Zhelikov made this the first of his changes. All the workers became free workers, although still unable to leave; and he had inquiries made by the security service to attract other specialists, people whose particular situations made them suitable for a life that, while cloistered, offered the highest scientific freedom together with unparalleled living conditions.
The living conditions he set about making.
And he had his chimpanzees flown in from the Caucasus.
In this period Stalin died (of a heart attack, March 1953) and Minister Beria was shot. Their successors had no interest in hibernation but a large amount in Zhelikov’s other developments; and these by now had cost several billions.
The original installation he had had shifted back into position, although now underground. In this he had no interest, but he had its laboratories attached to his own on Level Three. On Level Four he had installed the living quarters — the studio apartments, library, gymnasium, tennis courts, swimming pool and gardens — with special solar lamps, to his own design, roofed in the ‘outdoor areas’ and controlled to give night and day inside the mountain. He also made the first hybrid apes.
‘Is this real?’ Porter said.
‘Of course.’ Rogachev watched him pouring a drink and nodding up at a Rembrandt. They were back in the library.
‘I choose the pictures from old state catalogues. If they’re available I get them on loan for a few months. We get anything we want — films, music, books, papers. The staff join me here for social evenings occasionally. Or I look into their club. They have their own library, of course; this one is Zhelikov’s, built up over his twenty-five years here.’
‘Well, he doesn’t seem to have wasted his time.’
‘He didn’t waste it anywhere. A truly great man, as history will one day acknowledge. His fellow jailbird, Korolyov you know, they acknowledged only at his state funeral. Then the world knew who had made the satellites. The man himself was kept secret before. His. space station they kept secret even for years after his death. But he began the exploration of space. That’s one of the things that came out of the Soviet Union.’
‘Zhelikov’s ape being the other?’
Rogachev smiled.
‘No, no. What I have found is the other. Zhelikov was certainly the better scientist. But my discovery came by chance — as the momentous things do. Of course it couldn’t have come without his work, which was in every way remarkable. Yes, he made apes. But he also made problems.’
Zhelikov’s apes, by the early 1960s, were far ahead of anything in the world. This he knew for certain, for he was receiving all research papers, and he also knew the reason for it.
Although still in its infancy, genetic manipulation was causing concern abroad. The scientists engaged in it were finding difficulty in raising funds, were uncertain where the work would lead, and were worried at possible damage to their future careers.
Zhelikov was unconcerned about his future career, had no budget worries, and knew exactly where his work would lead. It would lead to a hardy animal that could live in Siberia and perform intelligent tasks. He had no ethical doubts at all.
He had a further advantage. The foreign workers, almost to a man, had no special training in physiology. In his own extraordinary life he had trained with the greatest physiologist of his age. Pavlov was noted not only for the ‘Pavlovian reflexes’ of dogs but for his brilliant studies on all mammalian structure.
At Tcherny Vodi Zhelikov had dozens of his unpublished papers, on which they had worked together, with careful sketches of embryonic development. Pavlov had urged him always to study the embryo for an understanding of limbs, organs and other structures, and had passed on his own exceedingly dexterous methods of doing so.
By the mid-1960s Zhelikov had not only a hardy chimpanzee but one that walked upright; that could drive home a nail with a hammer, select and use a nut for a bolt, dress itself in warm clothing, go and find a chosen package in a cold conditioning chamber, and return to unpack and then correctly repack the package.
He bred from the animals, and encountered his problem.
Although his apes reproduced they did so divergently. The intelligent ones proved to be not hardy; the hardy ones not intelligent. This problem occupied him into the next decade, and his advances — all in intelligence — became increasingly self-defeating. An intelligent ape was of use in the Arctic only if it was hardy; there was no present need for one elsewhere. The problem was to combine intelligence with hardiness, and reliably reproduce it, generation after generation.
He began a fundamental review of hardiness: of cell behaviour at low temperature — and also, again, of hibernation, as an aspect of it. He examined a hibernating bear, and the foetus of a bear. He examined what was known of mammoths, close relatives of elephants, adapted to ice ages. A whole mammoth was not obtainable but he obtained the best-preserved museum specimen, and found it useless. Without the required soft tissue it was not possible to learn anything from a skeleton. (Not at that time. Only a few years and it would be possible; although not for him.)
For him some more dramatic events intervened. In 1976 he developed a virulent cancer, and some months later urgently asked to see his chosen successor — a specialist in low-temperature work. (He had been following my career, had heard of my misfortune.) And in the week that I was due, in February 1977, he heard something else. A fresh mammoth had been discovered. A very fresh one, entombed in ice: quick frozen.
‘He never saw the result, of course — what you have seen. But now —’ Rogachev was looking at his watch, ‘it’s almost three in the morning. Stepanka still has to get you back.’
‘You said you had two things to show me.’
‘Yes. The other is … not quite ready. Tonight you had the pre-history, in both senses … What the satellite saw was mainly Zhelikov’s work — a few modifications by me. The steam age! What I have done, you will see for yourself. The subject will demonstrate it to you.’
Porter looked at him.
‘The subject is an ape?’ he said.
‘You’ll tell me. I’m not sure that I know. You will chat together. Perhaps I’ve made a soul — sacrilege, you see … But it’s not all I’ve done. Soon enough you’ll understand.’ He was smiling. ‘Anyway, you’ll have to come down again. And I have thought how this is to be managed.’
He explained how it was to be managed.
‘Now I’ll get Stepanka. Remember, you have not met me.’
His chair whined out of the room, and presently Porter heard the sound of a key turning. Then silence for several minutes, and a shuffling sound and Stepanka came in, very rumpled. He had a big watch in his hand.
‘By God! Almost three o’clock.’ He was dazed. ‘You were with him half the night. You’ve got the letter?’
‘No.’ Kolya was very serious. ‘He’s rewriting the letter. He says I have to come again.’
‘What!’
‘Stepanka — this man isn’t normal! He wanted every detail, all the years between. Every kind of thing that happened to the girl. Then he would break down and question me again. He doesn’t seem able to accept it — which doctors, which tests, have we done this, that.’ He shook his head. ‘He says he will bring me a ring — the mother’s wedding ring. I am to take it back, it’s to go to the grave. Tell me, is he mad?’