20
Chimeras and Neanderthals
'The Neanderthal experiment was conceived in order to create the euphemistically entitled "medical test vessels", living creatures that were as close as possible to humans without actually being human within the context of the law. The experiment was an unparalleled success — and failure. The Neanderthal was everything that could be hoped for. A close cousin but not human, physiologically almost identical — and legally with less rights than a dormouse. But sadly for Goliath, even the hardiest of medical technicians balked at experiments conducted upon intelligent and speaking entities, so the first batch of Neanderthals were trained instead as "expendable combat units", a project that was shelved as soon as the lack of aggressive instincts in the Neanderthals was noted. They were subsequently released into the community as cheap labour and became a celebrated tax write-off. It was Homo sapiens at his least sapient.'
The Brunei Centre was packed, as usual. Busy shoppers moved from chain store to chain store, trying to find bargains in places whose identical goods were price fixed by head office several months in advance. It didn't stop them trying, though.
'So why the interest in Xeroxed bards?' asked Bowden as we crossed the canal.
'We've got a crisis in the BookWorld.'
I outlined what was happening within the play previously known as Hamlet and he opened his eyes wide.
'Whoa!' he said after a pause. 'And I thought our work was unusual!'
We didn't have to wait long to find Mr Stiggins. Within a few moments there was a blood-curdling cry of terror from a startled shopper. A second scream followed, and all of a sudden there was a mad rush of people moving away from the junction of Canal Walk and Bridge Street. We moved against the flow, stepping over discarded shopping and the odd shoe. The cause of the panic was soon evident. Rifling through a rubbish bin for a tasty snack was a bizarre hybrid of a creature — in SO-13 slang, a chimera. The genetic revolution that gave us unlimited replacement organs and the power to create dodos and other extinctees from home cloning kits had a downside: perverse pastiches of animals who were not borne on the shoulders of evolution, but by hobby gene splicers who didn't know any better than to try to play God in the comfort of their own potting sheds.
As the crowds rapidly departed. Bowden and I stared at the strange creature that lurched and slavered as it rooted through the waste bin. It was about the size of a goat and had the rear legs of one. but not much else. The tail and the forelegs were lizard, the head almost feline. It had several tentacles, and it sucked noisily on a chip-soaked newspaper, the saliva from its toothless mouth dribbling copiously on to the pavement. In general, hybrid birds were the most common product of illegal gene splicing, as birds were closely enough related to come out pretty well no matter how ham-fisted the amateur splicer. You could even create a passable dogfoxwolf or a domestic catleopard with no greater knowledge than a biology GCSE. No. it was the cross-class abominations which led to the total ban on home cloning, the lizard/mammal switcheroos that really pushed the limits on what was socially acceptable. It didn't stop the sport; just pushed it underground.
The creature rummaged with its one good arm in the bin, found the remains of a SmileyBurger, stared at it with its five eyes, then pushed it into its mouth. It then flopped to the ground and moved, half shuffling and half sllthering, to the next bin, all the while hissing like a cat and slapping its tentacles together.
'Oh my God,' said Bowden, 'it's got a human arm!'
And so it had. It was when there were bits of recognisable human
in them that chimeras were most repellent — a failed attempt to replace a deceased loved one, or a hobby gene splicer trying to make themselves a son.
'Repulsive?' said a voice close at hand. 'The creature, or the creator?' I turned to find myself looking at a squat, beetle-browed Neanderthal in a pale suit and with a Homburg hat perched high on his domed head. I had met him several times before. This was Bartholomew Stiggins, head of SO-13 here in Wessex.
'Both,' I replied.
Stiggins nodded almost imperceptibly as a blue SO-13 Land Rover pulled up with a squeal of brakes. A uniformed officer jumped out and started to try to push us back. Stiggins said:
'We are together.'
The Neanderthal took a few steps forward and we joined him at the creature, which was close enough to touch.
'Reptile, goat, cat, human,' murmured the Neanderthal, crouching down and staring intently at the creature as it ran a thin pink-forked tongue across a crisp packet.
'The eyes look insectoid,' observed the SO-13 agent, dart gun in the crook of his arm.
'Too big. More like the eyes we found on the chimera up at the bandstand. You remember, the one that looked like a giant hamster?'
'Same splicer?'
The Neanderthal shrugged.
'Same eyes. You know how they like to trade.'
'We'll take a sample and compare. Might lead us to them. That looks like a human arm, doesn't it?'
The creature's arm was red and mottled and no bigger than a child's. To grasp anything the fingers grabbed and twisted randomly until it found something and then it clung on tight.
'Gives it an age,' said Stiiggins, 'perhaps five years.'
'Do you want to take it alive, sir?' asked the SO-13 agent, breeching the barrel of his gun and pausing. The Neanderthal shook his head.
'No. Send him home.'
The agent inserted a dart and snapped the breech shut. He took careful aim and fired into the creature. The chimera didn't flinch — a fully functioning nervous system is a complicated piece of design and well beyond the capabilities of even the most gifted of amateur splicers — but it stopped trying to chew the bark off a tree and twitched several times before lying down and breathing more slowly. The Neanderthal moved closer and held the creature's grubby hand as its life ebbed away.
'Sometimes,' said the Neanderthal softly, 'sometimes, the innocent must suffer.'
'DENNIS!' came a panicked voice from the gathering crowd, which had fallen silent as the creature's breathing grew slower. 'Dennis, Daddy's worried! Where are you?'
The whole sad, sorry scene had just got a lot worse. A man in a beard and sleeveless white shirt had run into the empty circle around the rapidly dying creature and stared at us with a look of numb horror on his face.
'Dennis?'
He dropped to his knees next to his creation, which was now breathing in short gasps. The man opened his mouth and emitted such a wail of heartbroken grief that it made me feel quite odd inside. Such an outpouring cannot be feigned; it comes from the soul, one's very being.
'You didn't have to kill him,' he wailed, wrapping his arms around the dying beast, 'you didn't have to kill him . . . !'
The uniformed agent moved to pull Dennis's creator away but the Neanderthal stopped him.
'No,' he said gravely, 'leave him for a moment.'
The agent shrugged and walked to the Land Rover to fetch a bodybag.
'Every time we do this it's like killing one of our own,' said Stiggins softly. 'Where have you been, Miss Next? In prison?'
'Why does everyone think I've been in prison?'
'Because you were heading towards death or prison when we last met — and you are not dead.'
Dennis's maker was rocking backwards and forwards, bemoaning the loss of his creation.
The agent returned with a bodybag and a female colleague, who gently prised the man from the creature and told his unhearing ears his rights.