Final Challenge (22 page)

- What about the rest?

- Not everyone
here is
driven by an altruistic spirit. Following your own vocabulary, which I must admit that I find inappropriate for the occasion, perhaps we could define them as ... - sipped wine and smiled again - mer
cenaries, ie luxury mercenaries
.

Once fired the kick-off, Kelly decided that she should not turn back.

- What about the Indians? ...

- This is a kind of symbiosis, my friend. They help us in certain tasks, in turn, don't lack anything. 

Kelly remembered then the scene of her capt
ure. She could not forget
that 
Ukekeni had been killed by a spear in the ambush, so she jumped as if moved by a spring, indignantly.

- Tasks? Is in that so simply way like you label their warlike activities, the same activities that have killed one of our guides?...

Clerigan looked at her carefully, surprised by her reaction.

- Kelly, sometimes they make mistakes so they don't follow the script that we have commissioned them, that's all. 

Kelly was shocked, she really expected another answer for banishing from her head forever the idea that Clerigan had nothing to hide, but instead she had found someone unmoved, cold, distant.

- Nor work, nor scripts! I rather call them dirty jobs, such as capturing young people from other villages or use them against us. 

Clerigan realized that Kelly was no longer the naive academic who came to his office for advice. He took another sip of wine, trying to reflect. Then he changed his mood, he turned serious and spoke with such degree of sufficiency that scared to her former student.

- You are going too far in your views and jumping to conclusions, Miss Adams, you still need a lot of information. My project can't stop in such trifles.

- Do you call "trifles" to the fact of playing with the will of persons?

- I call
as trif
les all the little
efforts that are justified to achieve a great goal. 

Kelly thought it was time.
Clerigan was handing it to her on a plate and her impatient and eager character didn't allow her to wait any longer
, so she was decided to ask the question that was boiling in her head since she had found him, or, more accurately, since he had found her.

- Well ... I think we have reached the key point - she paused a while because Clerigan fixed his gaze on her to the point of making her feel uncomfortable - What are you working on? .. You disappeared right before delivering the
second part of the
Human Genome Project.

- My team already had that information a few months before. Do not worry, in that sense
we didn't miss anything at all
.

-
And w
hat about Owen? He disappeared about the same time as you. But a few weeks ag
o was found floating in a dock
.

Clerigan lowered his head and took a deep breath before answering.

- Believe me, I'm sorry. Owen and I were more than colleagues, friends. He had
as much or more interest than me
in all this. Also embarked on this adventure, he was deeply involved, but I think the weather did not suit him well - he paused to take another sip of wine - he finally went crazy until one day he decided unilat
erally to leave, without previous notice
. We were stunned
–
as he observed
the silence
of
Kell
y, he decided to give her a dose of her own medicine.
- By the way, I also I have a question for you.

- Go.

- How is it possible that one of the brightest students I ever had, had chosen to accept a job at the FBI? - Kelly froze, could not assume that Clerigan was aware - How is it possible that for more than a year you haven't published any new article on your interesting projects? ... Tell me Kelly, give me a coherent explanation, I will be willing to accept it.

- But ... you ... how is that possible?...

- I told you I was aware of what was happening beyo
nd my paradise, better informed
than you could imagine.

- Well ... you know very well that I love research, but my new job allows me to see things from a new point of view.

- What? The view of being
the monitor of your own peers
? Or perhaps the view of limiting, putting barriers to their progress? -  emphasized Clerigan as he raised  significantly his voice -

- None of them. I limit myself to verify compliance with the law.

- Does the law? What law? The only laws that should guide scientists are those of nature.

She remembered having heard more than once that sentence, in fact it was one of the favorites of Clerigan, who began to seem a little to the one that she knew, at least in the form of exposing his ideas. His veheme
nce eventually got to decenter
Kelly, whom seemed to be back, sitting listening again his classes in college. It was hard to her overcome the impression of being in a state of inferiority to his former teacher. She had to tell herself that neither Clerigan was the same, neither she and that her situation there had nothing to do with any old status anchored in the mists of the past.

- We are scientists, but not moralistic, but each and every one of us have formed our own opinion. It is society that decides on the basis of criteria and moral values. My duty i
s, among others, make sure they are enforced. - Kelly finished to
said
sententiously
  -

- What values
are referring, Kelly? To those that have been set by the politicians? ...

- I think the opposite, namely that are politicians who are sensitive enough
to echo the general sentiment of the citizens.

-
Citizen is an abstract entity, whose weight is limited to a vote.
Finally are
politicians who decide, do not forget. - Clerigan
said
sententiously
-

- It seems obvious that we have differ
ent views about the same topic
.

- I hope to convince you, what's more - paused again to hurry to finish his glass of wine - I am quite sure that, when you are thoroughly familiar with my work, you are going to change drastically your mind and you'll finally agree with me and my reasons. 

It was Kelly who took this opportunity to ask on
ce again for the question that
had remained unanswered previously.

- Professor, tell me now, please ... I beg you ... what i
s your line of research? If you have co
me here and have taken so much trouble is because you want to keep it secret.

Clerigan suddenly got up from his chair and be
gan to walk from one side
to another, visibly excited. Then he began to speak ver
y slowly, emphasizing every
of his words.

- All this stupidity of governments, trying to put walls to the countryside  ... dictating moral rules at odds with the scientific reality
, rules that only a few fulfill
, forcing scientists to set themselves up as judges of good and evil, to rule on behalf of God ... - Kelly stood rapt listening again, she reminded Clerigan master classes,  but she also was thinking that this time he was going too far - perhaps we are not able to dictate the laws of nature, but we are able to change our own destiny. This is a new Renaissance, the man capable of generating life, able to approach God, someone had to.

Kelly was astonished. The speech
of
Clerigan no longer belonged to him, but rather to a visionary, someone who was beyond good and evil. And if she had correctly interpreted, it corroborated her most dire presumptions, those that always she had wanted to banish from her head. Kelly began to stutter as it was the time for pupil to judge even to correct his teacher.

-  What ... do you...
do you ... pretend to say
?...  What kind of experiments are you doing?... Perhaps you're practicing with stem cells back to the scientific community?
...

- Stem
Cells? Ah, yeah
, very interesting, no doubt. We have made great progress in this field, especially to correct certain defects ... in our main research line. 

Kelly observed like
Sena entered the lounge, and it was then when, instinctively, as she was withdrawing her platter, turned her eyes toward her belly. She was pregnant, just as the women who had attended her the previous day in the hut, with the notable difference that Sena would already be close to menopausal. A sinister idea began to take shape in her head. When the maid came out, Kelly barely had the strength to ask the question.

- Clerigan, do not tell me ... that woman pregnant ...

- Good deduction, expected no less from you! Yes - he paused to pour another glass of wine - I assure you that the males of the village fully satisfy their sexual desires, not what we prevent. Remember ... we are scientists, but deep down we are also human ...

Kelly remembered the conversation she had had one night, the firelight, with Hanson. The attitude of Clerigan, someone who had always been in the last and highest step of Olympus, someone that for her was closer to the myth that the reason, was merely ratifying their views
on the human specie. A specie
capable of anything to gain supremacy, able to use science
in its profit to get the most
gruesome ends. At that moment she felt an enormous contempt for humans, customized in Clerigan figure. She felt nauseous. Clerigan observed her condition and came to her with the intention to help her up. It was not necessary, Kelly got it by herself, but at times felt sweat and dizziness.

- Emotions are too strong even for a woman like you - Clerigan beckoned to the maid to accompany her to her room - for today is more than enough.

    Kelly returned to her room accompanied by Sena.
She was
so affected
that arguably was submerged in a state of shock.
As
the housekeeper closed behind her the bedroom door, Kelly laid on the bed and remained inert, locked, unable to articulate the most single thought. Only temporarily was out of her state as she heard the piano chords that reached every corner of the house.
She didn't understand too much about classic music, but the piece seemed familiar. It was "
Dream of Love" by Franz Liszt, romantic composer.  One
could tell that Clerigan played with passion each of the notes, as if his life was in the endeavor. Perhaps it was a way to feel a little closer to his missed and so longed Martha, while giving vent to his mood. A few minutes later it was complete silence followed by the monotonous sound of footsteps that revealed someone coming up the stairs and the sound of a door opening and closing.

Kelly remained sunk in such state for more than three hours. Then she was slowly regaining the lucidity of mind needed to try to
put some order in her head. She
had no doubt that Clerigan was the same in many ways.
His theatricality, his staging seemed to be the same, some of their ideas too. However, the Clerigan that she had known, even though she had always perceived in him certain flashes of anarchism, had never been
outside the law and much less
had defended at all costs so controversial stance, playing
with life as a child with a gun
.
He should have a reason to get so far.  Ambition? It was a possibility, she had heard him to say more than once that any good scientist should first be ambitious, but not to the point of putting into question his moral values. Power? Clerigan had never given much importance to money, despite spending more than he earned. Vanity? By the way he usually expressed, it was easy to deduce that he had always enjoyed of a high degree of self-esteem, but she didn't believe him capable of falling into such  defect, for very human that he was.

Neither it
was hard to deduce that he should not be alone in all that. On one hand, it was necessary a small fortune to put up a project of that scale and Clerigan had always lived a day. On the other hand, it was strange that he was so well informed, he should have some contact with the outside
,
Internet communications there w
ere almost impossible without
very sophisticated equipment (Satellite Internet access) that also had the added problem that could betray them in their try to keep anonymity
.
 
She chose not to stop and think that
Clerigan
had anything to do with the death of Owen, because she didn't considered him so petty as to carry out something similar. And, about the Indians who had missing,  was yet to be tested that authors could have been him and his people, but had to admit that she was being too magnanimous with his professor, and that everything pointed in that direction.