Next (Page 56)

"Guess not."

"No," he said. "I guess not."

What happened was that the female gave birth to a full-term infant, and the two were 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 chimps varied widely in the amount of pigmentation they showed. No one thought anything of it.

As the infant grew, it appeared less normal. The face, which was originally flat, did not bulge outward with age. The facial features remained rather infantile. Still, nobody thought to question the baby’s appearance – until they discovered on a routine blood exam that the infant tested negative for the Gc sialic acid enzyme. Since all apes carry this enzyme, the test was obviously wrong, and repeated. It again came back negative. The infant chimp did not have the enzyme.

"Absence of that enzyme is a human trait," Henry said. "Sialic acid is a kind of sugar. No humans have the Gc form of sialic acid. All apes have it."

"But this infant didn’t."

"Right. So they did a DNA panel, and quickly realized that the infant didn’t have the usual 1.5 percent difference in genes from a human being. It had many fewer differences. And they started to put it all together."

"And tested the chimp’s DNA against everybody who had worked in the lab."

"Yes."

"And found he matched your DNA."

"Yes. Bellarmino’s office sent me a sample a few weeks ago. I guess to give me a heads-up."

"What’d you do?"

"Took it to a friend for analysis."

"Your friend in Long Beach?"

"Yes."

"And Bellarmino?"

"He just doesn’t want to be responsible, when word gets out." He shook his head. "I was driving home, and I was just west of Chicago when I got a call from this guy Rovak, at the animal lab. And he says, you’re on your own with this one, pal. That’s their attitude. My problem, not theirs."

Lynn frowned."Why isn’t this a major discovery? Shouldn’t this make you famous around the world? You’ve created the first transgenic ape."

"The problem," Henry said, "is that I can be censured for it, or even put in jail. Because I didn’t have permission from the committees that oversee primate research. Because the NIH now forbids transgenic work on any animal other than rats. Because all the anti-GM whackos and Frankenfood nuts will be up in arms over this. Because the NIH doesn’t want any involvement in this and will deny any knowledge of it."

"So you can’t tell anyone where Dave came from? That’s a problem, Henry, because you’ll never keep him a secret."

"I know," he said miserably.

"Tracy’s on the phone right now, telling all her friends about the cute little ape in her backyard."

"Yes…"

"Her girlfriends will be over here in a few minutes. How are you going to explain Dave to them? Because after the girls will come the reporters." Lynn glanced at her watch. "In one, two hours, max. What’ll you say?"

"I don’t know. Maybe…I’ll say the work was done in another country. In China. Or in South Korea. And they sent him here."

"And what will Dave say, when the reporters talk to him?"

"I’ll ask him not to talk to them."

"Reporters won’t leave this alone, Henry. They’ll be camped outside the house with long lenses; they’ll be circling in helicopters overhead. They’ll be on the next plane to China or Korea to talk to the person who did this. And when they don’t find that person…then what?"

She stared at him, then walked to the door. She looked into the backyard, where Dave was playing with Jamie. The two of them yelling and swinging through the trees. She was silent for a moment. Then she said, "You know, his skin really is quite pale."

"I know."

"His face is flat, almost human. What would he look like with a haircut?"

And so was bornGandler-Kreukheim syndrome, a rare genetic mutation causing short stature, excessive body hair, and facial deformities that yielded a rather ape-like appearance. The syndrome was so rare, it had only been documented four times in the last century. First, in an aristocratic Hungarian family in Budapest in 1923. Two children were born with the syndrome, described in the medical literature by an Austrian physician, Dr. Emil Kreukheim. The second appearance occurred in an Inuit child born in northern Alaska in 1944. A third child, a girl, was born in S?o Paulo in 1957, but she died of infection a few weeks after birth. A fourth child, in Bruges, Belgium, in 1988, was briefly seen by media but subsequently vanished. His whereabouts were now unknown.

"I like this," Lynn said. She was typing on her portable. "What’s the name of that hairy syndrome? Excessive familial hairiness?"

"Hypertrichosis," Henry said.

"Right." She kept typing. "So Gandler-Kreukheim is related…to hypertrichosis. Actually…congenital hypertrichosis langinosa. And there’ve only been fifty cases reported in the last four hundred years."

"Are you writing that, or reading that?"

"Both." She sat back. "Okay," she said, "that’s all I need for now. You better go tell Dave."

"Tell him what?"

"That he’s human. He probably thinks he is, anyway."

"Okay." As Henry walked to the door, he said, "You really think this will work?"

"I know it will," Lynn said. "California has laws against invading the privacy of special children. Many of these kids have serious deformities. They’ve got enough challenges growing up and going to school without the added burden of media exposure. Big fines if the media do it. They won’t."