Project J (4 page)

She looked to him sharply, only to see a wide grin and knew he was kidding her.

“Well, it would be possible, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

“Well, sure, but we’re more interested in perfecting the Machine than creating a Jurassic Park.
 
Besides, the Machine is limited in the size of the object it can bring back.
 
Dr. Carlyn has some very small dinosaurs, but a T-Rex would never fit in the chamber.”

“You have any more animals around?” she asked carefully.

“Well, just one right now, he said with a smile.
 
“Come on, I’ll show you.”

Inside the building there was a laboratory, including a lot of testing equipment and cages.

“This here is Smiley.
 
Of course, he’s just a juvenile now.”

Inside a wire cage was a large cat with light brown coat.
 
When it looked up at her, she saw a blunt forehead and small, rounded ears.
 
But what immediately caught her eye were the teeth protruding from the upper jaw.
 
It looked like a cross between a cougar and a vampire.

Before she could ask, he told her, “This is a Smilodon, also known as the Saber-Toothed Cat.”
 
He opened the cage and reached in.
 
When he turned around, the cat was in his arms and licking his face.
 
It was big enough that he could barely hold it.

“Smiley here is quite affectionate, but that maybe partly because he was raised here, not in the wild.
 
Human company is all he knows.
 
We picked him up right after he was born.
 
He was bottle fed by humans and has become rather domesticated.
 
Of course, now we feed him nice, juicy chunks of raw meat.
 
Even so, he still plays rather roughly at times.
 
Tries to bite the hand that feeds him and such.”

“A Saber-Toothed Tiger,” Tamara said in wonderment.

“Cat actually.
 
Calling it a tiger is wrong.
 
Would you like to pet Smiley?”

“I’ll pass.
 
My aunt had a cat once, and every time I tried to pet it, it bit me.”

He scratched Smiley’s head, which the cat seemed to like very much, then put it back in the cage.

“Smiley’s in here for some tests.
 
Later I’ll take him for a walk and put him in the larger cage.
 
It’s big enough for him to roam around in.”

“How big will Smiley get?” Tamara wondered aloud.

“Oh, that depends.
 
My field is not paleontology, so I’m not totally sure which species of
Smilodon
this is.
 
If he’s a
Smilodon Gracilis
, then he’ll max out at about 220 pounds.
 
If he’s a
Smilodon fatalis
, then about 600 pounds.
 
But if he’s a
Smilodon Populator
, then he’ll get up to 800 pounds.
 
That’s about the size of the largest Siberian Tigers.”
 
He sighed.
 
“I’m afraid we’ll have to get rid of him before then.”

“What will you do with him?”

“That hasn’t been decided yet.
 
I’m hoping that we can announce our project before then so we can openly give him to a zoo.
 
But our little time machine is top secret right now and is likely to stay that way for a long time to come.
 
I’m pushing to announce him as a cloning project using DNA from a Smilodon crossed with a modern day tiger.
 
Smilodons, you may know, became extinct only a few thousand years ago.
 
They were contemporaries with man.
 
Cloning them without the Machine would be completely possible with modern techniques.
 
There’s been talk about cloning a mammoth.
 
Why not a Smilodon?”

Tamara thanked him, and left shaking her head.

“See, I told you we had some fantastic results from the Machine,” Carla said.
 
“Come on, now, I’ll take you over to Personnel and they’ll get you assigned an apartment in Mountain View.
 
That’s what the apartment building is called.”

It was done as Carla said.
 
After going through the usual red tape and delays, Tamara found herself later that afternoon standing in a second story apartment, looking out over the Dry Wells Project.
 
The apartment reminded her of a small studio apartment she had in West LA once.
 
Small kitchen, small bathroom but a fair sized single room with TV, desk, computer terminal, a picture on the wall of a fiery red sunset at the beach scene, and a sofa that opened out into a bed.
 
Nothing fancy, but good enough for her.
 
It made her nervous when some company tried to put her up in an expensive place, and wine and dine her.

The sun was low in the sky, but it was on the other side of the building so she saw its rays illuminating the low mountains to the east.
 
If the mountains were a higher and had more snow, they would have reminded her more of her home.

A great deal was going through her mind.
 
Usually she absorbed the technical details of a project while maintaining an intellectual attitude and remained impartial towards the possible results of them.
 
But this project was different.
 
It made her feel uneasy.
 
She tried to tell herself it was just because this one was such a giant leap in technology, but a nagging portion of her mind told her it was more than that; more than just high level technology.
 
Illogical as it might seem to an educated person such as herself, but she could not help but wonder if this was a tool that could be terribly misused in the wrong hands.

She had trouble getting to sleep that night, and it was because of more than a strange bed.

Chapter 5:
 
Questions

The man sitting back in the chair, legs outstretched and hands crossed on his lap, looked older than his thirty-six years.
 
His hair was long, a dark brown, as was his full beard, although traces of gray appeared at the temples and some in the beard.
 
His eyes were closed as he sat in the warm sunshine, absorbing its heat as it chased away the last of the night’s coolness.
 
His face was worn, creases radiated out from his eyes, and the skin was tanned as with someone who had spent most of his life out of doors.
 
He wore tan slacks and a blue UCLA sweatshirt.
 
His feet were in sandals.
 
Had he stood up, he would be barely over five feet in height.

The scene was a courtyard, twice the size of a tennis court and adorned with shrubs and several small, incongruous palm trees.
 
It was surrounded by a high wall, broken only by a few windows and two doors.

“Good morning,” said another man, walking slowly up to the seated man.
 
This man was easily least twice as many years, yet they both looked much alike.
 
The newcomer had a beard, neatly trimmed, almost totally gray matching his thinning hair, and more than a few lines creasing a face with pale blue eyes.
 
He walked with a cane and a pronounced limp.
 
He spoke not in English but in the native language of the seated man.

The seated man slowly opened his eyes to look at the newcomer, and then closed them again.
 
“You are come to ask more questions,” he said wearily.
 
It was not a question.

“If you feel like it.
 
There is much I would still like to learn.”

“Why is it you wish to know so much about me?” he asked.
 
“I failed.
 
What was to be, did not happen.
 
I was wrong.”

“You did not fail.”
 
When that did not evoke a response, he continued with, “You did what you could and what you believed in.”
 
Still there was no response.
 
The man eased himself down into the adjoining lawn chair and changed the subject.

“I would like to know about your home.
 
The town in which you were born and lived as a child.”

“I have told you.
 
It was nothing.
 
Just a small village.”

Taking a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, the older man slowly opened it and spread it out on his knees.

“I have a map of your small village here.
 
Would you please show me where your house was?”

For a while it seemed as if the man had no intention of answering.
 
Then, with a sigh, he straightened up and looked down at the paper.

“This is not right,” he said.

“I know it is not accurate, but please try to see it the way you remember it.
 
Can you show me where your house was?”

Looking down at the hand drawn map, he frowned.
 
“This word here...
 
It means water?”

“A well, yes.”

“Then our house was here.”

Chapter 6:
 
Diving into Records

The next morning, Tamara was up early and heading towards the administration building as a few early arriving cars trickled into the parking lot.
 
She found the cafeteria had just opened, and she dined on
huevos rancheros,
which she found to be quite good.
 
Twenty minutes later she was at her desk, ready to begin her audit.

‘God, I hope they aren’t hiding anything,’ she muttered to herself.
 
‘I hate when things get nasty and I have to nail people to the wall.’

She chuckled because that was not exactly true.
 
She loved nailing people to the wall – if they tried deliberately to slip something past her.
 
Honest mistakes were another thing and usually dealt with in a kinder manner.
 
Truth was, she enjoyed the hunt when she sensed something was amiss.
 
A challenge, a battle of wits, the bad guys vs. the good auditor – that sort of thing.

And so she plunged into the books, records, computer files, and anything else she could get her hands on that might tell her the story of how this project was spending the money granted to them.
 
And a large amount of money it was, larger than most research projects funded by the OSI, DOD or any other government agency.
 
She was humming to herself as she began tracing fund allocations within the project.

It was not until the afternoon of the second day of the audit that she began to sense something was not quite kosher.

Chapter 7:
 
Late Night Meeting

Three men met in a quiet office long after business hours.
 
It might have been an executive’s office; good quality furniture, soft carpet and a widow looking out over to the scattered lights of the city.
 
In the distance, an airliner was tracing its path over houses and businesses, lowering all the time as it approached the long line of lights marking the airport.
 
Only one lamp was turned on in the office, as if these three wished to meet in darkness in hopes no one would see them.

The oldest man was heavy set, doubled chinned and a bulging waist that even the expensive black suit could not hide.
 
On the pudgy fingers was a large gold ring bearing a dark red ruby and the chi-rho symbol on both sides.
 
He sat in the chair behind the desk, filling it so much that it creaked every time he moved.

The second man stood behind the fat one in an attitude of subservience.
 
His clothing was also black.
 
He was late thirties, slender of build and marked with a forlorn face and thinning hair.

The third man was standing before the desk, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot and glancing at the window every few seconds as if worried that someone was watching.
 
He seemed not to know what to do with his hands.

“Please tell the... us what you told me before,” said the man behind the chair.

The chair creaked as the fat man leaned forward, his dark eyes intent upon the nervous one.

“I...
 
Well, you see, I work at...”

Once started, he blurted out the essential fact he had come to say, then spent the next few minutes trying to make these two believe him.
 
When the questions began, it was the fat man who asked them, and who did not seem to believe the man’s story.
 
Or did not want to believe it.
 
But, try as he might, the fat man could not find fault with the story.
 
At least this man was consistent with his facts.
 
Which was not difficult, as he was telling the exact truth to begin with.

“I think you can see why I came to you.”

“You did the right thing, my child.
 
I promise you, I will look into this.”

The fat man rose with difficulty from the chair and offered his hand to the storyteller.
 
He remained calm, and even smiled as if this man had told him something that pleased him.
 
But as soon as the man left the room, his countenance turned dark and his voice took on a hard edge.

“Have you checked out this man?” he snapped.

“He seems to be who and what he claimed,” answered the other.
 
“I will, of course, check further into his story.”

“You must!
 
If there is the slightest shred of truth in what he says, we
must
know!”

“And act upon it,” added the slender man.

“What?!”
 
The fat man froze for long moments as that idea churned around in his mind.
 
Then he slumped back into the chair.
 
“You are right, of course.
 
We have never faced a danger like this before.
 
We may have to act, and swiftly!”