Trifecta

by Pam Richter

  Ivar decided he would have to get nearer to the woman. She must be doing something very significant if his KGB contact had chosen this moment to communicate with him.

  The fluke that had brought Ivar to America was that, as a boy, Ivar had been precocious in the art of mimicry. It seemed there was no sound he could not imitate. He could do all different kinds of birds, dogs, cats and chickens. Even cows, horses, cars and airplanes. And this proficiency had adjusted itself to foreign languages, especially English.

  Upon graduation from school at seventeen, Ivar's special gift was well known enough that he was invited to Leningrad State University. It was almost unheard of that someone not politically well positioned be taken there, but he was talented, and it was there that he learned to speak really excellent English. He went through the mandatory two years of military service, and then into the Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, where it was decided that placement outside the country would be possible. Then there was training in the KGB itself.

  The KGB made Ivar expert in the use of all weapons and in the most lethal and deadly arts. But it was also very effective in indoctrinating loyalty to his country and a disgust and hatred toward the nation where he was to be assigned.

  To be planted in a deep cover required that he first learn French. He lived outside Quebec for a few months, establishing himself, before moving into the United States. The proper identity had been found for him; parents who had both died along with their infant son in an accident in Canada. Ivar received his identity papers and became the son of Gretchen and Joseph Cousin, with dual citizenship in Canada and America.

  Ivar had liked Canada. The weather and rural situation was close to what he had known in the Soviet Union. However, when he moved to Washington, the riches available to anyone astonished Ivar. He had believed himself exempt of any passion for the luxurious lifestyle of the people in the United States. But that was before he had a very profound experience in a grocery store. He had walked the crowded Washington streets to familiarize himself with his new neighborhood, and finally found a grocery store that was brightly lit in the daytime. He thought it must have tuna and bread. It looked as big as a barn. He went inside and stood looking at long, tall isles, disoriented by the size of the place. Finally, he saw a sign proclaiming Produce. Produce, Ivar thought, must be something man-made. Maybe bread that way. He turned a corner and stopped.

  He was not aware his mouth had dropped open in astonishment. He believed he was looking at brightly colored, plastic fruit and vegetables because the abundance could not be genuine. He wanted everything and squeezed everything in his large hands in a shock-happy daze, believing he had entered paradise.

  Having come from a country where he routinely and drearily waited in long freezing lines in the snow to buy a few bruised beets to make borscht, and then queued up in another for the wilted beet greens, he had indeed entered paradise.

  At the check-out counter it finally dawned on him that the United States was a very dangerous place.

  As Ivar mused about his past, he saw Sabrina Miller come out of the grocery store with a small bag in her hand. He watched with appreciation. She moved with amazing strength and energy back to the apartment building.

  CHAPTER 9

  Alexander had dropped the bomb on Ferd. Now he was gone.

  "Never, ever mix politics and science, government with science, politicians with science, or government agencies and science," Ferd muttered to himself. Hadn't his son's learned anything from the Manhattan project? Were they really naive and innocent, or were they just plain stupid and amoral?

  God help my poor baby computer if the government is after her, Ferd thought to himself. He was so agitated that the doctor was summoned to monitor his heart again.

  Ferd still thought of the computer as his baby because she had started out that way.

  The Super-Computer had been the culmination of decades of work. It was ironical that after years of tedious labor, finally completing a part mechanical, part chemical computer, which Ferd believed could be implanted into the human brain, the hardest thing to come by was a real live human being to conduct a trial.

  There was precedent for his research. Brain 'pacemakers,' tiny platinum disc electrodes placed on the surface of the cerebellum, had been implanted successfully since 1976 to correct incurable problems with schizophrenia. They had also been used in uncontrollably violent psychotics. Now though, in the new century, drugs were preferred to surgical intervention, proving to be less invasive, more reliable and ultimately much cheaper.

  Ferd's computer was designed to attach chemically to the neurons of the brain through natural neurotransmitters. The brain itself does not reject foreign objects like other parts of the body, once the object passes the blood-brain barrier, so after it was implanted he did not have to worry about death through rejection. But it was still a very risky surgery.

  Ferd's computer was designed to enhance the inter-growth between the millions of brain cells, greatly heightening the mental capabilities in the experimental subject, enabling greater intellectual access to all perceptions and memories.

  Ferd could not think of a way to find a person legally for such an experiment. So he had gone to his sons, they were after all lawyers, and good ones at that. Maybe they would think of a way to find a person willing to go through such an experiment.

  Stephen had mentioned going to a prison. Prisoners, he reasoned, had nothing to lose. But Ferd wondered if a convicted prison inmate could be trusted. They were criminals. With alterations in their brain chemistry they might really perform some hideous crimes.

  During this discussion, Ferd, Alexander and Stephan had been sitting around the kitchen table at Ferd's place. Ferd was sipping tea and his sons were nursing cognac. Alexander mentioned that he had desperate and infertile couples come to his law practice, seeking to adopt babies. He had succeeded in obtaining babies legally for these couples. He stated he could get Ferd a baby. He would find a pregnant woman who would consent to have a baby, instead of an abortion. Stephan was sure that with the proper financial inducements he could find such a woman.

  At first Ferd was shocked at the thought of a baby, but he felt almost absolved of culpability. Without him the baby would have never have been born. He could have the human material he needed without too much guilt.

  Ferd had not questioned his sons about their motives too closely because he began busily experimenting on baby mice and rats. He had to find out whether he could make the computer small enough to implant into a small mammal. He found it was impossible.

  Then he started injecting the infant mice and rats with growth hormones to see how fast he could get them to mature. He could not implant his computer into an infant's head and he would be dead by the time the baby was mature enough for the surgery.

  Using a combination of growth hormones, the baby mice and rats became as large as their mature relatives, but growth hormone is tricky. The large babies did not look anything like their parents. They got big quickly, but they looked very abnormal. Some had enormous joints and huge heads on small bodies. Others looked swollen. Some had misshapen limbs and could not walk. Others had respiratory problems. And they all died young.

  The good news was that the hormones did not have a deleterious effect on the rodent's brain. His hormone-grown rats could run mazes with the best of their normal relatives.

  Ferd thought if he used growth hormones to grow a very large baby, then he could implant the computer. After that he would use what he called his 'copy machine' to made the baby look like a passable human, by copying another person's body. People do not want to see grotesque experiments on human beings, but this three-process experiment seemed viable.

  The copy machine was an instrument for duplicating an object exactly, if all the correct materials were available. It took exact pictures of the molecular structure of the object and reproduced it precisely, moving the copy materials atom by atom and molecule by molecule, almost like a jigsaw puzzle, until
the copy resembled, almost was, the original. Ferd had used it on dollar bills for his own amusement, but because he could not acquire the exact type of ink and paper the U.S. treasury used, his replicas looked like extraordinarily good counterfeits.

  Ferd had never thought of making organic duplicates so he set to work on his copying machinery. The arduous part would be to retain the biochemical computer during the process. Then he thought, why not change the body so that it would be immune to damage and very strong. He decided with some work he might accomplish that too.

  When Ferd finally told his sons, six years later, he was ready for the baby, they had forgotten all about the experiment. They showed renewed interest when Ferd reiterated the proposed computer's capabilities; the fantastic memory, enormous strength, and immunity to damage or disease. They became more enthusiastic than Ferd had ever imagined they would be.

  Stephan and Alexander brought the tiny baby girl to Ferd in a little bassinet and dropped her off like a bag of groceries, leaving immediately. Ferd took one look inside the basket and immediately got goose-pimpled with chills and then, moments later, flushed with heat. He thought he would vomit and ran to the bathroom gagging.

  Ferd had fallen in love with her tiny perfect innocence in one moment. She was only a few days old. He sat watching her face for hours, appalled that he had ever conceived of using a human baby in an experiment. He had a hard enough time with baby rats. Ferd reminded himself that he hadn't even seen a baby since Stephen and Alexander were themselves babies, thirty five years ago, and he was now repulsed by the very thought of such an experiment.

  The baby had bright blue eyes and ears like tiny translucent shells. Her hands were petals opening before his eyes.

  The experiment had seemed like such a remote thing, and he had promised himself that he could make the baby the smartest being in the world, a cryogenic marvel of human and computer components, which would justify his use of such a baby. But now he could never go through with it. Take this tiny, beautiful bit of humanity and inject her with a hormone which would distort the fragile tyke? No, he would give that all up and raise the little girl as his own. She was worth more than all of his years of experimenting, Ferd thought, as he watched her seriously sleeping with her tiny light pink eyelids twitching, or picked her up and watched her facial expressions change magically before his eyes. Maybe someday he would find a person who would be willing to let him implant the computer into their brain. Until that time, he vowed would take care of the baby until she grew up.

  Alexander and Stephan were appalled at Ferd's attitude after all of their effort in providing the baby girl. The brilliant scientist was acting like a dope; changing diapers, making up formulas, crooning foolishly to the baby and even rocking her after she was asleep. He got up several times each night to marvel over his new daughter. And what would happen to their inheritance? Ferd was quite wealthy from all his medical patents, even though he lived like a pauper, and they did not want to lose their inheritance, or share it with anyone. It was totally unfair that their own father was acting like the baby was some sort of miracle. He wanted to give up the Super-Computer for some worthless baby that would have been aborted without their persuasion, and a considerable amount of their finances. Now their own birthright was at risk with the appearance of a tiny squalling infant girl.

  Stephan and Alexander argued about the solution to their problem, but finally the answer was obvious and logical. They spent one evening sitting with their father, again in his kitchen, talking about the experiment. They acted as though they were genuinely interested in all of the boring scientific explanations that were entirely beyond their capacity to grasp; things like the dissolution of molecular force fields for the copy process, and the theory of how the brain's neurons could connect, attach, and become part of the implanted computer. Ferd enjoyed his son's company and forgot their scientific limitations in his enthusiasm. He talked for hours, until finally they had the information they needed.

  Alexander was the one who actually injected growth hormone into the baby girl. She had been waving her arms, babbling and blowing bubbles, delighted to see his face loom over the edge of the crib in the middle of the night. Then she had felt pain and had cried, with baby vague expectations that she would be comforted like she always had been in the past, but no one came to her that night, even when she screamed. Ferd had been given a sleeping pill in his tea.

  The next morning Ferd was concerned because the baby seemed to be burning with fever. He watched her carefully over the next few hours, never leaving her side until the truth of what had happened was finally apparent. She was getting larger almost before his very eyes and Ferd was appalled, remembering his son's interest in his experiment.

  When he saw the first changes he vomited and vomited, although he had eaten nothing. Then he had held the baby, who was beginning to look like a giant guppy, and told her he would love her forever. He rocked the baby and cried and took special care of her and watched her grow. There was no going back. Now she would have severe physical limitations and die at a very young age, shunned by society by her distortions. Or, he could make her the smartest human being on this earth. And beautiful, too. But even so, his wondrous baby would never grow up to her true and special unique potential. Ferd cursed his own superior intelligence forever imagining he could tinker with the human race.

  Ferd found the letter his son's had written to him a few days later. It said they couldn't bear to see his genius thwarted and years of painstaking work go undone for his understandable moral sensibilities in using a human baby in an experiment. As if he cared what the scientific community thought, Ferd told himself bitterly. A Nobel Prize was not worth looking at what his beautiful baby had become. He put the letter aside and concentrated on the large baby.

  She grew until he could no longer hold her on his lap, but she remained affectionate, even though her face and body were almost unrecognizable as human. He fed her, diapered her, hugged her and hoped that the brain would not be adversely affected by the hormones. She grew so large that he could not even put his arms around her to hug her, but she still loved her bottle and he lay beside her on his bed, six times a day, and fed her milk with special vitamins and minerals.

  During the exhausting months that followed, Ferd took care of the huge baby, and disdained contact with his sons. What they had done was so painful to him he could hardly think of them. He could not imagine living his life and never seeing his sons again, either. So he went on with the experiment, injecting the growth hormones and eventually it was time to surgically implant the computer.

  Ferd still felt a great affection for the baby, although caring for her had become his sole and exhausting occupation. He was also frightened. The surgery was so delicate that he might not be able to do it in his depleted physical state. But it had to be soon. He could not continue as he had been, changing diapers, feeding and cleaning up after the huge thing that most people would consider a monster. She was starting to have shortness of breath, and maybe a respiratory problem already. She often vomited and Ferd was worried that if he did not operate soon she might die as suddenly as his rats and mice.

  She was now so large that he had constructed an enormous playpen for her in the living room. She was very strong, but he could not put her in restraints, feeling it would be cruel.

  So Ferd had operated and then he had waited. The recovery time had been only a week when she had started mimicking his sounds. She did not understand what he was saying, so he started telling her what was important for her to know for the future. He was doing a kind of computer hypnosis. What he said would probably remain in her memory banks forever.

  Ferd told his computer baby that she must never hurt any living creature unless she or another person was threatened. She would obey those people who took care of her unless they tried to harm her. Ferd told her she was a new offshoot of humanity and was very special so that she was never to hurt herself, even though she had the ability to heal rapidly. Ferd told th
e baby-computer that she must always take very special care of the person they used as the original for her body.

  Ferd anticipated that the person he made his computer look like would have lots of publicity and work with him in the future, so choosing that person would be very important. He then contacted his sons, hoping that one of them would provide the physical body for copying; after all they had forced him into it by injecting growth hormone into the little baby girl, but neither one wanted to. He was disappointed in their reaction, but glad to have contact with them again and invited them over for dinner so they could see his marvel.

  Stephan and Alexander came to dinner the night Ferd had begun using teaching tapes to train the computer. When he showed them the large thing lying on the sofa, listening to audio tapes and watching the screen of a huge computer, both Stephen and Alexander thought that their father had truly gone mad. This was not at all what they expected. It did not look like a baby, although Ferd called it his 'Computer Baby' with evident pride. This large, grotesque, fleshy thing resembled a fish with no fins, or maybe, Alexander whispered to Stephen, a whale. They were repulsed and horrified. They said as much to their father, who simply agreed and said this was just the first phase. He did not want to tell his sons too much about his copy machinery, thinking they would probably use it, just as he had, to try to make copies. But they would not use one dollar bills, they would use hundred dollar bills. And try to pass them. He would never forget the original baby he had loved so much.

  As Stephan and Alexander drove back to the huge home in Bel Air that they shared that night, they both agreed that all their plans for the Super-Computer would have to be trashed. They could not use that 'thing' in their profitable schemes.