The Games

CHAPTER ONE

Somewhere in the blackness a videophone rang. Through force of will, Silas brought the glowing face of the clock radio into focus: 3:07 A.M. His heart beat a little faster.

Is it ever good news at 3:07 A.M.?

He fumbled for the light near his bedside, sliding his hand up to the switch, wondering who could be calling this late. Suddenly, he knew—the lab. The light was nearly as blinding as the darkness, but by squinting he found the phone, being careful to hit the voice-only button.

“Hello,” he croaked.

“Dr. Williams?” The voice coming through the speaker was young and male. He didn’t recognize it.

“Yes,” Silas answered.

“Dr. Nelson had me call. You’ll want to come down to the compound.”

“What’s happened?” He sat up straighter in bed, swinging his feet to the carpet.

“The surrogate went into labor.”

“What? When?” It was still too soon. All the models had predicted a ten-month gestation.

“Two hours ago. The surrogate is in bad shape. They can’t delay it.”

Silas tried to clear his head, think rationally. “The medical team?”

“The surgeons are being assembled now.”

Silas ran his fingers slowly through his mop of salt-and-pepper curls. He checked the pile of dirty clothes lying on the floor next to his bed and snagged a shirt that looked a little less wrinkled than its brethren. Above all else, he considered himself to be an adaptable man. “How long do I have?”

“Half-hour, maybe less.”

“Thanks, I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Silas clicked the phone off. For better or for worse, it had begun.

THE NIGHT was cool for Southern California, and Silas drove with the windows down, enjoying the way the wind swirled around the cab of the Courser 617. The air was damp, tinged with a coming thunderstorm. Eagerness pressed him faster. He took the ramp to Highway 5 at seventy miles per hour, smiling at the way the car grabbed the curve. So many times as a youth he’d dreamed of owning a car such as this. Tonight his indulgence seemed prophetic; he needed every one of those Thoroughbreds galloping beneath the low, sleek hood.

As he merged onto the mostly empty interstate, he punched it, watching the speedometer climb to just over a hundred and five. The radio blared something he didn’t recognize—rhythmic and frenzied, almost primeval, it matched his mood perfectly. His anxiety built with his proximity to the lab.

Over the years he had become accustomed to the occasional midnight dash to the lab, but it had never been like this, with so many unknowns. A vision of Evan Chandler’s grossly jowled face entered his mind, and he felt a rush of anger. He couldn’t really blame Chandler. You couldn’t ask a snake not to be a snake. It was the members of the Olympic Commission who should have known better.

He switched lanes to avoid a mini-tram, his speed never dropping below ninety-five miles per hour. His dark eyes glanced into the rearview, scouting for a patrol. The ticket itself wouldn’t bother him. He was exempt from any fine levied by local authorities while on his way to and from the lab, but the time it would cost to explain himself would be the real expense. All clear. He pushed the gas pedal to the floor. Minutes later, he hit his brakes, downshifted to third, and cut across two lanes to catch his exit. He was now out of the city proper and into the suburbs of San Bernardino.

Silas passed the brightly lit main entrance of Five Rings Laboratories without taking his foot off the gas. He didn’t have time for the main entrance, the winding drive. Instead, he veered left at the access road, whipping past the chain-link fence that crowded the gravel. At the corner, he spun the wheel and hooked another left, decelerating as he neared the rear gate. He flashed his badge to the armed guard, and the iron bars swung inward just in time to save his paint job.

The lab grounds were vast and parklike—a sprawling technological food web of small interconnected campuses, three- and four-story structures sharing space with stands of old growth. Glass and brick and trees. A semicircle of buildings crouched in conference around a small man-made pond.

He followed his headlights to a building at the west end of the complex and skidded to a stop in his assigned parking spot.

He was surprised to see Dr. Nelson standing there to greet him—a short, squat form cast in fluorescent lighting. “You were right. Twenty minutes exactly,” Dr. Nelson said.

Silas groaned as he extricated himself from the vehicle. “One of the advantages of owning a sports car,” he said, and stretched his stiff back as he got to his feet.

A nervous smile crept to the corner of Nelson’s mouth. “Yeah, well, I can see the disadvantage. Someone your size should really consider a bigger car.”

“You sound like my chiropractor.” Silas knew things weren’t going well upstairs; Nelson wasn’t one for quips. In fact, Silas couldn’t recall ever seeing the man smile. His stomach tightened a notch.

They made their way to the elevators, and Nelson pushed the button for the third floor.

“So where do things stand?” Silas asked.

“It’s anesthetized, and the surgical team should be ready any minute.”

“The vitals?”

“Not good. The old girl is worn out, just skin and bones. Even the caloric load we’ve been pushing hasn’t been enough. The fetus is doing okay, though. Still has a good, strong heartbeat. The sonogram shows it’s roughly the size of a full-term calf, so I don’t think there should be anything tricky about the surgery.”

“The surgery isn’t what I’m worried about.”

“Yeah, I know. We’re ready with an incubator just in case.”

Silas followed Nelson around a corner and down another long hallway. They stopped at a glass door, and Nelson slid his identification card into the console slot. There were a series of beeps, then a digitized, feminine voice: “Clearance accepted; you may enter.”

The view room was long, narrow, and crowded. It was an enclosed balcony that overhung a surgical suite, and most of the people were gazing into the chamber below through a row of windows that ran along the left wall.

At the far end of the packed room, a tall man with a shaggy mane of blond hair noticed them. “Come in, come in,” Benjamin said with a wave. At twenty-six, he was the youngest man working on the project. A prodigy funneled from the eastern cytology schools, he described himself as a man who knew his way around an oocyte. Silas had taken an instant liking to him when they’d met more than a year ago.

“You’re just in time for the fun,” Benjamin said. “I thought for sure they wouldn’t be able to drag you out of bed.”

“Three hours’ sleep is all any man needs in a thirty-six-hour period.” He grabbed Benjamin’s outstretched hand and gave it a firm shake. “What’s the status of our little friend?”

“As you can see”—Benjamin gestured toward the window—“things have progressed a little faster than we expected. The surrogate turned the corner from distressed to dying in the last hour, and it’s triggered contractions. As far as we can tell, it may still be a little early, but since you can’t sail a sinking ship”—Benjamin pulled a cigar from the inside pocket of his lab coat and held it out to Silas—“it looks like our little gladiator is going to have a birthday.”

Silas took the cigar, smiling against his best efforts. “Thanks.” He turned and stepped toward the glass. The cow was on its side on a large stainless-steel table, surrounded by a team of doctors and nurses. The surgeons huddled around their patient, only their eyes and foreheads visible above sterile masks.

“It should be anytime now,” Benjamin said.

Silas turned to face him. “Anything new on the sonogram visuals?”

Benjamin shook his head and pushed his glasses up his long, thin nose. For the first time his face lost its optimistic glow. “We did another series, but we haven’t been able to glean any additional information.”

“And those structures we talked about?”

“Still can’t identify them. Not that people haven’t had a field day coming up with ideas.”

“I hate going into this blind.”

“Believe me, I know.” Benjamin’s voice soured. “But the Olympic Commission didn’t exactly leave you with a lot of room for maneuvering, did they? The fat bastard isn’t even a biologist, for Christ’s sake. If things go wrong, it won’t be on your head.”

“You really believe that?”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“Then you’re wise beyond your years.”

“Still, one way or the other, Evan Chandler is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

“I don’t think he’s that worried,” Silas said softly. “I don’t see him here, do you?”

THE SCIENTISTS stood crowded against the glass, transfixed by the scene unfolding beneath them. Inside the white stricture of lights, a scalpel blinked stainless steel. The cow lay motionless on its left side as it was opened from sternum to pelvis in one slow, smooth cut. Gloved hands insinuated themselves into its abdomen, gently separating layers of tissue, reaching deep. Silas felt his heart thumping in his chest. The hands disappeared entirely, then the arms up to the elbows. Assistants used huge curved tongs to stretch the incision wide.

The surgeon shifted his weight. His shoulder strained. Silas imagined the man’s teeth gritting with effort beneath the micropore mask as he rummaged around in the bovine’s innards. What did he feel? A final pull and it was over. The white-smocked physician slowly pulled a dark, dripping mass away as a nurse moved in to cut the umbilical cord. Faintly, a sporadic beeping in the background changed to a steady tone as the cow flatlined. The medical team ignored it, moving to focus their energies on the newborn.

The first surgeon put the bloody shape on the table under the lamps and began wiping it down with a sponge and warm water, while another doctor peeled away the dense layers of fibrous glop that still clung to it.

The surgeon’s voice sounded over the speakers in the view room from a microphone in his mask. “The fetus is dark … still covered by the embryonic sack … thick, fibrous texture; I’m tearing it away.”

Silas’s face was nearly pushed against the glass, trying to get a better look over the doctor’s shoulder. For a moment he caught a glimpse of the newborn, but then the medical team shifted around their patient and he could see nothing. The sound of the doctor’s breathing filled the view room.

“This … interesting … I’m not sure …” The doctor’s voice trailed off in the speakers.

Suddenly, a shrill cry split Silas’s ears, silencing the excited background chatter. The cry was strange, like nothing he’d ever heard before.

The doctors stepped back from the wailing newborn one by one, opening a gap, allowing Silas his first real glimpse.

His mouth dropped open.

LATER THAT morning, the storm that had been threatening for hours finally moved in with all the subtlety of a shotgun blast. Thunder boomed across the expansive field of California mod-sod. Dr. Silas Williams watched from behind the window of his second-story office, hands folded behind his back, drinking in the scene. The familiar ache in his bad ear had finally begun to ebb, becoming tolerable again. It always seemed to act up at the most inopportune times, and he hadn’t let himself take anything stronger than aspirin because of what he knew was coming. He’d need his edge today.

Outside his window, the few well-manicured windbreaks of oak, hickory, and alder that stood scattered across the vast green promenade seemed to sway and shake with anticipation. Their branches bowed in the gusts that swept in from the west. In the distance, he could see the road and the cars—their headlight beams turned on against the darkening mid-morning sky.

He’d always felt there was magic in these moments just before the rain, when the sky brooded and rumbled its promises. The last few moments before a hard rain seemed to exist outside of time. It was the eternal drama, old as nature. Old as life. A dull curtain of precipitation spread west to east across the landscape, instantly soaking the grass. For a moment, he clutched at the wispy borders of ancient half-memories of other storms on other continents, of tall savanna grass waving and genuflecting before the monsoon.

The first fat drop spattered the window. Then another, and a dozen, and the window ran like a river, smearing away the outside world. As the sky darkened further, and the scene beyond the window lost its form in the streaming rain, his reflection materialized in the glass before him. He considered the visage gazing intently back at him. A good enough face, if a little weatherworn. For the first time in a long time, on this day of birth and rain, his mind cast back to his childhood. To a face so like his own.

Silas remembered his father in flashes—long legs, a towering silhouette that tucked him in at night. Huge hands with long, rectangular palms. Masculine. Solidly there.

Then not.

Silas’s father was killed in a refinery fire when he was three, leaving behind only the faintest ghosts of memories for his son. Most of what Silas knew of his father came from his mother’s stories and pictures. But in many ways, it was the pictures that spoke most eloquently.

The family portrait that hung in his mother’s living room for decades showed a huge, broad-shouldered man with tight curls shorn low to the scalp. A gentle half-smile dimpled his left cheek. He was sitting next to Silas’s mother, holding hands, his dark brown complexion contrasting sharply against the warm New Orleans honey of her skin. He had the kind of face that some Americans would have described as exotic—both broad and angular, an unexpected bone structure that snagged the eye. Immense cheekbones, high and sharp, dominated the proportions of his face. Many times growing up, Silas had noticed people lingering in front of that picture, as though his father was a puzzle to figure out. What did they see in that dead man?

While in her twenties, Silas’s sister had leveraged their father’s bone structure and long limbs into a modeling career. It had paid for college when she chose to go against the tracking of her state sponsorship. A thing most young people couldn’t afford to do. Ashley was married now, and had a young son. She still had a year left on her primary nuptial contract, but they were a happy couple and already had plans to re-up lifelong at the first option. He envied them a little. What they had was so different from what he’d shared with Chloe all those years ago.

He remembered the arguments and the shouting, the slammed doors, the things said that couldn’t be taken back. But it was the silences that did the most damage. The interminable quiets that ate their evenings, growing longer over every passing month as they each came to terms with the fact that there was nothing really left to say.

Neither of them had wanted children, and eventually there had been nothing there to hold them together. Their careers became their partners. In the end, they had simply let their contract expire. They didn’t even talk about it. The third anniversary came and went without either of them filing for a continuance, and the next day, they just weren’t married anymore. A lot of marriages ended like that.

Still, on the evening she’d moved out, he’d felt crazy. He hadn’t wanted her to stay, but as he stood there, watching her walk through the door for what would be the last time, he felt … grief. Not for the loss of her but for the loss of what there should have been between them. The enormous emptiness of his life had almost overwhelmed him.

As always, his work had been his savior. Later that month, he won the Crick Award for his contribution to design in the Ursus theodorus project. He was only twenty-seven years old and suddenly found himself center stage in the biological revolution. The bear teddy had eventually become the fourth most popular pet in the United States, next in line after dogs, cats, and domestic foxes. That had been the start of it all.

A buzz on the intercom interrupted his thoughts.

Lightning flashed. Silas took a deep breath and watched sheets of rain cascade down the glass. He wasn’t looking forward to this. There was a mutual dislike between him and most of the members of the Olympic Commission, and this year things had come to a head over their decision to use Chandler’s design.

The buzz came again.

“Yes,” he said.

“Dr. Williams, Mr. Baskov is here to see you,” his secretary said.

Silas was surprised. “Send him in.” It was hardly an industry secret that Stephen Baskov represented more than just another faceless vote in the commission. His reputation was widely acknowledged and served him well in the shark-infested waters of the Olympic politico. Officially, he merely chaired the commission. Unofficially, he ruled.

“Hello and good morning, Dr. Williams,” Stephen Baskov said, switching his cane to his left hand and holding out his right.

Silas shook it, then gestured toward a chair. Baskov sank into the seat graciously, letting his feet stretch out in front of him. He was a broad man, with even, ruddy features. He wore his snow-white locks combed in such a way as to get the most economy from a diminished budget of hair. He looked to be about eighty years old, an affable old man—grandfatherly, almost—but Silas knew better. His simple appearance was in stark contrast to the reality of the man. Within his worn face, beneath his bushy white eyebrows, shone eyes like hard glacial ice.

“I hear you had quite an exciting time last night,” Baskov began.

Silas eased back in his seat and propped his feet up on the big desk. “Yes, it was an eye-opener.”

Baskov smiled, resting one grizzled hand on each knee. “My people tell me you’re responsible for the successful birth of another gladiator. Congratulations.”

“Thank you. I assume that’s not all you heard.”

“Why do you assume I heard something more?”

“Because if that was all your people told you, then you wouldn’t be here right now.”

“No, probably not.”

“Then what did bring you here? What can I do for you today?”

“The commission decided not to wait for your report. I’ve been sent to find out just what exactly we’re dealing with here. To be honest with you, the description we’ve been given is a little disconcerting.”

“Disconcerting? An interesting choice of words.”

“Oh, there were more words used than just that.”

“Such as?”

“Inexplicable,” Baskov said. “Disquieting. Disturbing.”

Silas nodded. “I’d say those fit pretty well.”

“None of those are words the commission likes to hear in association with its investment in this project.”

“Nor would I.”

“Is it healthy?”

“Vigorously,” Silas said.

“That’s a good sign.”

“For now.”

“Do you foresee any problems, any reason why it may not be able to compete?”

“All I do see are problems. As to whether or not it can compete, I have no idea. We’re going to have to get the blood results back before we can even speculate if it’s going to survive the week.”

“Why is that?”

“I can’t even begin to guess what sort of immunity haplotype it might have. A common cold might kill it.”

“A common cold? That’s rather unlikely, isn’t it?”

“Sir, I have no way of knowing whether it’s likely or not.”

“You’ve never had a problem with disease susceptibility before.”

“Exactly. I’ve also never had a problem accessing the template protocols.” Silas let a challenge slip through the cracks of his expression.

Baskov noticed it in an instant and turned the tables. “I sense a climate of animosity here,” he said, as a smile spread across the lower portion of his face. His voice rose a subtle, questioning octave. “Do you have a problem with me, Dr. Williams?”

The directness of the question took Silas aback. He toyed with the idea of meeting it head-on, but then decided to change tacks slightly. His job as program head was nearly as much a political appointment as it was a scientific one, and although he hated that aspect of the job, he’d learned a few things about diplomacy during his years in the position. Meeting something like the commission head-on was a good way to get a broken head.

“Let me ask you a question, Mr. Baskov,” Silas said. “I’ve overseen the Helix arm of Olympic Development for twelve years. In that time, how many gold medals has the United States brought home in the gladiator competition?”

“Three,” Baskov said. His brows furrowed. He wasn’t a man used to answering questions.

“Three; that’s right. Three games, three wins. They were my designs that brought home those medals. Designs, not just the cytological grunt work. Your commission fought against me this time. I want to know why.” That question had burned in his gut for all the months he’d watched the surrogate’s distended belly grow.

Baskov sighed. “This event is different from the others; I shouldn’t have to tell you that. There are factors involved that you aren’t aware of.”

“Make me aware, then.”

“Most of the other Olympic events haven’t changed much in the last hundred years. The marathon is still twenty-six miles, and will still be twenty-six miles when you and I are long dead. But the gladiator event is about change.”

“I thought it was about winning.”

“That above all. But it’s about showcasing a country’s technological advancement. We have to use the newest, best tools at our disposal. It’s not like the hundred-yard dash, where you take the fastest guy you happen to have, push him onto the track, and hope for the best.”

“I doubt Olympic running coaches would appreciate that oversimplification.”

“I doubt I give a damn what they would or wouldn’t appreciate. The gladiator event is more than a test of simple foot speed.”

“And it’s more than some VR sim,” Silas snapped back.

“Yes, it is. But that doesn’t change the fact that Chandler’s computer is capable of design specs that you can’t touch. There’s only one rule in this event: no human DNA. That’s it. That leaves a hell of a lot of room to play, and we weren’t taking advantage of it. Ours was a business decision, nothing more. Nothing less. It wasn’t meant as a reflection on you.”

“If it were a reflection on me, then I could understand it. But my designs have a history of success to back them up. We won. We’ve always won.”

“And the endorsements that go with it, I know. The commission is very thankful for that. You’re a huge part of why the United States has dominated the field. But it could have gone either way last time. You know that.”

Silas remained silent. He remembered the blood. He remembered the swing of guts in the sawdust. The U.S. gladiator had outlived its competitor by forty-seven seconds. The difference between gold and silver.

“I’m not sure that you fully appreciate the pressure that the program is under right now,” Baskov said. “We can’t afford to lose. While you’ve spent all your time sequestered away in your personal little laboratory retreat here, the rest of the program has had to exist in the real world. Or have you forgotten?”

“No.”

“I think you have. The gladiator event is a bloody business—that’s why it’s so popular and why it’s always under attack. The activists have a powerful lobby in Congress this time around, and they’re pushing for a new vote.”

“And they won’t get it.”

“No, they won’t. Not this time. But public opinion is an unpredictable thing. Success has buoyed it up till now, and the commission was informed that we must continue to be successful if the gladiator event is to remain part of the Olympics. We do not have any other option.”

Informed by whom? Silas wondered.

“This competition is not going to be as simple and straightforward as the last,” Baskov continued. “Our sources tell us that China’s contestant will be very formidable. Let’s just say that when we compared your designs to what we know we’ll be up against, your ideas came up lacking. You couldn’t have won with the codes you had in the scrollers.”

“How could you know—”

“You couldn’t have won,” Baskov interrupted. “Our decision wasn’t made lightly.”

Silas’s face drained of expression as he considered the man sitting before him. He wanted to grab him by the lapels, pull him off his feet, and shake him. He wanted to yell in his face, What have you done?

But he thought again of broken heads, and by slow degrees managed to put his anger in a place he could shut down. In controlled, clipped words, he said, “I understand. Perhaps I don’t have all the information, but I’m still program head. We still have problems that need to be dealt with.”

“I’ve heard. We’ve been aware of the problems. Your reports during the last several months didn’t fall on deaf ears.”

“Then why hasn’t the commission acted?”

“We just decided to wait and see what happened.”

“Would you like to see … what’s happened?”

“I was waiting for you to ask.”

THEY SHUFFLED slowly down the narrow corridor, with Silas consciously shortening his strides to accommodate Baskov’s hobbling gait. He wondered at the anticipation the older man must be feeling. Hell, he was feeling it, too, and he’d already seen the organism, inspected it, held it. The newborn was the most beautifully perfect thing Silas had ever seen.

Baskov broke the silence between them as they turned a corner. “The commission is very troubled by the description we received. It isn’t really humanoid, is it?”

“Maybe. Not really.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“When you see it, you’ll understand.”

“And what about the hands?”

“What about them?”

“Does it really have … well, hands? I mean … it doesn’t have paws or hooves or something like the others?”

Silas suppressed the urge to laugh. Let the cocky old son of a bitch sweat a little. “I’d have to call them hands. They aren’t like ours, but they’re hands.” His bitter humor abated somewhat. “The similarities are mostly superficial, though.”

“Are you going to have trouble proving no human DNA was used in the design?”

Silas looked down at the old man. For a moment, he felt his temper rise again. He took a deep breath. With the competition less than a year away, it was a little late to be asking that question now. “Your guess is as good as mine at this point,” he said. “Chandler’s masterpiece didn’t provide us with any sort of explanation for the data in the scrollers, just raw code. I assumed that since you chose his design over mine, you would have some sort of idea what you were getting. You need to ask him. My reports are accurate, and if you read them, you—”

“We read them; we just weren’t sure if we could believe them.”

Silas mulled over several responses to the older man’s statement, but since most of them involved the end of his career and quite possibly his incarceration for battery, he decided to say nothing at all. For the first time, he considered the possibility that the head of the Olympic Commission might be utterly irrational in some aspects of his thinking. Power did that to men sometimes.

They stepped through a set of steel doors and followed the narrow hall around the corner. “I want to remind you that the sponsor dinner is still on for tomorrow night. I need you to be there,” Baskov said.

“I’ll send Dr. Nelson.”

“You’ll be there in person. We need to quell the rumors that have already begun to fly. Image is money in this business. The delegation will leave from the complex at six o’clock.”

Rumors?

They came to a second set of steel doors. A large yellow sign read:

Silas carded them through, and Baskov stopped short, blinking against the white brightness of the nursery. A stout, flame-haired man sat against a console near the far wall. There were no windows, but a large glass chamber boxed in the center of the room.

“How’s it doing?” Silas asked the redhead.

“Just fine,” Keith answered. “Been sleeping like a baby for an hour now. Come to show off your little creation?”

“Not mine,” Silas said. “This is Chandler’s handiwork.”

They peered in. The crib was large, and behind the chromed bars, a loosely swaddled shape twisted and bobbed within a cocoon of pink blankets.

“Looks like it’s awake now,” Silas said.

“Probably hungry again,” Keith replied. “You wouldn’t believe how much it loves to eat.”

Silas checked the paper printout of the infant’s eating habits, then turned back to Baskov. “The chamber is a walk-in incubator. The system has autonomic control of everything from temperature to humidity to oxygen-sat levels.”

Baskov nodded, shifting his weight for a clearer view.

“Want to get a closer look?” Silas asked.

“Of course.”

They donned sterile masks and gowns, and stretched latex gloves over their hands. “Just a temporary precaution,” Silas said.

“For us, or it?”

“It.”

Baskov nodded. “Why are we calling it an ‘it,’ anyway? It’s male, right?”

“No, female by the external genitalia. Or lack thereof.”

With a soft hiss, the door to the inner chamber opened and they stepped through. The air was warmer, wetter. Silas could feel the heat of the lights on the bridge of his nose above the mask. He bent and reached his hands through the bars and into the crib. Baskov hovered just to his side. The covers peeled back from the writhing form.

Silas heard a sudden intake of air near his shoulder.

“My God” was all Baskov could manage.

The newborn was on its back, four stocky limbs pedaling the air. Once again, Silas struggled to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. There was nothing to compare it to, so his brain had to work from scratch, filling in all the pieces, seeing everything at once.

The newborn was hairless, and most of its skin was a deep, obsidian black, slightly reflective in the warm glare of the heat lamps, as though covered with a shiny coat of gloss. Only its hands and forearms were different. It was roughly the size of a three-year-old human toddler. Wide shoulders tapered into long, thick arms that now bunched and stretched toward the bars. Below the elbow, the skin color shifted to deep red. Its blood-colored hands clenched in the air, the needle tips of talons just beginning to erupt from the ends of the long, hooked fingers. The rear legs were raptor monstrosities, jointed in some complicated way, with splayed feet that corded with muscle and sinew just below the surface of its skin.

Two enormous gray eyes shone out of the brilliant blackness of its face and raked across the two men looking down. Silas could almost feel the weight of the alien gaze. The lower jaw was enormously wide and jutting, built for power. A grossly bossed cranial vault spread wide over the pulled-out face, capped by two soft semicircular flaps of ear cartilage.

It opened its mouth, mewling the same strange cry that Silas had heard the night before. Even the inside of its mouth was midnight black.

“This is beyond …” Baskov began.

“Yes, that’s a perfect way to describe it.”

Baskov began to reach a gloved hand toward the newborn but then apparently thought better of it. “This is beyond the reach of what I thought we were able to do,” he finished.

“It is. We cannot do this,” Silas said.

The two men locked eyes.

“How?” Baskov asked.

“You’re asking the wrong guy, remember? I’m the builder, not the designer.”

“Does it seem to be put together well? Are those legs supposed to look like that?”

“Well, everything is symmetrical on the exterior, so that’s a good sign. But you haven’t seen the really interesting thing yet.” Silas leaned through the bars and grabbed the newborn under the upper arms. It struggled, but he was able to flip it over onto its stomach.

“What are those?” Baskov whispered.

“We’re not totally sure, but the X-ray data indicate they’re probably immature wing structures of some sort.”

“Wings? Are you telling me this thing has wings?”

Silas shrugged his answer.

“They’re not functional, are they?”

“I don’t see how they could be. Flight is probably the single most difficult form of locomotion from a design standpoint, and this thing certainly doesn’t look like it was built along avian lines. The bones are huge, strong.”

“But why even try? There isn’t really room to fly in the arena.” Baskov bent closer. “And those big ears are a liability. The eyes, too.”

“Now you understand my frustration with your chosen designer. We need to talk to him.”

Baskov’s expression faded from wonder to irritation. “Chandler isn’t as easy to reach as he used to be.”

“Where is he?”

“Where isn’t the problem. He just isn’t easy to reach anymore.”

AFTER WALKING Baskov back to the lobby, Silas returned to the nursery and sent Keith home for the night. He stood alone at the side of the crib, silently watching the baby breathe. It was a baby. Big as a newborn calf but just as underdeveloped and fragile as any human newborn. He extended a hand through the bars and stroked the infant’s back. It lay on its tummy, legs drawn up, bottom stuck in the air.

It’s beautiful.

But then, almost all life is beautiful at this stage. Pure innocence combined with complete selfishness. Its only function was to take from those around it so that it could live and grow, while remaining completely unaware of the effort involved in meeting its needs.

Silas closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of the creature. He felt himself relax a little. His sister hinted once that she thought he’d become a geneticist to create something that was a part of him. She was wrong. That was why people have children.

He wanted to create something better than himself. Better than any man could be. Something a little closer to perfect. But he had always failed. His creations were monsters compared to this. They were just animal Frankensteins that acted out impulses society wouldn’t allow men to indulge in.

But he’d come close once. Teddy. Ursus theodorus had been loving, gentle, and even intelligent, after a fashion. That last quality had cost the first prototype its life. It had been too intelligent. Some people got nervous. The board of directors had had its say, and late one evening, he’d been forced to place the little creature on a table and inject it with enough animal tranquilizer to stop its breathing. He’d stood back with ice in his gut while his creation died.

The next series of Teddys were dumber and better suited the board, but it wasn’t the same for Silas. He’d lost his stomach for pet manufacture. When the position at the Olympic Commission became available, he’d jumped at it. If he was going to watch his successes die, he would know to expect it from the outset. No more surprises.

But this was a surprise.

But not my surprise. Not my baby this time.

Chandler was deranged. There was no doubting that. And this was his creation. Silas fought back a surge of begrudging admiration for the man. In all Silas’s years as a geneticist, he’d never even come close to developing a creature like the one that lay before him now.

He shoved the feelings to the side, letting the anger take its place. Chandler knew nothing about genetics. He knew nothing about life. All he knew was computers. And his computer had been the true creator, after all.

This perfect little life form that lay snoring on the other side of the bars had been created by an organized composite of wires, chips, and screens. Somehow, all this beauty, all this perfection, had come from a machine.

CHAPTER TWO

Evan Chandler leaned his significant mass against the wall near the window, picking sores into his face with absentminded fingers. The fluorescent lights hummed softly in the background, providing a subtle soundtrack to the visions in his head. His eyes focused inward on some distant dimly lit horizon. For Evan, that horizon had been growing ever darker over the last several months.

A sudden clap of thunder brought his consciousness swimming to the surface like some strange, stunted leviathan. With an expression approaching surprise, he looked out into the desolation of the early evening. Rain dribbled its way down the glass. God, he hated storms.

He shifted off the wall and trudged over to his desk, where he eased his weight onto a loudly wailing swivel chair. His desk was a sprawling mountain range of papers, folders, and empty foam food containers. He considered the room before him. Stacks of computer digilogs stood at ease like drowsy sentinels against one wall. Several dead brown plants drooped from their pots in various stages of decomposition. He cast his muddied hazel eyes around the chaos, looking for his laptop amid the clutter. Eventually, he gave up. It would be easier to get another than to sift through the various geological layers of refuse he had accumulated.

He knew there was something he was supposed to do today, someone he was supposed to see, but he couldn’t quite remember. Looking around the room, he experienced a painful moment of lucidity, saw vividly where he was going, what he was slipping into. It scared him, but the feeling faded. It always did.

A knock on the door startled him, and his fat rolls shimmied as he jerked his chin up from his chest. He’d faded out again. Lost time. Outside the window he saw the storm had passed. Good. “What do you want?” he called.

A young woman opened the door and leaned her head through. He recognized her face, though he couldn’t quite place her name. Sarah, or Susan, or something like that. Was it his secretary? Did he even have a secretary anymore? He couldn’t remember.

“It’s getting late, Dr. Chandler,” the woman said. “The rest of the team and I are going to call it a day, I think.”

Team? “Okay.”

She shut the door softly. Curious, he got to his feet and shuffled over to where she had been standing. He swung the door wide and stepped out into the construction chamber. A dozen people dressed in tech cleans were gathering up their equipment. In the center of the room stood a huge monolithic plug booth, half finished. The electronics gleamed under the spotlights. He remembered now. Oh, yes, he remembered.

He picked his way slowly between the piles of electronic equipment and stepped up to the booth. He ran his palm across the smooth surface of the faceplate. It was cool to the touch, smooth and soothing. He felt better. The riptide in his head ebbed ever so slightly.

“How much longer?” he asked the woman as she closed the lid on her pack.

“Should be finished in two or three days.”

He didn’t bother to respond. His knee creaked audibly under his weight as he bent to inspect the optronic connections leading from the mainframe. He twisled the cable between his fingers, tugging the connection slightly. Nice and tight. You couldn’t be too careful, after all. This was his conduit. His church. This booth would help him talk to God.

EVAN WAS into the third bite of his burger when he heard the knock on his office door. Anger surged. They knew he wasn’t to be disturbed during lunch. A moment later, just as he brought the burger back up to his mouth, the knock came again.

“What is it?” he snapped.

The door swung inward, and Mr. Baskov limped through.

“Good morning, Dr. Chandler.”

Evan nodded. “Mr. Baskov.”

“May I sit?” Baskov asked.

“Go ahead, just clear off a chair.”

Baskov leaned his cane against the arm of a leather chair, picked up a haphazard pile of papers from the cushion, and placed them on the floor.

“To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit?” Evan asked through a squishy muffle of burger, bun, and tomato. A runnel of juice split his chin and deposited another stain on his filthy shirt.

“There was a birth,” Mr. Baskov said. “Do you recall the work you did for us on the Helix project?”

“Of course I remember the project.” Evan swallowed and wiped his hands with a napkin. “It’s the only thing I’ve been allowed to use the Brannin on. Why does everyone around here treat me like I can’t remember my own name?”

“Good. There has been concern, you see, about the work done with the Brannin.”

“Well, I’ve had some concerns of my own. I’m concerned that I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life on the design of a computer I’m not being allowed to use.”

“I have nothing to do with that. The concern—”

“And I want to know why it’s called the Brannin, anyway. Why isn’t it called the Chandler? I designed it.” His hamburger made a loud bong as he slammed the last oily chunk into the wastebasket near his desk. “Nobody else can even use it.”

“There are investors who decide such things. A name is a commodity, like any other.”

“My name could be a commodity.”

“Once again, I can’t really speak to that circumstance, but I have come today to ask you an important question. Do you think you could answer a question for me, Dr. Chandler?”

“These research institutes think that just because you are under contract with them, they have the right to claim and name. So what if the research was done at the Brannin Institute? I could have gone anywhere. They were begging for me. Harvard, C-tech, the Mid—”

“Dr. Chandler!” Baskov’s tone stopped Evan’s rant. “Why does the Helix project newborn have wings?”

Evan’s expression changed. He leaned back in his chair, lacing his pudgy fingers behind his head. “Wings, really?”

“Yes. It also has shiny black skin and prehensile thumbs. But let’s start with the wings, okay?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me; I don’t know.”

“That’s what Silas said. You both can’t use the same excuse.”

“Who’s Silas?”

Baskov shook his head in disbelief. “He’s the head of Helix Development. You’ve met him two or three times. How can you not know about the wings?”

“The guys at Helix fed me the directives. They were the ones who should have gone over them with a fine-tooth comb. If there is a problem with the product, then there must have been a problem with one of the directives.”

“Silas said he had nothing to do with the design. He’s putting the responsibility on your shoulders.”

“Do I look like a geneticist to you? I design virtual-reality computers, not live meats.”

“And it was your computer that developed the designs.”

“They think just because they have you under contract, they can tell you what projects to work on. It’s my computer. What gives them the right?”

Baskov took a deep breath, and his eyes gathered force beneath his shaggy eyebrows. He leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner, and when finally he spoke, his voice was soft and measured. “This isn’t a game, retard. I don’t care what kind of genius you are supposed to be. What I see sitting across from me is a three-hundred-pound sack of shit that doesn’t have mind enough left to hold a conversation.”

Outraged, Evan attempted to stand, and Baskov slammed his hand down on the desk. “Sit the fuck down!”

Evan sat.

Baskov leaned forward. “You have no idea who you are talking to. You have no idea what I can do to your life if you’ve fucked this up somehow.” Baskov paused, his eyes two sighted gun barrels. “Now, I want you to think real hard, if you still can. I want you to explain to me why the new gladiator looks the way it looks. Why?”

Evan cleared his throat. He started to answer several times but each time thought better of it, struggling for a different way to phrase his response.

“Why?” Baskov shouted.

Evan flinched. “The computer designed the product based on the directives it was given. I don’t know what else to say. I really had nothing to do with the design at all. The computer did everything.”

“What were the directives?”

“Just a list of what they wanted the product to be able to do.”

“The product. You mean the gladiator.”

“Yeah, the product. The computer was supposed to design it for those specs.”

“Specifically, what were these specs?”

“I don’t remember. Um, let me look, I think I still may have a list around here somewhere.” Evan stood and ruffled through a stack of papers on top of a filing cabinet.

“You don’t have a software file on it?”

“I can’t seem to locate my laptop at the moment.”

Baskov watched the fat man root through his disorganized office. Baskov sat silently for five full minutes before rising and walking toward the door.

Evan felt a wave of relief at seeing the old man turn to leave. He’d already given up hope of finding the documents he sought, but he’d been too afraid of Baskov’s reaction to say so. The laptop might have been lost or thrown out weeks ago. Evan had no idea where it might be. He’d been losing things more and more often lately. He was slipping, and he knew it.

At the door Baskov turned. “How can we get the information out of the Brannin computer files?”

“There are no files, at least not in the sense that you mean. Everything is in V-space. Only one way to access memory. We’d have to start it up again, run the program.”

“With the per-minute cost, an unscheduled run isn’t going to happen,” Baskov said.

“Helix lab has copies, I’m sure.”

Baskov nodded, then turned and disappeared through the doorway.

A small kernel of hope formed somewhere in the back of Chandler’s mind. Maybe, he thought. Just maybe.

He thought of his computer. His precious V-space. There was a chance he might soon run his program again.

SILAS SHUFFLED through the massive stack of envelopes on his desk. The mail was mostly advertisements, though a few scientific magazines and professional letters were also sprinkled in. He came to the letter from his sister and put it aside. He would read that one later, at home.

He talked to her at least once a week on the phone and visited her every couple of months, but the letters were special to him. They would be filled with the layered minutiae of her everyday existence. She would tell him about the flower blooming outside her window, or the fight she had with her boss. Actual letters, in the old style. Paper you could hold in your hand. It would all be in there, laid down in lines, her life.

She’d started that when she’d first gone away to school, and then sporadically continued the habit for years until she married. Then the letters stopped for a while. After their mother died, the habit had returned, like some childhood habits will.

He didn’t write her back. But that was okay; she didn’t seem to expect it. She wrote because she needed to share her life with him, not because she needed a reciprocal share of his in return.

Their relationship was close, in its own particular way. Silas had always considered this a minor miracle, considering how far apart they lived and how different their lives were. That was a blessing he didn’t take for granted. His sister’s family was the only family he had. And except for Ben, the only real friends.

He wasn’t lonely. On a weekly basis, he interacted with hundreds of people, knew several dozen well—and when time allowed, he could always find somebody to talk to, catch lunch with, and even occasionally go out with on those rare evenings away from the lab.

But letting them inside was somewhat harder. That was something he’d never been good at, and now that he’d entered his forties, he felt that it had almost ceased to be a viable option.

He flipped the envelope over, and out slipped the usual family photo of his sister, her husband, and their son. They were an attractive family. The kind you might expect to see in prime-time sitcoms or ads about orange juice—the dad neat and professional, the mother beautiful, the son a mixture of the two in a smaller, smiling package. It felt good to look at them, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

He put the envelope in his upper desk drawer and tried to summon the ambition to sift through the rest of the mail.

CHAPTER THREE

A small contingent gathered in the entryway of the lab administration building while the sun lengthened through the glass brick, stretching a grid of shadow across the plush green carpet.

Silas hated these things.

He made a point to arrive at six on the nose so he wouldn’t have to mingle. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. He nodded his hellos just as the group began disjoining to its respective vehicles. Silas entered the convoy in the middle of the pack, four cars down from the front. Except for the driver on the other side of the tinted glass, he was alone.

When his car pulled away from the curb, he flipped the TV on and tried to empty his mind. TV was usually good for that. He would need a kind of mental anesthetic to get through the evening.

The car moved west toward the city and the sun. They eased through the technical district’s narrow streets and merged onto the crowded highway. By the time they’d traversed the mountains, night had fallen.

The car took a left on Carter Street and slowed at the conference square. People in business attire carrying label-forward bags turned their heads toward the line of limousines. He knew they were speculating about who might be inside. And he knew Baskov would probably like him to roll his window down and wave, possibly win a few more fans for the home team.

After winding through a grid pattern of short drives, the procession came to a stop in front the Mounce Center. The building was an enormous, stylistically oblique structure that had always reminded Silas of a woman’s fedora. Baskov loved to use it for press and sponsor events. Cement planters circled the arched entranceway, providing seats for tired downtown shoppers, tourists, and businessmen, who now stared as the delegates made their way inside. Silas turned his face from the flash of a camera.

Like many large upscale conference centers, the Mounce had the requisite ultramodern expressionistic sculptures on display in its grand lobby. They’d changed it around some since Silas had last been here a few months ago—the same general sculptures but shifted slightly into a new conformation. The abstract figures now gave the distinct impression of having sex, though it disturbed him not to be able to tell in exactly what position it was happening.

An usher led them in loose formation to the dining hall, which was crowded with noisy men and women in business suits. They stood in shifting groups or sat at round tables with white tablecloths and crystal champagne glasses. Most were already drinking. A few, by the looks of them, were well on their way to drunk. Baskov believed in being fashionably late, and the dinner had probably been scheduled for thirty minutes ago. Silas supposed that was one way to make the begging seem less like what it was. Baskov would want them feeling privileged to give their money up. His speech—given usually after the appetizer and before the main course—would hammer that point home.

All eyes were on them as they made their way around to the back of the room, where the host table spread before an enormous bank of ornate windows. Silas nodded to several people as he edged the crowd, and he sat at the first opportunity. Baskov, of course, was at the center of the table. Silas enjoyed his relative anonymity at the periphery.

Pretty college-age waitresses poured glasses of water while the crowd on the main level discovered their seats. Today was only for those big-money contributors not directly related to the field of genetics: Coke, General Motors, Puma, Artae, IBM, and a dozen others, all negotiating for their opportunity to be the official drink, or shoe, or widget, of the Summer Games of the Thirty-eighth Olympiad. Everybody loves a winner, and the big companies were willing to pay in order to bask in the reflected light of Olympic glory.

Silas sipped his water and threw sporadic noncommittal nods toward the man on his right, who seemed to think they were engaged in earnest conversation of some kind. Silas recognized the man from administration, a suit of some importance, but couldn’t place his name. Everyone knew Silas’s name, though. That was part of what bothered him about these get-togethers.

The waitresses brought the appetizers—stuffed lobster tails and honey sauce—and Silas had to admit the smell was good. He dipped, bit, and it tasted as good as it smelled. He snagged the waitress’s attention as she passed by again. “Can I have a beer?”

She seemed somewhat amused by his strange request but nodded. “What kind?”

“Just give me a Red; don’t care which.”

He finished off his lobster tail and tried to tip the waitress when she returned. She adamantly refused, saying only, “We’re not allowed.” He realized he’d somehow embarrassed her and put the money back in his pocket, feeling awkward and out of place. He hated these events. He’d always been more comfortable in a laboratory than out at the money socials.

Baskov rose to his feet. The crowd quieted as he walked around the table and stepped up to the lectern. He smiled, tapping at the microphone and playing up his simple, grandfatherly appearance. “Testing. Testing,” his voice boomed out.

Then he coughed, and the microphone picked that up, too. Nervousness seemed to overtake him as he paused and looked out over the crowd of several hundred people. But Silas had seen his speeches too often to believe the façade. The man had no TelePrompTer, carried no cue cards or printed sheets. His speeches were pulled out of his head complete and perfectly honed, usually without a single misspoken word.

“My friends,” Baskov began, “I come to you today with great news. The United States Olympic Development team has produced another future gold medal winner.”

The crowd broke out in applause. Baskov paused, waiting for the applause to die down. “It was born yesterday, early in the morning, and is now resting comfortably at our complex’s neonatal unit. It’s healthy and strong, thanks, in no small part, to our program head, Dr. Silas Williams.” Baskov turned and smiled toward Silas, clapping theatrically.

Silas stood and nodded his acknowledgment to the crowd as they applauded again. He sat quickly.

“We live in interesting times, my friends,” Baskov continued. “I think that history will look back with its clear sight on this, the twenty-first century, and call it the age of genetics. This is the age that will fundamentally alter the lifeways of our species as no other period in the time of man. If you doubt me, read the headlines of your local newspapers. Diseases are being cured. Organ transplants are being performed in instances where rejection would have made those procedures impossible just a few short years ago. Deafness is no longer a life sentence, nor must be paralysis, or blindness. Eye tissues are actually being grown from a person’s own cells. I don’t know how it is they do it, but they do it, and sight has been returned to people who haven’t seen their children’s faces in twenty years.”

If you have the money or connections, Silas noted to himself. He poured his beer into a glass.

“But these great leaps forward are not limited only to helping those of us suffering from disability or disease. Telomere research holds great promise in the area of longevity. We may see life spans double, perhaps treble. Gene-therapy research is now under way that will one day soon eliminate obesity, baldness, and nearsightedness.” He paused for effect. “These are all conditions that will come to an end in our lifetimes. Daily progress is being made. We are standing at the door of a golden age, and that door is swinging open because of the advancements being made by talented people like the scientists at Helix. I believe God is on our side in this struggle. I believe He gave us our uniquely powerful minds in order that we may unlock our own destinies. Yes, we live in interesting times, my friends.” He smiled and leaned in to the lectern with his elbows. “And I don’t have to tell you who’s leading the way, do I?”

The crowd applauded wildly. They knew, all right.

Baskov grinned into the wash of approval, letting it linger. Finally, he continued, speaking in slightly lower tones. “Before the end of next year, our gladiator will compete right here in the U.S., in the city of Phoenix. The human portion of the Games will take place in Monterrey shortly thereafter.

“Rightly or wrongly, the gladiator competition has come to represent much more than just a simple Olympic event. More than just our opening event. When the rest of the Games commence a month later in Monterrey, the events of Phoenix will still be ringing in the hearts and minds of people around the world. What happens in that arena has come to stand for each nation’s bioengineering capabilities. The results are a badge each nation wears. But I think it is much more than that, even. I think it is what biologists call true signaling—a single trait that stands for a whole suite of characteristics related to strength and vitality. It is the peacock’s feathers. It is the lion’s mane. It is the sheer raging bulk of a charging bull elephant. And these things are not meaningless.” Baskov slapped his hand on the lectern. “They stand for something.” Then softly, “Just as this United States team has stood for something for the last twelve years. Our Olympic Development team has yet to lose in the steel arena.”

As Silas watched Baskov spool out his practiced monologue, he had to admit the man was very fucking good. The bait was in the fish’s mouth, and all he had to do now was set the hook.

“Most significant to you, our precious sponsors, is this: last year more people watched the Olympic Games worldwide than any other single event in the history of the world.” Baskov rested for a moment to let it sink in.

“The Chinese don’t watch the Super Bowl. Americans don’t watch the World Cup. Last year, the only ones interested enough to watch the inauguration of Indian Prime Minister Saanjh Patil were the Indians. And understandably so. Each nation has its own concerns. But everywhere around the planet, people watched the gladiator event. Billions of people.”

Baskov paused for effect.

“I don’t have to tell you how important product placement is to the dynamic of the global marketplace; you already know that. But you should also know that by helping us, you are also helping yourselves. And I’m not talking about your bottom line. Or not just your bottom line, anyway. The scientific advancements that are made while striving toward Olympic gold can be used to benefit everyone. What we learn can be applied against disease. It can be applied toward getting a larger yield from an acre of crop. It can be used to prevent birth defects. By helping us, you are helping yourselves. You are helping mankind.”

Wham! Baskov jerks hard on his finely tuned fishing pole. Silas smiled, but it was less a grin of pleasure than one of simple embarrassment. Poor fish never saw it coming.

The applause swelled again. Baskov smiled indulgently, holding up his hands in a show of modesty after all that bluster.

But the crowd wouldn’t be quieted. Eventually, he gave up and let it roll over him, unimpeded, a wave of applause. The crowd rose to its collective feet, first in the front, then all around the room. The faces were smiling, eyes alight.

Silas took a sip of his beer to assuage the sour that had crept into his stomach. The man should run for president, Silas thought, as the applause went on and on. But no, then he’d lose too much power.

BENJAMIN SAT on a stool in the near darkness of the gene-mapping lab, slowly rubbing his sore eyes. He placed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and concentrated, but the information contained on the glowing surface of the electrophoretic gel still made no sense. Something had to be wrong. He resigned himself to starting the entire process over again. Either way, Silas would want confirmation.

He pipetted a new sample out of the plastic cap labeled F helix DNA. Earlier they had used a centrifuge to isolate the plasma from a sample of whole blood serum drawn from the newborn’s arm. Affinity chromatography provided the necessary quantity of purified DNA, which had then been cleaved through several steps by restriction enzymes for the analysis he was about to conduct.

He slid the tip of the standardized pipette cautiously into the agarose gel and pushed the dispense button. The solution gathered in a tiny pool beneath the bulging surface tension of the gelatinous matrix. He hit the toggle at the side of the apparatus and electrified the field. DNA molecules possess a negative charge due to their phosphates, so the various segments always tended to migrate toward the positively charged side of the unit. The differential action of friction on the relative sequence lengths determined how fast and how far they moved. The smaller the segment, the better it traversed the micropores in the gel, and the farther it migrated in the two-minute time period. Benjamin toggled the electricity off.

He stained the newly attenuated DNA with an ethidium bromide standard and bathed the set in ultraviolet light for a full six minutes. As expected, the result was an unbroken fluorescence down the entire column of gel lane. Benjamin then used the Southern blot technique to develop the reference standard he’d need later. He applied a final critical restriction enzyme to the sample set and then transferred the entire assemblage of DNA fragments to a metered nitrocellulose filter, being particularly careful that the sequences on the filter were oriented in the same way as when they were in the gel. If human error was a factor the first time around, this is where it had most likely been introduced.

He looked down at his watch and grimaced. Half past two in the A.M. He wondered vaguely if Silas had gone home yet. His hand lingered on the videophone at the side of his lab bench. Better to wait until he had firm results, he decided. He didn’t want to embarrass himself if the bizarre results from his first analysis had simply been the artifact of some careless mistake on his part. He glanced at the electrophoretic gel drying on the counter. Yes, it had to be a mistake.

When the gel solidified enough to maintain its internal structure, Benjamin slid the new set in the vacuum oven, where the DNA fragments would fix to the metered filter. He punched two hours into the digital timer and hit the start switch. His feet seemed to weigh sixty pounds apiece as he dragged himself to the other side of the lab and collapsed into the swivel chair. He kicked his shoes off and propped his feet up as far as they would go onto the desk. His eyes closed.

There was no dream, just the total nothingness of exhaustion, less like sleep than a subtraction of consciousness. When the buzzer went off two hours later, he managed to hoist himself to the upright position. A sharp pain lanced at his neck when he straightened his head. His left leg was completely numb from the hip down, and he had to rub it vigorously to bring it back to life.

Benjamin pressurized the vacuum chamber and used a pair of tongs to remove the fixed set from the oven. He lowered the nitrocellulose filter into a hybridization buffer and prepared an autoradiograph to visualize the relative positions of the complementary DNA sequences.

Nearly an hour later, just as the first glow of morning was beginning to light the world outside the window, Benjamin finished the restriction map. It was done.

He held the gossamer plastic sheet up to the light.

The polymorphisms were unmistakable.

The genetic diversity contained within the newborn’s genome was like nothing he’d ever heard of. Very few bands lined up together on the sheet. It was heterozygous across most tested loci. Half of the young gladiator’s genes were apparently either co-dominant or unexpressed recessives.

Why engineer unexpressed genes into an organism? What were those recessives hiding?

Ben rubbed his eyes. Perhaps the more important question was Why had the world’s most powerful supercomputer put them there in the first place?

He looked at his watch: 5:47. Picking up the receiver, he hit the call button on the vid-phone. He’d try Silas’s office first.

SILAS WAS washing his face in his office’s bathroom sink when the phone rang. It had been a long night. He pulled a towel down from a ring and patted his face dry. This early in the morning, he knew exactly who was at the other end of the line.

“Hello, Benjamin.”

“Silas, I’m glad I caught you. Are you early to work, or late getting home?”

“Home? Haven’t been there in a while.”

“I know what you mean. Listen, I just got the results of the restriction map. I double-checked it. You might want to come down and take a look.”

“Yeah, but give me a minute. I’m just trying to wake myself up. Wait, better yet, why don’t you meet me in the cafeteria for some coffee? I want to show you the karyotype I just finished.”

“Is the cafeteria open this early?”

“It is if you have a key.”

“Must be good to be boss.”

“Now I know you’re sleep-deprived. I’ll trade you anytime you want.”

“No, thanks, but I’ll see you in five.”

SILAS RAISED the coffee cup to his lips with one hand and held the restriction map with the other. He willed his sleep-fuzzied eyes to focus. At forty-three, he was doing a good job staving off the optometrist, but his eyes did take a little longer to wake up than the rest of him. “You double-checked this?”

“Yeah,” Benjamin said. “I knew you’d ask.”

They sat in the empty cafeteria—a huge, open expanse of white tile divided by endless rows of glossy plastic tables. Against one wall was the kitchen and the glass refrigeration units. Every kind of snack or food or drink you could ask for. Enough to feed a small army of hungry, caffeine-addicted techs. Three hundred people might eat here for lunch. Right now, it belonged to just the two of them.

They sipped their coffees.

Silas put the plastic sheet down on the table and handed Benjamin a white page he’d pulled from the briefcase sitting on the floor. “This is what I was working on,” he said. “Don’t bother counting, there are one hundred and four.”

Benjamin whistled softly as he looked over the sheet. “A hundred and four chromosomes?”

“Certainly puts our paltry twenty-three in perspective.”

Ben shook his head as he studied the sheet. He’d never seen a karyotype like this before. The chromosomes were laid out in neat pairs from largest to smallest, across and down the page. They took up the whole sheet. Benjamin adjusted his small wire-rimmed glasses. “This is some dense reading.”

“Yeah, I get the feeling that might be the whole point. With this bulk of material involved, back-engineering wouldn’t be time-effective. There’s just too much to dig through.”

“With a large enough team, we could probably make sense of at least part of this before the competition.”

Silas shook his head. “With five years instead of thirteen months, we still wouldn’t unravel this, particularly with the diversity in the restriction map you just handed me. It almost seems as if this thing was designed to throw up roadblocks to any sort of investigation. It doesn’t want to be understood.”

“You mean Chandler didn’t want it understood?”

“I’m not sure what I mean.”

Benjamin laid his forehead down on the table. “So what next?”

Silas looked at the stack of papers that Benjamin had handed him when he first walked into the cafeteria. “I’m open to suggestions,” he said. “You got any ideas?”

“Yeah, but most of them would make me look like a crackpot.” Benjamin stretched in his chair. “Oh, hell, you’re the … What was it the magazines were calling you last time? The genetic pioneer? What do you think?”

“I think my pioneering days are over. But I’ve got one more idea.”

“What’s that?”

“How about we get some doughnuts to go with this coffee?”

“That’s your idea?”

“Only one I can come up with right now.”

“Well, it’s the best idea I’ve heard today.” He sipped his coffee. “Though my standards are low this early in the morning.”

STEPHEN BASKOV flipped through the report on his desk. He tried to force back the growing sense of apprehension that threatened to muddle his thinking. His mind needed to be sharp to face the decisions ahead.

He eased his chair back and ran a hand through his white hair. It had taken two frustrating weeks to track down the directives used by the Brannin computer. There had been no record of it at the Five Rings complex. The scientists at Helix were able to produce literally thousands of bytes of data on biology, physiology, and genetics, which they had given to Chandler’s team for upload. But there were no directives, nothing to guide the design parameters. Earlier today, when he’d finally discovered where the directives originated, he’d come very close to a total meltdown.

His own commission had developed them.

Several people nearly lost their jobs before lunch, but eventually, he’d decided it wouldn’t be in his best interest to have disgruntled ex-assistants floating around at this most inopportune of times.

He glanced at the papers on his desk. Stupid. Stupid. He couldn’t think of a more fitting descriptor. The report on his desk summarized the raw data that the Brannin was given before the design stage of the program. The vast majority of the text was comprised of information on the gladiator contest itself—the arena dimensions, the contest rules, as well as the specs of all past contestants. Winners and losers. There was also, thank Christ, a list of qualifications.

Baskov adjusted his glasses. He was relieved, at least, that the computer had been given information about the ban on the use of human DNA in all gladiators. The contestant wasn’t likely to be disqualified on those grounds. But it was the last page of the report that interested him the most. He studied the sheet in his hand, reading and rereading the short passages it contained.

That last page contained the sum total of all the directives given to Chandler’s computer for the design of the gladiator.

The extent to which the Brannin computer could have misinterpreted Helix’s intentions was terrifying.

He wondered how it could have happened. Who had overlooked it? When exactly had things begun to spin out of control?

There was only one directive typed on the page. Just a lone, solitary instruction that had been used to guide the design.

The gladiator was created to do only one thing.

That one directive was this: survive the competition.

He read the sentence over and over.

Survive the competition.

What in the hell type of directive was that? There was an awful lot of room for interpretation in that strategy.

Survive the competition.

He laid the report back down on the smooth surface of his desk. IQ test results to the contrary, he knew Evan Chandler to be a fool. But Chandler was a crazy fool, and if history had taught him anything, it was that the world was often changed through the works of crazy fools.

Stephen Baskov liked the world just the way it was. He pushed the call button on the vid-phone, then punched fourteen digits.

After a few moments, a man appeared on the screen. “Yes.”

“I want the Brannin up and running again.”

There was a pause. “And the cost?”

“I don’t care. Find room in the budget somewhere.”

“How long do you need?”

“Give us a full five minutes.”

The man stared through the screen. “The budget isn’t that flexible. Even for you,” he said.

“Okay, three minutes.”

“When?”

“Inside of two weeks,” Baskov said.

“That’s short notice.”

“Can you do it or not?”

“I’ll see what can be done.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Silas’s breath hung in a smoky pall on the thin mountain air. He rubbed his hands together as he gazed out over the precipice at the sun boiling up between two jags in the distant range to the east. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” his nephew answered. His voice still came raw from the thousand-meter climb over rock and scrub.

The terrain was steep, and Silas had pushed hard to beat the sunrise to the top of the ridge. He had almost decided not to bring Eric today, but the boy had size beyond his years and a serious, thoughtful demeanor. For a boy Eric’s age, something like this could leave a mark.

When Eric’s breathing slowed, Silas had him stand and then tightened the straps on his pack with two firm tugs. He pulled the small curved bow from the carry strap and held it out for the boy. “Keep it in your hand now.”

Silas played his fingers along the slow arc of his own bow, feeling for splits in the raw-hewn wood. There were none. His finger hooked the sinewy string and pulled back just an inch. The deep thwump of the release was hardly melodic, but it was music to his ears nonetheless. He’d been too long away from places like this, where there were no roads or concrete, and nature didn’t have to ask permission.

Back in California, the project would be at a standstill until after the second Brannin run. Baskov had pulled a few strings, and now it looked as if they were finally going to get some answers straight from the source. Silas had never been good at sitting around and waiting, so he’d decided to take drastic measures to retain his sanity: a three-day jaunt in the mountains near his sister’s home. The bow felt damned good in his hand.

“Ready?” Silas asked.

“Yeah.”

They started down the other side of the ridge and into the broad valley below, the sun on their faces. The valley was really nothing more than a shallow depression between two mountains, a couple miles wide, a dozen or so long. But it held a cacophonous ecosystem of shrub, pine, and unspoiled wildlife. A small lake pooled in the southernmost rim. To Silas, it was a little piece of paradise.

He kept the boy behind him in the steepest parts of the descent and let him move alongside when the terrain began to level out. There was no trail. They had to pick their way carefully between the rocky outcroppings and the stands of thorny brambles. The temperature rose with the sun, and soon Silas was shocked to realize he was perspiring, despite the altitude and the season.

Eventually, here and there, tufts of buffalo grass began to accumulate in the pockets of soil that gathered in the broken scatter of limestone. Dogtooth violets and wild irises splashed color haphazardly across the slope. When finally they stepped down onto the lush green basin, Silas stopped. “Keep an eye out. This is where we’ll find them.”

Eric nodded. Silas took his pack off and removed both arrows. He handed one to Eric.

“Now, remember what I told you,” Silas said. “This is heavier. It’ll drop more quickly than a target arrow, so aim high.” He’d taken the boy shooting several times last year, and the little guy was actually a pretty good shot. But targets were an altogether different species of game than what they were hunting today.

They moved out. There was no wind in the valley, and their eyes stretched for any twitch in the vegetation as they walked. Above them, Silas noticed an eagle doing slow circles in the sky, looking for its next meal. A hunter, like them.

Silas glanced over at the boy. He certainly looked as if he was enjoying himself. Silas recognized the expression of total engagement peering out from beneath the eight-year-old’s shaggy bowl cut. His nephew’s hair was the same thick mass of curls that Silas shared with his sister, though the boy’s hair was pale instead of dark, a sandy blond like his father’s. He was a beautiful child. Looking at him now, small and earnest, it was painful to fill in the blanks and imagine him older. Childhoods were short. Blink and you miss everything.

“I think I see something,” the boy whispered.

“Where?” Silas followed the boy’s gaze but couldn’t make out anything unusual.

“To the side of the pine. The one with the brown patch.”

Silas saw it then. Movement, low down in the thicket. They advanced, but Silas knew it was no deer. When they were finally close enough for him to identify the species, he held his arm out and stopped the boy.

“That’s far enough.”

“What is it?”

“That, my boy, is what’s at the very top of the list of animals you don’t want an introduction to here in the Rockies.”

“Wolverine,” the boy said.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s get a little closer; I want to see.”

“Not a chance. Your mother would kill me.”

“C’mon, just a little closer.” Silas looked at him.

“All right,” the boy said, slinking backward through the underbrush.

When they were a safe distance away, Silas pointed toward the stand of trees near the edge of the lake. “That looks as likely a direction as any,” he said. They pushed deeper into the valley. When the sun approached what Silas took for middle high, they stopped and broke down their packs for lunch. Two thick sandwiches of beefalo apiece, and a warm beer for Silas. Eric chugged his first Coke down in less than a minute. Silas had him put the crushed can back into his pack. A while later, as they were lounging in the warm grass, Eric sat up suddenly, his posture telling Silas something was on his mind.

“What?” Silas asked.

“Mom told me not to ask you about your work,” he said.

Silas laughed out loud. “But you just couldn’t help it, could you?”

The boy pursed his lips against a sly, involuntary grin. “I figured I’d just ask polite. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”

“I don’t mind. This place has helped.”

There was silence between them for a moment, then, “What does it look like?”

Silas tried to think of a way to describe it so the boy would understand. “Do you know what a gargoyle is?”

“Yeah, one of those things that hangs off the side of old buildings in old movies.”

“Well, it looks a little like a baby gargoyle.”

“Must be pretty ugly, then.”

“No,” Silas said. “That’s part of the problem. It’s not ugly at all.”

“And that’s the part you don’t want to talk about? Mom says you’re under a lot of stress.”

“She must think I’m emotionally fragile.”

“No, she just says you work too hard, and this was supposed to be your vacation.”

“Well, she’d be right about that.” Silas tousled the boy’s hair and stood. “C’mon, we only have about three hours left. We’d better get a move on if we’re going to get a shot off.”

They repacked and set off toward the lake, hoping to find better luck. Forty minutes later, they found it. It was sixty yards ahead, grazing in the overhang of a tree. Silas paused, letting Eric think he saw the deer first.

“I see one,” Eric whispered.

“Good eyes. You take the left flank. I’ll take the right. One of us should get a shot.”

They moved forward in what Silas wanted to think of as a two-man V formation, if that was possible. Silas kept the deer just within sight, then slowly moved back in on it. Across the clearing, he saw Eric come to a stop about twenty-five yards short. The deer stopped browsing and lifted its head to sniff at the air. It was a magnificent animal, over five feet tall at the shoulder, with a wide, elaborate rack. It looked like it owned the mountainside. Silas was grateful for the lack of wind. He crept forward, carrying the bow low to the ground in his right hand. He stopped.

The deer sniffed at the air again; then, apparently satisfied, it lowered its head for a meal of grass. Silas couldn’t see the boy.

The arrow came free from his pack in one slow, fluid movement from over his shoulder. His eyes stayed with the deer as he notched the arrow. Arm muscles bunched as he pulled the bowstring back. He paused. As his eye found the deer at the tip of his arrow, Silas remembered what it was like to be on a first hunt. He waited for Eric. His right arm began to complain. Soft annoyance at first but growing louder. The deer took a step, lifting its head. Silas closed one eye, and the deer’s shoulder disappeared from his vision, blotted out completely by the arrow’s tip. His arm was screaming now. His grip began to tremble. He took his eye off the deer and scanned the bushes to the side of the clearing. What is the boy waiting for? He focused on the deer again and had to concentrate to keep the bow steady. Finally, he heard it, a soft twang from off to his left. But the shot went high, a blur over the deer’s back. It startled into a long, reflexive leap.

Silas’s release followed in the next heartbeat. The string whirred.

He knew the shot was true as it left his bow. A good archer always knows.

The arrow lanced through the air, a momentary streak of aluminum. It connected solidly on the upper part of the deer’s shoulder—

—and then bounced off.

The arrow fell harmlessly to the grass.

Silas’s cry of triumph chased the white tail deeper into the valley.

“Great shot,” Eric said when he materialized across the opening.

Silas jogged toward the place where the arrow had landed and smiled as he bent to pick it from the grass. Its round plastic tip had changed from clear white to a deep blue. He held it up for the grinning boy to see.

It was a two-hour walk back to the lodge, and they made their way lazily up the side of the valley, enjoying the scenery now that the pressure of the hunt was finally over. At the top of the rise, they paused for one final look before hiking down the other side.

The lodge was enormous and built of raw timber in the old pioneer style, but the inside was state of the art. The structure was as ironic as the system it preserved. The man behind the counter smiled when Silas handed him the blue-tipped arrow.

“A buck,” he observed. The man scanned the arrow into a computer, and the printer buzzed softly for a second. He handed Silas the sheet. “Suitable for framing. Apollo is one of our finest bucks.”

Silas lowered the sheet so that he and the boy could look it over at the same time. It was a large color picture of the deer he’d shot, photographed at some previous time standing near a brook with the mountain in the background. The deer’s vital statistics were recorded in the lower-right corner of the sheet: age, estimated weight, number of points. A microchip planted under the deer’s skin had communicated with the arrow to approximate the arrow’s strike point. A red dot now appeared on the deer’s shoulder in the photograph.

“A good shot,” the man said. “Just a bit high.”

“We’ll take a frame with it,” Silas said.

Preservation safaris were expensive, but when Silas handed the picture to Eric, the boy’s face made it all worthwhile.

IT WAS nearly nine-thirty when Silas finally walked his nephew up the sidewalk to his front step. Nights tended to get cold in Colorado, even at this time of year, and the air carried a chill in it.

Ashley answered the door and hugged her son inside. She had a hug for Silas in the foyer, clapping his back.

“Did you boys have a good time?” she asked.

“Yeah, we got one.” Eric handed his mother the framed photo, and she considered it critically for a moment. “And whose little red dot is this?”

“His,” the boy admitted, jamming a thumb in Silas’s direction.

“It was a joint effort. Eric flanked him.” Silas tousled the boy’s hair again while he tried to pull away.

Eric snatched the picture back from his mother, kicked off his shoes, and bounded up the stairs by twos. “Hey, Dad. Dad!” He disappeared down the hall.

Silas followed his sister up the stairs of the split-level house and into the kitchen. The kitchen was the visiting area of the home. It was a familial trait; Silas knew she’d got that social peculiarity from their mother.

“Coffee?”

“No, thanks, my stomach,” he explained.

“Still bothering you?”

“Only when I eat or drink. And sometimes when I breathe.”

“Oh, is that all?”

Silas smiled. “I’ll take some milk, if you’ve got it.” He pulled a chair out from the table and sat.

She poured him a glass just as her husband, Jeff, appeared from down the hall. “High and to the right,” Silas’s brother-in-law said, holding the picture out in front of him with both hands and shaking his head sadly. “Same old Silas, never could hit something that didn’t have concentric red circles on it.”

Silas shook hands with his brother-in-law. Jeff had been out of town on business when Silas picked the boy up late last night, so it’d been almost two months since they had last seen each other.

Jeff was blond to an extent usually reserved for Scandinavian children, but it seemed to fit him—the overlying sense of the man was one of youthfulness. Silas knew him to be in his late thirties, but Jeff could easily have passed for ten or twelve years younger. Put a ball cap on the guy, shave the chin fuzz, and he’d probably get carded at a bar. He was fine-boned and slender, but that description belied his true nature. Jeff liked his sports and held a second-degree black belt.

It was somewhat disconcerting for Silas to look at a man more than half a foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter and know that the guy could probably knock his butt through a wall if he wanted to. Silas couldn’t have picked a better guy for his sister. They were a perfect match—both tough as nails in their own way.

Jeff had a tendency to talk fast, and some people took that for a kind of slickness, but Silas had known him long enough to realize that it was just the speed at which the man functioned. The guy thought fast. A moving target Silas could never quite hit dead-on.

“So what’s been going on?” Jeff asked.

“They’re keeping me busy.”

“I’d guess they are. I saw your picture in the paper the other day. Wasn’t your best side.”

“That’s my secret; I don’t have a best side.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“What was the article about?”

“Just a status article, nothing new,” Jeff said. “Letting the world know how the program is advancing. You should really think about changing up your quotes a little, though. Seems like every time I read about you, you’re saying the same catchphrases: ‘right on schedule,’ ‘good progress,’ ‘healthy,’ and such.”

“They make us say that; it’s in the contract.”

Jeff chuckled.

“I’m serious.”

“Really?” Jeff looked genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, but I haven’t talked to a newspaper in months. They’re recycling the same old dead interviews.”

Ashley set a steaming plate of food in front of Silas.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Dinner,” she said, without turning, as she walked back to the stove. “Don’t act like you’re not hungry. Eat. That is, unless your stomach hurts too bad.”

“Well,” Silas said, picking up a fork, “I can always eat.” He dug into the mashed potatoes, turning his eyes back to Jeff. “So how about you? How are things in the world of high technology?”

“The newest games are kicking our butts in retail. But we’re making progress in the catalogs. Different demographic.” Jeff was a game programmer for an indy company that made VR games. They were small but growing.

“So when are you and I going hunting again? I haven’t been replaced by a younger partner, have I?” Jeff asked.

“I got to be honest with you. Part of the reason I took the time to come up here now is because I know things are going to get nuts at the lab soon. I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to get away.”

“How long?”

“Might be after the Olympics.”

Jeff looked properly sympathetic. “That’s ten months. Are things going that bad?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Problems,” Silas stressed. “It would be easier to tell you all the things that are right. With any luck, you can see it for yourself at the Olympics.”

Jeff smiled. “I can, huh? You wouldn’t mean in person, would you?”

“I would, indeed.” He pulled an envelope from his shirt pocket. “Three tickets. Second row.”

Eric howled in the background. Another steaming plate of food was lowered to the table. “Eat,” Ashley said to the boy. His father pulled a chair out for him.

“Have you told Silas about your shrine?”

“It’s not a shrine,” Eric said emphatically.

Jeff turned to Silas. “He’s keeping a scrapbook of every article that’s written about the gladiator event. If your name’s in it, he cuts it out and puts it in a folder. And you’ve seen his collection of action figures, right?”

“Daaaaad.”

Silas had known, of course, that past gladiators had been turned into a line of toys, but he hadn’t realized his nephew collected them.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Jeff said.

The boy shot his father a withering look.

At that moment, a plate of food was finally placed in front of Jeff. “About time, woman. I can see where the priorities are around this place.”

“Have they set your track yet?” Silas asked the boy, changing the subject.

“Not yet,” Ashley answered for him. “He’s still scoring too high in too many areas for them to narrow it down. By about this time next year they’ll have to decide, even if it means playing eenie, meenie, minie, moe.”

The tension on Ashley’s face showed what she thought of the tracking system. The kitchen went silent. After finishing the meal, the adults floated into the living room to catch the news.

EVAN TRIED to concentrate, tried to focus on anything but the rush in his head. The world was fuzz he couldn’t think through yet. A blur. Pain. So he focused on the pain, trusting it to lead him back. Then came the suicide thoughts, and that, too, was familiar, something to hang on to. How much better it would be to just end it all than to endure this confusion. Fingers touched his face. Fat fingers that fumbled at the sensors. His fingers, he supposed. The sensors came loose in two soft pops. Two more burns at the skin of his temples. Burns on the outside of his head. But what’s it doing to the inside?

He’d been too deep too long. But the mechs were set; the protocols were humming in V-space bass. Everything was ready for the computer to come online tomorrow. That, at least, was some consolation as he slowly came back to himself. He couldn’t remember it ever being this bad before. His head was wood, and he couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. This new booth was good. Not for the first time, he wondered if he wasn’t leaving just a little of himself behind in the quickness. Not for the first time, he realized he didn’t care.

His vision came back gradually, and when he could see well enough not to trip over the clutter, he stepped out of the plug booth. His legs trembled slightly under his weight. Around him, the room was dark and blank and empty. He’d sent the techs home hours ago. He didn’t like the idea of them hanging around, staring at his body while he was inside. He could imagine them pointing and prodding at him, playing with his private parts while they all laughed.

He looked toward the door and saw it was still locked. He was still alone. Good.

He sat and peeled the suit like a snake molting its skin. It came off in huge gauzy strips that left a sticky residue behind. He hated the suit, but he loved the connection it gave him.

Tomorrow, inside the computer, he would see his baby again.

SILAS’S PLANE touched down at Ontario Airport just after three. Such an unexpected name for an airport in Southern California. When you thought of Ontario, you thought of geese and trees and moose. Not traffic and heat and pollution.

He was back at the lab by four-thirty. He tried to hold on to Colorado in his head, but as the paperwork mounted, he felt the quiet contentment slipping away. He finally decided to take a break sometime after midnight.

At the crib unit, Silas watched the steady rise and fall of the small animal’s chest. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. He toyed vaguely with the idea of going home for the night. A real bed, a real night’s sleep—it felt so good to think of it—but such things were a luxury he couldn’t afford now. Tomorrow night, perhaps, but not tonight. There was nothing to do but wait.

He glanced at the row of monitors to his right. Heart rate, respiration, oxygen saturation, temperature, brain waves, and intestinal peristalsis; every possible bodily function was being recorded. The irony didn’t escape him. They knew so much about the little creature they knew so little about.

From somewhere deep in his mind a decision that had been percolating finally bubbled up. This would be his last competition. He felt nothing, and it surprised him. He’d been doing this for too long, then.

Looking down, he took no pride in this creation. There was only apprehension. He would see the project through this last contest, but after that, he would find an island somewhere and retire. He’d find a place in the sun where he’d let his skin go dark brown, breed border collies the old-fashioned way—no petri dishes—and then give the puppies away to the neighbor children. This practice would probably make him less than popular with the local parents, but he wouldn’t care. It was a nice fantasy. He glanced over at the message on the vid-screen:

He’d already read Ben’s interoffice memo three times. Most of the questions had been formulated and coded within twelve hours of the organism’s birth. So many questions.

Maybe we’ll get some answers, Silas thought. Maybe we’ll know for sure.

The old, well-worn fear resurfaced. He took out a small notebook and glanced at the list of things to check into, look up, double-check, order, verify, replace, and beg the commission to provide. Then he sighed. He wrote a new entry, a single word, and circled it.

All those long years of study. All the discovery. For what? He closed the notebook and slipped it inside the pocket of his lab coat. He supposed his interest in genetics had begun as a way to feel connected to a man whom he’d never really had a chance to know. But now, standing in a lab and looking down at the strange creation before him with no past and no future, his father never felt further away.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Brannin Institute was a single five-story glass-and-stone building nestled within an elaborate arrangement of low artificial hills. It was sixteen acres of some of the greenest, most expensive parkland in the world, an island of exquisiteness in the rising urbanized tide that was Southern California. A new supply of leafy climax growth was shipped in on special trucks every three or four years to keep up appearances. The trees were deciduous, mostly, drought-adapted and selected for hardiness, but for all their size and tenacity, they tended to choke and sputter out one by one in the hot, tainted air of Southern Cali.

The Brannin Institute’s single small parking lot—usually nearly empty—today was filled to capacity.

News that the Brannin was going online again was cause enough for media interest. But a tip that Silas Williams and Stephen Baskov were also going to be present gave the story a whole new level of juice—enough to draw reporters across the country on red-eye flights from places as far away as New York, Chicago, and Miami. They set their equipment up along the cement walkways in the hopes of shouting a question interesting enough to get someone to stop and answer. Rumors were flying. Long limousines and short, snappy sports cars were squeezed between official-looking sedans and news personnel minibuses.

No one seemed to know for sure why the computer was being brought back online. But they knew the cost, and they knew who was attending, and because of that, they knew it was important.

EVAN CHANDLER sauntered into the chamber. He glanced at the long row of digilog drives that squatted along the wall of the anteroom. Real-space technology seemed so archaic to him now; and as he watched a group of clean techs busily assembling the interface, he couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for them. So much, after all, was lost in the translation. There was so much they could never experience on this side of the boundary.

Above him, the scrubbers hummed the air clean of particulate from behind vents evenly spaced across the broad acoustical ceiling. VR laser-optics were notoriously susceptible to dust contamination. It was another thing Evan loved about being in V-space: the only contamination was what you brought inside your head.

A large view screen stood in the center of the room before an audience of empty folding chairs. It’s where they would watch him, where they would see what he would see. Or so they thought. He smiled to himself. Evan had a secret.

The drivers were downloading some thirty-six million kilobytes of queries into the plug booth’s data streamers. It was part of how the three precious minutes were being paid for. Corporations, economists, researchers—they all had their questions, and all had paid for the opportunity to use a fraction of the Brannin.

But those questions meant nothing to Evan. Their software would talk directly to his V-ware without ever manifesting the slightest visual cue. He had simply to concern himself with opening the computer’s memory caches and activating the deduction systems. He hadn’t bothered to tell them they were giving him two minutes and fifty-nine seconds more than he needed. Things moved much faster inside, after all.

He pulled a supersized bag of M&M’s from his pocket, looked around to see if anyone was watching, then reluctantly put it back. Too many eyes. They would raise hell if they caught him eating anything in a clean chamber. His stomach ached. He cast his eyes around for Baskov. The old SOB thought he knew every damned thing. But he didn’t. He didn’t know shit.

BASKOV WAS at the back of the room, talking to a tall, lean man in a corporate suit. The man’s introduction was conspicuous for its absence, and Evan certainly noticed how politely everyone treated him. They gave him a wide berth. Even Baskov seemed a little uncomfortable around him. Evan was happy to see the old gimp squirm a little. Served him right.

His stomach turned again. To hell with them. He walked over to one of the drives and turned his back to the technicians, pretending to inspect the cables. With a glance over his shoulder, he quickly opened the bag of candy and stuffed half the M&M’s into his mouth. His head bobbed up and down in quick jerking motions.

A woman in a dark gray jumper approached. “It’s time, Dr. Chandler,” she said. She had the kind of mouth that showed lots of teeth when she talked, and he noticed how straight and white they were. He liked teeth, and a lot of people around here seemed to have really good ones. He thought about asking her if they were hers or veneers, but if he spoke, she might smell the peanuts, so instead he pressed his lips together and followed her.

It didn’t take long to attach the probes and strap him into the booth. The cloth pinched a little at his crotch, but by shifting his weight, it was tolerable. The nice-teeth woman in the jumper lowered the faceplate, and his vision lost its reds. He caught Baskov’s critical eye in the crowd just before the visor opaqued. Well, to hell with him; he wasn’t going to ruin Evan’s day. The old gimp could glare all he wanted, but Evan would still have his two minutes and fifty-nine seconds. Almost an eternity.

FROM SOMEWHERE a buzzer sounded briefly. Then the noise from the crowded anteroom began to fade, as if he were receding from it.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Chandler opened his eyes to whiteness.

A flash like a snapped photograph, like lightning, like quick death, and then he saw it: a long, empty corridor. The corridor’s edges were broken only by a gathering of switches protruding from the wall in the distance. He walked. It was the ultimate clean room. No dust in here, he thought. He moved quickly to start the programs, curling his fingers around the switches and throwing them one by one as he came to them. Each switch activated a different part of the computer, waking it up in bits and pieces. He could hear the thrumming of the drives now.

Evan paused at the final switch, the one Baskov didn’t know about. This switch was very, very small, little more than a tiny white toggle, actually. No, it was smaller than that even. The more you looked at it, the smaller it got, receding from your inspection—an interesting sort of camouflage he’d developed. He squinted, feeling for what was barely there, and then he flicked it. The lights went out.

Time for a little privacy.

He chuckled, and the sound was booming and happy in his ears. It was the sound of a god laughing.

His body was firm and full of energy. His mind was clear. He swung his arms as he walked and whistled a tune he remembered from a vid-show he’d seen as a child. He was Hercules. He was an athlete, a sprinter. He was rage a thousand feet tall, with muscles that rippled as he walked. When he finally stepped from the confines of the corridor and out into the secret place, he paused and took a deep breath of the fresh, clean air. Sunlight filtered through the leafy canopy high above, casting a warm greenish glow on the floor of the forest.

The forest swayed.

“Pea?” he called loudly.

It’s what his mother had called him as a child when she tucked him in at night. It was one of the few things she’d given him that he’d been able to hold on to, that name, and it had seemed only right to pass it on.

“Pea?” he called again.

A name is important. It can stamp you for life, so one has to be careful. Naming someone carries with it a lot of responsibility. Pea Chandler. Named for his grandmother’s love. Born ten months ago. Father, Evan Chandler. Mother, unknown.

A giggle.

It was supposed to be the father unknown, not the mother.

Something moved.

“Papa?”

There was a rustle of leaves as a small arm parted the bushes at the edge of the clearing. The small dark-haired boy stepped into sight. Evan surged across the clearing and scooped the boy into his arms, hugging him wordlessly against his broad chest. He’d grown so much, lengthened out. Evan guessed him to be about four years old now. Has that much time passed in here?

“Papa, where have you been?”

“I’ve tried to come back, Pea. I thought of you every day.”

“It’s been so lonely.”

“I missed you, too.”

Evan carried the child out of the forest on his shoulders. When they came to the first dune of fine white sand, he paused and lowered the boy to his feet. Then, laughing together, they raced up and over the other side of the dune and across the tidal flat into the rolling surf of a warm inland sea.

“You’ve been busy,” Evan told the boy.

“All for you, Papa,” the boy said. “I made this all for you.”

“How did you know how?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You like building things?”

“Yes. This sea has kept me busy.”

“It’s truly beautiful.”

They ran in the waves, and Evan enjoyed the heat of the sun on his back as they played. He picked up the laughing child and tossed him into the water again and again. For a short while, Evan was able to pretend that there was nothing else, that this was his true life and the lonely fat man that existed in some other universe was merely a bad dream from which he had awakened.

The boy wiped the water from his eyes and found his feet somehow in the surge of waves. He stood, pulling back a little so Evan wouldn’t grab him up and toss him again. “There is so much I want to show you.” The boy’s eyes were black and piercing. “And so much I want to ask.”

The boy extended his arm, palm down, and the waves suddenly smoothed themselves out. In the space of a heartbeat, Evan found himself standing thigh-deep in a sea that was calm and flat—a single unbroken pane that stretched to the horizon. The only sound was the wind blowing in from offshore, but after another moment, that, too, quieted. He looked down at the boy.

“I’ve made life for the sea,” Pea said. “I call them fish.” The boy pointed.

In the distance, an imperfection formed on the flat surface, a ripple, small at first. But the ripple gradually grew into a wave. Evan looked back at the boy, feeling the first stirrings of unease.

“I couldn’t wait to show you,” the boy said.

The wave swelled as it moved toward them, across the flat sea. The sound of rushing water filled his ears. At a hundred yards out, Evan saw the shape. It was dark and huge, and it roiled wildly behind the growing white wall of froth. An enormous black fin appeared, thick and fleshy, and large as a man. The bulging tail flexed in the surf, and water splashed high into the air. The sea broke away as the thing fought into the shallows. It was a distorted monstrosity, low and flat, with a wide, gaping mouth filled with ragged teeth. Its eyes were white and sightless, extending from stalks at the sides of its head. It ground its belly deeper into the sand with each powerful thrust of its tail, getting closer. Forty yards now. The fleshy fins paddled at the surf, dragging the creature through the shallowing water.

“They keep changing over time. That’s something I didn’t expect,” Pea said.

Evan watched as the thing finally ground to a halt, still twenty yards out—a huge hump of flesh jutting above the water. The eyestalks swayed as the mouth worked open and closed.

“I’ve made life for the air,” Pea said. “I call them birds.” The boy pointed again.

Evan followed Pea’s outstretched arm upward into the brilliant blue sky. There, triangular forms pinwheeled in the air currents like shiny red kites, their long, thin tails trailing behind them in the wind. As Evan watched, one of the larger creatures swooped down onto a smaller one, enveloping it and severing its tail. The wounded animal screamed and, separated from its stabilizing tail, fell spiraling to the ground in the distance.

“I’ve made life for the land, too,” Pea said. “But I haven’t decided yet what to call them.” When Pea gestured toward the shore, the dunes themselves began to shift and sag. Something moved beneath them. Something big. Evan heard a sound like sandpaper on steel, a low, corrosive lumbering that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

As he watched, a thing writhed free from beneath the dune and struggled onto the beach. It was huge and pink and formless, with a maw at the front that opened and closed spasmodically against the hard, wet beach. There were no eyes, no obvious sense organs at all, just the single gaping feature at the front—an all-encompassing hunger, a mouth like the end of the world. In the seconds that Evan watched, its skin burned and blackened in the bright sunshine. Within a short time, it was dead.

“How do they live? What do they eat?” Evan asked.

“You’re so smart, Papa. They do have to eat. At first I made them to want to eat each other. But then soon I had only one of each type left, and those starved. I got tired of having to make them over and over again, so I made them able to remake themselves. That was how I realized how to keep them fed.”

“How?”

“They make babies that they eat.”

“What do you mean?”

“They eat their babies.”

“You have them eating each other’s babies?”

“No, they eat their own.”

Evan frowned.

“It keeps them happy,” the boy said.

“That’s all they eat, their babies?”

“Uh-huh.”

Evan looked down at the boy for a long moment. “Pea?”

“What?”

“That can’t be right. That sort of ecosystem defies physics, the conservation of matter and energy. If they eat only their own babies, and their babies come from them, then it’s a closed system.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” the boy said. “But it works. In fact, sometimes a baby gets away. That’s how the numbers grow. But even that isn’t always the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve noticed that over time, in later generations, the babies have gotten better and better at getting away. They’re born a little older now.”

“How can they be born older?”

“They’re better able to run or swim or fly when they’re born now. They’re born more mature. Not like before, when the adults would just gobble them up.”

“Why is it changing?”

“I don’t know. But the newer generations all have trouble catching their babies. Some of the adults make babies that are mostly too fast, and those adults starve quickly and die. Others make babies that are too slow, and those babies never get away. But it seems like there are fewer of that kind around now, for some reason.”

Evan could only stare at the child.

“The ones there are more of are the ones that catch their babies sometimes. But not all the time.”

Evan was at a loss for words. Darwinian evolution inside VR? He supposed it was possible. Even if it was a fucked-up kind of Darwinian evolution that wasn’t constrained by physical laws.

“Why did you make them?” Evan asked.

“I don’t know. It seemed interesting.”

As good a reason as any, he supposed.

“Are you going to keep making more?”

“Maybe sometimes. It’s easier to let them make themselves. I just start them. Then they do the rest. There’s so much I’ve been doing. So much I want to show you. I’ve made everything for you.”

“I want to see it all.”

The pull came, then—sudden, familiar, unstoppable. It drove all other thoughts away.

There was still much Evan wanted to ask. He knelt down and hugged the boy. “Pea, they’re calling me.” The pull grew stronger.

“No, don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“When will you be back?”

“I’m not sure.”

“No! You can’t leave!”

“It’s not my choice.”

“I’m so alone,” Pea cried. “I need you.”

“I need you, too.”

“I get so scared. I don’t know what I might do.”

Evan was pulled up to his feet. “Neither do I,” he said into the darkness of his faceplate. “Neither do I.”

SILAS WATCHED Chandler’s body go into convulsions as the drives wound down to a soft electronic whir. The lights came on, and the room exploded into frenzied activity. A team of medics rushed the plug booth as the obese man broke free from his moorings and collapsed to the floor in a quaking avalanche of flesh and twitching sensor wires. They worked quickly to extricate him from his skin suit, cutting it away in big, gauzy swaths with their stainless-steel scissors. Someone shouted something about a defibrillator. To his left, Silas could see a tech he recognized from Helix shaking his head at the readout on his computer feed.

“What just happened?” Silas asked him.

“Not sure,” the man replied. “But that is one crazy son of a bitch.”

“What did he do?”

“Not him, it. I’m talking about the Brannin. It’s flawed.”

“What do you mean?” Silas asked.

“Look,” the man said, gesturing to the terminal that sat on the folding table in front of him. Silas looked over the man’s shoulder at the screen.

ACA CAC UAU AUG CUU CUC CUG GAU UUA CGC AGG UGG UAG UGA UAC CAC CAA AGG CGA UCG UUU UCA ACU ACC AUU CGG CGG AAA ACG GGA UUU GUG GUA GGG GGA CGU AUG AUA CCG CUA AAU UAU GAG AGU AUG GCA UAG GUU UAA AGA ACU AGA GAG GGU AGU CAC CUG UAG UUU UGA CGU ACG AUU UCG CGC CUC CCC UCC UGA GAG AUU GGG CGA CAG UCA CAG GUC UGC ACA CUA UGC CUC CUU CAG GCG CAC GAG UCU UUG CCA GAC GUC AUC CGU GGG GCA UGA AGA CUG CAU UGG UUU ACU GGG CAG CUG CGG GCA AAA UGA UUU UAA UUU GGA AAC GGG CAG CAG CAG GAA CCC CUA GUC GGG UGC AAU GGG GAC CAA CAA UAG UGA CAU CUG CAU CAU GAU AAG UUU CAU UAC GAG GGA CAU CAU CAA AUG GAC UGA UGA GUG UUG CUA CCG AGU UUU AAC GUG AAA GGG UAC AAU GGA UAG AAA ACH AGU ACG UAU GGG GGG AUG AAA GUG AGG ACG CCC CGC AGC CCC CGG GGG CCC CGG CAG AAA AGA AGC AGC AGC CCC CCG ACG AGC AGA

As Silas read, he tried to feel surprise. He wanted to feel like he hadn’t expected this. Somehow, if he could just conjure up a little shock, just a modicum of outrage, he could go on pretending that he really believed this whole thing had been the result of some sort of miscommunication.

“What about the other queries?” Silas asked.

“All answered, by the looks of it.”

“But not ours?”

The man scrolled down through several more screens. “Absolutely nothing. It’s the same code the Brannin gave us before. It accessed our file, but it didn’t answer the query. It just gave the code back to us.” The man swiveled around in his chair to face Silas. “I think we’ve been snubbed.”

Silas glanced across the room, and Baskov was staring over another young man’s shoulder into a similar computer feed. The scowl creased his face to the bone.

CHAPTER SIX

The first thing Evan did upon regaining consciousness was to immediately wish he hadn’t. The second involved rolling onto his side and puking unceremoniously over the edge of the bed. Hot vomit splashed cold tile. The sound came at him muffled, like the world heard from the other side of a closed car door. His head throbbed. He tried to sit up but couldn’t. His eyes ungummed to a blur of white and gray. He fought to focus, but the effort exhausted him, and he collapsed, grateful, back into the dark swirl.

After a time, the world swam toward him again. He tried to resist, to retreat, but was thrust into the light. Of all his senses, one seemed to work. His nose whispered to him in the oldest language. He was in a hospital. He could smell the sickness around him.

It came back to him in parts after that. The Brannin. Pea. What happened to me in there? He heard a moan, low and miserable, again from the other side of that invisible car door that muffled his hearing. The moan was his, of course, and when he could, he stopped.

He sensed movement at his side, a subtle change in the composition of gray that surrounded him.

“Evan, can you hear me?” a voice asked in the distance.

He tried to answer, but the words broke apart in his throat.

“You’re going to survive,” the voice said.

Evan recognized Baskov’s gravelly tone. “Too bad,” Evan managed to say.

“Yes, truer words I’ve yet to hear you speak. The doctors say you’ll never be the same again. They say your brain has been damaged.”

Evan swallowed hard against the dryness of his throat. How long have I been out? A day? A month? “What do you want?” he croaked.

“I told them you were no prize to begin with, that your brain was damaged all along, and they shouldn’t waste their effort. But it seems the Hippocratic oath has saved another piece of shit.”

“What do you want?” Evan repeated.

“I just want to know what you could possibly have been thinking.”

“Pea.”

“What is Pea?” Baskov asked.

Evan thought about how to explain, but after a second or two, his mind lost the trail and he forgot what the question had been.

“Where did you go when the screens blacked out?” Baskov asked.

Evan hesitated, trying to judge how much he could hide.

“I’m not a patient man, Evan. We’ve tried to back-trace what happened, but there is no record to follow. You covered your tracks well. There are ways that I can get you to tell me what I want to hear, but the doctors tell me you are very weak. The drugs could kill you. I’m under pressure that you couldn’t begin to understand. If that is what I need to do, I’ll do it.”

More shapes moved around him in the gray. A dozen voices whispered in tones too low for Evan to unscramble. He thought about dying. It would be a relief in many ways, but Pea would think he’d been abandoned. “What do you want to know?”

“Why didn’t the computer answer the Helix queries?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. It interfaced the logs but didn’t reply.”

“That’s not possible. The computer can’t choose what it responds to.”

“It chose not to respond.”

“It doesn’t know how to ignore.”

“It did.”

“I activated the logic areas before the smooth-out. You saw me do that, the levers. It had to process.”

“It didn’t,” Baskov said flatly.

“Then I don’t know.”

“Do you expect me to believe you, Evan?”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“You don’t understand,” Evan said.

“I understand better than you think. I had people checking up on you, Evan. They’ve been looking into you the way I should have before I ever involved you in any of this. They interviewed your old professors, your colleagues, your subordinates. Would you like to know what I keep hearing about you?”

“No.”

“Sure you do, Evan. At the heart of things, insecure bastards like you always want to hear about yourselves. You want to hear that you’re a genius, that you’re gifted, that you’re special. Well, they said those things, Evan, they did; but mostly they said you were an asshole. They might not all have used that word—though some certainly did—but it came through loud and clear every time. You’re a sad-fuck introvert too arrogant and self-absorbed to notice anyone but yourself; consequently, nobody gives a damn about you. That piece of information really helps me. It gives me the keys to your little kingdom. Nobody cares you’re here—nobody is going to come looking, or making calls, or pulling strings. You’re mine for as long as I want you.”

Baskov pulled a chair away from the wall and clattered it across the tile. He sat.

Evan tried to rise, to move away, but he was too weak.

“I’m going to let you in on a secret, Evan. That gift you’re so proud of, that genius …” He moved closer, speaking softly. “It’s maladaptive.”

Baskov nodded seriously. “It’s shit, Evan. Think about what it’s ever done for you. I mean, look at you, for Christ’s sake. Isolated, no wife, no children, without friends. Have you ever even been with a woman?”

Evan stared at him.

“Of course not,” Baskov continued. “What woman would open her legs for you? What woman would let you know her that way?” Baskov jabbed Evan’s gut with a gnarled finger.

Evan turned his head away, wanting to hear nothing more.

Baskov went on. “People think that man will be smarter in the future, that our intelligence is evolving on some upward trajectory as a species, but that’s not really true at all. The bell curve rises to its peak at an IQ just above a hundred for a very good reason. The bell’s under directional selection from both sides, isn’t it, Evan? Stray too far from that safe middle bulge and the world becomes unnavigable. Pass a critical threshold on either side of the curve and the world, the real world, unravels in your fingers. You’re testament to that.

“I’m a fan of history, and history has shown it time and time again. Einstein used to forget his children in the park. Newton suffered debilitating depressions. Do you know how Gödel died?” Baskov prodded him with his finger again. “Do you?”

“No.”

“His death certificate listed inanition as cause. The father of incompleteness couldn’t be bothered to eat. He starved himself to death.

“You’re not so special, Evan. You’re a story that history has retold many times. People like you rise from the fringes at regular intervals. Outside the cloisters of your respective fields, you’re helpless—like specialized worker ants born only to provide some benefit to the rest of us before your tragic little lives draw to a close, usually in poverty and madness. Tesla and Turing—do you remember how their stories end?”

Evan kept his face turned away.

“That your kind keeps rising at all shows some flaw in our species’ template. You’re a sport, a type of sacrificial defect, and it’s my burden to see to it that your sad existence is made use of. I take that burden very seriously, Evan. You believe me, don’t you?”

Evan said nothing; the finger jabbed him again. He tried to speak then, but his voice gave out.

“Oh, you have something to say?” Baskov said. “Speak up. I’m listening.” Baskov leaned closer.

“You,” Evan said, pushing the word out, “are jealous … of us.”

Baskov’s face went white. His hands fisted. Evan waited for the blow, but it didn’t come.

“You wanted to be us, didn’t you?” Evan croaked. “As a child, in school. Like Gödel. You studied. But you weren’t smart enough.” Evan smiled.

After several seconds, Baskov hissed, “I’m going to enjoy this, Evan. I’m going to enjoy making you talk.”

“Probably you will,” Evan scraped. “But not so much as you think. Because I know. And now you know.”

There was a strange sound. Then the faraway voices murmured.

“Tell me why the computer didn’t answer the questions.”

Evan saw no reason to lie. “Pea,” he said.

“What the hell is Pea?”

Evan swallowed again, and his throat clicked. “I wanted to talk with the profile core.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I wanted time alone with him.”

“With who?”

“With the profile core. With Pea.”

“What is a profile core?”

“I anthropomorphized a redundancy loop in the logic core. It was the one thing that is connected to everything inside. It touches on everything. I named him Pea.”

“Him?”

“Yes, the boy.”

There was a long silence. Baskov’s voice was lower, turned away from Evan, toward someone else in the room: “Will the drugs still work if he is insane?”

“Not sure,” another voice answered.

“This is the part I will enjoy, Evan. And the part that comes after.”

A few seconds later, Evan felt a muffled sting as a needle penetrated his arm.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Silas sat alone, looking through the thick glass and into the nursery. He took notes on a clipboard as little Felix romped around in the new containment area.

Benjamin was the one who originally came up with the suggestion about the cardboard boxes. It was such a simple thing, but the idea had worked better than they could have hoped, turning the sluggish and docile young organism into the shiny black rush of activity that Silas saw before him now. It had just been bored, apparently. Like any youngster, it wanted to play.

As Silas watched, it busied itself at reducing the boxes to a random scatter of cardboard mulch. It had a talent for disassembly. Its true calling.

Ever the cladistician, Silas unconsciously continued to assess the organism as it played. As much as he tried, the little thing defied classification. Although it was engineered, there should still be something that gave away the roots of its nature, some trait that would reveal itself and imply that, yes, Felix was a feline derivative, or a simian derivative, or an avian derivative. But Silas was left without this closure, and always when he watched it, he felt uneasy because it seemed he was looking at something completely alien.

Putting the clipboard down, Silas walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a large jug of milk and a square plastic container of dried prey food. With a heavy wooden spoon, he stirred the milk into the crunchy mix until the consistency was about right.

The biochemists had had a field day with little Felix. After doing a complete metabolic workup, they’d found that the organism could profitably digest an amazingly wide variety of foodstuffs, from grains and cereals to raw meat. Though they guessed that simple dog food would probably have sufficed, they ended up synthesizing their own dietary blend, which, when combined with a hefty pour of whole dairy, seemed to do the job well. The little thing was growing fast and was now cutting a second row of jagged teeth.

Silas opened the outer door of the nursery with his left hand, being careful not to spill the brimming bowl in his right. When he heard the latch click behind him, he opened the inner door and stepped into the nursery chamber. The scent of disinfectant and wet cardboard assailed his nostrils.

The little creature squealed with delight. Silas quickly found it clamoring at his feet for its dinner. Long, thin arms fluttered about his torso, reaching up at the bowl.

“Hold your horses,” he said, trying not to stumble over it as he crossed the room. He placed the bowl on the floor in the center of the chamber and watched with satisfaction as the creature dug in ferociously. He made a mental note to increase the feeding again. The thing ate like an elephant.

He smiled, marveling at its vigor. Thin, stumpy wings positioned high on its wide back bobbed rhythmically with the pleasure of eating. Its large gray eyes maintained a position just above the bowl’s rim, alternately looking down at the food, then up at Silas. Silas liked that. It would be easier to train the gladiator if it associated humans with the arrival of food. Tay Sawyer, the resident animal trainer, had made a point of stressing that.

When the creature finished the bowl, it sat back and licked its chops, snaking a thick tongue around the outside of its short black muzzle. Gray eyes looked into Silas’s brown.

As they stared at each other, Silas wondered what might be going on in its head. What kind of mind worked behind those eyes?

Silas stood and crossed the room. When he stooped to pick up the bowl, the creature made a noise. A strange sound Silas hadn’t heard before. He hesitated. This was new behavior. The creature’s ears flattened to its skull, and its back arched. Not catlike. Nothing like that. Instead, it reared up like some angry black baboon—but like something else, too. Something not at all like a baboon. Something Silas couldn’t place.

The thing moved forward, guarding the bowl.

“Back off,” Silas snapped. “Back!”

He clapped his hands, and the creature slunk backward a few feet.

It was still young, he reminded himself. Despite its size. Barely out of infancy. At this age, animals as predatory as genus Panthera were still docile cubs that could be petted and played with.

“Come on, back up!”

But the creature didn’t move, only hunched down lower to the floor. Silas whispered, “What a strange thing you are.”

He slapped his foot on the ground to drive the creature away from the food dish, but it stood its ground, staring up at him.

“I need the bowl,” Silas said, by way of exasperated negotiation.

The creature hissed in response—a sound something between a cat’s hiss and a hyena’s cackle.

“Enough is enough.” Silas bent to pick up the bowl, reaching past the creature.

He wasn’t, at first, sure what happened.

Pain.

Like being kicked in the hand. A jolt.

And the creature spun away, a dark streak.

Silas flinched, blood spattering the floor. First in fat drops like rain, then in a gush.

Silas clutched his other hand to the wound, squeezing down on the pain, an instinctual response.

“What did you do?” Disbelief pouring out of him like all the blood.

He backed up, blood splattering the tile while he reached for the door. He hit the door-open button as the creature eyed him from a crouch, gray eyes slitted. Its muzzle slid away from its teeth as its face contorted in rage.

Silas took a step back through the opening door, and the creature bolted, crossing the room in springing strides. Silas jerked himself backward, slipping on his own blood, falling through the open doorway. He hit the ground on his shoulder and kicked at the door, trying to shut it. The creature launched itself forward and slammed into the bloody glass a moment after the door clicked shut.

There was a meaty thump, and the gladiator dropped to the ground.

Silas rolled away from the door. Away from the staring, slitted eyes on the other side of the glass.

He pulled himself to his feet, grabbing at the edge of the lab bench to steady himself. Only then did Silas look at the wound.

Only then did he see the missing finger.

On his right hand, his pinkie finger terminated just above the second knuckle.

HOSPITALS. SILAS had always hated them.

The surgery took a little more than an hour.

“We need to shorten the bone,” the doctor had said.

To Silas, this seemed counterintuitive, but a series of nurses assured him it was necessary so that skin could be pulled over the wound.

“It’s too bad you couldn’t find the finger,” one of them said.

“Oh, I know where it is.”

A finger. Not a pound of flesh, exactly. But it was something. It felt like payment.

They pumped him full of IV antibiotics. Then tetanus shots. Rabies shots were suggested when it was learned an animal bite was involved.

Silas explained to the new doctor at shift change that the animal in question wasn’t going to be available for brain tissue dissection. “Honestly, it’s worth more than I am. They might want to dissect my brain to make sure I didn’t give it something.”

The next morning, the calls started at nine A.M. The visits soon after that. Tay, the trainer, showed up, accompanied by several members of the team. After the condolences, “It’s time to shift gears on this,” he said.

Silas agreed.

“Past time,” Tay said. “We’ve officially transited the natal phase of the program. The training phase begins tomorrow.”

“I’m really sorry about this,” Tay said. “If I had any idea that it might be so aggressive so young …”

Silas shrugged as best he could while sitting in the hospital bed. “You did say it was a good thing that the gladiator associated humans with the arrival of food.”

Tay cringed.

Silas smiled. “Things happen.”

“You say that now. We’ll see if you’re casual when the drugs wear off.”

When Tay left, Silas made several calls to Benjamin, who was already on his way and had to reroute back to the lab. He showed up at the hospital a few hours later, arms laden.

Benjamin laid the requested papers on Silas’s hospital bed and collapsed into a nearby chair.

“That bad?” Silas asked, reading Ben’s expression.

“A bust,” Benjamin said.

“Complete?”

“Not a single match.”

“Damn.” Silas leafed quickly through the pile of papers that represented nearly two weeks’ work for his head cytologist. The DNA fingerprinting hadn’t turned up a single template match to any of the known existing orders of animals.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked. “You in a lot of pain?”

“Let’s not worry about me at the moment. Let’s worry about the project.”

“Well, I’m out of ideas,” Benjamin said.

Silas leaned back in his bed. He was out of ideas, too. He laced his remaining fingers behind his head and casually considered his friend. His hand throbbed.

Ben was one of those rare individuals, usually of Scandinavian extraction, afflicted with skin so profoundly devoid of melanin that the underlying blood vessels provided a kind of emotional broadcast system. When he was embarrassed, he flushed red to the ears. When angry, deep red ovals would form in the hollows of his cheeks. If he was merely overheated, a rosy glow would reach across his face to his forehead. It was a communication system both completely alien and completely fascinating to Silas.

As he looked at the younger man’s mottled pink face, Silas assessed that there was now a new emotion to be cataloged: frustration. “I think we’ll have to take a different angle on this. We’ve been trying to learn about Felix from the inside out. Now let’s try the opposite.”

“I don’t get you. You’re in the hospital, and you’re still thinking about work?”

“I’ve got nine and a half other fingers. What we need now is data.”

“You have a problem.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

“We need to learn everything we can about the creature.”

“It’s all there,” Ben said, gesturing to the paperwork. “Right down to its raw code, but I don’t know what you expect to find.”

“Maybe I’ll know when I see it.”

“We’ve already done a head-to-toe workup.”

“Yes, but with the wrong mindset and the wrong people. We were looking for similarities to existing species, existing patterns. If this organism really is new, then we’ll have to relate form to function if we’re going to learn anything about what to expect.”

“So what are you saying—bring in some new talent?”

“Perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“We can do that. We’ve had teams of anatomists fighting over time to study it.”

Silas considered. He thought of the creature as it had hissed at him. That strange alien sound. “No, that would still be from the wrong perspective. Conventional anatomic study is still rooted in cladistics.”

“So is all of biology.”

“Not all of it,” Silas said.

He flipped open his notebook and scanned down the page, not wanting to look at Benjamin when he said what he was thinking. “I think we need a xenobiologist.”

Silas heard the smile in Benjamin’s voice. “Busy field, that?”

“You know what I mean. Theoretical xenobiology.”

“How is that gonna help?”

“Fresh eyes. A different perspective.”

Ben nodded. “Okay, you’re the boss. I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

“I want you to check who’s the best.”

“Sure.”

“And, Ben.”

“Yeah?”

“This is a silent program. No publicity on this one.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I assumed that.”