Xeno Sapiens (11 page)

“
Sit down, please, Ingrid. I apologize
for my remark. I had no idea it was you.”

“
I’ve heard worse. I came to tell you
that we’re ready to go ahead.”

“
Go ahead?” Merrifield seemed
confused. “So soon? You mean we can start building?”

“
There are still a couple of maybes.”
Ingrid spoke perfunctorily. It seemed cold to
Merrifield.

“
You have the tissue samples,” she
asked.

“
They’re in storage. Ten thousand
different genotypes, all cataloged as to what traits we want from
them.”

“
I’ve decided to go chain by chain. I
think what I was most worried about was starting some kind of body
farm here. Can you imagine the shit that would fly if we were
cloning entire organisms for spare parts? This way, we can go
tissue by tissue, cell by cell if we have to.”

Even Merrifield, a man who was used to
being involved in many unpalatable things, seemed a little queasy
at the prospect of organ harvesting from sentient
beings.

“
You’re sure you can cut all the genes
we want onto chromosomes?”

“
We’ve got forty-six to work with.
Considering how many genes are defective and redundant and will
have to be excised anyway, we’ve got room to spare.”

Merrifield walked to a squat wooden
cabinet in the corner of his office. He produced a keyring and
unlocked the cabinet. He withdrew two shot glasses and a bottle of
bourbon.

He returned to his desk and poured each
of them a shot. The bottle made a heavy thump on his desk when he
set it down.

“
Sorry it’s not champagne.” He sat
down. “What decided you?”

“
Jimmy Sunners.” She sipped her
bourbon. It was like swallowing molten iron.

“
Jimmy Sunners,” Merrifield echoed. He
stared intently into his bourbon, swirling the brown liquid around
in his glass. “Isn’t he the thin, red haired chap who slinks around
the sequencing lab?”

“
I wouldn’t call it slinking,” Ingrid
said. She believed that most everybody probably slinked when
Merrifield was around.

She told Merrifield about Jimmy’s
running down the codon sequences for desirable traits. She skimmed
over the part about Jimmy’s not thinking it important.

“
So Jimmy Sunners, of all people,
makes the first breakthrough. I always did like that
boy.”

Ingrid wisely made no
comment.

“
So,” Merrifield said. “What’s
next?”

“
I’d like to start running down the
codons for each gene, then assemble each gene into
chromosomes.”

“
Are you going to use a
zygote?”

“
No,”
Ingrid said, probably a bit more shrilly
than she should have. “I’ll not have a perfect chain of DNA
subjected to the whims of a substandard ovum. We have to keep
complete control over the genetic chain; integrate only
one
Major
Histocompatibility Complex out of a thousand different ones into
every cell, control
every
surface antigen. If we build cell by cell and system by
system, we can abort anything that goes wrong without destroying
what’s been accomplished.”

She didn’t know it, but her face had
gone red.

“
Whatever you want,” Merrifield said
soothingly. “I dare say you know best.”

Ingrid regained control. Getting
screechy was no way to act. It showed she might already have too
much of her ass in this thing.

“
I wasn’t angry,” she explained. “The
thought of anything fouling this up once it starts worries me
silly. All systems interdepend on one another. If something goes
wrong anywhere, we may spend years trying to find it. We have to go
one step at a time, one codon at a time if need be. It’s one shot,
all or nothing.”

“
You needn’t apologize to me, Ingrid.”
Merrifield drank his bourbon in one quick shot and turned the glass
down on the table. Something about that gesture was peculiarly
heavy and dramatic to Ingrid. He pierced her with his gaze. This
was the Merrifield who had rammed the whole project through the
works.

“
If I had wanted a contrite, piss-poor
excuse for a research director, I would have gotten one. I wanted
the best. The one who wouldn’t be second guessing and vacillating
over every little thing. This is the top. I
am
the top. And you’re right here with
me.”

The top.
Ingrid liked the sound of that. She felt much more an
equal, a motor rather than a cog in the big wheel. She didn’t
realize she had quietly succumbed to the greatest of all
seducers.

Limitless power.

********************

“
Best Chinese food in town,” Clifton
said, lifting a forkful of sweet and sour pork from his plate. He
took a long swallow of his tea and speared a boiled
shrimp.

They had gotten into the habit of going
out once every week or so. Clifton was amusing when he wasn’t
playing government handy man and both of them needed the break from
the monotony of work. Staring at genetic models, black, and blue
and red balls fastened together like Tinker Toys, got tiresome even
for them.

After her meeting with Merrifield,
Ingrid had gone against previously established custom and invited
Clifton out to dinner.

“
You pick the place,” she had told
him. “I’ve got to get out of here tonight.”

“
Something wrong,” Clifton had
asked.

“
Nothing,” she had answered. “I want
to start with a clean slate tomorrow.”

Clifton now asked her again what was so
urgent about getting out tonight.

“
With all your charm,” she said, “you
have to ask me that?”

“
Oh, I know my charisma and native wit
are powerful inducements. Enough to turn any woman’s head. But
there’s something else.” He studied her closely, his dark, brown
eyes warm in the subdued light.

“
I had a meeting with Jon
today.”

“
I heard.”

“
Did you?” She looked at him blandly,
her lips pursed in distaste, but it lasted only a moment. “Then you
know we’re ready to go ahead.”

“
You’re positive?”

“
Positive. We’ll have to iron out the
problems as they come up, but that’s to be expected.” Impulsively,
she reached across the table and put her hand on top of
his.

“
This is it, Alex. Everything will
work.”

He smiled. He had been surprised when
she took his hand, but refused to read anything more into it than
the high of the moment.

“
You seem to be getting pretty chummy
with Jon,” Clifton said.

“
Not nearly as chummy as you. You seem
to know everything I do before I do it.”

“
I’ve been at this game a long time,”
Clifton said, extricating his hand and lighting a cigarette, a
thing good for a few frowns from neighboring diners. But the
restaurant execs said nothing. They knew who Clifton
was.

“
I know how most things are going to
come out. I’ve known Jon for many moons and I’ve established a
fairly workable relationship with him, which is more than most can
do. We’ve been neck deep in political intrigue and strife since we
started working together. You plays de game and you gets yo’ money.
That’s how it works. But Jon’s not a man to trifle
with.”

“
I’m not trifling with
him.”

“
Did I say you were?”

“
You implied it.”

“
You’ve got a good relationship with
him. You’re his ace recruit, so you’ve got a lever to work him
with. But don’t overstep. He’s a dangerous man.”

“
What?”
Ingrid couldn’t feign her surprise. “Pudgy
little moonfaced Jon. That’s ridiculous.”

“
You’ve seen it yourself. You haven’t
screwed up, but I know you’ve seen him crawl Alan’s
ass.”

“
How can you fault him for that? I
have no patience with incompetence, either.”

“
How can you call Alan incompetent,”
Clifton argued irritably. “He has a quirk. He mumbles. That has
nothing to do with his ability to carry out a complex and demanding
job. Jon wields an immense amount of power. What kind of man do you
think it takes to get approval for a project like this which is one
hundred percent illegal? Or to keep the thugs of a congressional
oversight committee from sharpening their cudgels at the gate, or
to keep all the wheels in the Pentagon from trooping through the
doors to put in their two cents’ worth? Jon’s a chameleon, given to
fits of temper and you never know how he’s going to
react.”

“
You’re something of a chameleon
yourself,” Ingrid pointed out.

“
That’s my job. Jon acts like that
because that’s the way he
is.
I want you to be prepared for the day he turns on you like
a tornado and sucks all the life out of you.”

“
Well, you seem to have him wrapped
around your little finger.”

“
Nothing of the kind. You can push him
a ways, but no further than he wants to be pushed. I’ve never known
anyone to have better than a bumpy relationship with
him.”

“
Why are you so worried about how I
act with Jon,” Ingrid asked peevishly. “You’re always coming up
with little bits of advice. ‘Get an apartment in town’, ‘get some;
sleep’, ‘don’t overstep’. I’ve already got a father. I’m a big
girl. Wanna see my tits?”

For a second, Alex thought she was going to stand up and
rip the buttons from her blouse to prove to him that she
was
a big girl. Her face
was rigid and her voice had tilted past the fulcrum of calm. Some
of the diners at nearby tables turned to look at them, and it
wasn’t because of Alex’s smoldering cigarette.

“
Don’t you think Jon is in my corner,”
she asked.

“
Jon is in his own corner,” Clifton
said flatly. “You, me, the Alamo, are all only a means to Jon’s
ultimate end. He may have fooled you into thinking he’s no egoist,
but the truth is he has to have a wheelbarrow to cart it
around.”

“
Lots of brilliant men have a...high
opinion of themselves.”

“
That’s understating it,” Clifton said
sourly.

“
I didn’t come here to fight,” Ingrid
said quietly. “I came to celebrate. We’re right on the brink. Can’t
we talk about something else?”

“
Whatever you want,” Clifton replied.
“I didn’t realize we were fighting.”

“
You wouldn’t. That would suggest
something beyond a mere business relationship, wouldn’t
it?”

Alex relaxed. He smiled wearily as if
something that was binding him internally had loosened.

“
The hours are catching up with me. I
shouldn’t act like I’ve got a bug up my ass.”

“
It hasn’t been easy for me. I left
everything I’ve ever known to move a thousand miles away and work
on this project. Three years of my life. It’s not going to be for
nothing.”

“
I know, Ingrid. I know, I know, I
know. You plays de game and you gets yo’ money. This is all part of
it.”

“
It’s not a game to me.” Ingrid
laughed with no resonance. “I sound like Victor Frankenstein,
huh?
‘Ze
monster lives. I haff ze power to create life. Out of my vay you
dirty Colombian cutthroats, or I’ll send out the personal
nuke.’”

“
I wouldn’t go that far,” Clifton
said. “All we’ve got is a retina. Hardly enough to get rattled
over.”

“
You know it’s more that that,” Ingrid
chided gently. “The jump from synthesized chromosome to synthesized
tissue is bigger than the jump from synthesized tissue to
synthesized man. It’s only a matter of time, now.”

Clifton ground out his cigarette.
“Maybe that’s why I’m so edgy. Things are going too
fast.”

“
We’ve got loads of time,” Ingrid
said. “Everything will work out just like we want. You’ll
see.”

Ingrid let herself into her office. The
remainder of the evening had passed agreeably enough. It made her
wonder, considering their antler crossing over Merrifield, whether
they had simply given into their feelings for each other, neither
wanting to push the other too far.