Xeno Sapiens (2 page)

“
Should that impress me?”

“
Impressive or not means little. It’s
a simple fact.” Clifton’s expression was skillfully
neutral.

“
If you’re after some new biotoxin or
plague organism,” Ingrid said, “I’ll tell you now to look
elsewhere. I’ve always been willing to take the good with the bad,
but I won’t be a party to something like that.”

Clifton looked pained, but continued
patiently.

“
What you’re talking about could be
whipped up by any half bright grad student. We’re not prepared to
pay top dollar for the most eminent researcher in the field if we
could get the same job done for a lot less of the folding green.
We’re not a bunch of stooges and I can make some deductions on my
own. You’re wanted for something much bigger and better.” Clifton
drained the last of his coffee, now barely warm, and awaited a
reaction.

The offer had been delivered not in a
bitter pill ultimatum, but in a sugar coated, silky bribe. After
the thin veneer of scientific ethics was stripped away, it was not
a wholly unattractive proposition. Researchers had feet of clay and
they all had their particular toys they wanted to play with. She
had seen it countless times, even at small, Delian
University.

But she would proceed cautiously.
Clifton might talk as if he could be milked for everything from a
centrifuge to an entire genetics lab, but Ingrid’s own dealings
with other slick, corporate types had convinced her that they might
promise the moon and deliver a jug of lead laced white lightning in
its stead.

“
What
can
you tell me,” Ingrid asked.

“
Like most covert projects, it’s non
disclosure, and code named. Project Change.”

“
That’s a pretty uninspired
choice.”

“
You don’t like it?”

“
What I don’t like,” Ingrid said, “is
the word covert.”

“
Semantics. Nobody is going to hold a
gun to your head. We can’t afford to invest huge sums of money into
something this big only to have the first hacker that comes along
steal such sensitive and expensive information. The cover is our
only form of protection.”

Ingrid thought at least half of that
might be true. She’d had her own experiences with computer
hacking.

“
Well, Mr. Clifton...”

“
Call me Alex.”

“
Alex, then. I have my own reasons for
even considering involvement in something like this, but I won’t
dive head first into an empty pool. I personally believe Robert
Oppenheimer would have never had his pangs of conscience about the
atomic bomb if he had failed. But I’m not Robert Oppenheimer, and
I’ve never intended to fail.”

“
Nobody’s asking you to kill
anyone.”

“
Then what exactly
are
you asking?”

“
Alright,” Clifton said. “You’re
wanted for a project to construct enhanced biological organisms.
What type I’m not at liberty to say until we have your commitment.
But it’s not a bug, or a virus, that much I can say. I’m not a flag
waving patriot or a machine, and I don’t make policy. If Uncle Sam
is footing the bill, so what? He’s been funding you here at the
university for years.” Clifton smiled quite sincerely.

“
You
are
an ingratiating bastard,” Ingrid said.

Clifton carefully ignored the
comment.

“
It wouldn’t be wise of us to try and
keep you in the dark about the project, but the truth is that I
-nor the project committee members- don’t know you from Eve. I
assumed you had probably worked under non disclosure rules before.
That was my error. Now, I need to know if working under those
conditions really would be against your will.”

“
Do I have to enlist,” Ingrid asked,
only half jokingly.

Clifton smiled. “Not at all. You will
be required to sign certain documents and make certain pledges. You
will be required to maintain proper identification. You will have
to give up your post at the University and move to the project
site. Expenses paid, naturally. You may not discuss the project
with any unauthorized persons. Not mom, dad, boyfriend, husband or
fly on the wall until the project is declassified. By the way, you
aren’t Catholic are you?”

“
No. Why?”

“
At least we don’t have to worry about
a priest.”

Ingrid wasn’t sure whether Clifton was
kidding or not.

“
The project is scheduled for three
years,” Clifton said, referring to the papers he had spread before
him. He had put on a pair of croupier’s glasses, looking like a
wizened old accountant poring over the day’s receipts. “Your salary
will be two hundred thousand dollars per year...”

Ingrid’s jaw dropped. Clifton did an
expert job of not noticing, continuing by rote.

“
...plus all the materials, assistants
and lab apparatus you need.”

“
Wait, wait,” Ingrid interrupted. “I
haven’t agreed to anything yet.” She was still reeling over her
salary. “I’m not a hack for hire to the highest bidder.”

Clifton seemed genuinely puzzled. His
glasses slipped back on his nose when he looked up.

“
Top drawer projects,” he said,
“demand top drawer salaries.”

“
But you can’t tell me these things.
Isn’t there something I should sign? An oath of allegiance or
something?”

“
I haven’t told you anything,” he
said. “The only specific I’ve given you is your salary. I had
planned to propose further meetings to inform you gradually. Until
you’re willing to commit, we can’t tell even
you
most things.”

She mentally ran over the points
Clifton had made. He had gabbed on and on and told her nothing. She
had almost gotten to like him, but he now seemed to be nothing more
than a silver tongued devil of the Fed. She would keep that in mind
and not be taken in by his flashes of boyish
ingenuousness.

“
I hope you don’t mind my speaking
frankly like this,” he went on, all warmth and teddy bear cuddly.
“My bosses and I haven’t always met on level ground, but I believe
in being honest with people.” He gave another hopeful
smile.

Ingrid returned it with a less than
welcoming stare.

“
I can’t give you an answer right now.
I have to know what’s expected of me. Picking up and shoving off
for three years is a big step.”

“
We weren’t expecting an answer right
away. Could we meet again next week? That will give you time to
examine the issues. If you’re favorably inclined, we could get into
a few more specifics then.”

“
Fine.”

“
Wonderful.” Clifton stood and placed
his glasses in a black case. He rummaged in his briefcase and
pulled out a form.

“
I’d like for you to read this and, if
you have no objection, sign it.”

“
What is it?”

“
Boiler plate stuff. All it says is
that you agree not to discuss the content of this meeting with
anyone else. It doesn’t obligate you in any other way.”

She scanned the form. It was just as
Clifton said. She scribbled her name at the bottom. The page
vanished into Clifton’s briefcase.

“
It’s been a pleasure,” Clifton said.
“You have my card. Please call if you need to change the
appointment.”

Ingrid led him to the door. They stood
there a few moments, the warm salt air blowing through the
portal.

“
You haven’t really told me anything,
you know. About the most I got out of this meeting was your
name.”

Clifton considered. His eyes took on a
sage gleam that would have looked more at home behind his
spectacles. He retreated to the coffee table, selected a manila
folder from his briefcase, and gave it to Ingrid.

“
I guess I don’t need to tell you that
you can never tell anyone what is in that folder. More than just my
job is on the line.”

He left quickly, without even saying
good bye. She watched him through the bamboo blinds of her living
room window as he drove away. She looked with some hesitation at
the folder on her coffee table, foolishly imagining that it was
some kind of Pandora’s box that would loose evils on the world once
she opened it.

Still, with a sigh, she sat down to
read it.

Clifton drove downtown to the Burbank
Electra office building where Parker, Usher and Foster technologies
had rented an entire floor of the twenty story building for a short
term, three month lease. Half an hour after leaving Ingrid, Clifton
made his report to Merrifield.

“
I think we can sign her
on.”

Merrifield was pleased. His boast he
would recruit the best bioengineer money could buy now seemed to
have more substance than shadow.

There had been misgivings about the
project in general; no one in the sacred halls of government wanted
to assume the moral authority for the results. Merrifield had
little tolerance for the soul searching and wrangling that went on
amongst the bioethicists and cadres of lawyers. It had been his
experience that the progress of science steamed along its course
with its own sort of manifest destiny and anything else was simply
a holding action.

The lawyers had bitched about the constitutionality of the
project (as if lawyers had ever given a furry rat’s ass about the
constitution), arguing that slavery was illegal. Listening to the
gutless government attorneys always put Merrifield in mind of an
old joke:
“What do you do when you find a lawyer buried up to his
neck in sand? Get more sand.”

But the secrets of the genetic
structure were being rapidly unraveled and there was a next,
logical step that had to be -and would be- taken by somebody.
Merrifield, always straddling a dicey edge between warmongering
neocons and soylent green liberals, had had to bring all his
considerable power and political leverage to the table to blunt
that challenge.

As for Ingrid, no one knew if she could be brought into a
project with the sole purpose of creating a “Genetically modified”
human being (and that was as unexciting a term as Merrifield could
come up with). A background check revealed that she was about as
politically motivated as a tree sloth, a rarity among college
students who believed themselves enlightened, but had simply been
indoctrinated by sixties Bolsheviks who had found a home
masquerading as professors at America’s universities. A glance into
the real workings of the power machine -the BIS in Basel, the CFR
and MIC, Bilderbergs and Rothschilds, Wall Street, and The City
-London’s Banking District- was usually enough to send them
scurrying back to their love-ins and protests with their red tails
between their legs. Merrifield would catch Ingrid fresh and show
her the
real
workings of power without any preconceived notions. And the
time was now. Something big was in the wind, like the scent of
smoke from far away.

A new term had been floating around in the pentagon,
uttered a little more urgently recently.
Asymmetrical warfare.
There had been hints
and teases in the intelligence community, the thousand threats
attended to every day given greater weight.

“
Did you have to twist her arm,”
Merrifield asked.

Clifton sat down in a well padded
chair, his omnipresent briefcase resting on its own battered hide.
The two of them would have made a fine addition to a den of
Threadneedle Street thieves, smoking fat cigars and swirling hard
liquor around in tumblers.

“
There’s enough resentment festering
inside her without rubbing salt into the gouge. She’s smart enough
not to turn down two hundred K for being allowed to do exactly what
she wants.”

“
You left the packet?”

“
Did I have another
option?”

Merrifield sighed. “I suppose not. I
never took her for a turnip head. So now Miss Milner knows all.
Will it hold her to the line?”

Clifton chewed his lip thoughtfully.
“Hard to say. Just don’t let her think we’re using her as a patsy.
She mentioned Robert Oppenheimer. She said that she believed he had
expected to fail in his effort to build the A- bomb, and when he
didn’t, he had a sudden attack of conscience. I think she’s
fighting that already. Are we expecting to become Jonas Salks, or
Hitlers?”

“
It’s a job, no more,” Merrifield
said. “An important job, but with all that high minded crap aside,
the simple truth remains that we have to do it before someone else
does. I think the benefits of the project will be great enough to
cover us no matter how much shit Josh Hall can sling. May his soul
burn in hell.”