Apparently Jericho had held back more than the true nature of the experiment to Bellucci. He also hadn’t revealed his healing abilities. “Pregnant?”
He nodded with a grimace. “He figured if he could accomplish the manipulation he had in mind in utero, it would be merely a series of extrapolations to achieving the same in those already fully formed.”
“And what exactly were the accomplishments he hoped to make?” I doodled something on the pad, nonsense basically, to give the impression I was actually taking notes.
“Faster, smarter, stronger.” There was a pained crease between his eyebrows. I wondered what would happen to that deepened line if he knew the “improvements” Jericho had actually ended up making instead. “Nonsense, all of it.” He sat back down and tapped a toe restlessly on the floor. “They were volunteers. He did pay them money. They knew more or less what he was doing to the fetuses, what little they could understand, but the women were poor . . . desperate. Many of them were drug users, which didn’t precisely lend any kind of credence to the experiment results, human trial violations aside.”
“Then what the hell was he thinking?” I asked for appearance’s sake. I knew precisely what he’d been thinking, and science had been only half of it. “No one would touch him or his work after he was found out. He had to know that.”
“You would think.” Shaking his head, he repeated with a soft incredulity unfaded by time. “You would think.” He stood and walked to the expanse of windows to stare blindly at the rain. “John was the most determined person I’d ever met . . . will ever meet. He truly didn’t believe there was anything in the world he couldn’t do if only he wanted it badly enough. Maybe he thought he was too smart to be found out. Maybe he thought the ends justified the means. Maybe he was completely out of his mind.” His shoulders hitched in a dismissive motion. “Could be all three. We’ll never know.”
“But he did get caught, right? If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about it. How did that come about? Who was the first to discover he’d strayed from the path of the scientific straight and narrow, so to speak?” I had a suspicion on that score that was easily confirmed by the iron-rigid set of his spine.
“Why, his closest colleague of course.” His voice was deceptively calm. “His friend. The one he nearly turned into an unwitting collaborator. We helped each other out, you realize, on various projects. One would lead and the other would come in later to help with the paperwork and publishing end of it. We’d done that for years. By the time I waltzed obliviously into that last experimental trial, John was too far gone to save. So far . . .” Sighing heavily, he turned away from the outside world. “He wasn’t even ashamed. There wasn’t the slightest iota of guilt in him over what he’d done. I tried to reason with him, but it was futile. He simply couldn’t see where the line was anymore. Couldn’t even understand why there was a line. I had no choice but to turn him in.”
“And then?” I prompted quietly.
“And then nothing.” He took his seat again, loosely clasping his hands in his lap. “By the time administration managed to get off their collective wrinkled asses to confront him, it was too late. He had disappeared and all evidence of the project had disappeared along with him.”
“The women?”
“The same. They were invisible people to begin with, living on the outskirts of society. Many of them lived in missions or with other lost souls. Not one of them ever showed up at the lab again. I’d copied a few names before I blew the whistle. I used that to try to find some of the women, but I never did. They had vanished just as thoroughly as John.” The nervous energy was draining away now, leaving a bitter emptiness in its place.
“Did any of them have their babies before the project was blown open?” I shifted and leaned forward. This would’ve been nearly fifteen years ago. Had the first genetically altered chimeras been produced then?
He shook his head. “No. The farthest along was a woman at eight months. I never saw the results of John’s work.”
Until now, I thought, as Michael continued to follow our conversation with a blank face. What Jericho had learned to do to children before they took their first breath, he’d adapted to those already born natural chimeras . . . not yet genetically manipulated by a monster.
“What do you think happened to those children?”
“After they were born?” The intertwined fingers tightened on one another. “At best, nothing. At worst, congenital defects that would make thalidomide seem like party punch. Genetics, as a science, wasn’t yet advanced enough then that we could do even half of what John was attempting. It still isn’t. He thought he was a god. I’d never noticed that before. He was my friend and arrogant as hell, yes, yet I never noticed that he thought himself a god.” He paused and cleared a suddenly tight throat. “But I imagine those poor damn children proved him less a god and more a fiend. If they grew up capable of coherent thought or purposeful movement, I’d be surprised.”
I didn’t argue the label of monster; after all, I’d thought it many times myself. But Bellucci was less accurate with the rest of his assessment. Jericho hadn’t crippled his subjects, not physically or intellectually. There were other damages, to be sure, but for all that he was a monster, he was a monster who knew his business.
I closed my notebook. “No one has seen him since, have they?”
“No. He disappeared so very well that I have to wonder if he didn’t have some sort of help. That and the fact the majority of what happened was kept out of the papers.” The wide mouth thinned to a knife-edged gash. “And I was bound by a nondisclosure agreement. The university would’ve ruined me if I’d spoken up.” There was a broken-glass glitter behind his eyes. “Odd. I’ve kept quiet all these years; yet I still feel ruined. It hardly seems fair, does it? I wrote my articles, of course, refuting everything John ever theorized, but it wasn’t enough. It won’t ever be enough.”
“So why open up now?”
The question seemed to amuse him, but it was a bleak and dark humor. Lifting a hand, he tapped the base of his skull. “Brain tumor,” he said matter-of-factly. “Supratentorial glioma. I have six months . . . if I’m very, very lucky. There is little anyone could do to my life now that this rampaging package of cells hasn’t already done, nondisclosure agreements be damned.”
It made sense. He was stepping away from the game and wanted to clear his debts before he went. It was human nature. It was only too bad it wasn’t our nature to settle things before it was on the verge of being too late. “Two last questions, Dr. Bellucci, if I may.” Placing the mock notes into my jacket pocket, I asked, “Do you think if Hooker hadn’t been found out that he would’ve been able to do what he’d planned in the beginning? Do you think he could have gone on to substantially change the genes of a person after they were born?”
“Genetic replacement is a reality for us now.” He continued to unconsciously rub the juncture of his neck and skull. “Unfortunately, the amazing medical miracles we were so sure it would bring about have been accompanied by problems nearly as adverse as what we were trying to cure. As for John . . . normally, I would say his chances were low. What he was aiming for was worlds beyond what the scientific community is doing now. Still”—he dropped his hand and used it to make a throwaway gesture—“this is John we’re speaking of and that alone makes it almost conceivable. I’m not saying he would’ve accomplished any of his goals, mind you; they were far too improbable, not to mention insane. But I do believe if he’d continued on with the resources we had, he would’ve advanced genetic replacement considerably—in theory if nothing else.”