Ted Kosmatka - Prophet of Bones

“But testing proved how wrong we were. The eighties showed us it wasn’t so simple as that. In actuality, it is this.” He scraped a new diagram out on the floor.

“Gorilla, us, chimp,” he said. “So, armed with this knowledge, we did the responsible thing first. We crossed the two more distantly related clades as a proof of principle, before ever involving humans. Chimps and gorillas, after all, are more different from each other than are humans and chimps. So if crossing chimps and gorillas worked, then crossing humans and chimps, well”—he spread his arms—“that would be easy.”

Paul looked into the cage. The creature crouched at the back of its enclosure. Black and massive. A dumb animal. But the things he’d seen at the park hadn’t been dumb. And the thing on the bridge certainly hadn’t been.

“Where are the other crosses?”

“Which ones?”

“The human crosses.”

“You’ve met them,” the old man said. “You’ve met them all.”

“Only three in total?”

“Two now,” said a strange, raspy voice. “Thanks to you.” The creature stepped from around the side of the cages, materializing from the shadows. It walked over to stand near Martial, its huge bulk hunched beneath a hooded sweatshirt. The beast from the bridge. It smiled its impossible teeth. Black eyes hidden beneath its heavy brow.

“Where is the soul in all this?” the old man asked Paul. He gestured to the creature, looking truly confused by the hulking thing that stood before him.

The hooded figure ignored the old man’s question. It shuffled around behind Paul and Lillie, seeming to sniff the air.

“You’ve met Trieste, I believe,” the old man said.

Paul only nodded.

The old man continued: “I look for that place where the line isn’t blurry between our species, and I can’t find it. Are these things bound for heaven, I wonder? Are they beasts with human hands?” He moved to the cage and stuck his hand inside his pocket. He pulled out an apple and tossed it inside the cage where the chimp-gorilla hybrid crouched. The hybrid picked it up and ate it in three huge bites. “Or humans with the hearts of beasts? Or something in between.”

The old man turned to look at them. “These are the questions we strive to answer.”

“Why us?” Paul asked.

The old man sighed. “Gavin is dead. People with your level of training aren’t easy to come by. They’re out there, of course, but to bring them in…” He shrugged. “It is a risk. How do you show them, and then if they say no…” The old man shook his head. “It’s messy. But with you, it’s already messy. But it is more than that, I admit. Come.”

The old man led them past the cages and out the door. Trieste followed close behind. There was a short sidewalk leading to another, smaller building. A guard in a black suit stood just outside. They entered the building, crossing an empty expanse to a room tucked into the back of the structure. At first Paul thought it might have been an office of some kind, or a storage room, but then he noticed the stainless steel table. A dissection room. Silver walls. A rack of equipment lined the back wall. A small hoist hung suspended from the ceiling. Near the door frame, a long steel handle leaned against the wall—a part of the hoist that had been disengaged.

On the table was a single folder.

The old man gestured for them to come closer. The creature Trieste stayed watchful at the door. Martial opened the folder and pulled out a photograph, which he held out to Paul.

“That was your father when I first met him.”

Paul took the photo. It looked to have been taken somewhere in China. His father, tall and brooding, standing in a lecture hall.

“You look like him,” the old man said.

“I look like my mother.”

“You’re big like your father. Your father’s size. Tell me: your father’s temper, too?”

“No.”

“Your father’s cold-bloodedness.”

Paul was silent.

“Oh, yes.” The old man smiled. “Some of that, I suspect.”

The old man took the photo back and closed the folder.

“Your father worked here, and now here we are with the son. It feels fitting somehow, don’t you think? It feels like fate. So I have shown you all the wonders, and now I have this question: Will you finish what your father started?”

Paul considered the old man. He wondered how Martial would kill him. He wondered how long ago this had all become inevitable. Was it when he broke into the lab? Was it when he first told Charles about what he’d found? Or was it earlier, even. When he’d first gotten on the plane to Flores? Or was it way back in childhood somewhere? Had it all been set in motion on that day when he’d started building the cages? At that moment, a small brown mouse skittered across the floor. Only Paul saw it. A flash of brown fur, then gone. Or maybe it hadn’t happened at all. Maybe he only thought he saw it.

“You’re considering my offer, I can see. I respect that. If you’d said yes too quickly, I would have known you were lying. There is great work we can do here, Paul. Without the government to get in the way. Without the churches and the oversight. We exist in a bubble. Nothing is off-limits. We have nearly endless funding and no oversight. Imagine what is possible. Other scientists work at the edges of things, but we can tackle the large questions themselves.”

The old man moved back to the doorway. He gestured out at the cage that held the chimp-gorilla hybrid. “You see, Paul, why I did not wish to be rash in my decision on how to deal with you. Though there are many qualified scientists who work in this branch of cytology, it is a rare man with the vision to look past ethical vagaries to what is really important. But this is a special kind of work—a calling. When you need a specialist, you can’t just interview several candidates for the job. You can’t invite someone to do this and then take no for an answer.”

Paul and Lilli stared at the man and said nothing. Behind him, the hooded creature swayed slightly, rocking on its feet. Paul eyed the hoist handle that leaned against the door frame. Three feet of steel.

“Gavin said you killed him.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

The old man froze. The smile left his face.

“Gavin said that?”

Paul nodded.

“Then Gavin was a bigger betrayer than I’d suspected. It was you he betrayed as well.”

“How is the truth ever a betrayal?”

“Because it means you’ll never forgive. It means you’ll say no. Your friend Gavin killed you when he told you that.”

The old man lowered his head for a moment. When he raised it, he looked at Paul. “The beast you killed was born of woman,” the old man said after a long silence. “Artificial insemination, of course.”

Paul took Lilli’s hand in his.

“A volunteer,” he added, his voice trailing off, “of sorts.” The old man seemed lost in his memories. “A woman named Sacha Etting.”

“How did she live with it?” Lilli asked.

“Not well. Not for long. She died some years ago. Cancer, unrelated to the procedure.”

Paul stared out through the doorway, at the cages against the far wall. His eye found the steel handle again, leaning against the door frame. “Human mother, chimp father.”

The old man nodded. “And Trieste here was the opposite cross.”

Paul didn’t turn to look.