“What’s Isla Francesca?” Candace asked.
“It’s the island where the transgenic bonobos go once they reach age three,” Melanie said. “So what’s with smoke?”
Kevin stood and motioned for the women to follow him. He walked over to his desk. With his index finger he pointed out the window toward Isla Francesca. “I’ve seen the smoke three times,” he said. “It’s always from the same place just to the left of the limestone ridge. It’s only a little curl snaking up into the sky, but it persists.”
Candace squinted. She was mildly nearsighted, but for vanity reasons didn’t wear glasses. “Is it the farthest island?” she asked. She thought she could just make out some brownish smudges on its spine that could have been rock. In the late-afternoon sunlight, the other islands in the chain appeared like homogeneous mounds of dark green moss.
“That’s the one,” Kevin said.
“So, big deal!” Melanie commented. “A couple of little fires. With all the lightning around here it’s no wonder.”
“That’s what Bertram Edwards suggested,” Kevin said. “But it can’t be lightning.”
“Who’s Bertram Edwards?” Candace asked.
“Why can’t it be lightning?” Melanie asked ignoring Candace. “Maybe there’s some metal ore in that rocky ridge.”
“Ever hear the expression lightning never strikes the same place twice?” Kevin questioned. “The fire is not from lightning. Besides, the smoke persisted and has never moved.”
“Maybe some native people live out there,” Candace said.
“GenSys was very sure that was not the case before choosing the island,” Kevin said.
“Maybe some local fishermen visit,” Candace suggested.
“All the locals know it is forbidden,” Kevin said. “Because of the new Equatoguinean law it would be a capital offense. There’s nothing out there that would be worth dying for.”
“Then who started the fires?” Candace asked.
“Good God, Kevin!” Melanie exclaimed suddenly. “I’m beginning to get an idea what you’re thinking. But let me tell you, it’s preposterous.”
“What’s preposterous?” Candace asked. “Will someone clue me in?”
“Let me show you something else,” Kevin said. He turned to his computer terminal and with a few keystrokes called up the graphic of the island. He explained the system to the women, and as a demonstration, brought up the location of Melanie’s double. The little red light blinked just north of the escarpment very close to where his own had the day before.
“You have a double?” Candace asked. She was dumbfounded.
“Kevin and I were the guinea pigs,” Melanie said. “Our doubles were the first. We had to prove that the technology really works.”
“Okay, now that you women know how the locator system operates,” Kevin said, “let me show you what I did an hour ago, and we’ll see if we get the same disturbing result.” Kevin’s fingers played over the keyboard. “What I’m doing is instructing the computer to automatically locate all seventy-three of the doubles sequentially. The creatures’ numbers will occur in the corner followed by the blinking light on the graphic. Now watch.” Kevin clicked to start.
The system worked smoothly with only a short delay between the number appearing and then the red blinking light.
“I thought there were closer to a hundred animals,” Candace said.
“There are,” Kevin said. “But twenty-two of them are less than three years old. They are in the bonobo enclosure at the animal center.”
“Okay,” Melanie said after a few minutes of watching the computer function. “It’s working just as you said. What’s so disturbing?”
“Just hold on,” Kevin said.
All at once the number 37 appeared but no blinking red light. After a few moments, a prompt flashed onto the screen. It said: animal not located: click to recommence.
Melanie looked at Kevin. “Where’s number thirty-seven?”
Kevin sighed. “What’s left is in the incinerator,” he said. “Number thirty-seven was Mr. Winchester’s double. But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” Kevin clicked and the program restarted. Then it stopped again at forty-two.
“Was that Mr. Franconi’s double?” Candace asked. “The other liver transplant?”
Kevin shook his head. He pressed several keys, asking the computer the identity of forty-two. The name Warren Prescott appeared.
“So where’s forty-two?” Melanie asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I know what I fear,” Kevin said. Kevin clicked and again the numbers and red lights alternately flashed on the screen.
When the entire program had run its course, it had indicated that seven of the bonobo doubles were unaccounted for, not including Franconi’s, which had been sacrificed.
“Is this what you found earlier?” Melanie asked.
Kevin nodded. “But it wasn’t seven, it was twelve. And although some of the ones that were missing this morning are still missing, most of them have reappeared.”
“I don’t understand,” Melanie said. “How can that be?”
“When I toured that island way back before all this started,” Kevin said, “I remember seeing some caves in that limestone cliff. What I’m thinking is that our creations are going into the caves, maybe even living in them. It’s the only way I can think of to explain why the grid would fail to pick them up.”
Melanie brought up a hand to cover her mouth. Her eyes reflected a flicker of horror and dismay.
Candace saw Melanie’s reaction. “Hey, come on, guys,” she pleaded. “What’s wrong? What are you thinking?”
Melanie lowered her hand. Her eyes were locked on Kevin’s. “What Kevin was referring to when he said he was terrified he’d overstepped the bounds,” she explained in a slow, deliberate voice, “was the fear that he’d created a human.”
“You’re not serious!” Candace exclaimed, but a glance at Kevin and then at Melanie indicated that she was.
For a full minute no one spoke.
Finally Kevin broke the silence. “I’m not suggesting a real human being in the guise of an ape,” Kevin said finally. “I’m suggesting that I’ve inadvertently created a kind of protohuman. Maybe something akin to our distant ancestral forebears who spontaneously appeared in nature from apelike animals four or five million years ago. Maybe back then the critical mutations responsible for the change occurred in the developmental genes I’ve subsequently learned are on the short arm of chromosome six.”
Candace found herself blankly gazing out the window, while her mind replayed the scene two days previous in the OR when the bonobo was about to be inducted under anesthesia. He’d made curious humanlike sounds and tried desperately to keep his hands free so that he could continue to make the same wild gesture. He’d been constantly opening and closing his fingers and then sweeping his hands away from his body.
“You’re talking about some early hominidlike creature, something on the order of Homo erectus,” Melanie said. “It’s true we noticed the infant transgenic bonobos tended to walk upright more than their mothers. At the time we just thought it was cute.”
“Not so early a hominid as not to have used fire,” Kevin said. “Only true early man has used fire. And that’s what I’m worried I’ve been seeing on the island: campfires.”
“So, to put it bluntly,” Candace said, turning away from the window. “We’ve got a bunch of cavemen out there like back in prehistoric time.”
“Something like that,” Kevin said. As he’d expected the women were aghast. Strangely, he actually felt a little better now that he’d voiced his anxieties.
“What are we going to do?” Candace demanded. “I’m certainly not going to be involved with sacrificing any more until this is resolved one way or the other. I was having a hard enough time dealing with the situation when I thought the victim was an ape.”