Kate Wilhelm - The Planners

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THE PLANNERS

Kate Wilhelm

Rae stopped before the one-way glass, stooped and peered at

the gibbon infant in the cage. Darin watched her bitterly. She

straightened after a moment, hands in smock pockets' face

innocent of any expression what-so-goddam-ever, and con-

tinued to saunter toward him through the aisle between the

cages.

"You still think it is cruel, and worthless?"

"Do you. Dr. Darin?"

"Why do you always do that? Answer my question with

one of your own?"

"Does it infuriate you?"

He shrugged and turned away. His lab coat was on the

chair where he had tossed it. He pulled it on over his sky-

blue sport shirt.

"How is the DriscoU boy?" Rae asked.

He stiffened, then relaxed again. Still not facing her, he

said, "Same as last week, last year. Same as he'll be until he

dies."

The hall door opened and a very large, very homely face

appeared. Stu Evers looked past Darin, down the aisle. "You

alone? I thought I heard voices."

"Talking to myself," Darin said. "The committee ready

yet?"

"Just about. Dr. Jacobsen is stalling with his nose-throat

spray routine, as usual." He hesitated a moment, glancing

again down the row of cages, then at Darin. "Wouldn't you

think a guy allergic to monkeys would find some other line

of research?"

Darin looked, but Rae was gone. What had it been this

time: the DriscoU boy, the .trend of the project itself? He

wondered if she had a life of her own when she was away.

"I'll be out at the compound," he said. He passed-Stu in the

doorway and headed toward the livid greenery of Florida

forests.

The cacophony hit him at the door. There were four hun-

dred sixty-nine monkeys on the thirty-six acres of wooded

ground the research department was using. Each monkey was

screeching, howling, singing, cursing, or otherwise making its

presence known. Darin grunted and headed toward the com-

pound. The Happiest Monkeys in the World, a newspaper

article had called them. Singing Monkeys, a subhead an-

nounced. MONKEYS GIVEN SMARTNESS PILLS, the most enter-

prising paper had proclaimed. Cruelty Charged, added another

in subdued, sorrowful tones.

The compound was three acres of carefully planned and

maintained wilderness, completely enclosed with thirty-foot-

high, smooth plastic walls. A transparent dome covered the

area. There were one-way windows at intervals along the

wall. A small group stood before one of the windows: the

committee.

Darin stopped and gazed over the interior of the compound

through one of the windows. He saw Heloise and Skitter

contentedly picking nonexistent fleas from one another. Adam

was munching on a banana; Homer was lying on his back

idly touching his feet to his nose. A couple of the chimps were

at the water fountain, not drinking, merely pressing the pedal

and watching the fountain, now and then immersing a head

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file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Kate%20Wilhelm%20-%20The%20Planners.txt

or hand in the bowl of cold water. Dr. Jacobsen appeared

and Darin joined the group.

"Good morning, Mrs. Bellbottom," Darin said politely.

"Did you know your skirt has fallen off?" He turned from

her to Major Dormouse. "Ah, Major, and how many of the

enemy have you swatted to death today with your pretty little

yellow rag?" He smiled pleasantly at a pfmply young man

with a camera. "Major, you've brought a professional peeping

torn. More stories in the paper, with pictures this time?" The

pimply young man shifted his position, fidgeted with the

camera. The major was fiery; Mrs. Bellbottom was on her

knees peering under a bush, looking for her skirt. Darin

blinked. None of them had on any clothing. He turned toward

the window. The chimps were drawing up a table, laden with

tea things, silver, china, tiny finger sandwiches. The chimps

nporo all ilfpnrincr flowp.rod shirts and dresses. Hortense had on

a ridiculous flop-brimmed sun hat of pale green straw. Darm

leaned against the fence to control his laughter.

"Soluble ribonucleic acid," Dr. Johnson was saying when

Darin recovered, "sRNA for short. So from the gross begin-

nings when entire worms were trained and fed to other

worms that seemed to benefit from the original training, we

have come to these more refined methods. We now extract

the sRNA molecule from the trained animals and feed it, the

sRNA molecules in solution, to untrained specimens and

observe the results."

The young man was snapping pictures as Jacobsen talked.

Mrs. Whoosis was making notes, her mouth a lipless line, the

sun hat tinging her skin with green. The sun on her patterned

red and yellow dress made it appear to jiggle, giving her

fleshy hips a constant rippling motion. Darin watched, fasci-

nated. She was about sixty.

". . . my colleague, who proposed this line of experimenta-

tion, Dr. Darin," Jacobsen said finally, and Darin bowed

slightly. He wondered what Jacobsen had said about him,

decided to wait for any questions before he said anything.

"Dr. Darin, is it true that you also extract this substance

from people?"

"Every time you scratch yourself, you lose this substance,"

Darin said. "Every time you lose a drop of blood, you lose it.

It is in every cell of your body. Sometimes we take a sample

of human blood for study, yes."

"And inject it into those animals?"

"Sometimes we do that," Darin said. He waited for the

next, the inevitable question, wondering how he would answer

it. Jacobsen had briefed them on what to answer, but he

couldn't remember what Jacobsen had said. The question

didn't come. Mrs. Whoosis stepped forward, staring at the

window.

Darin turned his attention to her; she averted her eyes,

quickly fixed her stare again on the chimps in the compound.

"Yes, Mrs. uh . . . Madam?" Darin prompted her. She didn't

look at him.

"Why? What is the purpose of all this?" she asked. Her

voice sounded strangled. The pimpled young man was inching

toward the next window.

"Well," Darin said, "our theory is simple. We believe that

learning ability can be improved drastically in nearly every

species. The learning curve is the normal, expected bell-

shaped curve, with a few at one end who have the ability to

learn quite rapidly, with the majority in the center vho learn

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Kate Wilhelm - The Planners

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