They heard a splashing from the stall. Colding looked back to see fluid spurting out of the cow’s vagina, a three-second downpour cascading off the floor. The cow’s water had just broke.
Jian shouted something in Chinese, her voice an uneven tremor that rang with easily understood fear. She tangled both hands in her hair and yanked. Clenched fingers came away thick with long black strands.
Colding grabbed her shoulders, turning her toward him. “Jian, stop it!”
She stared at him, eyes wide with primal fear. She seemed terrified of him, as if she thought he was someone else. Or something else. She pulled another double handful of hair from her head, then shoved Colding hard in the chest. The move caught him by surprise. He tried to regain his balance, but his foot caught on Rhumkorrf’s stool, knocking it over and sending both men to the rubberized deck. Jian ran, disappearing down the open rear ramp, heavy feet pounding out a reverberating rhythm.
Rhumkorrf was up first, surprisingly nimble. He helped Colding to his feet. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Doc, do not try and tell me what I just saw was normal.”
“It was probably just a reflexive acti—”
“Oh fuck you!” Tim said. “Try studying your biology 101, Doctor Rhumkorrf.”
Colding left them both behind, sprinting past docile cows sitting quietly in their plexiglass stalls. He ran down the rear exit ramp.
“Jian, wait!”
She kept moving, kept heading for the hangar door, fat shaking in time with her panicked waddle. Colding caught her just before she grabbed the door handle. She turned and tried to push him again, but he caught her wrists. She struggled for a moment, but he held her tightly. Her wide eyes stared at him without recognition.
“Take it easy,” Colding said. “Jian, just take it easy.”
She blinked rapidly, then clarity seemed to return to her vision. She fell forward into his arms. The sudden move and her weight knocked him back a step, but he held her up. She wrapped her arms around him, head buried in his chest, her body shivering.
NOVEMBER 16: AUTOPSY
Implantation +7 Days
RHUMKORRF SIGHED AS he looked down at the fetal ancestor curled up on the dissection tray. The fetus had torn the amniotic sac in order to get at the tiny camera, spilling the life-supporting fluid contained inside. It had died shortly afterward.
They would avoid fiber-optic work now, stick to the 3-D ultrasound for fear of a repeat performance. Additional ultrasounds on the herd had shown that each cow had only one fetus. All second and third fetuses were gone.
Looking at the cat-sized corpse on the autopsy tray in front of him, he had trouble grasping that it wasn’t even a week old. Mammalian development didn’t happen like that. The word impossible flashed through his mind every few seconds, yet the facts lay on the tray before him.
His gloved hands set the little corpse on a scale. Twenty-one pounds. In just six days. But why should he be surprised? From the earliest planning stages they’d sought rapid growth. That was how he’d found Jian in the first place.
He’d read her published research and realized she could theoretically create an artificial genome, then experiment digitally until they could alter normal growth rates. It was on reading Jian’s second or third paper, he wasn’t sure which, that the whole ancestor project came to him in a flash of brilliance. His work on the quagga cloning project, breakthroughs in computing power, advances in oligo machines—the parts clicked, and he knew his destiny. The pieces existed, the required technology just a bit beyond what was already available off the shelf. All it really took, of course, was enough money.
Venter had funded the quagga cloning, but the man wouldn’t touch the ancestor project. He had even called the idea ludicrous. So Claus had secured a meeting with Danté Paglione, CEO of Genada, Inc.
Danté jumped on the project. He saw the real possibility of Claus’s vision. Danté obtained Jian, and the project was born. Erika Hoel’s leading-edge expertise in large-mammal cloning was the perfect parallel to Jian’s theoretical work, so Danté hired her as well. And now, after several abandoned lines of experimentation, after five long years, Claus’s vision was a reality.
Tim Feely came up the ladder to the second deck. He looked sweaty, harried. His nose looked a little red. “What did you find, bro?”
Such a loser. Oh, how Claus longed to have Erika back. Just to see her face again…
“I’m still working on it, Mister Feely. And stop calling me bro.”
Tim poked the dead fetus, then quickly pulled his finger back. “Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here.”
“You have such an eloquent way with words.”
“Funny,” Tim said, “your mom told me the same thing.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t reference my mother.”
“And I prefer box seats at a Pistons game followed by a Texas reach-around, but I’m not going to get either.”
Claus paused, thought of asking what a Texas reach-around was, then shook his head and let it go.
“Goddamn spooky,” Tim said. “The physiology looks so familiar, almost first-trimester human if you factor in the large size.”
Tim was right. It did look a little like a human fetus. Claus cut out the heart. It was already well developed and looked very human. So much, in fact, the two might be indistinguishable. Transplanting it into a human would prove exceedingly easy.
The ancestor’s limbs were already forming into their final shape. Somewhat disturbing were the tiny, needlelike claws at the end of each finger. Claws, like a cat’s, not hooves, like a cow’s. Had Jian coded for that? Maybe it was part of her broad integument swap. As long as the organs were right, the feet didn’t really matter.
The size of the head and braincase also surprised Claus. Obviously, Jian had used a great deal of genetic information from higher mammals. But it was far too early to tell if the current body proportions would remain through birth and into adulthood.
“Hey, bro,” Tim said. “You wanna hear something really scary?”
Claus sighed. “Just say it, Doctor Feely.”
“I did some calculations. I’m estimating the fetuses have a fifty percent food conversion rate.”
Claus stopped and looked at the younger man. “Fifty percent?”
Tim nodded. “Based on the amount of food the mothers have ingested, minus their baseline metabolic rate and factoring in the fetal weight.”
Claus looked at his subject in a new light. Fifty percent of everything the ancestor took in was converted to muscle or bone or other tissues. Vastly higher than any other mammal.
“That’s significant, but not the scary part,” Tim said. “What makes my nut sack shrivel up and head for higher ground is Jian’s weight projections. According to her tables, a six-day-old fetus should weigh five pounds, not twenty.”
Claus looked up. He’d known the numbers but hadn’t stopped to realize that the fetus on the table was more than four times the size Jian had coded for. Shorting her meds had produced the needed breakthrough, but Claus found himself wondering what details she might have missed in her creative state. What things might she have failed to document?