Forty-Eight X (33 page)

McGraw gave a fleeting glance toward Krantz, who lay bloodied and unconscious. He felt neither enmity nor compassion for the man. Others would attend to him. He fixed his attention on his soldiers. A moment ago, they had been so filled with energy, and more than that, potential. And now they were so very still. He had never “petted” his boys. It seemed inappropriate for a commander to do. But now he caressed them. Their body fur was soft, still warm. Their faces felt like a man’s coarse unshaven beard, but their skin underneath was soft and textured like human skin. Coarse and powerful yet soft and gentle creatures, that’s how he would describe them as they lived.

McGraw was bewildered. “Why, Fish?” he asked the dying animal. Fish was one of his best. He learned quickly. He could teach others. He had special gifts. And he had a personality that radiated an exuberance for life. Fish’s huge close-set eyes looked up at his god, and in the last flicker of his life, McGraw sensed he was asking for forgiveness.

McGraw turned to the rest of his troops. A company of chimp soldiers stood in an orderly phalanx on the beach. They had seen everything, but they had not moved an inch.

“Company atten-tion!” McGraw called out.

Two hundred chimpanzees stood upright, feet together, their long arms pressed to their hips.

“Hoo-rah,” McGraw yelled.

“Hoo-hah!” his army replied.

“Dismissed.”

And in a quick and orderly fashion, they rushed back to their tent encampment as if nothing of import had passed before them.

The base hospital was a modern facility in the basement of the main research building. Two navy surgeons spent three hours operating on Krantz—repairing a lacerated liver and ruptured spleen. His rib, arm, and leg fractures were minor considerations. Two veterinary pathologists spent about the same time dissecting the three mad chimpanzees. Had genetic manipulation created brain tumors or metabolic derangements? Did they succumb to a disease like encephalitis? But nothing seemed amiss. The animals were healthy.

After quickly looking in on the Israeli colonel in recovery and offering apologies to Fala, General Shell sought out Gordon Guffman, Lemuria’s chief primatologist.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Guffman began. “Or even heard of such behaviors.”

“What are you talking about?” Shell responded, bewildered. “Chimpanzees have often attacked humans. And that’s especially what we’ve trained these animals for.”

“Yes, sir. Of course they have. But while these three animals apparently went on a mad frenzy, two hundred others stood nearby—perfectly quiet, still, and obedient. There were no screeches, no pounding of feet, no herd instinct to participate. That’s what’s remarkable.”

“So, do you suggest I give the rest of my Lemurian army medals?”

“Some reward would be appropriate. Yes, sir.”

“Fine,” the general replied. “But that still doesn’t answer the main question. Why did those three go crazy?”

“Most behaviors that seem irrational actually have a rational adaptive significance. The behavior provides a benefit.”

“What was the benefit of nearly beating a strange man to death?”

“I don’t know, sir. Usually such dramatic and violent behaviors give the animal an edge—an edge for survival or reproduction. In this case, I don’t know what kind of edge. I haven’t figured it out.”

“Then do that,” the general said. “Figure it out.” It was an order.

I
t was Father’s Day—or at least it felt like it. Julius Wagner felt a sense of warmth and pride at having his daughter beside him. He was especially gratified that she had followed in his footsteps. She had nearly completed her PhD, and as she described her work, Wagner knew she was well on her way to becoming her own world-class geneticist.

Side by side, father and daughter peered through a dual laser scanning optical microscope at chromosomes from a Pan troglodyte—that is, the genus chimpanzee. There was a substitution on one of the strands of the eighteenth chromosome.

“You can see the exchange has occurred very close to the end of the ‘ss’ region at the gapped circle.”

“And what happened past the ‘ss’ region at the duplex part of the gapped circle?” Maggie asked.

Dr. Wagner beamed. He had purposely passed over the most significant success with this particular chromosomal link and she had seen it anyway.

“That’s you,” he said. “We made a four -strand exchange reaction and a Holliday junction fashioned from your ribosomal DNA. That resulted in an improvement in hemoglobin oxygen-carrying capacity, almost doubling endurance testing in the succeeding generation.”

With a clearing of his throat, General Shell, shadowed by two aides, made his presence in the microscopy room known. He had been standing there a few moments listening to father and daughter chitchat.

“Don’t be so impressed with your father,” the general interrupted. “He won’t tell you about his failures.”

“General, have you met my daughter?”

“Not officially. But I know a lot about her already. She is quite the persistent young lady.”

“Maggie, this is General Maximillian Shell, project director of Lemuria and its prime visionary. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for his insistence that the impossible was possible.”

“I just had faith in talented people. And faith, along with time and plenty of money, makes all things possible.”

“General, are you going to have me shot for disturbing your secrets here?”

“I can’t say you have made my work easier, but no firing squad.”

“Honey”—Dr. Wagner took his daughter’s hand–“it may not be what you planned on, but you’ll have to stay here on Diego Garcia for a while. But I’m looking forward to us working together.”

“No,” the general was quick to reply. “You’ll be going home soon.”

Julius Wagner was surprised. Just a few weeks earlier, Shell had informed him that Fala, the Egyptian archaeologist who had come too close to knowing the secrets of Lemuria, would be their guest for the “duration.” That, he assumed, meant for another three years, until their project reached its culmination with the creation of an alternative non-human fighting force of at least division strength—ten thousand chimpanzees. They even had bantered about names for it—the First Troglodyte Division; the First New Army Division; the First Lemurian Division.

The word from the general that secrecy was no longer paramount was actually a disappointment. For the last several months, Dr. Wagner had worked hard to conceal his depression. He lived in a pleasant climate with superb intellectual stimulation and none of the stresses of academia, and yet he felt hollow. Something was missing. With Maggie’s arrival, that feeling had immediately vanished. What he was missing was the need to care about someone and for someone to care about him. General Shell had done a superb job of catering to the needs of his scientific and military community. There were wonderful accommodations, good food, entertaining diversions, intellectual stimulation. However, there was one human need he could not supply—love.

“What about security?” Professor Wagner asked. “Do you expect my daughter to simply follow your orders and keep quiet about what she knows? She’s not one of your soldiers.”

“What your father didn’t tell you,” the general abruptly changed the subject, “was that this same technology, what he created for that chromosomal link that gives our chimps extraordinary endurance, can also be applied to curing sickle cell disease and hemophilia.”

Mack put his arm around the old doctor.

“You did a great job, Julie. Extraordinary. But starting today, I want you to start organizing your findings so that you can begin disseminating the information to your colleagues worldwide. Your research is going to save lives and improve the quality of life for people all over the world. It was billions of dollars well spent.”

“What about your First Troglodyte Division?”

Shell smiled. Dr. Wagner had always preferred using the species name for the chimpanzee to describe his new army. Mack Shell knew, though, he would call them the Lemurian Division, a link to his ancient utopia and his hopes for a new one. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes as if he was tired and strained. There was a wetness there, as if he had teared. But that couldn’t be. Generals didn’t cry. Particularly not this one.

“Our experiment with chimpanzees is over,” Shell announced. “I have been ordered to close down Lemuria.”

“But why?” Wagner asked, astounded. “You’re on the verge of success. No. Except for a few missteps that are easily correctable, you have succeeded.”

“America doesn’t like the idea.”

“What do you mean ‘America doesn’t like the idea’? The public knows nothing about it.”

“They’ve done polls, Julius,” the general answered. “Congress and the president do nothing without knowing how the American people will respond. When the questions involved experimenting on monkeys and saving the lives of American soldiers, nobody hesitated and the Lemuria Project was given the green light. The questions they’re asking now are quite different.”

“How can they be different? What kind of questions are they asking?”

“Let’s ask your daughter. She probably represents a fair sampling of American opinion.”

“Don’t make me out to be the devil, General,” Maggie retorted. “I believe we should make human life better by genetic research. And experimenting on primates is ideal.”

“Do you approve of animals killing humans?”

“No.”

“Even if they’re terrorists and murderers?” Mack countered.

“Well, what about capturing people? Or people who want to surrender? And what about trials—”

“You see,” the general responded. “American opinion. But that wasn’t the main reason people didn’t like the idea of my chimpanzee army.”

The general stood silent for a moment, looking for a way to explain something that he, too, still didn’t quite understand. Then, he undid a ribbon from his jacket.

“Major,” he ordered his adjutant, “step forward.”

“Arnie, I couldn’t have done this job without you. You put up with my temper, which was job enough. And when a bunch of egghead scientists made impossible demands, you fulfilled them.”

The general then pinned the ribbon to his aide’s uniform shirt.

“I hereby award you this first Lemuria campaign ribbon for a job superbly performed.”

Mack Shell then turned to Dr. Wagner and his daughter. “And that, my friend, is the reason Lemuria will be no more. The pollsters not only asked questions, they also rated how important the issues were to people. Sure, Americans abhor the deaths of young soldiers and want things done to prevent them. But the one thing they were not willing to give up in any scenario were their heroes. America is all about heroes. It just wouldn’t be the same country without them. And no hairy chimpanzee is ever going to get an Independence Day ticker-tape parade down Main Street.”

T
he night, as usual, was pitch-black with a trillion bright stars overhead. McGraw sat on the beach at the edge of the outgoing tide. Fala sat beside him. They were on a tiny dot of an island in a great sea on a tiny blue pebble planet, no more significant in the universe than the specks of sand on the bottom of their feet. After meeting with Julius Wagner, the general had gone on to break the news to Colonel McGraw. And, he gave him new orders. It was not an order that McGraw relished carrying out, and he made the most intelligent arguments he could to alter it. But the general made it clear. There would be no reprieves from this order. McGraw was a soldier who had received unpleasant commands before. He would carry out this one, as well. The general made one more thing clear. Link McGraw would not be returning to Leavenworth. He was too valuable an officer.

“Even if I can’t get you reinstated, Colonel,” the general promised, “you will continue to be my ‘go to’ man. You may have to pretend to be my Filipino houseboy—but you’re not going back.”

There was a chattering in the nearby chimp encampment. It was nothing unusual. His men were—
no
, McGraw suppressed that thought. He had caught himself thinking that time and again. They were his “troops” but not his “men.” They were not human.

“Do you smell it?” Fala asked. “Do you think they do?”

More than eight hundred baby chimps had been euthanized during the day. Their bodies, along with a huge assortment of embryos and other genetic materials, were being disposed of in biomedical waste incinerators. Behind him, McGraw could still see the smoke curling into the starlit sky.

“Sure, they do,” McGraw replied. “But do they know what it means? In World War II, the Jews walked passively into gas chambers past chimneys spewing the remains of their families and friends. And most didn’t know. I don’t think they know. I hope they don’t.”