and stricter state regulations, I was proposing to the Board of Governors that the pavilion be closed and that the animals be sold or given to other institutions. I told him quite frankly that I did not regret the prospect.