The Big Sheep

by Robert Kroese

  “A firmware update,” said Keane.

  “Exactly,” said Takemago.

  “Is such a thing possible?” I asked. “A firmware update on the human brain?”

  Takemago shrugged almost imperceptibly. “This goes well beyond my area of expertise. A few years ago I would have said no.”

  “But something happened to change your mind,” said Keane.

  “Nearly three years ago, a scientist at MIT, Dr. Henry Allebach, published a paper about the possibility of transferring memories from one person to another. The arguments he gave were fairly convincing.”

  “So Allebach thinks it’s possible?”

  “That was his theory,” said Takemago. “But his paper was met with a great deal of criticism, and to my knowledge he hasn’t responded.”

  “What sort of criticism?” I asked.

  “Practical objections, mainly. But also ethical concerns. The concept of overwriting one person’s memories and personality with another’s is … morally problematic.”

  “I would imagine so,” I said. Takemago had a way with understatement.

  “It should be noted that this is all theoretical,” Takemago said. “The idea that somebody would actually go to the trouble of doing all this, and be able to get away with it…”

  “We understand, Doc,” I said. “The whole thing is pretty ridiculous.” On the other hand, I thought, so was chasing a giant sheep all over Los Angeles.

  “Now,” said Takemago, “what does this have to do with Mary?”

  Keane had prefaced his account of the multiple Priyas with assurances that the information Takemago provided could help us find the missing sheep.

  “To be honest,” said Keane, “we’re not entirely certain. But we have reason to believe the two cases are connected.”

  “Because the woman in the park had Mary’s tracker,” said Takemago.

  “That’s part of it,” said Keane. “There have been other … confluences.”

  “Selah Fiore wants the sheep,” I said. “If we knew why, it might help us figure out what’s going on with Priya. And get Mary back.”

  “I can’t imagine why someone like that would want Mary,” said Takemago. “As I said before, Mary is a research subject. She has no practical value.”

  “Unless there’s something you’re not telling us,” said Keane.

  Dr. Takemago bit her lip.

  “You lied when you said you didn’t know about the age-reversal research,” said Keane.

  Takemago fidgeted nervously but said nothing.

  “Banerjee instructed you not to talk about it, didn’t he?” said Keane. “Probably threatened your job.”

  “You told me you don’t trust Banerjee,” I said. “Why?”

  Takemago was silent for a moment. Then she said, “He doesn’t care about these sheep. If he thinks the truth is going to get out, he’ll have them killed. All of them.”

  “The truth?” asked Keane. “What truth? What haven’t you told us about the sheep?”

  “They … aren’t sheep,” said Takemago.

  “What do you mean, they aren’t sheep?” I said. “What does that mean? Of course they’re sheep.”

  “No,” said Takemago. “Not entirely.”

  “You told us that,” I said. “They have human organs. Heart, lungs, liver, et cetera. So?”

  Takemago looked from me to Keane and then to Mark the sheep, who we noticed was staring expectantly out of the wall display at us. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he could see us. In fact, if I were prone to wild flights of fancy, I might have said he was judging us.

  “My God,” said Keane. He was staring into the sheep’s eyes, and the sheep was staring back. “I thought I sensed something when I first encountered the sheep, but I dismissed it. I should have known better than to question my instincts.”

  “What?” I asked. “You mean when you were playing with its fleece? Or when you looked into its eyes and said you were taking measure of the sheep’s … oh.” It suddenly occurred to me what was so strange about these sheep. What Takemago meant when she said they weren’t sheep.

  “They’re human,” I murmured. “Jesus Christ. Their brains. They’re human.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Mary the sheep, and all the others in the Esper lab, had been genetically engineered with human brains. That was why Esper had chosen such a large breed. Sheep brains were proportionately much smaller, but there was plenty of room in that big skull for a human brain. As Takemago explained it, the cerebellum and brain stem—the more rudimentary parts of the brain, which controlled bodily functions and basic motor activity—were mostly built from sheep DNA. But the cerebral cortex was almost entirely human. The result was essentially a human being who inhabited the body of a sheep. Their instincts—eating, sleeping, reproducing—were sheeplike, but their thoughts were presumably human.

  The sheep were all less than five years old—Mary was the oldest, at four and a half—and had been raised in a lab with minimal intellectual stimulation, so it was hard to say how much they really understood about what was going on. Then again, that could be said of any human being. I had been raised by nuns in Rancho Cucamonga, and I was starting to think I didn’t really have any idea what the fuck was going on either.

  Takemago was a little vague on the rationale for giving the sheep human brains; evidently the original idea had been to breed hosts to provide brain tissue that could be transplanted into patients who had had parts of their brains removed because of tumors or other damage. How Esper thought they were going to get away with raising human-sheep hybrids was beyond me. The project only began to bear fruit shortly after the Collapse, and Banerjee must have figured he had a few years before anyone noticed anything was wrong with the sheep. Maybe he thought he could recoup some of his investment by conducting experiments on the sheep during that time, or maybe he was simply betting on another regulatory holiday—another Collapse.

  As far as Takemago knew, only she and Banerjee were privy to the strange truth about Esper’s sheep. Another scientist, a Michael Guryev, had been involved in their design, but he had left Esper several months earlier to work at a research institute in Belgium. Takemago was worried it was only a matter of time before someone else figured it out, though: already the sheep were exhibiting behavior that was uncharacteristic of lab animals—behavior that sometimes made technicians think the sheep understood what they were saying. As the sheep grew older, their brains would continue to mature, even with minimal stimulation. Mercifully, Takemago informed us that this breed of sheep only lived for seven or eight years, so the poor creatures wouldn’t have to live a full human lifetime in sheep bodies. Not that that would be allowed to happen anyway. If the sheep started showing clear signs of sentience, Banerjee would have them exterminated before Esper’s crimes could become public.

  After our meeting with Dr. Takemago, Keane dropped me off downtown near April’s office. We had planned to meet for dinner so April could give me whatever she’d been able to find on Priya Mistry. She thought she’d be able to dig up a contract—I didn’t ask how—but she came up empty.

  “Maybe Priya Mistry isn’t her real name?” I offered. I’d completely forgotten to tell April about Bryn Jhaveri.

  “Should have been cross-referenced,” April said. “If it were there, Tom would have found it.”

  I began to wonder what kind of relationship April had with Tom that made him so willing to risk his neck for her, no questions asked. April didn’t talk much about her personal life. Best not to ask.

  “Unless someone made a deliberate effort to keep it buried,” I said.

  April shrugged. “You’re watching out for the woman, right? You’re not going to let Keane screw up her life.”

  I sighed. “You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but her life is already about as screwed up as it’s possible to be,” I said.

  “All that glitters, huh?”

  “It’s not her fault. She’s in a bad situation. Several bad situ
ations, from the look of things.”

  “But you’re going to straighten it out, right? Be her knight in shining armor?”

  “It’s not like that,” I said. “I mean, okay, I’ll admit I was a little starstruck at first. But at this point I just want to try to help her as best as I can. Anyway, she’s too young for me. And not my type.”

  “You mean you’re still hung up on Gwen.”

  “That too,” I said wearily. There was no point in lying to April. She knew better than anyone how the specter of Gwen hung over all my relationships. We had both assumed I’d get over her in time, but it had been three years. What the hell was my problem? Why couldn’t I just let her go? For a while it seemed like it was getting better, but lately I’d started obsessing about her again. And somehow the Priya Mistry case had only made it worse. It didn’t make any sense.

  “What about your other case?” April asked, apparently picking up on my self-destructive spiral. “The sheep thing?”

  I sighed again. “The sheep is actually even more screwed up than Priya.”

  “What kind of problems can a sheep have?”

  “Right?” I said. “It should be all bleating and chewing cud. Maybe a good shearing every now and then. But I don’t envy this sheep one bit.”

  Concern came over her face. “Just be careful, okay?” she said. “A sheep isn’t worth risking your life over, no matter how valuable it is.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Although if it comes down to Keane or the sheep,” said April, “that’s another matter.”

  “Understood.”

  Just then her comm chirped, and she glanced at the display on her wrist. “Hang on,” she said. “It’s Tom.” She stepped outside and spoke on her comm for a moment. When she came back inside, she had a troubled expression on her face.

  “Tom says Priya was scheduled for a shoot this afternoon, but she never showed up. Nobody can get ahold of her.”

  I had to think for a moment. Assuming there really were multiple Priyas, this would be Palomar Priya. The one who’d sneaked down to the bar to talk to Keane and me. She’d been terrified.

  “Have you seen Priya today?” asked April. “Is she okay?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. “I should check on her,” I said. “She’s staying at the Palomar, on Wilshire.”

  “All right,” April said. “Let’s go.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “You don’t have a car, remember? Mine is in the garage just down the block. Let’s go.”

  We went. It took us over half an hour to get there. April pulled up to the curb, and I ran inside and went to the front desk.

  “I need you to check on one of your guests for me,” I said to the young woman behind the counter. “Priya Mistry. She may be staying under another name.”

  The woman regarded me doubtfully.

  “I’m a private investigator,” I said. “I’m looking into a threat against Ms. Mistry. All I need you to do is call her room and make sure she’s okay.”

  “Sir, I can’t confirm whether a Priya Mistry is staying with us.”

  I gave a little involuntary laugh at the way she’d phrased this, as if there were several different Priyas, any one of whom might be staying at the hotel. Which of course there were. I don’t think my reaction helped my case.

  “Can you get a message to her?” I asked, remembering Keane’s note.

  “You can give me a message. If there is a guest with that name staying with us, I will get it to her.”

  “Fantastic,” I said without enthusiasm. I could get a note to her asking her to come down to the lobby again. But if she wasn’t here, or if she were incapacitated or under guard, she wouldn’t be able to come down, which somewhat defeated the purpose of contacting her in the first place. If only she had given us her room number instead of writing the date, not to mention getting it wrong.… And then it dawned on me.

  I ran to the elevator and pressed number twelve. Priya—or whatever her name was—may have been a basket case, but she was smarter than I’d given her credit for. She’d managed to give us her room number right under Jamie’s nose.

  I got out on the twelfth floor and ran down the hall toward room 1225. I was only halfway down the hall when I heard a muffled scream. I drew my gun and approached the door. I listened closely, but everything had gone quiet. I thought the scream had come from 1225, but there was no way to be certain. I debated for a moment whether I should wait, knock on the door, or kick the door in. The matter was settled when the door opened and I found myself face-to-face with a man with long red hair pulled into a ponytail. I’d seen him before. He was one of the guys who had “helped” Priya at the party the other night.

  Red went for his gun, but the sight of my SIG Sauer in his face made him rethink his options. I put my finger to my lips and gestured for him to go back inside. I followed, closing the door behind us. We walked through a narrow hall into a good-sized sitting area. Somewhere to our left I heard scuffling, followed by a man saying, “Is it clear? We need to get this bitch downstairs.” There was some more scuffling, and another scream. “Damn it, get in here!” the man yelled. A second later Priya burst from the hallway into the room in between Red and me. She wore only a bra and underwear and had a crazy, addled look in her eyes.

  Red threw his arm around Priya’s neck, his gun pressed up against her temple. The other man—the Filipino from the party—stumbled into the room and stood, agape, for a moment, taking in the situation. He pulled a gun from a shoulder holster.

  “Easy,” I said to Red. “She’s your meal ticket. Anything happens to her, you’re out of a job.”

  Red laughed. “This one? She’s all used up. We’re just taking her down to the trash.”

  A sickening sensation washed over me as I realized he wasn’t joking. Maybe he was just being hyperbolic to make me think he’d really shoot her if it came down to it, but somehow I didn’t think so. If they could make two copies of Priya, there was no reason they couldn’t make four, five, or a dozen. Any particular instance was replaceable, disposable. Priya Mistry wasn’t a person; she was a product. How many Priyas were there? How many had they already killed because they’d outlived their usefulness? It was impossible to know, but one thing was clear: if I didn’t get this woman out of here, she was going to die.

  As it turned out, though, this particular model had some pluck left in her. She ducked beneath Red’s gun barrel and drove her elbow into his solar plexus, causing him to double over and stagger backward. Priya evidently had been in enough action scenes to know what happened next, because she dove to the floor. I shot Red right between his eyes.

  While Red was still falling, the Filipino fired twice at me, but his aim was wide. I put three rounds into his chest for good measure. He hit the carpet a couple of seconds after Red.

  “Is that it?” I said to Priya, watching the hall. “Is there anybody else?”

  She didn’t answer. She was trying to pull herself to her feet, using the back of a couch as support.

  “Stay down,” I said. I made a quick survey of the suite, but it seemed to be empty. I was a bit relieved Jamie the bodyguard wasn’t around. I had no qualms about putting down a couple of Selah’s henchmen, but as far as I could tell, the bodyguards weren’t involved in the plot.

  I came back and helped Priya to her feet. She was pretty unsteady, and her eyes were dilated. “Can you walk?” I asked. She nodded. “All right,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”

  Somebody would have heard all those shots for sure. I wasn’t too worried about hotel security, but LAPD could be a problem. Those guys weren’t known for their restraint. A strange man dragging a famous actress through a hotel lobby could easily get a couple of extra holes put in him before he had a chance to explain anything. And I wasn’t sure explaining would help matters much either.

  “Wait here a sec,” I said, and Priya braced herself on the couch while I went to the door. I opened it and looked down the ha
ll. It was empty in both directions. “Okay, let’s go,” I said. But when I turned, I saw Priya was still hanging on to the couch. She looked like she was about to fall over. I don’t know what those guys gave her, but it was working.

  I went to her side and wrapped her arm around my neck, dragging her away from the couch. Her eyes began rolling into her head, and I gave her a light slap on the cheek to keep her conscious. “Priya!” I said. “Stay awake. We need to walk to the elevator.” She groaned.

  I made my way down the hall, half dragging Priya while holding my gun in my other hand. We got to the elevator without incident, and I mashed the down button with the butt of my gun. The elevator door opened. Empty. So far, so good. We got in, and I hit the button for the lobby.

  “April,” I said into my comm.

  “What’s happening, Blake?” April’s voice answered. “Did you find Priya?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We had a little trouble. Are you still parked up front?”

  “I’m waiting down the street. I’ll be in front by the time you get there.”

  “Okay, be ready to leave in a hurry.”

  “Got it.”

  Priya was leaning against the back of the elevator, and her eyes were rolling again. Her knees buckled and she began sliding to the floor, despite my best efforts to keep her upright. “Priya!” I yelled. “Stay awake! Just a few seconds more.” She stirred and blinked. As her eyes focused on me, I saw no recognition in them.

  “Blake!” said April’s voice in my ear.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “The cops are here. Just one cruiser so far. Two men entering the lobby.”

  “Shit!” I snapped. “Roger that. Be ready for us. But if you hear gunfire, get out of there.”