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CHAPTER 035

Henry Kendall left Dulles Airport and drove north on 267, heading toward the Primate Facility in Lambertville. It was almost an hour before he saw the chain-link fence and the guardhouse behind the double gates. Beyond the gates he saw huge maple trees that obscured the complex of buildings farther back. Lambertville was one of the largest primate-research facilities in the world, but the National Institutes did not publicize that fact, or its location. Partly because primate research was so politically charged, and partly out of concern for vandalism by activists. Henry pulled up at the outer gate, pushed the button, and said, “Henry Kendall,” and gave his code number. He hadn’t been here for four years, but the code was still good. He leaned out of the car so the camera could see his face clearly.

“Thank you, Dr. Kendall.” The gate opened. He pulled through to the second gate. The first closed behind him. A guard came out and checked his ID. He vaguely remembered the guy. “Didn’t expect you today, Dr. Kendall.” He handed him a temporary swipe card.

“They want me to clear out some things from my storage locker.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Things are getting tighter around here, since, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” He meant Bellarmino.

The inner gate opened and Henry drove through. He passed the admin building and went straight to the holding facilities. The chimps were formerly in Building B. He assumed they still were.

He opened the outer door and swiped his card on the inner door. He went down a corridor to the B Monitor Room. It was a room filled with display screens, showing all the chimpanzees on two floors of the facility. There were about eighty animals of various ages and sexes.

The on-duty veterinary assistant was there, in khaki uniform. But also there was Rovak, the head of the facility. He must have been notified by the front gate. Rovak was fifty, steel gray hair, military bearing. But he was a good scientist.

“I wondered when you’d show up,” Rovak said. He shook hands. He seemed friendly. “You got the blood?”

“Yes.” Henry nodded.

“Fucking Bellarmino had a cow,” Rovak said. “He hasn’t been out here yet, and we think we know why.”

“What do you mean?” Henry said.

“Let’s take a walk,” Rovak said.

Henry consulted his paper. “I’m looking for female F-402.”

“No,” Rovak said. “You’re looking for the offspring of female F-402. He’s this way.”

They started down a side corridor. This led to a small training facility that was used for short-term teaching experiments with animals. “You keep him here?”

“Have to. You’ll see.”

They came into the training facility. At first glance, it looked like a kindergarten play room, brightly colored toys scattered around, blue carpet on the floor. A casual visitor might not notice that the toys were all made of high-impact, durable plastic. There were observation glass walls on one side. Mozart was playing over the speakers.

“Likes Mozart,” Rovak said, shrugging. They went into a smaller room, off to the side. A shaft of sunlight came down from the ceiling. There was a five-by-five cage in the center. Inside sat a young chimpanzee, about the size of a four-year-old child. The chimp’s face was flatter than usual, and the skin was pale, but it was clearly a chimp.

“Hello, Dave,” Rovak said.

“Hello,” the chimp said. His voice was raspy. He turned to Henry. “Are you my mother?” he said.

Henry Kendall could not speak. His jaw moved, but no words came out. Rovak said, “Yes, he is, Dave.” He turned to Kendall. “His name is Dave.”

The chimp was staring at Henry. Just staring silently, sitting there in the cage, holding his toes in his fingers.

“I know it’s a shock,” Rovak said. “Think how people here felt, when they found out. Vet almost passed out. Nobody had any idea he was different until out of the blue; he came up negative on a sialic acid test. They repeated it because they assumed it was an error. But it wasn’t an error. And then he started talking about three months ago.”

Henry sighed.

“He speaks well,” Rovak said. “Has a little trouble with verb tenses. But nobody has been instructing him. In fact, he’s been kept away from everybody around here. You want to let him out?”

Kendall hesitated. “Is he, uh…” Chimps could be nasty and aggressive; even small ones might be dangerous.

“Oh sure, he’s very docile. He’s not a chimp, right?” He opened the cage. “Come on out, Dave.”

Dave came out hesitantly, like a man released from jail. He seemed frightened to be outside the cage. He looked at Henry. “Am I going to live with you?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said.

“I don’t like the cage.”

He reached out and took Henry’s hand. “Can we go play?”

They went into the playroom. Dave led.

Henry said, “Is this his routine?”

“Right. He gets about an hour a day. Mostly with the vet. Sometimes me.”

Dave went over to the toys and began to arrange them into shapes. A circle, then a square.

“I’m glad you came to see him,” Rovak said. “I think it’s important.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“What do you think? This is illegal as shit, Henry. A transgender higher primate? You know Hitler tried to cross a human and a chimp. And Stalin tried. You might say they defined the field. Let’s see, Hitler, Stalin, and now an American researcher at the NIH? No way, my friend.”

“So what are you…”

“This represents an unauthorized experiment. It has to be terminated.”

“Are you kidding?”

“You’re in Washington,” Rovak said, “and you’re looking at political dynamite. NIH funding is already flat from the current administration. It’d be cut to a tenth, if word of this got out.”

“But this animal is extraordinary,” Henry said.

“But unauthorized. That’s all anybody cares about.” Rovak shook his head. “Don’t get sentimental. You have a transgenic experiment that was never authorized and the rules state explicitly that any experiment not approved by the boards will be terminated and there will be no exceptions.”

“What will you, uh…”

“Morphine drip intravenously. Won’t feel a thing.” Rovak said. “You don’t need to worry. We’ll take good care of him. And after incineration, there will be no evidence at all that it ever happened.” He nodded to Dave. “Why don’t you go play with him for a while? He’d like the company. He’s bored with all of us.”

They played a sort of impromptu game of checkers, using toy blocks, jumping over each other while they both sat on the floor. Henry noticed details-Dave’s hands, which were the proportion of human hands; his feet, which were prehensile like a chimp’s; his eyes, which had flecks of blue; and his smile, which was not quite human, not quite ape-like.

“This is fun,” Dave said.

“That’s because you are winning.” Henry didn’t really understand the rules, but he thought he should let Dave win. That’s what he had done with his own kids.

And then he thought, This is my own kid.

He wasn’t thinking clearly, he knew that. He was acting by instinct. He was aware of watching intently as Dave was returned to his cage, of the way he was locked in with a keypress padlock, of the way-

“Let me shake his hand again,” Henry said. “Open it up again.”

“Look,” Rovak said, “don’t do this to yourself. Or him.”

“I just want to shake his hand.”

Rovak sighed, unlocked the lock. Henry watched. 01-05-04.

He shook Dave’s hand and said good-bye.

“Are you coming tomorrow?” Dave said.

“Soon,” Henry said.

Dave turned away, not looking at him as Henry left the room and closed the door.

“Listen,” Rovak said, “you ought to be grateful you’re not being prosecuted and thrown into jail. Now don’t be foolish about this. We’ll handle it. You go on about your business.”

“Okay,” Henry said. “Thank you.”

He asked to stay at the facility until it was time for his plane home; they put him in a room with a terminal for researchers. He spent the afternoon reading about Dave and all the annotations in his file. He printed the entire file out. He walked around the facility, went to the bathroom several times, so that the guards would be accustomed to seeing him on the monitors.

Rovak went home at four, stopping in to say good-bye on his way out. The vets and guards changed shifts at six. At five-thirty p.m., Henry went back into the training facility and headed straight for Dave’s room.

He unlocked the cage.

“Hello, Mother,” Dave said.

“Hi, Dave. Would you like to take a trip?”

“Yes,” Dave said.

“Okay. Do exactly what I say.”

Researchers frequently walked with the tamer chimps, sometimes holding their hands. Henry walked with Dave down the training corridor, moving at a casual pace, ignoring the cameras. They turned left into the main corridor and headed for the exterior door. He swiped the inner door, led Dave through, and opened the outer door. As he expected, there were no alarms.

The Lambertville facility had been designed to keep intruders out, and to keep animals from escaping, but not to prevent researchers from removing animals. Indeed, for a variety of reasons, researchers sometimes needed to remove animals without going through extensive red tape. And so it was that Henry put Dave on the floor of the backseat of his car and drove to the exit gate.

It was now shift change, with a lot of cars coming and going. Henry turned in his swipe card and his badge. The guard on duty said, “Thanks, Dr. Kendall,” and Henry drove out into the rolling green hills of western Maryland.

“You’re driving back?”Lynn said. “Why?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Why, Henry?”

“I have no choice. I have to drive.”

“Henry,” she said, “you’re behaving very strangely, you know that.”

“It was a moral issue.”

“What moral issue?”

“I have a responsibility.”

“What responsibility? Goddamn it, Henry-”

“Honey,” he said, “it’s a long story.”

“You said that.”

“Believe me, I want to tell you everything,” he said, “I really do. But it’ll have to wait until I get home.”

Dave said, “Is that your mother?”

Lynn said, “Who’s in the car with you?”

“Nobody.”

“Who was talking? That raspy voice.”

“I really can’t explain it,” he said. “You’ll just have to wait until I get home, and then you’ll understand.”

“Henry-”

“Gotta go, Lynn. Love to the kids.” He hung up.

Dave was watching him with patient eyes. “Was that your mother?”

“No. Somebody else.”

“Is she angry?”

“No, no. Are you hungry, Dave?”

“Soon.”

“Okay, we’ll find a drive-in. But meantime, you have to wear your seat belt.”

Dave looked puzzled. Henry pulled over, and clipped the seat belt around him. It didn’t really fit; he was only slightly larger than a child.

“I don’t like it.” He started to tug at the harness.

“You have to wear it.”

“No.”

“Sorry.”

“I want to go back.”

“Can’t go back, Dave.”

Dave stopped struggling. He stared out the window. “It’s dark.”

Henry ran his hand over the animal’s head, feeling the short fur. He could feel Dave relax when he did it. “It’s okay, Dave. Everything is going to be fine, now.”

Henry pulled back onto the road, and headed west.