Half Brother (32 page)

Then I made his name. I crossed my chest with the
Z
and then pointed at him.

You Zan! Come now.

For a moment he just sat motionless, and I worried he was too bewildered and scared to move. From some of the other cages I heard movement. Shadows shifted in my peripheral vision.

If Zan panted or shrieked we were sunk. We’d be caught. Then Zan came.

He ran to me and leapt into my arms so fast I nearly toppled right over. I stood and walked towards the pillar of moonlight at the main door. Then I was outside.

“All right?” whispered Mom.

I nodded.

We walked back toward the car as quickly as we could. I held Zan tight. He kept pulling away and looking around in the dark and giving soft surprised pants, then kissing me on the cheek.

We reached the car and got in. I sat in the back with Zan. I tried to get the seat belt on him but he kept jumping around.

“Just try to keep him back there,” said Mom, starting the engine.

After a few minutes I got him sitting on my lap and talked to him softly as he looked out the window. His body was still small but I could feel the new strength in him; he was heavier too.

I was shaking.

“Mom,” I said, “what’s going to happen?” “I don’t know, Ben.”

I wondered if she was shaking too. I heard a police siren in the distance and wondered if it was coming for us. But it faded away soon enough. We were way out in the middle
of nowhere, heading northwest. Darkness towered solid on either side of the road. We were like a spaceship, hurtling across the universe. We were like those astronauts in the
Planet of the Apes.

Before long, we’d crossed the state line into California, which was good. In movies it was always good when you crossed the state line—if you were a criminal, anyway. That way it would take longer for the law to find you. It was still pretty early, and Helson’s staff usually didn’t open up the chimp house until seven o’clock.

We saw a gas station, and Mom went in and bought some diapers, some cheap shorts, and a T-shirt with a picture of a slot machine on it.

I tried to get the diaper on Zan, but after going without them for months, there was no way he was putting one back on. He seemed pleased, though, to have shorts and a T-shirt again.

Pants,
he signed.
Shirt!

“Should we call Dad?” I asked, looking at the glowing phone booth outside the gas station.

“No,” Mom said. “We’ll be home soon enough.”

We drove. After a while Zan fell asleep against me, and I didn’t move in case I woke him. Before long I was asleep too. When I woke, it was six-thirty and beautiful, the sun rising up over rocky hills.

“Are you tired?” I asked Mom.

“Getting there,” she said. “I’m good for another few hours. Then we’ll stop somewhere for breakfast.”

We didn’t go into a restaurant. We bought stuff at a gas station and ate in the car. We didn’t want anyone seeing Zan, if
possible. Now that he was awake, I was a little worried about how he’d behave. Mostly he was pretty good. He could stare out the window for a long time, the wind in his face, just hooting and signing at all the things he saw. He’d never spent much time in a car, so this was all new, and I think he loved it. We’d filled the back with all the blankets and favourite toys from his suitcase—his own moving playroom.

Once, he crawled into the front seat and put his hand on the wheel. He didn’t turn it or anything, but Mom slowed right down and pulled over. We were both very strict with him and told him he had to stay in the back.

Sorry,
he signed, and felt bad enough that he actually let me buckle him in for a while. Fifteen minutes later, when he wanted out, it took him about two seconds to figure out how to undo the buckle.

Registering at the motel wasn’t too tricky. Mom just left me and Zan in the car while she checked in at the office, and then we carried Zan in, all wrapped up in a blanket like a big baby—and double-locked the door.

We bathed him. Mom said it was like the scene in the Bible where Moses parts the Red Sea. Huge waves and water everywhere, people getting doused and drowned. Mom and I both ended up soaked. But afterwards Zan smelled a lot better, though he still didn’t let us put a diaper on him.

When Mom went out to buy us some food for dinner she got a bunch of new clothing for Zan, since he was going through it so fast and we had no way of cleaning it. Mom was fantastic. I knew she didn’t want Zan ending up in a lab either, but I got the feeling she was doing this mainly for me.

We didn’t talk about what would happen when we got home.

We just talked about getting there.

The next day we drove through Oregon and Washington and reached Port Angeles. We took the last ferry over to Victoria.

It was very late when we pulled up in the driveway, and Zan was so excited I thought he was going to knock himself out trying to get out of the car. He obviously hadn’t forgotten our house.

Mom took a deep breath, gripping the steering wheel for dear life.

Lights were on inside, so I knew Dad was home, and awake. I watched the front door, waiting for it to open. For a second, I hoped …

I hoped it would be like the first time Zan came to us, and Dad would rush out and be happy to see him. And then we’d all eat pizza on the living room floor while Zan slept.

The front door didn’t open.

We all got out of the car and went inside. Dad was sitting with a drink in his hand. He looked at all three of us. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised.

“Jack Helson called,” he said wearily. “He wondered if I knew anything about the robbery.”

“Robbery?” I said, horrified by the word. It had been ricocheting
in my head the whole drive home, but Mom and I had never said it aloud.

Dad nodded. “You stole his property.”

The idea of Zan being owned, being property—I hated it.

“God, Sarah,” Dad said, slamming his glass down so hard I thought it’d shatter. “What the hell have you done?”

“He was going to sell Zan to a lab!” I said.

“The Thurston Foundation,” Mom said. “We saw the letter.”

“He showed you this letter?” Dad said. “We opened it.”

“You opened his confidential mail?” Mom nodded. “We did. Because Peter had a hunch he was planning on selling Zan. And he was right.” “Peter’s involved in this too, is he?” Mom said nothing.

“What Jack Helson does with Zan is not our concern,” Dad said.

“It is too!” I shouted.

“It
is
our concern,” Mom echoed. “We have obligations to Zan. The understanding with Helson was that Zan would
not
be used for biomedical experiments.”

As all this was going on, Zan was charging around the house, skidding on cushions, and swiping books out of the shelves and then climbing higher to get at the next row. I think he may have pooped somewhere. He scampered into the kitchen, and I heard the fridge door opening and things hitting the floor.

With disconcerting calm, Dad said, “Ben, get him under control, and put him in … his room.”

I left Mom and Dad to fight this out and went to Zan. He was sitting contentedly on the floor amid a pile of food, scooping yogourt out of the tub with his fingers.

Hide,
I signed.
Play.

That caught his attention.

Come,
I signed, leading him into his suite.

Inside, he looked at his bed for a few seconds, like he couldn’t quite remember what it was for. He was used to sleeping on concrete now. Then he leapt up onto it gleefully. From the shelf he took down his old toys and arranged them around himself in a circle. It seemed such a simple, easy thing. Just a few little scraps of material and bits of plastic in a ring, and he felt safe. But I knew he wasn’t, not yet. Maybe not ever.

All the way home, I’d let myself fantasize.

It would be like this:

Zan would live with us, and be my younger brother. We’d play in the backyard. We’d climb trees together. We’d watch the birds eat seed from their feeders. We’d throw leaves at each other and chase and tickle each other.

I never thought:
Who will take care of him when I’m at school and Mom and Dad are at work?

I never thought:
How will we keep him safe? Keep him from hurting other people and himself?

Brush teeth,
I signed.

Where toothbrush?
he signed back.

He remembered
toothbrush,
even though he hadn’t used one in months. I went to the little bathroom to check, and found
one. We kept plenty because Zan liked brushing his teeth a lot, and tended to chew off the bristles after a couple of weeks.

I gave him the new toothbrush and watched him go at it. He hadn’t forgotten.

Through the dark window he looked outside at the backyard.

Out. Play.

I shook my head, and he let me pick him up and put him back on his bed, encircled by his toys.

He didn’t smell very good; he needed another bath.

I lay down beside him. Putting my arm around him, I could feel his heart beating against my hand.

I fell asleep on his bed, curled against him.

Z
an and I slept late, even though I’d forgotten to close the curtains. I think it was the breakfast smells coming from the kitchen that finally woke us: bacon and toast and coffee. Zan still looked a little confused by the room and his blankets and toys, and he was bewildered enough to let me get a diaper on him, and then a clean set of clothes, which were really too small for him now. We had a good game of hide-and-seek and tickle-hug and then went into the kitchen to get something to eat.

Dad and Mom were already there, and Dad was saying, “Helson’s being reasonable. He won’t call the police if we return Zan right away.”

I guess they hadn’t really settled anything last night. Through the doorway to the living room I saw someone had slept on the sofa. I didn’t think it was Mom. Dad rubbed wearily at his temples when he saw Zan.

“There’s got to be another option,” Mom said.

Zan let me slip him into his high chair (also too small for
him now), and I started putting all his old favourite foods in front of him. No chimp-loaf for him, not today—not ever again if I could help it.

“Helson’s perfectly within his rights,” Dad said, “even if he wants to sell Zan.”

I had an idea. “What if we told the university here that Helson was going to sell Zan to the Thurston Foundation?”

Dad shook his head. “Why on earth would a university be upset about legitimate scientific research?”

“You
know
the kinds of things they do at the Thurston Foundation,” Mom said, slapping some burned toast on his plate.

“Sure,” said Dad. “I also know they’ve produced a lot of very useful biomedical data. And drugs that’ve helped thousands of people. We use animals to advance human science. It’s completely acceptable. It’s only a very small group of people who protest it. Ben, if you had a terrible disease, and I could use Zan to find a cure, but it would kill him, there’d be no hesitation. I’d sacrifice Zan’s life in a second, to save yours.”

I didn’t know what to say. It meant Dad cared about me, but it wasn’t really the answer I wanted.

“I don’t want Zan to be sacrificed at all,” I said quietly.

Dad pushed his burned toast away and looked at Mom hard. “This isn’t easy, and you’ve made it harder, bringing him back. But if Zan isn’t returned, you’re going to destroy your career, Sarah—and seriously harm mine.”

Mom said, “Maybe you should worry less about your career and more about your family—because that’s going to be in serious trouble too if you don’t do the right thing.”

I’d never seen Mom look so seriously, and so coldly, at Dad. It was riveting, and terrifying too, because it was the kind of look one chimp gave another. It meant:
Only one of us is going to win this, and it’s going to be me.

“The
right
thing?” said Dad, with a frustrated laugh. “And what exactly would that be, Sarah?”

“He’s an animal, you’re right,” said Mom. “And we use them all the time. We eat them. We inject them. We kill them. Zan’s not human. But we
taught
him he was. We raised him like a child. Our child. And we have responsibilities to him now, Richard. We do. We can’t just abandon him to the Thurston Foundation.” Her voice was hoarse. “It is wrong.”

There was a knock at the door, and my heart lurched. I thought:
Police. The County sheriff with the big gut and gun on his belt, spitting tobacco juice on my shoe.

“It’s all right,” said Mom. “It’ll be Peter.”

“Peter?” I said in astonishment, and at the sound of his name, Zan started hooting.

“Jack Helson flew him out to bring Zan back,” Dad said.

I ran to the door and threw it open for Peter. The taxi was just pulling away.

“Hey, man,” he said, looking exhausted.

“Come in, come in,” said Mom.

I grabbed his suitcase and dragged it into the front hall. Peter looked at me. “You know why I’m here, right?” I nodded. “But you’re not really going to take him back, are you?”

“Hell, no,” said Peter. “But Helson doesn’t know that, and it got me a free ticket home. Is that bacon I smell?”

We got him seated at the breakfast table and I helped get him a big plate of bacon and eggs and made sure his toast wasn’t burned.

Dad let Peter eat for a few minutes and then said, “If you don’t take Zan back, you’re ending your academic career at Siegal, maybe everywhere else too.”

Peter shrugged. “I want what’s best for Zan.”

I smiled. Mom and I had another ally.

After breakfast we all went outside into the backyard so Zan could play while we talked.

“There’s no escaping the facts,” Dad said. “Zan is Helson’s legal property, and if we don’t return him, we’ll be guilty of theft.” He looked at Mom. “And mail fraud, if he finds out. You can go to jail for that too.”

“Helson wants money, right?” I said to Peter.

“Definitely, yeah.”