After a few moments he felt a pressure on his back. The wall behind him was moving slowly forward with a power that he couldn’t resist or even slow down. Silently and ineluctably he was forced out of his elevator and into the tunnel. It was silvery and had small holes punched in it in striplike patterns. He heard an electric motor start up. The air grew warm and began to whip around him in crisscrossing currents. He was, he realized, in a giant hair dryer. The process lasted for a couple of minutes and was curiously pleasant. At the end of it his thick black hair was once again shiny and without the matted dampness that had made it look like some old sackcloth left out in the rain.
Another panel opened at the far end of the silvery corridor. This time he could see where it led—back into his cage in the corner of the laboratory. Once again he probably wouldn’t have moved unless obliged to, which in a sense he was.
Because he could see Kathy standing on the far side of the bars, waiting for him.
Chapter 33
HALLO, CHARLIE,” she said, as he walked toward her. “I hope you’re feeling better after your wash and brushup. We didn’t want you to catch cold.”
Charlie reared up on his legs and seized the bars of his cage, trying to shake them, but they were fixed firmly in place. An agitated chattering noise came from his throat. He could feel that his lips were curled back and his teeth exposed. He wanted to close his mouth, but he couldn’t make it happen; it seemed to be a reflex, beyond his control.
“I’ve brought you something,” she said, and looked over to one side of his cage. He followed her gaze. By the wall stood an easel with a fresh canvas, a palette of paints, and brushes. He went over and reached out a hand to pick up one of the brushes. The movement felt surprisingly natural, just as it always had. He looked back at her. She was still watching him. Encouraged by the expectant look on her face, he dipped the brush cautiously in a whorl of green paint, then touched it to the canvas. He knew what he was going to do. If he couldn’t speak, he could at least write.
“Go ahead, Charlie,” she said, encouraging him, “go on.”
The question he wanted to write was, “What is happening?” He could hear the words in his head, and he knew how to write them. But somewhere between the order that came from his brain and its execution by his hand there opened up a yawning and mysterious gap.
He stood briefly paralyzed, like someone who has forgotten a word but who knows that a moment’s concentration will bring it back. He tried to visualize the words he wanted to use, to see them in his mind’s eye as they would appear on the canvas when written. He saw them. They were absolutely clear. And yet, when he tried to look closer, to distinguish each letter, take it out of context and focus on its form enough to reproduce it, he found he couldn’t.
It was almost too absurd to be frustrating, one of those moments when some chance collusion of synaptic firings creates a sense of deja vu, or persuades you that a passing shadow on the edge of your vision is something it is not.
He waited for the lacuna to pass, but instead it drew out and still nothing happened. He made a renewed effort to visualize the first letter of the first word he was trying to write. It was a… what was the name for it? A W.
Now he had it. Three—no, four—lines connected at angles. Tentatively, he reached out his brush and made a mark on the canvas. It wasn’t, he realized at once, quite what he wanted. As the first angle of the first letter, it seemed somehow wrong. Could he incorporate it as one of the other angles? Had he left enough room for something in front, not to mention everything that had to come after, all those other lines and curves that made up the phrase he could still see in his mind’s eye?
He could see it, couldn’t he? He was sure that he could. So why couldn’t he break it down into its parts, then execute them one by one? Surely he must be able to do that.
His brush struck out this way and that, but never in the way he wanted. Whatever was in his mind refused to project itself onto the canvas before him. He didn’t know whether it was a failure of skill, or of imagination. He had never imagined that such a sense of inner dislocation could exist.
The slashes of line and color became wilder, until they became rents and tears in the canvas. Then, with a cry of outrage and frustration, and indefinable but terrible fear, he broke the easel into splinters and scattered the paint and brushes. He only turned when he heard voices behind him raised in alarm. Two or three people in white lab coats had run in. After them came two men in suits and ties.
“Is there a problem, Dr. Flemyng?”
It was the shorter of the men in suits who had spoken. His hair was brushed back sleekly from a pink and well-fed face.
“Just a tantrum,” Kathy replied, “no problem.”
Charlie watched as the other man took a few steps toward his cage. He was probably around fifty, a year or two older than the one Kathy had just spoken to, but taller and wearing rimless glasses. He had the diffident though sharply observant air of a college professor, which is what Charlie would have guessed him to be.
“Is this the one?” he asked, peering more closely at Charlie. He spoke in a light and very clear but rather brittle voice.
“Don’t lean too far over that barrier, General,” the sleek-haired man said, hurrying to the taller man’s side and laying a hand respectfully on his elbow.
Charlie registered with some surprise the use of the rank “general.” He would never have guessed that in a thousand years.
“They’re strong and they’re vicious,” Sleek Hair continued. “Not even their keepers ever get within striking distance of a full-grown chimpanzee. He’s about eight times stronger than any human being.”
The general looked at Charlie critically. “I always thought chimpanzees were friendly little fellows.”
“That’s just the babies. The ones you see on cute TV shows. A full-grown male weighs over two hundred pounds.” He threw a glance over his shoulder. “All right, everybody, there’s no problem. You can go back to what you were doing.”
The three men in white coats departed, but Kathy remained. Charlie still thought of her as Kathy despite the name this man had called her by, and the name she now used herself. He thought back to the other night when he’d climbed into her apartment and found her looking through his pictures. Just how long ago was that? It seemed like a lifetime ago—which in a sense it was, he thought, not without irony.
“But they’re not as tall as we need, are they?” the general asked, still eyeing Charlie with distrust, as though somebody was trying to sell him a suspect idea. “Five feet… what? Five something at the most.”
“The height will come naturally as part of the genetic adjustment,” Sleek Hair said, smiling unctuously and rubbing his clasped hands slightly. “It’s actually a minor thing, largely a function of the upright stance. The physical similarities are extraordinary, both skeletal and muscular. Do you know, the sole of the human foot has exactly the same muscles as the chimpanzee foot? The only reason we can’t grip things with our feet is because we’ve lost the habit.”
“Why aren’t we using gorillas?” the general asked, twisting around to look at Sleek Hair almost accusingly. “They’re bigger and I imagine stronger than chimpanzees.”
“The process wouldn’t work so well with gorillas,” Sleek Hair replied, holding up a soft pink hand in a cautioning gesture that made Charlie think of a priest about to pronounce the blessing. “They’re less intelligent and less aggressive than chimpanzees. More important, they’re not as closely related to us. Human beings and chimps are as closely related as the African and Indian elephants. The difference between our DNA and his”—he pointed a plump finger in Charlie’s direction—“is one point six percent. Between chimps and gorillas it’s two point three—which means that chimps are genetically closer to humans than they are to gorillas. In fact they’re practically human already.”
“Except for that one point six percent.”
“But we know now where it makes the difference. Interesti
ngly, it’s not the brain. They have much the same brain as humans—slightly smaller, but not significantly. The human brain is dominated more by the left hemisphere but that’s a result of our having evolved speech and sequential thought—which is where the human branch of the chimp family really scored. Chimps communicate amongthemselves quite effectively, though on a fairly basic level. A few chimps have been taught to use sign language amazingly well, and of course they have quite a visual sense. They love to paint, some of them, especially in captivity, where they need something to do. But without spoken language they could never build the Parthenon or a rocket to the moon.”
“But given language, they could do all that?”
“Not overnight, of course. But that’s not what we want, after all.”
The general looked at Charlie thoughtfully, pursing his lips and blowing a little burst of air out through his nose. “No, you’re right,” he said, “that’s not what we want.” He paused, still thinking something over, then added: “I must say, though, I was surprised to learn chimps can’t swim. How do you explain that in evolutionary terms?”
“I’m not sure I can. Maybe they didn’t evolve around enough water.”
“But it won’t be a problem with our fellow—swimming, I mean?”
“Oh, no. He’ll swim far better than any normal human being—not to mention all his other accomplishments.”
The general continued to look, Charlie thought, somehow unconvinced. Then he turned to the attractive young woman he’d not had a chance to speak with yet. “Do you really believe that this can work?” he asked her. “Can we really create this prototype just by giving some chimp DNA a tweak here and a push there?”
“Genetics isn’t my side of things,” she replied awkwardly. Charlie had the impression that she didn’t want to get into this conversation.
“Dr. Flemyng has been working on some special neurological aspects,” Sleek Hair said quickly. “We had problems with visual memory—all solved now, thanks to her.”
The general looked her up and down, then gave an appreciative smile and inclined his head in a courtly, old-fashioned bow. “I’m bound to say, Dr. Flemyng, that you would have a beneficial effect upon anybody’s visual memory.”
Before she had time to make some anodyne, polite reply, they were interrupted by a fusillade of angry screeching from Charlie. Turning to the cage, they saw that he had hauled himself halfway up the bars and was wrenching wildly at them as though trying to pull them loose.
“We mustn’t keep you, Dr. Flemyng,” Sleek Hair said. “I know you have things to do, thank you for your time.”
Charlie saw her murmur something to the two men and leave. He continued his screeching and tugging at the bars, though he didn’t know quite what he was hoping to achieve. Gradually, overwhelmed by the sense of his own powerlessness and the futility of his rage, he slid down until he sat murmuring helplessly on the floor.
Sleek Hair and the general had watched his performance with interest.
“Can he actually understand what we’re saying?” the general asked as Charlie quieted down.
“No more than the average dog or cat can. Tone of voice means more than anything else.”
The general looked at Sleek Hair with suspicion as well as puzzlement in his face now. “But you said that these VR tests you’ve been doing have proved that he can handle language.”
“Ah, yes—but only while he’s wired into the suit. The prototype that we’ll grow from the genetically engineered egg will have the modified larynx as well as a fully human appearance. He will live the life that Charlie has experienced only through virtual reality.”
The general glanced from Sleek Hair over to Charlie, who stood motionless, staring back through the bars of his cage with a kind of dumb stupefaction. “Hm,” the general said, blowing air out through his nose again, “fascinating.”
“We got a lot of data from this last VR trial,” Sleek Hair said, with an air of deep satisfaction. “Charlie’s helped us a great deal.”
Chapter 34
SUSAN AND HER father sat on the porch in comfortable rockers, drinking the coffee that Mrs. Hathaway, Christopher’s new “Auntie May,” had brought them. They were watching Christopher go through his paces on his horse under the careful supervision of Michael, the young man who seemed to have become something between a father, brother, and best friend to him. Christopher’s dog, Buzz, sat obediently and rather primly watching nearby.
“He misses home, his friends, school,” Amery was saying, “but otherwise he’s fine here—it’s a beautiful place, after all.”
Susan shifted uneasily in her chair, frowning as she brought the mug of coffee to her lips.
“I know you don’t like to hear that,” Amery added quickly. “Neither do I. But as long as we’re in this situation, it could be a lot worse.”
“As long as,” she echoed flatly. “How long is that going to be, I wonder?”
Her father sighed. “I went back to Washington last week for a couple of days. I had some business to attend to, so I spoke to Mrs. Hathaway—if that’s her real name. I somehow can’t believe it is. Anyway, she put a call through to somebody, and within five minutes 1 had Latimer West on the line. They had someone fly me to the airport in the chopper, fixed my ticket up and everything—the full VIP treatment. In fact West said that not only could I make this trip, I could come and go as I pleased. He said he knew he could rely on my discretion as long as Christopher remained here.”
He looked over at his daughter, watching her reaction. She sat hunched and tense, her head sunk into her shoulders, her gaze still fixed on Christopher though without really seeing him. Amery set his coffee mug down on the table, then sat back, rocking slightly, picking his words carefully.
“Something else he said to me. He said he and others—I don’t know who he meant by others, but there obviously are others, quite a lot of them, and in high places—anyway, he said that he and others would very much like to see this situation normalized. I asked him what he meant by normalized, and he said exactly what the word implied. I said, you mean Christopher and his mother could return home, resume their lives? He said that’s exactly what he meant.”
Susan was looking at him now, unblinking. It was impossible to tell whether she was outraged or encouraged by what she was hearing.
“The thing is,” Amery continued, “they feel they’ve made their point now. They have the power to do what they want, and they’ve shown that they’ll use it if they have to. Now, if we’re prepared to cooperate, we can all go home.”
“And live under house arrest?”
“Live like normal people, with something we’ve agreed not to talk about.”
“And if we do talk, they’ll kill us.”
It wasn’t a question but a flat statement of how she saw the facts.
Arnery dropped his gaze. “I didn’t go into that.”
They sat in silence for a while. Christopher had completed a circuit of jumps and waved to them in triumph. They waved back mechanically. Michael started raising the bars a notch for another round.
“You know,” Susan said, “the more I think about this, the more I can’t believe it’s happening. What kind of country are we living in?”
Her father looked at her sadly. “A country like any other,” he said. “When those responsible for its security decide that something needs to be done, they’re going to do it—without any discussion and in spite of any moral opposition. Do you really think there’s any major country that doesn’t have chemical weapons or nerve gas hidden away somewhere, just in case? We know they have nuclear weapons, but do we want that to be the only choice they have? Elected politicians pay lip service to fine principles, because that’s their job. But behind them are the people who do the dirty work, who are guided only by necessity and pragmatism. Because when the chips are down, all the people who vote for politicians want to know is, Are we ready for this crisis? Can we handle it? Can we keep their houses warm in winter, cool in
summer, their cars full of cheap gas and their refrigerators packed with frozen steak and ice cream? So if the people whose job it is to guarantee all that decide that they need a new kind of weapon or new kind of fighting man, they’re going to get it.”
Susan had turned her gaze onto him again. “You almost sound like you approve of this.”
He shrugged. “My approval—anybody’s—is irrelevant. You may as well disapprove of the earth going around the sun. It’s just how things work.”
They sat in silence awhile, watching Christopher as he started his next round of jumps.
“So,” she said eventually, “you’re saying that if I continue to work on this project voluntarily and convince them I’m no longer a security risk, they’ll let you and me and Christopher live our lives as though nothing had happened.”
“That’s about it, as far as I can see.”
“Jesus, Dad, these people are all heart.”
The bitterness in her voice was so raw that he didn’t say anything for a while. They both watched Christopher, who was going around the course without a fault.
“Look,” Amery Hyde said eventually, “it’s just something to think about, that’s all. But it’s your decision.”
She nodded a couple of times. “You know,” she said, “these people seem to think they’re pretty powerful. But there’s one thing they can’t do.”
“What’s that?”
“They can’t bring John back.”
Chapter 35
CHARLIE ATE ALONE in his cage—a platter of fruit and vegetables that was pushed in through a slot. His sleep was surprisingly undisturbed and dreamless, and he awoke gently enough to reabsorb the ongoing strangeness of his situation almost calmly. Had they put something in his food or water? he wondered. A tranquilizer?
The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk Page 16
