Altar Of Eden

Chapter 47

Lorna followed Malik back to his office. Her legs wobbled with each step, and she came close to falling on her face after first sliding off the exam table. Bennett caught her and offered her his arm. She hated to take it, but the only other choice was to be carried there.

At least moving helped clear her head.

By the time she reached the chair in front of his desk, she felt strong enough to let go of Bennett’s arm and move to the seat. The burning ache in her lower back had also dulled to a low throb. She sank to the chair as Malik took a remote and pointed it at the wall of screens.

“This is a live high-definition camera feed from the habitat we set up on the neighboring island. The animal reserve is connected to ours by a land bridge, but we’ve set up an electric fence between the two islands and maintain around-the-clock guards. The other island is a perfect test field for evaluating how this new intelligence manifests in a real-world setting.”

The center plasma monitor bloomed to life. The clarity was such that it looked more like a window into another world-and perhaps it was. The view opened into a clearing in a primeval forest. Crude, palm-thatched huts circled the edges, and in the center, a fire pit glowed with embers.

A pair of naked figures crouched near the pit. They were the size of large children, naked but covered mostly in fur. The male rose to his feet as if sensing their observation. He searched around. His nose was broad and flat, his forehead high and prominent, shadowing his eyes. His jaw protruded, looking like it had been crudely sculpted, halfway between ape and man.

Despite her weakness, Lorna rose again to her feet, fascinated despite her personal repugnance concerning the research here. She recognized the creature. Here was a living example of the body she’d seen earlier. A hominid-like version of early man. As if wary, the male helped the female to her feet. Her br**sts hung heavy. She held a hand to her belly, which bulged.

“She’s pregnant,” Lorna said, surprised.

“Due any day,” Malik agreed. “We’re lucky to catch a view of the female. She normally stays hidden and only comes out at night.”

“I named her Eve,” Bennett said with a vague note of fatherly pride in his voice.

Malik rolled his eyes a bit at the conceit of his choice of names. “She’s the first of them to conceive in the wild. We’ve normally orchestrated all breeding via artificial insemination in the lab. We’re very curious what sort of offspring she’ll give birth to.”

“How old is she?”

“The male is eight, the female seven.”

The shock must have been plain on Lorna’s face.

“The specimens mature at a very fast rate,” Malik explained.

Behind the figures, a large dark shape crept out of the shadowy forest. It kept low to the ground, padding on wide paws, tail straight back, ears laid flat. It stalked toward the unsuspecting figures. It was an ebony-furred version of the saber-toothed jaguar killed in the bayou. A juvenile, from the looks of it. Still, this youngster had to weigh over a hundred pounds, most of it muscle. Its eyes squinted toward the two targets-then in an explosion of muscle, it charged at them.

Lorna took a step back in horror.

The male suddenly swung around. The cat skidded to a stop and promptly rolled onto its back, baring its throat and wiggling happily on the ground. The female bent down, one hand supporting her lower back, and rubbed the cat’s chin. A tender smile suffused her face. Her features were a more softly sculpted version of the male’s. The cat’s tail swished in contentment.

Bennett stepped to Lorna’s side. “ ‘And so the lion shall lie down with the lamb…’ ”

Malik explained less philosophically. “They’re all bonded. The habitat was established a year ago. At first there were a few deaths, but over time, the specimens established and grew into an interconnected family of sorts, connected, we suppose, by their mental affinity, sharing at a level we cannot comprehend.”

Lorna heard the longing in his voice-not out of any desire to experience it, but more out of a desire to understand and harness it.

As she watched, another three figures entered the clearing. One carried a crude spear, the other two hauled a small pig between them.

“We stock the island with deer and pigs,” Bennett said. “To keep them fed.”

“They also have wild-growing coconut and mango trees and a freshwater spring,” Malik added. “But other than that and the makeshift shelters, we’ve left them to fend for themselves. To see how they adapt, to coexist, and use their strange intelligence to solve problems. We set up weekly challenges and tests and evaluate their performances.”

Behind the trio of hunters, a pack of a dozen dogs burst out of the forest. Lean, with bushy tails and sharp ears, they looked like miniature wolves, each the size of a cocker spaniel. The dogs swept into the clearing, but rather than moving like a tumbling, riotous pack, there was a strange coordination to their movement. They gave the clearing one full run, then swept eerily to a standstill, dropping simultaneously to their haunches, like a flock of birds settling to a perch.

Another handful of hominids appeared from the huts, drawn out by the commotion. Lorna counted.

At least ten.

“It many ways,” Bennett said, “this place truly is Eden. All God’s creatures-great and small-living in harmony.”

Malik had a less biblical take on the matter. “What we’re seeing is a demonstration of fractal intelligence, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We believe the group has developed a hivelike intelligence, where the individuals in the habitat act like one living unit. It may be why they haven’t developed the ability to speak. They each know the others’ thoughts.”

“And perhaps that’s the way the world once was,” Bennett said. “Before we were cast from Eden.”

Rather than dismiss the biblical analogies this time, Malik nodded. “Mr. Bennett might be right. Perhaps what we’re looking at is the source of the mythology of an earlier earthly paradise, the proverbial Garden of Eden. Various versions of that story persist in cultures around the world. Why is that? Perhaps it rises from some race memory of such a prior union. Just as we still carry magnetite crystals in our brain-fractured pieces of this old neural network-maybe we do somehow recall this earlier paradise.”

“And maybe it’s more than just memory,” Lorna said, finding herself inadvertently caught up in the wonder of what she was seeing.

Malik turned to her for elaboration.