Next: A Novel (21 page)

“Just do what your uncle asks,” she said. “And leave the rest to him.” She closed her purse. “And one final thing. Do not call or contact your uncle about this or any other matter. He wants no record ofany contact with you. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Good luck. And on behalf of your uncle, thank you.” She shook his hand again and left.

NO BLONDE EXTINCTION, AFTER ALL

BBC Reported False Story Absent Fact Check

No WHO Study, No German Study

A Bad Blonde Joke for 150 Years

The World Health Organization (WHO) today denied it had ever conducted or published any study predicting the extinction of the blonde hair gene. According to the UN group spokesman,

“WHO has no knowledge of how these news reports originated but would like to stress that we have no opinion on the future existence of blondes.”

According to the Washington Post, the BBC story stemmed from a German wire service account.

That story, in turn, was based on an article published two years before in the German women’s magazine Allegra, which cited a WHO anthropologist as its source. But no record of the anthropologist exists.

The story would never have run, said Georgetown media professor Len Euler, if even minimal fact-checking had been done by BBC editors. Some media observers noted that news organizations no longer check anything. “We just publish the press release and move on,” one reporter observed. Another reporter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “Let’s face it, it’s a good story. Accuracy would kill it.”

Further inquiry by the urban legend site Snopes.com uncovered multiple versions of the extinct blonde story going back 150 years, to the time of Abraham Lincoln. In every instance, scientific validity was claimed to bolster the story’s credibility. A typical example dates from 1906:

•BLONDES DOOMED TO VANISH FROM EARTH •

Major Woodruff Sounds Their Deathknell—It’s Science

The girl with the golden tresses is doomed, and within six hundred years blondes will be extinct.

The fate of the blonde was foretold today by Major C. E. Woodruff in a lecture at the Association for the Advancement of Science at Columbia University…

Clearly, blondes will not become extinct, but neither will the news stories that predict their demise, since the stories have been repeated for a century and a half with no basis whatsoever, said Professor Euler.

CH034

Henry Kendall’s wife, Lynn, designed web sites for a living, so she was usually at home during the day. Around three in the afternoon, she got an odd call. “This is Dr. Marty Roberts at Long Beach Memorial,” a voice said. “Is Henry there?”

“He’s at a soccer game,” she said. “Can I take a message?”

“I called his office, and I called his cell, but there was no answer.” Dr. Roberts’s tone made it sound urgent.

“I’ll see Henry in an hour,” Lynn said. “Is he all right, Dr. Roberts?”

“Oh sure, he’s fine.He’s perfectly fine. Just ask him to call me, would you?”

Lynn said she would.

Later, when Henry came home, she went into the kitchen, where he was getting cookies and milk for their eight-year-old son, Jamie. Lynn said, “Do you know somebody at Long Beach Memorial Hospital?”

Henry blinked. “Did he call?”

“This afternoon. Who is he?”

“He’s a friend of mine from school. A pathologist. What did he say?”

“Nothing. He wanted you to call him back.” She somehow managed not to ask her husband what it was all about.

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

She saw Henry glance at the phone in the kitchen, then turn on his heel and walk into the little study that they both shared. He closed the door. She heard him speaking softly on the phone. She couldn’t make out the words.

Jamie was eating his snack. Tracy, their thirteen-year-old, was playing her music very loud upstairs. Lynn yelled up the stairwell: “A little less noise, please!” Tracy didn’t hear her. There was nothing to do but go upstairs and tell her.

When she came back down, Henry was in the living room, pacing. “I have to take a trip,” he said.

“Okay. Where?”

“I have to go to Bethesda.”

“Something at the NIH?” The National Institutes of Health were in Bethesda. Henry went there a couple of times a year, for conferences.

“Yes.”

She watched him pace. “Henry,” she said, “are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“I just have some research—I just have to check on something—I just—I’m not sure.”

“You have to go to Bethesda but you’re not sure why?”

“Well, of course I’m sure. It’s, um, it’s to do with Bellarmino.”

Robert Bellarmino was the head of genetics at NIH, and no friend of her husband. “What about him?”

“I have to, uh, deal with something he has done.”

She sat down in a chair. “Henry,” she said, “I love you but I am really confused here. Why aren’t you telling me—”

“Look,” he said, “I don’t want to talk about it. I just have to go back there, that’s all. Just for a day.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Lynn. I have to go back.”

“Okay…when?”

“Tomorrow.”

She nodded slowly. “All right. Do you want me to book—”

“I’ve already done it. I have it handled.” He stopped pacing and went over to her. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want you to worry.”

“That’s pretty hard, under the circumstances.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s just something I have to take care of, and then it’ll be taken care of.”

And that was all he would say.

Lynn had been married to Henry for fifteen years. They had two children together. She knew better than anyone that Henry was prone to nervous tics and flights of fancy. The same imaginative leaps that made him such a good researcher also made him a bit of a hysteric. He was inclined to frequent self-diagnoses of dreaded diseases. He visited his doctor every couple of weeks, and telephoned more often than that. He was plagued by aches, itches, rashes, and sudden fears that woke him in the middle of the night. He dramatized small concerns. A minor accident was a brush with death, the way Henry told it.

So even though his behavior about a trip to Bethesda was odd, she was inclined to regard it as probably minor. She glanced at her watch and decided it was time to defrost the spaghetti sauce for dinner. She didn’t want Jamie eating too many cookies or it would spoil his appetite. Tracy had turned her music up louder again.

In short, daily events took over, and pushed Henry and his odd trip from her mind. She had other things to do, and she did them.

CH035

Henry Kendall left Dulles Airport and drove north on 267, heading toward the Primate Facility in Lambertville. It was almost an hour before he saw the chain-link fence and the guardhouse behind the double gates. Beyond the gates he saw huge maple trees that obscured the complex of buildings farther back. Lambertville was one of the largest primate-research facilities in the world, but the National Institutes did not publicize that fact, or its location. Partly because primate research was so politically charged, and partly out of concern for vandalism by activists.

Henry pulled up at the outer gate, pushed the button, and said, “Henry Kendall,” and gave his code number. He hadn’t been here for four years, but the code was still good. He leaned out of the car so the camera could see his face clearly.

“Thank you, Dr. Kendall.” The gate opened. He pulled through to the second gate. The first closed behind him. A guard came out and checked his ID. He vaguely remembered the guy.

“Didn’t expect you today, Dr. Kendall.” He handed him a temporary swipe card.

“They want me to clear out some things from my storage locker.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Things are getting tighter around here, since, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” He meant Bellarmino.

The inner gate opened and Henry drove through. He passed the admin building and went straight to the holding facilities. The chimps were formerly in Building B. He assumed they still were.

He opened the outer door and swiped his card on the inner door. He went down a corridor to the B Monitor Room. It was a room filled with display screens, showing all the chimpanzees on two floors of the facility. There were about eighty animals of various ages and sexes.

The on-duty veterinary assistant was there, in khaki uniform. But also there was Rovak, the head of the facility. He must have been notified by the front gate. Rovak was fifty, steel gray hair, military bearing. But he was a good scientist.

“I wondered when you’d show up,” Rovak said. He shook hands. He seemed friendly. “You got the blood?”

“Yes.” Henry nodded.

“Fucking Bellarmino had a cow,” Rovak said. “He hasn’t been out here yet, and we think we know why.”

“What do you mean?” Henry said.

“Let’s take a walk,” Rovak said.

Henry consulted his paper. “I’m looking for female F-402.”

“No,” Rovak said. “You’re looking for the offspring of female F-402. He’s this way.”

They started down a side corridor. This led to a small training facility that was used for short-term teaching experiments with animals. “You keep him here?”

“Have to. You’ll see.”

They came into the training facility. At first glance, it looked like a kindergarten play room, brightly colored toys scattered around, blue carpet on the floor. A casual visitor might not notice that the toys were all made of high-impact, durable plastic. There were observation glass walls on one side. Mozart was playing over the speakers.

“Likes Mozart,” Rovak said, shrugging. They went into a smaller room, off to the side. A shaft of sunlight came down from the ceiling. There was a five-by-five cage in the center. Inside sat a young chimpanzee, about the size of a four-year-old child. The chimp’s face was flatter than usual, and the skin was pale, but it was clearly a chimp.

“Hello, Dave,” Rovak said.

“Hello,” the chimp said. His voice was raspy. He turned to Henry. “Are you my mother?” he said.

Henry Kendall could not speak. His jaw moved, but no words came out. Rovak said, “Yes, he is, Dave.” He turned to Kendall. “His name is Dave.”

The chimp was staring at Henry. Just staring silently, sitting there in the cage, holding his toes in his fingers.

“I know it’s a shock,” Rovak said. “Think how people here felt, when they found out. Vet almost passed out. Nobody had any idea he was different until out of the blue; he came up negative on a sialic acid test. They repeated it because they assumed it was an error. But it wasn’t an error.

And then he started talking about three months ago.”

Henry sighed.

“He speaks well,” Rovak said. “Has a little trouble with verb tenses. But nobody has been instructing him. In fact, he’s been kept away from everybody around here. You want to let him out?”

Kendall hesitated. “Is he, uh…” Chimps could be nasty and aggressive; even small ones might be dangerous.

“Oh sure, he’s very docile. He’s not a chimp, right?” He opened the cage. “Come on out, Dave.”

Dave came out hesitantly, like a man released from jail. He seemed frightened to be outside the cage. He looked at Henry. “Am I going to live with you?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said.

“I don’t like the cage.”

He reached out and took Henry’s hand. “Can we go play?”

They went into the playroom. Dave led.

Henry said, “Is this his routine?”

“Right. He gets about an hour a day. Mostly with the vet. Sometimes me.”

Dave went over to the toys and began to arrange them into shapes. A circle, then a square.

“I’m glad you came to see him,” Rovak said. “I think it’s important.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“What do you think? This is illegal as shit, Henry. A transgender higher primate? You know Hitler tried to cross a human and a chimp. And Stalin tried. You might say they defined the field.

Let’s see, Hitler, Stalin, and now an American researcher at the NIH? No way, my friend.”

“So what are you…”

“This represents an unauthorized experiment. It has to be terminated.”

“Are you kidding?”

“You’re in Washington,” Rovak said, “and you’re looking at political dynamite. NIH funding is already flat from the current administration. It’d be cut to a tenth, if word of this got out.”

“But this animal is extraordinary,” Henry said.

“But unauthorized. That’s all anybody cares about.” Rovak shook his head. “Don’t get sentimental. You have a transgenic experiment that was never authorized and the rules state explicitly that any experiment not approved by the boards will be terminated and there will be no exceptions.”

“What will you, uh…”

“Morphine drip intravenously. Won’t feel a thing.” Rovak said. “You don’t need to worry. We’ll take good care of him. And after incineration, there will be no evidence at all that it ever happened.” He nodded to Dave. “Why don’t you go play with him for a while? He’d like the company. He’s bored with all of us.”

They played a sort of impromptu game of checkers, using toy blocks, jumping over each other while they both sat on the floor. Henry noticed details—Dave’s hands, which were the proportion of human hands; his feet, which were prehensile like a chimp’s; his eyes, which had flecks of blue; and his smile, which was not quite human, not quite ape-like.

“This is fun,” Dave said.

“That’s because you are winning.” Henry didn’t really understand the rules, but he thought he should let Dave win. That’s what he had done with his own kids.

And then he thought, This is my own kid.

He wasn’t thinking clearly, he knew that. He was acting by instinct. He was aware of watching intently as Dave was returned to his cage, of the way he was locked in with a keypress padlock, of the way—

“Let me shake his hand again,” Henry said. “Open it up again.”

“Look,” Rovak said, “don’t do this to yourself. Or him.”

“I just want to shake his hand.”

Rovak sighed, unlocked the lock. Henry watched. 01-05-04.

He shook Dave’s hand and said good-bye.

“Are you coming tomorrow?” Dave said.

“Soon,” Henry said.

Dave turned away, not looking at him as Henry left the room and closed the door.