Lucy Read online

  Then she discovered the bonobos in the Milwaukee Zoo and changed course. She entered graduate school in biological anthropology. At the time, Harry was going to central Africa once a year to perform surgery on children for Doctors Without Borders. He’d sometimes be on his feet eighteen hours a day. Jenny thought he was a god and was relieved that he didn’t take himself too seriously. He referred to the odd multinational collection of physicians as “Doctors Without Licenses.” He took Jenny to Sudan as his assistant one summer. When they were finished, he introduced her to David Meece and she made her way down to Congo to see bonobos in the wild for the first time. By then Harry and Jenny had bonded permanently. They had tried but could never quite kindle a romance, especially with both of their busy schedules. But she could always count on him. It was Harry who had wired the money to get Jenny and Lucy out of England. As they stood in the kitchen now, Jenny told herself, You were a fool not to marry him. You could have had children. But that was long ago.

  “We couldn’t really talk when I was driving you home from the airport,” Harry said. “I mean, she was right there in the car. But what on earth were you thinking, bringing her here? Have you lost your mind?”

  “I couldn’t throw her in an orphanage, Harry. I rescued her. I brought her out of the jungle. And then it was like with those girls at the shelter. I had to help.”

  Harry let his shoulders drop. “Well, you’re right, of course. You have a good heart, Jenny. Maybe too good for your own good.” He took her in his arms and rubbed her shoulder. He found a spot and scratched. “You still itch there in the mornings?”

  “Yes.” She felt like a little girl in his arms.

  “I’m just glad you’re safe. I hope you’ll stick around a while. Not planning on going back there, I hope.”

  “Take a look at her, will you? Go make yourself useful and be a doctor.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll run some tests. Make sure she doesn’t have Ebola or something lovely like that.”

  “Hey. You’re the one who took me to Africa.”

  “Not Congo. Congo is different. Dart of Harkness, it is.” And he vaulted up the stairs two at a time.

  Lucy seemed to be sleeping more peacefully. Harry rummaged in his pockets for a flashlight, then pulled back her eyelids and shined the LED into her pupils. He looked in her throat and ears, listened to her lungs and heart with his stethoscope. “Clear lungs,” he said. “Strong heart.” Then he drew two vials of blood. Lucy didn’t flinch.

  When they had returned to the kitchen Harry said, “There’s something very peculiar about that girl.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can’t say. Just a sense I get. Her eyes are strange. Her skin is different. Her hair. She smells funny, too. Has she bathed?”

  “Yes, of course.” Jenny had noticed it, too.

  “Well, I’m going to run these over to the lab.”

  “You’re a saint.”

  “I’m a doctor. Don’t fret. Her vital signs are good. She probably just has the flu.”

  Yes, Jenny thought, as she watched Harry go: It’s probably just the flu.

  5

  JENNY SLEPT ON A PAD at the foot of Lucy’s bed. She took her temperature twice in the night, and the second time it was normal. Relieved, she slept soundly after that. Now she thought she was dreaming. She heard a beautiful voice singing in Italian. She luxuriated in the sound, the sleep, and then with a start, she was awake. The lilies were in bloom, and their aroma reached her on the breeze. She sat up and saw that Lucy’s bed was empty.

  Quando men vo solettaper la via,

  La gente sosta e mira

  E la bellezza mia tutta ricerca …

  ricerca in me,

  Da capo a pie’ …

  Jenny rose and followed the voice down the hall and into her own bedroom. She went to the open window and looked out into the garden. Lucy sang sadly while picking strawberries from the bushes that grew against the fence. She wore not a stitch of clothes. With a gasp, Jenny grabbed her robe and ran downstairs. She hurried out and down the stone path, calling out in a cheerful voice, “Good morning, Lucy!”

  “Good morning.” Jenny wrapped the robe around Lucy’s shoulders. “Do I have to wear clothes even in the garden?”

  “Yes, dear, you do. Sorry. I know it’s silly. I wish it weren’t so. But we’re not in the rain forest anymore. The neighbors wouldn’t understand.”

  “Why do people live so close together?”

  “I think greed is the answer. People bought the land, divided it up, and sold it.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather live in the forest?”

  “Yes, I guess I would. But I teach at the university, and it would take too long to get there. And then my mother gave me this house. She got old and couldn’t handle it anymore. So here I am.”

  Lucy gazed at the sky. “Those are airplanes? Like the ones we were in?”

  Jenny followed her gaze and saw the tic-tac-toe of contrails from the airliners passing overhead. “Yes. Exactly.”

  “They’ve put the sky in a cage.”

  “You’re right. They have put the sky in a cage.” Jenny tied the sash on the orange robe. “I’m so happy to see you up and about. Come on, Lucy. Let’s go in and get something to eat.”

  Lucy sighed, “Oh, all right.” So like a normal teenager: Exasperated.

  They went back up the stone walkway among the prairie grasses and toward the kitchen. A few minutes later, Jenny was making oatmeal.

  “Lucy. What were you doing in that tree? Did you make that nest?”

  “Yes. I made it.”

  “Why? How?” Jenny recalled the moment when she’d first seen it. She had been reaching for an image in her mind, but the urgency of the situation had prevented her from completing the thought. What was it?

  “I slept like that sometimes. In the forest. I was afraid of the cats, and it was safer up there. I learned a lot of things like that from the bonobos.”

  The bonobos, Jenny thought. Of course. They made nests like that each night and slept in the trees. It would make sense that Lucy had learned to do the same, growing up in the jungle. With Dr. Stone’s feeding station, the bonobos were always nearby.

  “Want to eat outside?” Jenny asked.

  “That sounds delightful. I’ll take things out.”

  They sat at a wrought iron table under the maple. Lucy drenched her oatmeal in honey from a pot that Jenny’s mother had given her. It had a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh on it.

  “May I please have one of your bananas?”

  “Certainly, Lucy. I want you to feel at home. Take whatever you like.”

  Lucy went back into the kitchen and returned with a banana. She sat and bit the end off without peeling it.

  “Lucy, what are you doing?” Lucy looked up, puzzled, her mouth full. “Don’t you peel them?”

  Chewing self-consciously now, Lucy shook her head, uncertain. She swallowed. “Sorry. That’s how we all did it at home.”

  “No, it’s quite all right. I was just thinking … Maybe wash it first … Never mind.”

  But Lucy was no longer paying attention to Jenny. She was staring intently at a squirrel that was sitting on a branch, screeching. “There’s a big hawk up there.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t see it yet. But listen.”

  Jenny shrugged it off, thinking only that Lucy had learned to be especially alert in the jungle. She watched Lucy as she listened and ate with such intensity. At the shelter, Jenny had seen a few teenage girls with such an air of fierce concentration. But Lucy was so gentle and kind and innocent seeming, unlike some of the girls at the shelter, who could turn violent in a heartbeat.

  Jenny heard the squirrel crying, “Caw! Caw! Caw!” And as she watched, Lucy turned her gaze on Jenny. Those eyes. It wasn’t quite like the feeling she had when Harry looked at her, into her, but it was equally powerful.

  “What?”

  “I hope we don’t have to go to any stores today.”


  She said it with such earnestness that Jenny turned away, her lips pursed over a smile. “No. No, we don’t. We’ll just take it easy today. But I have some work to do, so you’ll have to entertain yourself.”

  “I saw that vampire series, Twilight, on the shelf in your living room. May I please read those? Papa said that was trash. He always wanted me to read intellectual things. But I want to read trash, too.”

  “Of course. You should consider this your home until we find your family.” And Lucy gave Jenny that pained look again. As Jenny was trying to read into it, the phone rang.

  “Listen, doll,” Harry began, “the girl is clear of any infections that we could find with lab tests.”

  “Yeah, she seems a hundred percent this morning. Thanks for being such a champ and getting that done. I owe you one.”

  “You’ll have to let me think about how to collect on that.”

  “You do that.”

  “Gotta run. Illness beckons.”

  “Goodbye, Harry.” Jenny turned to Lucy. “Harry says you’re okay.”

  “I feel better. A little tired.”

  “So I’m going to clean up these dishes and then do some paperwork.”

  “I’ll clean up. You can go work.”

  “That would be great. Just ask if there’s anything you want. I’ll be in my study.”

  Jenny had turned a sunroom into an office. She loved the bright light, the lush green of the garden, bursting now with pink and yellow hollyhocks. She had planted local vegetation and let it grow naturally after her mother had moved to an apartment. Great heavy tree limbs plunged down to the earth, and a flowering hedge towered ten feet tall. A high cedar fence to the east added privacy. Her mother had been horrified at what Jenny had done with the garden.

  “You’ve turned my nice backyard into your own private jungle,” she had said more than once. “Don’t you get enough of that in Africa? Well, it’s your house now.”

  Jenny smiled, musing about her mother and turned to her desk. She found her backpack where she’d dropped it by the window that first day. Even after they were safely home, Jenny had felt shaky from the experience. She had been through two wars in Congo, the first in 1996, then again in 1998. She had missed several years of research because the Hutus and Tutsis were busy killing what would eventually amount to five million people. But most of the fighting was to the north and west of where Jenny worked. It wasn’t until the last outbreak that she’d actually come under fire.

  She lifted her bag and sat at her desk. Her father’s big antique Shelbyville. She’d always thought of the desk as a part of her father. He had died when she was ten, and afterward, she would sit in his chair with her head on his desk and smell the oiled wood. She still used the same oil.

  She opened her pack with a heavy heart. She knew that in all likelihood she wouldn’t be going back to Congo again, and she already missed the rolling green hills, so green that the color seemed impossible beneath an exploding cobalt sky with clouds scudding along like great white schooners.

  The first thing she saw when she opened her pack was the photograph that she’d salvaged from Stone’s hut. Even in her panic, she had thought that the girl might want the photograph. It showed Stone down on one knee with his arm around Lucy, who was about ten years old. They were both smiling. He had a rugged face, craggy but kind. He had bright eyes, a nice smile, a mischievous look. Lucy’s great mane of curly hair engulfed her small face. But she had the same intense smile that Jenny had come to know. She set the frame on the desk.

  She pulled her chair closer to the desk and felt her foot touch something. She looked down. When she saw Stone’s backpack, she had a thought and bent to unfasten the top. The pack contained the notebooks she’d collected. She had no idea what he’d been doing all those years while he was studying bonobos. He hadn’t published in twenty-five years. He didn’t even have a university affiliation any longer. He was quirky and shy, polite to a fault, yet difficult to get to know. The last of his family had left him money, and Stone had given up writing grant proposals. Maybe his notes would hold some clue that could lead them to a relative of Lucy’s mother.

  They were small orange sketchbooks, about four by six inches, numbered and dated. She removed a few from the backpack. They smelled of the naphthalene that he’d used to prevent them from rotting in the jungle. She flipped through a couple of them. The text was densely lettered in pencil in a small but neat hand. She laid them out on the big wooden desk and arranged them in chronological order. Then she went to refill her coffee cup.

  Jenny tiptoed through the kitchen, noticing that Lucy had done a good job of cleaning up. She went to the front hall and peeked into the living room. Lucy was lying on her stomach on the floor in a shaft of sunlight, still wearing the orange robe. Her bare feet were in the air and she was twiddling her toes as she read one of the popular books about vampires. She glanced up and smiled at Jenny, then went back to her reading. Jenny thought, She’s perfect in every way. Nothing strange about her at all. And she does chores. Jenny knew already that she would miss Lucy when she returned to England.

  She went back to her study and sat in her favorite chair in a sunny corner. She opened the first notebook, begun more than a quarter century before, and read, “I will not attempt here to give a reason for undertaking this project. That is more of a philosophical task and one more appropriate to another time and place, if not perhaps another author. For now I will only recount what I do and how well or badly it goes. In any event, if all goes well, my children will speak for me, as I will instruct them in who they are and why they are here.”

  She paused, curious about the tone and vagueness of Stone’s notes. What did he mean, “this project”? What project? This certainly didn’t seem like the conventional field notes of a scientist. But she recognized in it the polite and cordial tone he’d always adopted when speaking with her on the radio: Yes, I must have you over for tea very soon …

  She read on: “Having thoroughly investigated interspecific hybrids, I have no doubt that what I plan to undertake is physiologically possible even without the extraordinary preparations I have made. There is now convincing evidence that even after chimpanzees and humans diverged from each other genetically some six million years ago, they continued to breed and produce hybrids (see Prager and Wilson, 1975). With modern biogenetic techniques, there seemed no theoretical barrier to returning to a condition in which interspecific breeding would be possible.”

  She felt a morbid thrill at the thought: I hope he’s not talking about what it sounds like he’s talking about. She turned back to the notebook, alert and slightly alarmed as well.

  “Indeed,” Stone wrote, “the genetic structures of human and bonobo are more alike than those of horse and donkey, which can breed to produce a mule. And healthy hybrid individuals have been born through a cross between bonobos and chimpanzees as well. The many similarities are well detailed elsewhere. The key, in my view, was to first create a hybrid karyotype by inserting fragments of human chromosome material into the genome of the bonobo. This would ensure, for example, that the CMP-sialic acid hydroxy-lase gene was deactivated and that the retrotransposon subfamilies of LINE-1 nuclear elements known as L1Hs were present. It would also overcome any potential incompatibility between mother and fetus due to antigenic sugars on the surface of the cells.

  “Therefore, employing conventional gene-splicing techniques, I managed to produce a live female bonobo, Leda, whose genetic profile was even closer to that of a human being than naturally born bonobos.”

  Jenny felt a chill run over her. “No,” she said aloud. She must be misunderstanding what he was talking about. She read on, her heart racing with excitement.

  “Leda is in every way morphologically indistinguishable from an ordinary bonobo, including her body hair, genitals, lack of speech, dark-hued sclera, and so on. And yet I have brought her just slightly closer to the human genotype so that, in my view, she should be more likely to produce a ‘virtual
ly human’ child, that is, one who looks and thinks and talks like a human but who has certain of the advantageous features conferred by the bonobo genome.”

  “Oh, man, this is nuts,” Jenny heard herself say. She felt the hair stand up on her arms and neck as she wondered, Could this be a hoax? A scientist who’d fallen into obscurity, out to grab the spotlight for himself? Was he planning to publish this and create a sensation? Of course. That must be it. Or was this perhaps the ranting of some heart-of-darkness lunatic who’d gone mad out there in the bush? Jenny knew that anything was possible in Congo. But Stone certainly hadn’t looked or acted mad when she’d met him.

  Then again, others who were presumably not insane had actually attempted it. Jenny vaguely knew the details from a class about AIDS that she’d taken as a graduate student. A biologist named Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was sent by the Russian Academy of Sciences to Africa in 1926. The purpose of his trip was to inseminate female chimpanzees with human sperm. The effort had been supported by the Institut Pasteur in Paris, which kept captive chimpanzees at Kindia in what was then French Guinea. Ivanov, who pioneered the techniques of artificial insemination, had already done extensive work creating hybrid animals when he introduced the idea of a human hybrid at the International Zoology Congress that was being held at Graz in 1910. In fact, Ivanov ultimately did inseminate three chimpanzees, but none of them became pregnant. It was an ugly time, in which local hunters killed chimpanzee parents and brought the children to the scientists at Kindia. The researchers were unaware that it took chimpanzees eight or ten years to reach puberty. Once Ivanov had realized his mistake and obtained mature females, the brutal procedures he used to inseminate them were likened to rape by later researchers. His failure to impregnate any of the female chimpanzees led him to ask for permission to inseminate human women with chimpanzee sperm in a hospital in Congo—without informing them of what was being done. Although there’s no evidence in the literature that the women were actually inseminated with sperm from an ape, the AIDS pandemic was genetically traced to west equatorial Africa and first appeared in humans around 1931. Before that, the HIV virus was found exclusively in apes. The grad school professor who taught the course that Jenny took believed there was a connection.