Mercedes Lackey - Anthology (20 page)

 
          
Then
he heard a rustling sound above him and looked up. It was a buzzard, a huge
black creature with Saul Rabinowitz's face, diving down toward him, claws
extended to rip out his eyes, beak razor-sharp to tear open his belly, hooded
eyes filled with hatred.

 
          
Just
before the raptor reached him, Justin O'Toole heard a familiar voice say,

 
          
"I
told you there was nothing funny about a buzzard!"

 
          
In
the moment of life remaining to him, O'Toole found himself agreeing.

 
          
Samuel
Conway holds a doctorate in organic chemistry and is a pharmaceutical
researcher when he is not busy writing. He has worked closely with birds of
prey as a hobby since 1989, both in
Vermont
and in
Pennsylvania
, where he now resides. He has written
several stories on the theme of anthropomorphic animals, bringing together his
love of nature and his scientific background.

 
          
"Tweaked
in the Head" is his first published story.

 
          
ACROSS
the chess board sat a hawk, its feet gripping a padded perch, its keen eyes fixed
attentively ahead. Dr. Pollard sat facing it, chin resting on his hands. An
analog timer clicked monotonously on the table. It was the only sound in the
room.

 
          
"Aren't
you going to make a move?" Dr. Pollard said at last.

 
          
Red's
gaze never shifted. "Shut up," he rasped. "The second quarter is
starting."

 
          
Pollard
sighed and looked over his shoulder. Through the window he could barely make
out the tiny speck of a television screen glowing on the other side of the
complex.

 
          
"Goddamn
Philly," Red muttered. He fluffed his feathers up and shook them out, head
first, then body, then tail. "They pay these guys enough. You'd think
they'd actually make an effort once in a while."

 
          
"What
is it with you and football?"

 
          
Red
shifted his weight and tucked one foot relaxedly up into his breast feathers.
"What is it with you and chess? Maybe I just like watching humans beat the
snot out of each other." The feathers on his head suddenly stood up in an
angry crown.
"Oh, you stupid son of a bitch!
You
were wide open.
Jeez .

 
          
.
."

 
          
Pollard
closed his eyes. "Why do you keep paying attention if you don't like how
they're playing?"

 
          
"I
got a bundle riding on this game."

 
          
"You
bet on
Philadelphia
?"

 
          
"Yeah.
Figured you'd have made me smarter than that,
huh?"

 
          
"Mm."
Pollard stood up resignedly, stretched, and
watched as Red shifted his cigar to the other side of his beak and took a long
drag. The tip glowed merrily, and twin jets of blue smoke shot upward from the
bird's nostrils. "I wish you wouldn't smoke those things in here."

 
          
"Kiss
my cloaca."

 
          
"I've
told you
before,
they're bad for your lungs."

 
          
"They're
my lungs."

 
          
"No,
they're not. They belong to the government."

 
          
Red
grunted and glared at him. After a moment he leaped from his perch and flew to
the windowsill. Bending, he ground the cigar out against the smudged and sooty
paint and then spat the butt out through the wire mesh. "Stuff your
government," he croaked, settling down on the sill with his back to
Pollard.

 
          
"I
can see the game better from here anyway."

 
          
Pollard
watched the hawk for a long time, and then sank down dejectedly on the sofa,
wondering where it had all gone wrong.

 
          
Dr.
B. Philip Pollard had been the first scientist with the courage to announce the
conclusive identification of a genetic sequence that determined the level of
intellect in higher animals. "Courage" is perhaps the wrong word; Dr.
Pollard was rarely accused of possessing such a trait. It was more a case of
unchecked scientific zeal that caused him to blurt out his findings in an eager
paper to an international journal. Sadly, his colleagues had not yet recovered
from the devastating public outrage over the few tentative experiments aimed at
combining human and animal chromosomes. Somewhere along the line, someone had
decided that this meant that Science was out to create some grotesque hy-brid.
Spurred by breathless news reports, some of which were almost accurate, mobs of
terrified citizens all over the country had descended upon any institution
involved with genetic research, forced their way into the laboratories, and
proceeded to smash everything in sight. With the dust from those uncomfortable
months still settling, it is perhaps understandable that Dr. Pollard's peers
did not take his report well. With cries of "intellectual
discrimination" and "eugenics" echoing at his heels, Dr. Pollard
was driven into hiding.

 
          
That
is where the government found him.

 
          
Dr.
Pollard listened unhappily to their proposal. They had followed his earlier
work in the field of gene therapy, and were particularly intrigued by his
talent for overcoming the body's annoying habit of destroying damaged or
altered DNA. This handy mechanism is nature's way of avoiding genetic
mutations, but creates a dreadful conundrum when it is the mutations one wishes
to preserve. Dr. Pollard had made tremendous strides in the use of viruses as
delivery vectors for what he called "tweaked" DNA. Dull and mindless
and tiny, viruses had nonetheless perfected the art of injecting genetic material
into living cells and successfully altering the DNA therein, all for the
singular purpose of replicating themselves. By removing the contents of a viral
particle and replacing it with genetic material of his choosing, Dr. Pollard
could introduce that genetic material into whatever part of the body the virus
would normally infect.

 
          
At
first, Dr. Pollard thought that the government men were trying to recruit him
for biological warfare experiments, and he tried to flee through a window.

 
          
They
caught him, though, and gently explained that they wanted no such thing from
him. Would it be possible, they asked, to "tweak" the
intellect-coding sequence he had discovered in order to enhance a living
creature's mental capacity?

 
          
Dr.
Pollard reluctantly admitted that it was possible. This was the sort of thing
that had nearly gotten him strung up on the nearest light pole, though, and he
wanted no part of it. Once more he tried to make good his escape.

 
          
After
calming him down again, the visitors patiently explained that they wished to
implement a program in which animals—not humans, they assured him—would be
intellectually enhanced and used for purely peaceful military missions. They
evoked dazzling images of thinking creatures with keen ears and noses who could
help find lost children or disaster victims buried in rubble, who could locate
unexploded land mines or chemical weaponry facilities and thus save thousands
upon thousands of innocent lives.

 
          
They
wanted him to lead the program. With the promise of secrecy, protection from
lynch mobs, and a fat, fat research grant, Dr. Pollard agreed.

 
          
Initially
he chose dogs for his research subjects, both for their native intellect and
their susceptibility to the rabies virus. With its convenient ability to cross
the blood/brain barrier and infect the brain tissue directly, rabies was the
ideal delivery vehicle for genetic material meant to enhance mental capacity.

 
          
Though
the idea was sound, the task was daunting. The exact sequence had to be
determined which would have the desired effect on intelligence; once that was
accomplished,
the "tweaked" DNA would have to be
introduced into rabies particles from which all native DNA had been eradicated.
If any remained, the test subject would die frothing at the mouth within two
weeks. Vaccination was out of the question, as it would defeat the purpose of
the experiment by destroying the virus once it entered the body. Even if the
new DNA were successfully implanted, there was still the question of whether it
would do what it was meant to do.

 
          
Dr.
Pollard worked many long days sequencing, testing, resequencing,
testing
again. He worked many longer days scooping out the
guts of viral particles and refilling them with his own artificially created
strands of DNA. Then there were months of watching and waiting. Secrecy was
maintained at all times, and Dr. Pollard referred to his work only by saying he
worked with animals that were "tweaked in the head."

 
          
The
first breakthrough had been a Labrador retriever named Jack who had progressed
to college-level trigonometry by the time he was four years old. Sadly, Jack's
remarkable life was tragically cut short when he jumped up to lick the face of
the visiting President and was shot dead by a nervous Secret Serviceman. Old
habits do, indeed, die hard.

 
          
The
incident dealt a terrific blow to the program, especially after the President,
who was not fond of dogs, proclaimed that
canines,
would henceforth be off-limits to further experimentation. Dr. Pollard's
vehement protests were ignored; the Executive Branch, thoroughly ignorant of
the scientific basis of the project, stood stubbornly by its decree and ordered
Pollard to choose another species or risk losing his funding. An influential
member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff quickly stepped in and persuaded (rather,
bullied) the unhappy scientist into considering birds of prey. The General
obviously felt than an enhanced hawk or owl would not only be a more dignified
sight than some old slobbery dog, but would also make the perfect spy, sitting
unseen in a tree while quietly noting all that was happening in the range of
its keen vision.

 
          
Had
he known what this endeavor would bring about, he would have kept his bright
ideas to himself, or perhaps even stepped into the latrine and blown his brains
out. Either way, it would have been a boon to national security.

 
          
Science
raced blindly forward, however, and the result was Red.

 
          
Red
had arrived in a flurry of feathers and lashing claws on a hot summer afternoon
a year after the death of Jack. The animal technician who carried him in was
unfamiliar with birds of prey and was carrying Red around the middle, leaving
the bird's feet free. Pollard tried to give a warning but was too late. In a
heartbeat, the hawk lunged forward and freed first one wing, and then the
other. He scrambled away from the stupefied technician and made for the nearest
window, which was closed, and upon which Red soundly cracked his head. He fell,
dazed and panting, and lay on his back with his feet waving comically in the
air.

 
          
He
began to chirp in alarm as Pollard approached. Eyes wide, he raised all of his
feathers and brandished his talons, daring the man to even try to touch him.
Back off!
his
gaze said. I know how to use these!

 
          
Pollard
crept closer, eyes on the
bird's
. He knew that he only
had to control the feet and the hawk would be defenseless. Getting past those
vicious claws was always the trick, though. Carefully, Pollard raised one hand
to hold the hawk's attention, and with his other he began to reach for Red's
legs. He kept his movements slow and fluid. He watched Red's eyes, dark and
defiant, to make sure that the bird's attention stayed on the diversionary
hand.