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CHapter 036
What areyou talking about?" Lynn Kendall said, staring at Dave, who sat quietly on the living room couch
"This monkey is yourson ?"
"Well, not exactly"
"Notexactly ?" She paced around the living room "What the hell doesthat mean, Henry?"
It had been a norhter, Tracy, was in the backyard, sunbathing and talking on the telephone, and not doing her ho pool Lynn had spent the day inside the house, finishing a job on a tight deadline She&039;d been working hard on it for the last three days, so she was surprised when she opened the front door and her husband had walked in, leading a chimpanzee by the hand
"Henry? Is he your son or not?"
"He is, in a way"
"In a way That&039;s clear I&039;lared at hiht occurred to her "Wait ato tell me that you had sex with a - "
"No, no," her husband said, holding up his hands "No, honey Nothing like that It was just an experiment"
"Just an experiment Jesus An experiment? What kind of experi his toes in his hand Looking up at the two adults
"Try to keep your voice down," Henry said "You&039;re upsetting hi hi monkey, Henry!"
"Ape"
"Ape,here? Why is he in our house?"
"WellI&039;m notActually, he&039;s come to live with us"
"He&039;s come to live with us Out of the blue You have a monkey son and you never knew about it He just suddenly arrives with you Great That makes sense That makes perfect sense Anybody can understand that Why didn&039;t you tell me, Henry? Oh, neverhome with my monkey son but I&039;ll tell you about it when I walk in the door That&039;s great, Henry I&039;lad we had all those therapy sessions about intimacy and communications"
"Lynn, I&039;oing to do with hi to take him to the zoo, or what?"
"I don&039;t like the zoo," Dave said, speaking for the first time
"I didn&039;t ask you," Lynn said "You keep out of this"
And then she froze
She turned
She stared
"He talks?"
"Yes," Dave said "Are you my mother?"
Lynn Kendalldidn&039;t actually pass out, but she began to treht her and helped her to sit in her favorite chair, facing the coffee table, next to the couch Dave didn&039;t move He just stared ide eyes Henry went into the kitchen and got his wife soht it back to her
"Here," he said "Drink this"
"I want a damn martini"
"Honey, those days are over" Lynn was AA
"I don&039;t knohat days are what," she said She was staring at Dave "He talks The monkey talks"
"Ape"
"I&039;m sorry I upsetted you," Dave said to her
"Thank you, uh"
"His naet his tenses right"
Dave said, "Soet upsetted by me They feel bad"
"Dave," she said "This is not about you, honey You seem to be very nice This is about him" She jerked her thumb toward Henry "The asshole"
"What is ah-sole?"
"He&039;s probably never heard swearing," Henry said "You need to watch your language"
"How do you watch language?" Dave said "It&039;s noises You can&039;t watch noises"
"I&039; into her chair
"It&039;s an expression," Henry said "A figure of speech"
"Oh, I see," Dave said
There was a silence His wife sighed Henry patted her arm
"Do you have any trees?" Dave said "I like to climb trees"
At that momentJamie came into the house "Hey, Mom, I need a towel - " He broke off and stared at the chimp
"Hello," Dave said
Jamie blinked, recovered fast "Hey, neat!" he said "I&039;m Jamie"
"My na one! Coly at Lynn and Henry
"Go ahead," Henry said "It&039;s okay"
Dave leapt off the couch, and sca Jamie
"How do you knoon&039;t run away?" Lynn said
"I don&039;t think he will"
"Because he&039;s your son"
The door banged shut Outside, they heard their daughter screa, "What is that?"
They heard Ja trees"
"Where&039;d you get him, Jamie?"
"He&039;s Dad&039;s"
"Does he bite?"
They couldn&039;t h thethey saw the tree branches swaying and oing to do with him?" Lynn said
"I don&039;t know," Henry said
"Well, he can&039;t stay here"
"I know that"
"I won&039;t have a dog in the house I certainly won&039;t have an ape"
"I know"
"And besides there&039;s no room for him"
"I know"
"This is really a , just nodded
"How the hell did this happen, Henry?" she said
"It&039;s a long story," he said
"I&039;enoenome of a chimpanzee was nearly identical to that of a man "All that separates our two species," he said, "is five hundred genes"
Of course, that nus and sea urchins also shared a lot of genes In fact, nearly every creature on the planet shared tens of thousands of the saenetically speaking
So that created a lot of interest in what had caused the differences in different species Five hundred genes weren&039;t a lot, yet a great chass
"Many species can crossbreed to produce hybrids - lions and tigers, leopards and jaguars, dolphins and whales, buffalo and cattle, zebras and horses, camels and llamas Grizzlies and polar bears sorolars So there was a question of whether chimps and humans could hybridize to make a humanzee The answer see back to the 1920s"
But even if hybridization were ienes directly into a chienic animal Four years back, when Henry was on sabbatical at the National Institutes of Health, he was studying autisht account for the difference in communication abilities between people and apes "Because chie of cries and hand gestures; they can organize the parties to kill se Like severe autistics That&039;s what interested me"
"And what did you do?" his wife asked
In the laboratory, under a enes into a chienes for speech?" she asked
"Actually, all of theenes"
"Look, I never expected the experi to retrieve a fetus"
"A fetus, not an aniht or nine weeks before it spontaneously aborted, there would be enough differentiation that he could dissect the fetus and advance his understanding of speech in apes
"You expected the fetus to die?"
"Yes I was just hoping that it would carry long enough - "
"And then you were going to cut the fetus up?"
"Dissect it, yes"
"Your own genes, your own fetus - you did this in order to have so at him like he was a monster
"Lynn, it was an experi all the - " He broke off No point going there "Look," he said, "the genes were close at hand I didn&039;t have to get anybody&039;s permission to use them It was an experiment It wasn&039;t aboutto ansas fundamental Chimps and huo And scientists had long ago noticed that chis at their fetal stage This suggested that hus differed from chimps in part because of difference in intrauterine develop been arrested at the chie Sorowth of the human brain, which doubled in the first year after birth But Henry&039;s interest was in speech, and for speech to occur, the vocal cords had toa voice box That happened in humans, but not in chimps The entire developmental sequence was ienic fetus, and froe in human developinal experimental plan
"Why didn&039;t you remove the fetus as you intended?" she asked him
Because that summer, several chimps contracted viral encephalitis, and the healthy chimps had to be moved away for quarantine They were taken to different labs around the East Coast "I never heard anything about the embryo I implanted I just assumed that the female had spontaneously aborted in a quarantine facility somewhere, and the fetal material was discarded I couldn&039;t inquire too closely"
"Because what you did was illegal"
"Well That&039;s a strong word I assumed the experiment had failed, and it was over"
"Guess not"
"No," he said "I guess not"
What happened was that the feave birth to a full-term infant, and the tere returned to Bethesda The infant chimp appeared to be normal in every respect Its skin was somewhat pale, especially around the mouth, where there was no hair But chi of it