Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume One (6 page)

He thought of the Finishing School for Barbies where long-legged, high-breasted, stomachless girls went to get shaved clean, get their toenails painted pink, their nipples removed, and all body openings sewn shut, except for their mouths, which curved in perpetual smiles and led nowhere.

The class consisted of six black spider-monkeys who had not been fed yet. They had to do six tasks in order: 1) pull a rope; 2) cross the cage and get a stick that was released by the rope; 3) pull the rope again; 4) get the second stick that would fit into the first; 5) join the sticks together; 6) using the lengthened stick, pull a bunch of bananas close enough to the bars of the cage to reach them and take them inside where they could eat them. At five the monkeys were returned to Kelly, who wheeled them away one by one back to the stockroom. None of them had performed all the tasks, although two had gone through part of them before the time ran out.

Waiting for the last of the monkeys to be taken back to its quarters, Stu asked, “What did you do to that bunch of idiots this morning? By the time I got them, they all acted dazed.”

Darin told him about Adam’s performance; they were both laughing when Kelly returned. Stu’s laugh turned to something that sounded almost like a sob. Darin wanted to tell him about the school Kelly must have attended, thought better of it, and walked away instead.

His drive home was through the darkening forests of interior Florida for sixteen miles on a narrow straight road.

“Of course, I don’t mind living here,” Lea had said once, nine years ago when the Florida appointment had come through. And she didn’t mind. The house was air-conditioned; the family car, Lea’s car, was air-conditioned; the back yard had a swimming pool big enough to float the Queen Mary. A frightened, large-eyed Florida girl did the housework, and Lea gained weight and painted sporadically, wrote sporadically—poetry—and entertained faculty wives regularly. Darin suspected that sometimes she entertained faculty husbands also.

“Oh, Professor Dimples, one hour this evening? That will be fifteen dollars, you know.” He jotted down the appointment and turned to Lea. “Just two more today and you will have your car payment. How about that!” She twined slinky arms about his neck, pressing tight high breasts hard against him. She had to tilt her head slightly for his kiss. “Then your turn, darling. For free.” He tried to kiss her; something stopped his tongue, and he realized that the smile was on the outside only, that the opening didn’t really exist at all.

He parked next to an MG, not Lea’s, and went inside the house where the martinis were always snapping cold.

“Darling, you remember Greta, don’t you? She is going to give me lessons twice a week. Isn’t that exciting?”

“But you already graduated.” Darin murmured. Greta was not tall and not long-legged. She was a little bit of a thing. He thought probably he did remember her from somewhere or other, vaguely. Her hand was cool in his.

“Greta has moved in; she is going to lecture on modern art for the spring semester. I asked her for private lessons and she said yes.”

“Greta Farrel,” Darin said, still holding her small hand. They moved away from Lea and wandered through the open windows to the patio where the scent of orange blossoms was heavy in the air.

“Greta thinks it must be heavenly to be married to a psychologist.” Lea’s voice followed them. “Where are you two?”

“What makes you say a thing like that?” Darin asked.

“Oh, when I think of how you must understand a woman, know her moods and the reasons for them. You must know just what to do and when, and when to do something else… Yes, just like that.”

His hands on her body were hot, her skin cool. Lea’s petulant voice drew closer. He held Greta in his arms and stepped into the pool where they sank to the bottom, still together. She hadn’t gone to the Barbie school. His hands learned her body; then his body learned hers. After they made love, Greta drew back from him regretfully.

“I do have to go now. You are a lucky man. Dr. Darin. No doubts about yourself, complete understanding of what makes you tick.”

He lay back on the leather couch staring at the ceiling. “It’s always that way, Doctor. Fantasies, dreams, illusions. I know it is because this investigation is hanging over us right now, but even when things are going relatively well, I still go off on a tangent like that for no real reason.” He stopped talking.

In his chair Darin stirred slightly, his fingers drumming softly on the arm, his gaze on the clock whose hands were stuck. He said, “Before this recent pressure, did you have such intense fantasies?”

“I don’t think so,” Darin said thoughtfully, trying to remember.

The other didn’t give him time. He asked, “And can you break out of them now when you have to, or want to?”

“Oh, sure,” Darin said.

Laughing, he got out of his car, patted the MG, and walked into his house. He could hear voices from the living room and he remembered that on Thursdays Lea really did have her painting lesson.

Dr. Lacey left five minutes after Darin arrived. Lacey said vague things about Lea’s great promise and untapped talent, and Darin nodded sober agreement. If she had talent, it certainly was untapped so far. He didn’t say so.

Lea was wearing a hostess suit, flowing sheer panels of pale blue net over a skin-tight leotard that was midnight blue. Darin wondered if she realized that she had gained weight in the past few years. He thought not.

“Oh, that man is getting impossible,” she said when the MG blasted away from their house. “Two years now, and he still doesn’t want to put my things on show.”

Looking at her, Darin wondered how much more her things could be on show.

“Don’t dawdle too long with your martini,” she said. “We’re due at the Ritters’ at seven for clams.”

The telephone rang for him while he was showering. It was Stu Evers. Darin stood dripping water while he listened.

“Have you seen the evening paper yet? That broad made the statement that conditions are extreme at the station, that our animals are made to suffer unnecessarily.”

Darin groaned softly. Stu went on, “She is bringing her entire women’s group out tomorrow to show proof of her claims. She’s a bigwig in the SPCA, or something.”

Darin began to laugh then. Mrs. Whoosis had her face pressed against one of the windows, other fat women in flowered dresses had their faces against the rest. None of them breathed or moved. Inside the compound Adam laid Hortense, then moved on to Esmeralda, to Hilda…

“God damn it, Darin, it isn’t funny!” Stu said.

“But it is. It is.”

Clams at the Ritters’ were delicious. Clams, hammers, buckets of butter, a mountainous salad, beer, and finally coffee liberally laced with brandy. Darin felt cheerful and contented when the evening was over. Ritter was in Med. Eng. Lit. but he didn’t talk about it, which was merciful. He was sympathetic about the stink with the SPCA. He thought scientists had no imagination. Darin agreed with him and soon he and Lea were on their way home.

“I am so glad that you didn’t decide to stay late,” Lea said, passing over the yellow line with a blast of the horn. “There is a movie on tonight that I am dying to see.”

She talked, but he didn’t listen, training of twelve years drawing out an occasional grunt at what must have been appropriate times. “Ritter is such a bore,” she said. They were nearly home. “As if you had anything to do with that incredible statement in tonight’s paper.”

“What statement?”

“Didn’t you even read the article? For heaven’s sake, why not? Everyone will be talking about it…” She sighed theatrically. “Someone quoted a reliable source who said that within the foreseeable future, simply by developing the leads you now have, you will be able to produce monkeys that are as smart as normal human beings.” She laughed, a brittle meaningless sound.

“I’ll read the article when we get home,” he said. She didn’t ask about the statement, didn’t care if it was true or false, if he had made it or not. He read the article while she settled down before the television. Then he went for a swim. The water was warm, the breeze cool on his skin. Mosquitoes found him as soon as he got out of the pool, so he sat behind the screening of the veranda. The bluish light from the living room went off after a time and there was only the dark night. Lea didn’t call him when she went to bed. He knew she went very softly, closing the door with care so that the click of the latch wouldn’t disturb him if he was dozing on the veranda.

He knew why he didn’t break it off. Pity. The most corrosive emotion endogenous to man. She was the product of the doll school that taught that the trip down the aisle was the end, the fulfillment of a maiden’s dreams; shocked and horrified to learn that it was another beginning, some of them never recovered. Lea never had. Never would. At sixty she would purse her lips at the sexual display of uncivilized animals, whether human or not, and she would be disgusted and help formulate laws to ban such activities. Long ago he had hoped a child would be the answer, but the school did something to them on the inside too. They didn’t conceive, or if conception took place, they didn’t carry the fruit, and if they carried it, the birth was of a stillborn thing. The ones that did live were usually the ones to be pitied more than those who fought and were defeated
in utero
.

A bat swooped low over the quiet pool and was gone again against the black of the azaleas. Soon the moon would appear, and the chimps would stir restlessly for a while, then return to deep untroubled slumber. The chimps slept companionably close to one another, without thought of sex. Only the nocturnal creatures, and the human creatures, performed coitus in the dark. He wondered if Adam remembered his human captors. The colony in the compound had been started almost twenty years ago, and since then none of the chimps had seen a human being. When it was necessary to enter the grounds, the chimps were fed narcotics in the evening to insure against their waking. Props were changed then, new obstacles added to the old conquered ones. Now and then a chimp was removed for study, usually ending up in dissection. But not Adam. He was father of the world. Darin grinned in the darkness.

Adam took his bride aside from the other beasts and knew that she was lovely. She was his own true bride, created for him, intelligence to match his own burning intelligence. Together they scaled the smooth walls and glimpsed the great world that lay beyond their garden. Together they found the opening that led to the world that was to be theirs, and they left behind them the lesser beings. And the god searched for them and finding them not, cursed them and sealed the opening so that none of the others could follow. So it was that Adam and his bride became the first man and woman and from them flowed the progeny that was to inhabit the entire world. And one day Adam said, for shame woman, seest thou that thou art naked? And the woman answered, so are you, big boy, so are you. So they covered their nakedness with leaves from the trees, and thereafter they performed their sexual act in the dark of night so that man could not look on his woman, nor she on him. And they were thus cleansed of shame. Forever and ever. Amen. Hallelujah.

Darin shivered. He had drowsed after all, and the night wind had grown chill. He went to bed. Lea drew away from him in her sleep. She felt hot to his touch. He turned to his left side, his back to her, and he slept.

“There is potential
x
,” Darin said to Lea the next morning at breakfast. “We don’t know where
x
is actually. It represents the highest intellectual achievement possible for the monkeys, for example. We test each new batch of monkeys that we get and sort them—
x
-1,
x
-2,
x
-3, suppose, and then we breed for more
x
-1’s. Also we feed the other two groups the sRNA that we extract from the original
x
-l’s. Eventually we get a monkey that is higher than our original
x
-1, and we reclassify right down the line and start over, using his sRNA to bring the others up to his level. We make constant checks to be sure we aren’t allowing inferior strains to mingle with our highest achievers, and we keep control groups that are given the same training, the same food, the same sorting process, but no sRNA. We test them against each other.”

Lea was watching his face with some interest as he talked. He thought he had got through, until she said, “Did you realize that your hair is almost solid white at the temples? All at once it is turning white.”

Carefully he put his cup back on the saucer. He smiled at her and got up. “See you tonight,” he said.

They also had two separate compounds of chimps that had started out identically. Neither had received any training whatever through the years; they had been kept isolated from each other and from man. Adam’s group had been fed sRNA daily from the most intelligent chimps they had found. The control group had been fed none. The control-group chimps had yet to master the intricacies of the fountain with its ice-cold water; they used the small stream that flowed through the compound. The control group had yet to learn that fruit on the high, fragile branches could be had, if one used the telescoping sticks to knock them down. The control group huddled without protection, or under the scant cover of palm-trees when it rained and the dome was opened. Adam long ago had led his group in the construction of a rude but functional hut where they gathered when it rained.

Darin saw the women’s committee filing past the compound when he parked his car. He went straight to the console in his office, flicked on a switch and manipulated buttons and dials, leading the group through the paths, opening one, closing another to them, until he led them to the newest of the compounds, where he opened the gate and let them inside. Quickly he closed the gate again and watched their frantic efforts to get out. Later he turned the chimps loose on them, and his grin grew broader as he watched the new-men ravage the old women. Some of the offspring were black and hairy, others pink and hairless, some intermediate. They grew rapidly, lined up with arms extended to receive their daily doses, stood before a machine that tested them instantaneously, and were sorted. Some of them went into a disintegration room, others out into the world.