The spider scrambled out of the way as the plastic bottle hit the floor and spun, spraying the area.
“Zou kai!” Jian screamed. “Zou kai!”
The spider was gone. Must have slipped into a crack or something, even though she couldn’t see a crack. Damn spiders.
The numbers. She had to fix the numbers, fix the numbers so the ancestors would come out right.
But… ancestors… for people parts?
That was it! How could they expect to produce an animal with transplantable organs? Out of a cow? She could fix it, she could fix it all, make the whole project work. They just needed a different kind of host.
She put on gloves, then opened the liquid nitrogen container. She carefully pulled out sample trays and set them aside until she found the one she wanted. The one nobody else knew about. She put the other trays back inside, then carried her special sample to the elevator and descended to the empty lower deck.
Some of the cows were asleep. The ones that were awake watched her. Sir Moos-A-Lot had an orange rat on his head. It didn’t seem to notice that the rat was gnawing on a black-and-white ear, red blood spilling down the cow’s big flat cheek. The cow just stared at her, oblivious.
Stupid cow.
Jian quietly walked down the center aisle, trying to ignore several sets of cow eyes that followed her motion. She opened the storage cabinets in Mister Feely’s area. There, a sterile envelope that had what she needed: a catheter that looked like a thin turkey baster.
Jian grabbed the catheter package. She placed it and the sample tray on the lab table.
Embryo transfer in most in vitro procedures was done by a doctor, and guided by ultrasound. Ultrasound would take an extra set of hands. Jian did not have an extra set of hands. Too bad the orange spiders couldn’t help. They had lots of hands.
She’d be on her back, but doing it herself would only take about five minutes.
And besides… they were her eggs. She could do whatever she wanted with them.
NOVEMBER 25: A VALID CONCERN
Implantation +16 Days
CLAUS RHUMKORRF SAT at the ultrasound station, waiting for Tim to finish running the transducer across Molly McButter’s belly. Claus had taken a liking to Molly, but that was simply because the cow showed above-average intelligence. And he liked the way she nuzzled against his chest when he scratched her ear (but only, of course, when no one else in the lab was looking).
Jian, thank God, was looking better already. She’d even combed her hair. Two more days, three at the most, she’d be back to her normal, far-less-creative self. That was okay, though, because they were in the homestretch. No question anymore—the ancestors would live to term, and all data indicated they would walk on their own.
That asshole Colding, manhandling him like that. How dare he. And yet Colding had been right. At least somewhat. If Jian killed herself, that didn’t help the project. With the most significant problem behind them, Claus could afford to be gracious and correct her meds. She still threw darting glances into the corners, but he estimated that behavior would vanish by the end of the day.
The progress bar filled up. A gold-hued picture flared to life. “Heilige scheisse,” he said, the words out of his mouth before he knew it.
Baby McButter had come a long way from its start as a microscopic ball of undifferentiated cells. If Claus hadn’t known better, he would have estimated the creature up on the screen to be four or five months along, not two weeks.
Jian stared at the picture. She shook her head as if to clear it, then stared at it again. “There has to be a mistake,” she said. “That fetus is at least a hundred pounds.”
“More,” Tim said as he came out of Molly McButter’s stall. “Try one-thirty.”
“No,” Jian said. “Program say ancestors should be no more than forty pounds right now.”
“Your program versus a scale?” Tim said. “I think the scale wins, Froot Loops.”
“Stop with the names,” Claus said, feeling odd about his instant defense of Jian.
“I don’t care about Jian’s bullshit program,” Tim said. “Look at the damn readouts. Well over a hundred pounds in two weeks? Nothing grows that fast. Not an elephant, not nothing.”
Claus marveled at the life he’d created. The back legs looked much thicker than he’d theorized. The front legs looked strong as well, but were skinnier and longer than the back. That would suggest a creature that moved at somewhat of an angle, like a gorilla on all fours, as opposed to horizontally, like a running dog or a tiger.
The skeletal structure also showed remarkable growth. The ribs looked very thick and extended from the head all the way down to the hips, growing against one another almost like a kind of internal armor.
“Doc,” Tim said. “What are we going to do?”
“We observe and document,” Claus said. “We prepare for a C-section in a week. Maybe less.”
“That’s not what I mean, dude. Based on the growth patterns thus far, in another week these bitches could hit three hundred pounds.”
Rhumkorrf nodded. “True, and adult weight could reach four hundred, maybe five hundred pounds. You’re right, the organs might be too large. We’ll adjust the genome for the second generation, but right away we can use livers, maybe even kidneys.”
Tim’s face wrinkled up as if he were looking at a very, very stupid person.
“What?” Claus said. “Now what is your problem?”
“I’m not talking about transplants and organs, you fucking nerd.” Tim looked at Jian. “You know what I’m talking about, Fruity Pebbles?”
“Mister Feely,” Claus said, “I’m not going to tell you ag—”
“Predators,” Jian said. “Teeth. Claws. Maybe three hundred pounds at birth, possibly twice that size within days. Where will we put them? What will we feed them?”
Claus looked at her blankly, then turned to stare at the workstation’s gold-tinted screen. He used the trackball to turn the fetal image, looking at it from every possible angle. Teeth. Claws. Muscle. Aggression. Attacking the camera, killing while still inside the womb.
“Perhaps,” he said quietly, “that is a valid concern.”
NOVEMBER 26: CHECKMATE
Implantation +17 Days
COLDING STARED AT the chessboard and contemplated his next move. He couldn’t screw it up, because he was winning—he was actually beating Jian. No one in the project had ever beaten her. Okay, maybe her brain was still a bit addled from the med shorting, but Colding would take a victory over her any way he could get it.
He had avoided Sara as much as possible in the last two days. After, of course, he’d gone to her room and broken the cameras there. He didn’t quite know how to tell her that Andy “The Asshole” Crosthwaite had a video of her, naked, making love.
He explained his distance by telling Sara that he had to focus on Jian, that he’d been slacking off more than a little on that part of his job. Sara understood. And he wasn’t lying, because he did focus on Jian, monitoring her progress, making sure Rhumkorrf gave the proper dosage. That and playing a lot of chess.
Colding moved his queen’s knight and smiled. “Check.”
Jian stared blankly out the lounge’s picture window. She seemed to have forgotten Colding was even there at all. She looked much better, though—clearly, the proper dosage was working.