by Ted Kosmatka
“Have you heard of The Modern Synthesis?” The old man’s voice seemed to filter through the piles of books. It was the opposite of an empty church, where your voice might echo hollowly off the walls. Here your voice was eaten by the room.
“Yeah.”
“Have you read it?”
“It’s one of the banned books.”
“Have you read it?” the old man repeated.
“I have.”
“And what about this?” he asked, pulling a large dark book free from the shelves. The old man held the book out for Paul to see.
“The Bible?”
“Also a banned book, in some parts of the world.”
The old man placed the book down on the table and gestured for Paul to come closer.
Paul stood next to the old man, his leg brushing the table. The old man was tall but frail. Paul thought about killing him. The image flashed through his mind. His hands around the old man’s neck. The way his throat would feel when he crushed it. What his eyes would look like when the life had gone out of them.
“Turn to Genesis chapter three, verse twenty,” the old man said.
Paul turned the pages.
“Now read it.”
“‘And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.’”
“‘Mother of all living.’ What do you think of that?”
“I don’t think anything.”
“They were cast out from the garden for their sins,” the old man said. “God was angry, because they’d eaten the fruit of knowledge. His punishment was swift.” The old man closed his eyes and quoted from memory: “‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.’”
The old man opened his eyes and looked at Paul. “Thus were Cain and Abel begotton. And then Cain slew Abel. There is another verse I’d like you to read. Genesis four, lines sixteen and seventeen.”
Paul flipped through the Bible until he found the verse. He read aloud, “‘And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch.’”
The old man smiled. “You see, Paul, that was what got me. That was what started all this.” He gestured around himself, but Paul had the sense that he meant something larger. The entire compound. Everything. “That is what sent me down this path. Reading Genesis, when I was a young boy in school.”
The old man held out his hand, and Paul gave him back the Bible. The old man looked down at the pages, creased and yellowed with age.
“Because even as a boy I wondered…” The old man closed the Bible. “This boy Cain, cast out from paradise, who did he marry?”
Paul stared at the old man. “It’s an origin story.”
“Is it now? Come, sit,” the old man said. He gestured to a high-backed chair near the table. Paul sat, while the old man continued looking through his books. He took a pair of bifocals from the front pocket of his suit jacket and studied the spines, searching for titles he had in his head. One by one, he pulled down other books. Books on paleontology. Books on bones. And these books, too, like the Bible, were banned in various parts of the world, Paul knew. Or some of them, anyway.
“Tell me, Paul, did you find your room to be comfortable?”
“I’m not particularly interested in the accommodations.”
“I see; nor would I expect you to be. But still, so long as you aren’t uncomfortable, I suppose that’s fine. Aha!” The old man slid a book from its place on the shelf. “This is what I was looking for. Very rare, this one.”
He placed it on the table with the others and sank down into a nearby chair. They were sitting side by side, like dear friends. Paul imagined that a security camera recorded their every interaction. He pictured men in riot gear just outside the door, waiting to step in if he made the wrong move. But he could do it quick, he knew. But maybe not quick enough. Could he kill the old man before anyone had time to reach him? And then there was Lilli. Of course. And what would happen to her? The old man was no fool. For all Paul knew, there might be a gun trained on him right now, unseen.
“I knew your father for many years,” he said. “He was a talented scientist.”
“So I am told.”
“I see him in you.”
“Few people do.”
“Ah, but they’re not looking at the important things, are they?” The old man flipped through the pages of the book before him. He continued: “Aristotle wrote that, at his best, man is the noblest of all animals; also he is the worst. Your father and I had a parting of the ways. It pained me bitterly at the time, but I understood the reasons. Your father… was a difficult man, in many ways. Perhaps you knew this?”
“It escaped my attention.”
“Oh, I doubt that.” The old man smiled. “And your mother. She, too, was a brilliant worker, though perhaps not as gifted. Nor as afflicted. It is a trade-off, no? Do you understand about trade-offs?”
Paul understood.
“Let Lilli go,” he said.
The old man looked surprised. “So now it’s you who speak of trade-offs. Tell me, what do you have to trade, I wonder.”
“She has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, but she does. Now.” The old man paused. “Paul, you must understand the position I’m in. This is a very delicate time—thanks in no small part to your own activities. The political situation is fragile at the moment, a circumstance you attempted to exploit to your advantage. Fortunately, Congressman Lacefield was amenable to negotiation.”
“He sold us out?”
“Traded you, more like.”
“For what?”
“Senate votes, of course. Politicians all have their constituencies to keep happy. And to be clear, the information you want to divulge would be uncomfortable to a large number of people on both sides of the aisle. The status quo is hardly ever served by rocking the boat.”
The old man opened the book lying before him. In it were large full-color prints of bones. It was a specialist’s book.
The old man’s eyes lingered on a glossy image of a skull. He touched the photo. “The magic is in the minutiae, isn’t it?” he said. “The careful measurement. The interpretations come and go like the tides, argued over like fashion, but the measurements themselves stay. Unassailable. I’m told that you’re a man who appreciates this also.”
“She won’t say anything, if you let her go.”
“In Java, Homo erectus. In Europe, Neanderthals. In Siberia, the newest DNA evidence points to something else entirely. As distinct as Neanderthals, but different. Bones found in a cave just outside Denisova.” The old man flipped through several more pages, his rheumy old eyes moving from photograph to photograph.
“Homo erectus. Homo heidelbergensis, Australopithecus, Ramapithecus, all these different things. These, Paul, are what we bred with when we left our garden.”
“You’re mad,” Paul said.
The old man smiled. “You’ve seen so little. You can’t possibly understand it all. You’re like a fish calling a turtle mad for telling of dry land. Do you think this is just a theory of mine?”
The old man stood. He closed the book, hiding its photographs.
“Here, Paul, let me show you.”
* * *
They took the hall to a stairwell and then descended to a deeper level of the building. Two guards fell into step behind them. They’d been standing just outside the door of the library.
The old man pushed through a set of security doors and led Paul into a laboratory. “This is the anthropogeny lab,” he said.
The lab was white and sterile. Jars and microscopes graced shelves that lined one wall. Banks of computers occupied the other side of the room.
“It took us years to perfect the procedure,” the old man continued. “This is where we made them.”
“Made what, exactly?” Paul asked.
The old man ignored him, moving ahe
ad with the guided tour. “The jars are the miscarriages. Chromosomal abnormalities, mostly.”
Paul saw then that the jars contained fetuses. A moment earlier, the jars had seemed to hold formless brown shapes that could have been anything. But now he recognized them for what they were, all at once, the whole wall of monsters. Arms and legs and twisted hands. Misshapen skulls. Faces like blooming flowers. Things with tails.
“The difference in chromosome count is small,” the old man continued. “But it does complicate things. Less in the first generation, though. Backcrosses are the real problem.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“You will. Follow me.”
Paul followed him through the lab to a set of double doors that led to a long hallway. He had a sense that they were leaving the main building and entering one of the wings.
The old man carded them through a security door, and they stepped into a dark room. A moment later, the lights clicked on with an audible click. They were standing in an enormous atrium. It took Paul a moment to recognize it for what it was. An ape house.
As if in response to the light, the apes moved to the front of their cages and began to call out. Soft hoots at first, but growing louder and more intense as the moments passed.
“This is where we house the juveniles,” the old man said.
Floor to ceiling, twenty-five feet high, cages were stacked one atop another like children’s building blocks. Each cage five feet cubed. Each housing a young chimp. The noise was deafening.
Paul lifted his hands to cover his ears.
The old man smiled. “Of course, the staff came up with their own name for this room.”
He spread his arms wide while the chimps shrieked all around them. The cages shook, the dark shapes inside spitting in rage.
“They call it hell.”
* * *
Lowering his arms, the old man continued walking. Paul stayed close, his hands still over his ears. Behind them, the two guards followed at a distance.
The old man led them through another set of doors and into an outdoor area. High cement walls closed them in. It was obviously an animal run of some kind.
“For the very young chimps,” the old man offered. “Before they get too dangerous.” At the far end of the run was a narrow steel door. He opened it with a key that hung around his neck.
“A bit old-fashioned,” he said. “But then, I’m an old man, and old-fashioned security gives me comfort at times.”
He led them into another building.
“And here,” he said, stepping aside so that Paul could enter, “here is the final destination for your bone sequences. This is where the data goes. This is what it is all for.”
Paul looked around, trying to take it all in. They stood just outside a vast nursery.
Paul moved forward. His mouth hung agape. It was impossible to process what he was seeing.
In this room, a dozen toddlers played behind glass.
Things almost human. They wore diapers and nothing else.
“What…” he began, but he could not finish. Could not formulate a coherent sentence.
“In Aristotle’s time, chimps were unknown to civilization—did you know that?”
“No.”
“It’s true. Aristotle was preoccupied with nature, and with man’s position within it. And all the time that he was writing, and theorizing, and formulating his understanding of what it meant to be human, there were these beasts living in the jungles of darkest Africa—beasts with ten fingers and ten toes, small primates who are so like us, and not. And what would Aristotle have thought, I wonder? If he’d seen one. If he’d known that they existed and walked the same world as us.”
“These aren’t chimps.”
“No.”
“What are they?”
“Clones,” the old man said. “Australopithecus. Homo erectus. Homo habilis. Our newest creations.”
Paul moved closer to the glass. He touched it with his hand, feeling the cool, smooth surface. On the other side, small miracles played. Rangy-limbed. The inhuman side by side with the almost human.
“And others, too,” the old man continued. “The Denisovans. KNM-ER fourteen-seventy. All the archaeological finds. Here they are, Paul. The bones you’ve been studying your entire life. Here they are.”
The old man put a hand on Paul’s shoulder. “That’s what I offer.”
Paul looked at him. Speechless.
“And next will be Flores,” the old man said softly.
* * *
Paul stood, entranced, and watched the toddlers play for nearly an hour. Beyond the glass, activity in the nursery continued without noticing him. A man and woman in white lab coats took turns caring for the children. Children. The word snagged in his mind. Not quite right. But close. Closer than any other word that might be applied. For what else could they be called? Yet they were most decidedly not like any children he’d ever seen before—strange little child-things that scrambled around the room.
“Do you want to go inside?”
Paul could only nod. Martial took him to the door and let him into the glass room. The children backed away at first, fearful of the large stranger. Paul took a knee, and one of the little ones moved across the padded floor. Crawling. This one was bare-skinned, but with a face like no toddler he’d ever seen. The skin a medium brown, the hair a shade lighter than the skin. An unusual combination, but not unique.
“Hold your hand out,” the old man said.
Things that aren’t man. But almost man. It crawled around in a diaper.
The child was a boy, Paul decided. Something masculine in the face, even at so young an age. The hair was tawny-colored, like wet beach sand. Straight and coarse. Paul held out his hand, and the child moved closer and wrapped its fist around his finger. Muscles bunched in its shoulder, and Paul marveled at its strength.
“One of our most vigorous specimens.” The old man had come up behind him without Paul noticing.
“What is he?”
“We call him Samson.”
“No, I mean… what is he? Which one? Which kind?”
The old man looked down at Paul appraisingly. “Which one do you think? I’m curious to hear your guess.”
Paul looked at the child. It looked very human, but it was hard to say how it might develop. The infants of many animals looked very much alike—more alike than the adult forms. It was one of the mysteries of biology. The babies of many species were indistinguishable, while the adult forms varied wildly. A baby puma and a baby house cat looked very much alike.
“One of the Java specimens,” Paul said.
The old man smiled. “A reasonable guess.”
“Am I correct?”
“It’s possible.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“No, I only said I was curious to hear your guess, not that I’d give you an answer. But there’s still more to see. Would you like to see more?”
“More than this?”
“So much more.”
Martial led him out of the nursery and down a long hall to still another room. Martial handed him a mask. “Until the children are vaccinated, we can’t have you breathing on them without a mask. We have to vaccinate them for everything. What is a minor sickness in us tends to kill them. It’s like the early colonial die-offs, but worse.”
Paul donned the mask and stepped through the door.
“I’ll leave you to it,” the old man said. “But before I do, I have something for you.” He motioned to one of his guards. The guard handed Paul a folder.
“The report from your computer technician,” the old man explained. “It was saved on the flash drive. We took the liberty of printing it out for you.”
Paul opened the folder. Inside were a dozen pages of type.
“Interesting reading,” Martial offered. “Feel free to peruse it at your leisure. But for now…” He gestured to the door.
Paul stepped inside. The old man didn’t foll
ow.
Paul wasn’t alone in the room. Lillivati was sitting in a rocker, holding a bottle in an infant’s mouth.
The infant was tiny, little more than a newborn. Its bare limbs were covered with a fine, downy coat of hair a few centimeters long. Its feet were square and blocky—the toes slightly long, but aligned in the familiar configuration. Only the slightest gap between the first and second toes gave any hint that the feet were anything but human. The face, though, could scarcely be confused. Broad and projecting, with a low, bony brow and a sloped forehead. The top of the skull seemed small in comparison to the size of the face. The mouth simian, lipless. The eyes were large and dark and lacked any whites at all. The sclera of its eyes as black as any ape’s. The ears were the ears of any hominoid, delicate and curled and perfect. The nose was broad, cartilaginous, projecting—a nose truly, and not the nasal depression found in apes.
Although the infant was small enough to be a newborn, it looked up when Paul entered the room and watched him alertly with its dark eyes. It reached up and held the bottle in its hands. The thumbs were prehensile, grasping the bottle.
Lilli rocked the child as she fed it.
When Paul finally tore his gaze away from the infant to look at her, he saw that there were tears in her eyes.
“It’s impossible,” she said.
* * *
The guards took them back to their room an hour later. The door latch made a loud click behind them.
A moment later, Paul tried the doorknob. “Locked,” he said.
They both sat on the bed. They sat for a long time without speaking.
Finally, Paul opened the folder and began reading the report. He thought of Alan on the bridge. His black eyes, his broken nose. The results in the report were clear. When Paul finished reading, he closed the folder.