by David Dun
Chellis stood inside the doorway of the office he had appointed lavishly as a gift for Jacques Boudreaux, his lead researcher. The imported antique furniture displayed the fantasies of glory dear to its occupant. More significantly, it was a measure of the scientist’s importance within Grace Technologies.
“I am anxious to see the practical application of all this theory,” Chellis said by way of greeting.
“You have Samir Aziz coming in. The largest arms dealer in the world. A dangerous man.”
“Maybe not so dangerous; a little tamer when you are through.”
“Yes. But if I knew…”
Chellis held up his big left hand bearing an oversized gold ring. “Jacques, I do the business, you invent the goodies. It’s a division of labor.”
“But…”
“I know you are going to tell me that if you know the application you can better tailor the product. Well, I don’t care and I own the company. I had to bring Samir. I’ll tell you that much. The Mossad paid a visit to his private residence in Lebanon and they wanted to know what I was up to in medical technology. With a very big gun under his nose they told him that they’re interested in the brain research. They went into his safe, ransacked the place, and believed him when he said he knew nothing. Samir should have been happy that he had nothing in his safe. Instead he was very unhappy that they knew something about Grace Technologies that he did not. Samir is a powerful man and he is not used to being pushed around by the Mossad or anyone else, and it has put him in a very grumpy mood. He and I have a very tidy arrangement and I want to keep him manageable. Like Jason is manageable. That’s where you come in and that’s the only place you come in.”
“I called security. Talked to Claude Balford himself. I asked about the man who came to visit without authorization. Devan Gaudet I believe he was. Our security man, Mr. Balford, was so silent I thought the phone had gone dead.”
“You forget about Devan Gaudet. You assured me you told him nothing. Is that right?”
“Nothing.”
“I am shocked you know that name. You wipe it from your mind, my friend. I cannot afford to lose you.”
“Lose me?”
“In the purest sense, Jacques.”
Jacques looked troubled, and Chellis knew that he should be.
“So am I going to see the real thing used on a monkey before I see it used on my good friend Samir Aziz?”
“Let’s go.” Jacques stood and led the way, apparently ready to accept the fact that there would be no more information. He was short and blond and had a strut that might have suited Napoleon himself.
Chellis followed him to double doors over which hung a sign indicating MOLECULAR BIOLOGY. Inside, a second set of doors was marked PRIMATE WING NEUROLOGY.
They stopped in a large room with multiple cages housing pigtail macaques. In all there were six. Four appeared completely normal.
Behind a plate-glass stood a large cage outfitted with gray tree trunks, rope swings, and a multilevel climbing frame. An obvious effort had been made to introduce natural elements to the enclosure.
“Aren’t these critters mostly terrestrial?”
“More than most but they are still monkeys.”
To one side of the plate-glass was a door that admitted them to an area immediately outside the cage that contained four chairs, small writing desks, and a console. Housed in the cage were a male macaque, Centaur, and a female, Venus. Centaur busily groomed Venus, his eyes concentrating on his fingers as they picked through her coat. Each monkey wore a harness with a small pack in the center of its back. Standing by was a young man dressed in a khaki uniform.
Jacques walked to the console. “Where we can control everything and have instant injection of the various juvenile hormones, we are making rapid progress in our behavioral studies,” Jacques began. “Of course to get the range of behavior that I will now display, we need to have altered neurons from several regions and a direct-access IV drip of the various juvenile hormones. Note Centaur’s calm demeanor.” Jacques reached to the console and typed in a code.
Centaur sat back on his haunches, yawned, and looked out at them, Buddha-like, as if he were gazing into eternity.
“He looks like the Dalai Lama,” Chellis joked. “I understand macaques are cannibals.”
“No. That’s chimps you’re thinking of. But then people are cannibals if they are hungry enough.” Jacques punched in another command.
Centaur began vocalizing and pacing up and down the cage, stretching his arms and making breathy screeching sounds. Again Jacques punched in a code, and the monkey began racing at the bars and screaming with a blood-lust trill. Suddenly he charged Venus, who at first cowered, then ran to a perch in the tree. Centaur followed. When he arrived at the perch, he stood over her, shrieking. Again Jacques typed a code, and the male grabbed the female, attempting to push her from the perch; a fight erupted, and quickly Jacques typed in another code.
Immediately Centaur sat on his haunches as if nothing had happened. After a moment he climbed down and approached the female, who was still trembling and baring her teeth in a grimace.
“That’s actually a submission display.”
“It looks like she’s pissed.”
“No, that means she’ll play ball by his rules.”
Methodically he began once again grooming her, and gradually she calmed.
“And what if you had not canceled the last command?”
“He would have become progressively more agitated and aggressive until he killed her.”
“Very impressive. When will it be ready for the real world?”
“Don’t know. We’re working on it. What you observed is much more advanced in the mood control than we can get without IV access. And of course we placed the receptors over a long period and with much trial and error. We went through five animals.” Jacques stepped away from the console. “Jason Wade is a phase one. These animals are phase three. We use both activating cells and suppressor cells in many cell types.”
“Let’s go get some lunch,” Chellis said.
Jacques did not care for cafeterias, so they adjourned to a conference room adjoining his office that each day was turned into a private dining room, where he entertained various researchers and high-level staff. Chellis was perfectly happy to eat in the cafeteria, and even enjoyed the curious glances of all the employees, but he deferred to Jacques when in Kuching.
Chellis only visited every couple of months, and he appreciated that with Jacques running the facility more frequent visits weren’t necessary. Benoit Moreau, his assistant and his mistress, came a little more frequently. Marie, Chellis’s wife, didn’t care for Malaysia, and although, for appearances, he did not like traveling alone with Benoit, he would not be without a woman. That was the main reason he’d assigned Benoit to monitor Kuching. She had been his assistant for eight years and his mistress for seven of them, and therefore only occasionally resided in Kuching. Chellis’s life was further complicated by that fact that Benoit was Marie’s sister.
This trip he had Benoit meeting with the heads of each department to obtain research summaries and to keep her away from the macaques demonstration.
“You don’t think the aerosol is ready yet, even if we just limit ourselves to a phase-one paranoia continuum.”
“Not quite.”
“If we want only to achieve phase one on Samir with a simple paranoid continuum, do we need to put him to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“But you know the effect?”
“We’ll get the receptors, but the magnitude of the effect isn’t completely dear. It’s a question of how well the gene expression comes through, which depends primarily on the volume of vector particles. And frankly, the human will has incredible powers of adaptation. The mind with all its abilities is created by an odd composite of neuronal activity. The neurons, billions of them working together, trillions of interconnections create consciousness, but they are not consciousness. People can liter
ally sometimes think their way or learn their way out of a change in physiology. Maybe we could say that training or thinking creates physiology. In the end physiology wins.”
“So if I go ahead with my little plan, we don’t know exactly how good the result will be on Samir?”
“That’s right.”
“But he will be nervous.”
“Yes. It would be shocking if he weren’t at least somewhat paranoid. Especially for the first few months.”
“But not completely crazy. And we alone can provide him relief.”
“It should make him a lot more manageable. We will see. You know I can guarantee nothing. We are reasonably sure but we don’t have the controls, and the volume for a human-sized mammal remains a question.”
“I know. I know. But let’s do something.”
“Imagine what you could do to a head of state, or an entire parliament…”
Chellis didn’t mind Jacques’s probing; he wasn’t going to get anywhere with it.
“Is the gas chamber foolproof?”
“You must get him placed between the nozzles. If you don’t we’ll have to try again on the way back, maybe use force and rely on memory blockers.”
“Samir should be here any moment; I need to get to my office.”
“You could use mine,” Jacques said.
“No. No. I don’t need to impress this man.”
When Samir entered Chellis’s office, Chellis stood and greeted him in quiet tones. Samir was a big man, thick like a wrestler with glasses like Coke bottles, and an aura of confidence that was palpable. They had met for the first time fifteen years earlier, and since then had actually met face-to-face on perhaps a dozen occasions. They had become not so much friends or acquaintances as uneasy joint venturers, each keenly aware at any given moment of what the other might hold for him.
“Well,” Chellis said, interrupting the mutual pleasantries. “I know you’re a busy man and would no doubt like to get on with business.”
“I’m not like the Orientals who require an hour’s socializing before getting down to work,” Samir said, “but I do need to see what you’re developing so I can begin thinking about how we might employ it.”
“I’d like to ask that only you view the demonstration. It’s top secret.”
Samir hesitated but was unreadable. “My men can wait outside the door?”
“Of the molecular biology wing.”
Samir nodded, clearly not pleased but amenable. Weapons carried by Samir’s men were hidden only in a crude fashion. There were obvious lumps in their clothes.
They went down long halls, and finally emerged into the main molecular biology lab, but this time Chellis led him to a different door. It was metal and heavy.
“What is this?” Samir asked.
“We go through an air lock. An anticontamination measure.”
They walked to a second heavy metal door that said: AIR LOCK. CLEAN ROOM.
Chellis removed a plastic card and inserted it into a shiny stainless box. As if to ease Samir’s mind, he explained:
“We have to keep out foreign bacteria. Ordinarily we wouldn’t traipse through with street shoes on, but today it’s okay.”
With a sucking sound the heavy door opened to reveal a three-meter-by-five-meter chamberlike area with all-metal walls and to the left, hanging on the wall, heavy white suits looking rather like astronaut garb. They approached an even more massive door. Chellis determined that Samir was perfectly placed between the two gas nozzles.
Chellis took a deep breath and held it. A whirring could be heard as the sliding door began closing behind them. There was a loud pop and rushing gas. Samir, startled, took a breath, then began to look wildly about, gasping. Within ten seconds he began to stagger and to lose motor control. Chellis grabbed his own throat and swayed as if drunk, turning to look in Samir’s alarm-filled eyes as he fell to the floor. Chellis stepped back to the door through which they had come. A crack remained to allow his exit; then the door closed. By the time Samir’s eyes had rolled back in his head, Chellis was outside the chamber with the door closed.
Two hours later Chellis, as was his custom when under stress, went on a ten-minute screaming tirade. Jacques, appearing pale, began to stare down at his shoes, and Chellis realized that he was repeating himself badly. “You never said he would get uncontrollably angry.” Jacques blinked his irritation but said nothing. “Answer me! I had Samir Aziz in the lab. We gassed him. How could you screw this up?”
“There is no indication that we screwed anything up. He is angry. He probably always gets mad when he feels powerless. Mad is different from aggressive. Aggressive means killing people; it comes from phase two, and he received no phase-two-vector particles. No receptors for those areas of the brain. You watch, the fear will increase, but he won’t become more hostile or aggressive. When you have had a chance to introduce him to a masseuse, the massage oil will work perfectly. He will calm himself temporarily with each introduction of the hormone. More than that, he will crave it once he tries it.”
At that moment Benoit arrived with Jacques’s right-hand man, a bearded fellow with a round face and stomach. He stood back and nodded toward Chellis, who looked at Benoit as she put a hand on Chellis’s arm.
“I am sorry. I wondered if I might interrupt.”
“I want it working,” Chellis said, no longer yelling but ignoring Benoit. “I’m going to see him in a few hours and he’s mad as hell.”
Chellis escorted Benoit down the hall, knowing he should not have alluded to the Samir situation in her presence. He kept her out of such things.
It was a short walk to her comfortable six-bedroom home, a small mansion set carefully at the jungle’s edge with lush gardens and a ten-foot brick wall to ensure privacy. Benoit held his arm as they came up the walk and he nodded at the servants whose names he could never remember. Benoit seemed to know them all. It bothered him that she held his arm, as it gave the appearance of impropriety.
In the study he found a bottle of Glenlivet. After the first sip he turned his attention to Benoit. She was dark-haired and with the same stark-white unblemished skin as her sister Marie, his wife, but with large, doelike, brown eyes. She was slightly more squared in the shoulders than Marie, which he liked, and unlike Marie she was petite in the torso with a small bust.
Two years younger than Marie, Benoit looked more like five years her junior; at forty-one she looked to be in her early thirties. While Marie was a witty observer, an arranger of things, passively inviting sexually, and generally warm to everybody, Benoit was calculating and aggressively sexual, a small tigress with a killer instinct. In his most private thoughts it seemed to Chellis that they were two halves of a marvelous whole: sweet and succulent but tart and nourishing; luxurious and classy but practical and gritty. Where Marie was sexual creme brulee, Benoit held the hot tang of his favorite chutney. Together they had it all, and which of them he wanted in his bed depended on whether he wanted to rhapsodize or sweat.
He made sure the shades were drawn and the door locked. Although he was still not quite in the mood, he gave Benoit a long, slow kiss, very carefully, with enough of his tongue to warm the heart but not so much as to move over the line to disrespect. If he hadn’t made it right, she would be a bitch for a while. It was one of the few concessions he made to another person playing with his carefully spun reality. Never would he tolerate diffidence from a man, but the two women in his life were different.
Benoit gave him a good smile. She was pampering him. And he knew it was because she had a strong opinion about Jacques and his value and she felt the need to manipulate his mood any way she could.
“It will be fine. Give it time and it will work just like it did with Jason. You know I would never tell you your business, but it strikes me that Jacques is very capable. Perhaps we should not unfairly blame him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“DuShane, darling. I know what you tried with Samir.”
/> “How do you know these things?”
“I snooped in your briefcase on the jet when you went to sleep.”
“There was nothing in my briefcase.”
“There was a planned experiment for this afternoon on a macaque with a body weight of 240 pounds.”
“Maybe a young gorilla.”
“Okay.”
“You knew it was Samir Aziz?”
“Of course.”
“Just how did you know?”
“Jacques’s secretary booked a hotel reservation for him. He weighs about 240 pounds. We don’t have any young gorillas. They don’t stay in hotels.”
The phone rang.
Even in Kuching there was a screening computer on his phone system that would not allow a call unless the computer recognized the phone number of the caller or unless the caller knew a code. He picked up the phone.
“Yes.”
It was Roberto, insisting that Chellis hear the story of Anna Wade’s tumble into the saltwater rapids. Chellis could feel himself being dragged into something and he didn’t like it.
“Are you certain the scrambler is on?”
“Yes, we checked.”
Roberto told the story twice, repeating each and every detail and taxing Chellis’s patience.
“Get the CD back or make sure it’s gone for good.” Chellis interrupted when Roberto tried to respond. “If she had an accident, that would be…”
“Yes, an accident,” Roberto said.
“And don’t forget who you are dealing with here. Even in Canada this won’t go away quickly if something else happens to her.”
“The currents here are fierce.”
Immediately after he hung up Chellis knew he had made a mistake. This was happening too fast. He shouldn’t be involved directly with this.