by Ben Bova
Big George lumbered along the fence, knuckles on the ground. Lou saw that the gate had no lock on it, just a simple latch. With a shrug, he opened it.
George lurched out and grabbed Lou in his immense arms.
“Hey’ Careful!” Lou laughed as George lifted him off his feet, strong enough to crush him, gentle enough to handle an equal amount of nitroglycerin without danger.
Lou pounded the gorilla’s massive hairy shoulders happily. The warmth of his body, even his scent, carried the impression of huge jungle strength. And if the gorilla could have laughed or even smiled, he would have right then.
A pistol shot cracked nearby. Startled, George jerked and nearly let Lou fall. Lou saw sudden fear in the gorilla’s eyes, then turned to see some sort of uniformed guard pointing a pistol at them.
“Stop! Put that man down!” the guard yelled—from a safe distance away. He was wearing a khaki-colored shirt and shorts, with a little cap on his head and that big gun in his wavering hand.
“Shut up,” Lou snapped “And put that stupid gun away. We’re old friends. He’s not hurting me.”
The guard’s mouth dropped open.
“Let me down,” Lou said softly to George. The gorilla stood him carefully on his feet.
Walking to the wide-eyed guard, Lou said, “Put that gun away and don’t let me catch you doing anything that hurts that gorilla or frightens him in any way. Do you understand?”
“I—I thought…”
“You thought wrong. Big George wouldn’t hurt anybody—unless they scared him so badly that he lashed out in fright.”
“I was only…”
“You were wrong. Now get out of here.”
“Yes sir.” The guard turned and walked away, fumbling the gun back into the holster strapped to his hip.
Lou stayed with Big George until lunchtime—but inside the relative safety of the wire screen that marked off the gorilla’s compound. Too many people out there who’ve been frightened by bad movies And too many guns. The compound was wide and wild, Lou saw George had plenty of room, big trees, a stream, even the slope of one of the hills to climb.
“You’d better stay inside,” Lou said as he left the gorilla at the gate, “until the people around here get to know you better. I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble.”
“I know,” George whispered “I’ll be good.”
Lou smiled at him “Sure you will. I’ll see you soon.”
Lou walked briskly back toward his quarters, knowing that George would spend the better part of the afternoon feeding himself. It took a huge supply of fruits and vegetables to keep a gorilla satisfied. By the time Lou approached the white prefab building, he felt sweaty and uncomfortable. It was beginning to get really hot, and the breeze had slackened.
The turbowagon was sitting in front of the dorm, with a driver wearing the same sort of khaki uniform that the gun-waving guard had worn. The driver also had a holster strapped on.
In the back seat an older man was reading some papers. His face was mild and milky white, with a high balding forehead and thin sandy hair that had started to turn gray. He looked slim to Lou, and was probably getting near-sighted, judging from the way he held the papers close to his nose. He wore a starched white shirt, short-sleeved, and full-length trousers.
He looked up as Lou’s sandals crunched on the gravel of the driveway.
“Ah Mr. Christopher.”
Lou nodded and put on a smile as he walked up to the wagon.
“I’m Donald Marcus, the head of the laboratory,” Marcus put his hand out and Lou shook it. The grip was limp, almost slippery.
“Get in and we’ll go down to the lab area. I want you to see the computer set-up before we have lunch.”
Lou climbed up into the wagon and sat beside his new boss.
“By the way,” Marcus said as they drove off, “did you know that you’re three minutes late?”
Without even blinking, Lou snapped back, “My guard must’ve set my watch wrong.”
Marcus looked a little startled, but said nothing.
The computer was housed in a building of its own, off to one side of the lab complex and not far from Big George’s compound.
Inside the one-story building was chaos. Workmen were uncrating bulky consoles, ripping off the protective plastic coverings, leaving huge gobs of spongy foam heaped all over the floor. Carpenters were putting up partitions with whirring drills and power saws. Someone was pounding on a wall someplace. Everyone was talking, calling back and forth, shouting orders or responses, mostly in sing-song Chinese. Lou was nearly run down by four men who, with backs bent and heads down, were wheeling in the massive main control desk at breakneck speed from the open double doors at one end of the building.
It was hot and sticky, and the room smelled of new plastic and machine oil. Lou felt perspiration trickling down his body.
“Most of these components,” Marcus yelled over the din, “come from your computer system at the Genetics Institute.”
Lou nodded but kept his eyes on the nearest workmen, who were busily laying a heavy cable across the floor.
“We brought the logic circuits and the whole memory bank.”
“What about the voice circuits and input software?” Lou shouted.
Marcus lowered his voice a notch. “Um, we didn’t bring the voice circuits or the vocal input units. You’ll have to type your inputs to the computer and get the replies on the viewscreen or printer, just like any ordinary machine.”
“What? How come?”
Marcus avoided Lou’s eyes. “Well, we didn’t have the time or the transportation capacity to take everything. Besides…” his voice lower, so that Lou had to bend down a bit to hear him, “with all these Chinks around as workmen and technicians, if they heard a computer talk they’d probably get scared out of their skulls. They’d think it was devils or something supernatural.”
Lou stared at him. “You’re kidding. Nobody’s…”
Marcus stopped him with an upraised hand. “No, I’m serious. Sure, we’ve got some good people on the technical staff, but the hired hands are straight from the hill country, believe me. My own driver—he’s a great mechanic, don’t get me wrong. But he keeps some powdered bones in a bag around his neck. Claims they keep evil spirits away.”
When they went outside and climbed back into the car, Lou took a careful look. Sure enough, the driver had a thin leather thong tied around the brown skin of his neck, with a tiny bag at the end of it.
They had lunch on the veranda of Marcus’ quarters, a house made of real stone and wood, with a red tile roof that overhung the walls by several feet and made welcome shade against the heat of the sun. The house was atop the hill that overlooked the little blue-water inlet, and the breeze from the ocean made it very pleasant on the veranda. Lou leaned back in a wicker chair, watching the moisture beading on the outside of his iced drink, listening to the songbirds in the flowering bushes that surrounded the house.
“A month ago,” Marcus was saying, “this was the only house on the island. By the end of this week, we’ll have more than a hundred people here—twenty of them scientists, like yourself.”
“I’m not a scientist,” Lou said automatically. “I’m a computer engineer.”
Marcus smiled wanly. “Yes, I know. But anybody who understands this genetics business looks like a scientist to me. I’m a civil engineer, by training. Right now, I guess I’m just a straw boss.”
The young Malay driver served them lunch on a round bamboo table, his little bag of magic dangling between Lou and Marcus whenever he bent over to put something on the table.
“Minister Bernard’s plan,” Marcus said as they ate, “is to carry on the work that was going on at the top genetics labs.”
Lou shook his head. “Twenty men can’t do the work of two thousand. Especially when those two thousand were the best men in their fields.”
Marcus chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of food. He swallowed and then said, “I know it
won’t be easy. We’ve brought some good people here, but you’re perfectly right, they’re not the best. And we couldn’t bring too many of them either, without the government catching on to what we’re trying to do.”
“Just what is it that you are trying to do?”
“Exactly what I told you,” Marcus said, concentrating his gaze on a leaf of salad that was eluding his fork. “We’re going to continue the work you were doing at the Institute. We’re going to complete it, and show the world that we can alter a human embryo deliberately, and safely. Once we’ve announced that news, and told the people that the government tried to prevent this work from being completed, the government will have to relent and allow your friends to return to their homes and their work.”
Lou felt an old excitement tingling through his body. “The next step in evolution,” he said so softly that it was almost a reverent whisper. “Man’s conscious improvement of his own mind and body.”
Marcus leaned back in his chair.
“It’s criminal,” Lou flared, “for the government to stop this work! In a generation or two we could be turning out people who are physically and mentally perfect!”
Smiling, Marcus said, “Yes, we can. And we will, if you can do your part in this job. You realize, don’t you, that you’re the most important human being on Earth?”
12
Lou felt physically staggered. He stared at Marcus, who was smiling easily at him.
“Me? What are you talking about?”
“It’s very simple,” Marcus explained. “All of the world’s top geneticists and biochemists have been put into exile. They’re being shipped up to their satellite prison right now. Of all the top men working on genetic engineering, you’re the only one we’ve been able to save.”
“But…”
“Oh, sure, we’ve rounded up a few of the second-string people, and we’ve brought in a couple of young pups, bright boys, but the ink is still wet on their diplomas. You’re the only experienced top-flight man we have.”
“But I’m only a computer engineer.”
Nodding, “Maybe, but your work is the key to the whole project. You’ve got the computer coding system in your hands. Unless we can get the computer to handle all of the thousand of variables that are involved in any tinkering with the genes, we don’t dare try to do anything. It would be too dangerous.”
Lou agreed, “Yeah … you’ve got to have the computer plot out all the possible side effects of any change you make. Otherwise you’d never know if you were making the zygote better or worse.”
“Right,” Marcus said. “And you’re the only man who was close enough to the geneticists to really understand what the computer coding system must be. We’ve checked all across the world, believe me. None of the other labs were as close to success as your Institute. And none of them had a computer system as sophisticated as yours. So that makes you the key man. The fate of your friends—the fate of the whole world—is in your hands.”
Grinning foolishly, Lou said, “Well… it’s really in Ramo’s hands. Ramo’s got the whole thing wrapped up in his memory banks.”
Marcus tensed in his chair. “The whole thing?”
Lou nodded. “All I’ve got to do is run through the programs and de-bug them. Then we’ll be ready for the first experiments. Take me a few weeks, at most.”
“This is critically important to us,” Marcus said. “I don’t want you to rush it. I want it done right.”
Feeling a little irritated, Lou said, “It’s almost finished. In a few weeks, we’ll be ready.”
“You’ll be able to scan the zygote’s genetic structure, spot any defects, plot out the proper corrective steps, and predict the results?”
“To twenty decimal places,” Lou insisted. “And it’ll all be done in less than a minute of computer time.”
“If you can do that…”
“When we can do that,” Lou corrected, “we’ll be able to mend any genetic defects in the zygote and make each embryo genetically perfect. Ultimately, we’ll be able to produce a race of people with no physical defects and an intelligence level way beyond the genius class.”
“Yes,” Marcus said. “Ultimately.”
Lou sat back, Marcus smiled pleasantly and sipped his drink. Then Lou noticed, through the chirping of the songbirds, the drone of a jet high overhead. Marcus heard it too. He looked up at the silvery speck with its pencil-thin line of white contrail speeding along behind it.
Glancing down at his wristwatch, Marcus said, “That’s our next supply shipment. Your programmer friend should be on that plane.”
“Bonnie?”
Marcus nodded. “I understand she’s quite a lovely girl.” He grinned at Lou.
Pushing his chair from the table, Lou got up. “I’ll go down to meet her at the landing pad.”
“Sure, go right ahead. Her quarters are in the same building as yours. She’s on the second floor.”
“Okay. Fine.” Lou started toward the front of the house. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be bothered by Marcus or anyone else. He just wanted to see Bonnie.
“I’m afraid the car’s already down there,” Marcus said, trailing along behind Lou. “You’ll have to walk it.”
“That’s okay. See you later.”
He left Marcus standing in front of the house and started down the dirt road toward the harbor area. The jet sounded closer now, and Lou could see it circling, stilt pretty high out over the sea.
From behind him he heard the whine of another turbo-wagon. Turning, he saw Kori jouncing in the back seat as the wagon worked slowly down the rutted road toward the harbor. Lou waved and Kori yelled for the driver to stop. They lurched off together toward the landing pad.
“Going to meet the plane?” Lou asked.
“Yes. They’re bringing some equipment in for me. And some data tapes from Starfarer that came in just before I was arrested.”
“The interstellar probe?”
The road leveled out and they picked up speed. Light and shadows flickered across Kori’s face as they drove past a stand of tall palms.
“Yes. If everything was working right, these tapes might have close-up pictures of Alpha Centauri on them.”
“Really? But I didn’t see anything in the newscasts about it—”
The road wound along the edge of the harbor now, and the driver pushed the turbine to top speed. There was no other traffic. The wind tore at Kori and Lou in the back seat.
“The government kept it quiet,” Kori hollered back. “Remember what Cobryn said, back in Sicily? Alpha Centauri is a threat to the stability of the world,” Kori laughed bitterly.
The car screeched to a halt alongside the landing pad. Billowing dust enveloped them for a moment. Blinking and coughing, Lou jumped out of the car and walked clear of the slowly-settling dust cloud. Kori came up beside him, walking in a slow gangling gait.
“Are you going to be working on the probe data? Is that what Marcus wants you to do?”
Kori made a little shrug. “He said I can work on analyzing the data. But what he really wants me to do is to make some nuclear explosives for him.”
“Explosives? You mean bombs?”
“No, no, nothing so big,” Kon answered, grinning. “Just little things, toys, really. The kind that engineers use on construction jobs. Why, if you exploded one of them in a city, it would hardly take out a building.”
The plane was circling low now, its jets roaring in their ears. Lou watched as its wings spread straight out for landing and the jet pods swiveled to the vertical position. Slowly the plane settled on its screaming exhaust of hot gases, flattening the grass beneath it Through shimmering heat waves Lou saw the plane’s wheels touch the ground and the weight of the jet settle on them. Then the turbine’s bellowing whine died off, like some supernatural demon melting away.
Lou took his hands down from his ears; they were ringing slightly.
The hatch of the jet popped open, and a three-step metal ladder slid to the ground.
A broad-shouldered young man stepped out first, then turned around and reached up to help the next passenger. It was Bonnie.
She was wearing shorts and a sleeveless blouse. Her hair was pinned up the way she usually wore it at work. Her face looked grave, utterly serious, perhaps a little scared.
Lou felt something jump inside of him, and then he was running toward her, calling to her.
“Bonnie! Bonnie!”
She looked up, saw him, and smiled. Lou ran up to her, past the guy who had helped her down the steps. He wrapped her in his arms and swung her around off her feet.
“Am I glad to see you! You came! You did come.”
She looked surprised and happy and worried, all at the same time “Lou … you’re all right. They didn’t hurt you or anything …”
“I’m fine, now that you’re here…”
Without ever letting go of her arm, Lou took Bonnie’s one travel bag from the Chinese guard who was unloading the baggage and started walking her back toward the car. Kori was still standing beside the wagon, so Lou introduced them.
Kori said, “Why don’t you two drive back to the dormitory?
I’m sure you’ll want to get unpacked and settled in your room, Miss Sterne It’ll be some time before all my junk is unloaded from the plane. Lou, if you’ll just send the car back here…”
“Fine, fine, I’ll do that.” Lou was grinning broadly as he helped Bonnie into the back seat of the car and got in beside her.
She was very quiet as they drove away from the pad and the harbor Lou chattered about what a beautiful island it was, and how good it was to see her again. All Bonnie did was to nod once in a while. By the time Lou had carried her travel bag up to the door of her room, his own joy at being with her had simmered down to the point where he could see that something was wrong.
There were no locks on the dormitory doors, only latches that could be pushed home from the inside So Lou opened her door and gestured her into the room.
Bonnie walked in and looked around.
“This will be my room?”
“Right. It’s not much, I know, but…”