“What’s preposterous?” Candace asked. “Will someone clue me in?”

“Let me show you something else,” Kevin said. He turned to his computer terminal and with a few keystrokes called up the graphic of the island. He explained the system to the women, and as a demonstration, brought up the location of Melanie’s double. The little red light blinked just north of the escarpment very close to where his own had the day before.

“You have a double?” Candace asked. She was dumbfounded.

“Kevin and I were the guinea pigs,” Melanie said. “Our doubles were the first. We had to prove that the technology really works.”

“Okay, now that you women know how the locator system operates,” Kevin said, “let me show you what I did an hour ago, and we’ll see if we get the same disturbing result.” Kevin’s fingers played over the keyboard. “What I’m doing is instructing the computer to automatically locate all seventy-three of the doubles sequentially. The creatures’ numbers will occur in the corner followed by the blinking light on the graphic. Now watch.” Kevin clicked to start.

The system worked smoothly with only a short delay between the number appearing and then the red blinking light.

“I thought there were closer to a hundred animals,” Candace said.

“There are,” Kevin said. “But twenty-two of them are less than three years old. They are in the bonobo enclosure at the animal center.”

“Okay,” Melanie said after a few minutes of watching the computer function. “It’s working just as you said. What’s so disturbing?”

“Just hold on,” Kevin said.

All at once the number 37 appeared but no blinking red light. After a few moments, a prompt flashed onto the screen. It said: animal not located: click to recommence.

Melanie looked at Kevin. “Where’s number thirty-seven?”

Kevin sighed. “What’s left is in the incinerator,” he said. “Number thirty-seven was Mr. Winchester’s double. But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” Kevin clicked and the program restarted. Then it stopped again at forty-two.

“Was that Mr. Franconi’s double?” Candace asked. “The other liver transplant?”

Kevin shook his head. He pressed several keys, asking the computer the identity of forty-two. The name Warren Prescott appeared.

“So where’s forty-two?” Melanie asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but I know what I fear,” Kevin said. Kevin clicked and again the numbers and red lights alternately flashed on the screen.

When the entire program had run its course, it had indicated that seven of the bonobo doubles were unaccounted for, not including Franconi’s, which had been sacrificed.

“Is this what you found earlier?” Melanie asked.

Kevin nodded. “But it wasn’t seven, it was twelve. And although some of the ones that were missing this morning are still missing, most of them have reappeared.”

“I don’t understand,” Melanie said. “How can that be?”

“When I toured that island way back before all this started,” Kevin said, “I remember seeing some caves in that limestone cliff. What I’m thinking is that our creations are going into the caves, maybe even living in them. It’s the only way I can think of to explain why the grid would fail to pick them up.”

Melanie brought up a hand to cover her mouth. Her eyes reflected a flicker of horror and dismay.

Candace saw Melanie’s reaction. “Hey, come on, guys,” she pleaded. “What’s wrong? What are you thinking?”

Melanie lowered her hand. Her eyes were locked on Kevin’s. “What Kevin was referring to when he said he was terrified he’d overstepped the bounds,” she explained in a slow, deliberate voice, “was the fear that he’d created a human.”

“You’re not serious!” Candace exclaimed, but a glance at Kevin and then at Melanie indicated that she was.

For a full minute no one spoke.

Finally Kevin broke the silence. “I’m not suggesting a real human being in the guise of an ape,” Kevin said finally. “I’m suggesting that I’ve inadvertently created a kind of protohuman. Maybe something akin to our distant ancestral forebears who spontaneously appeared in nature from apelike animals four or five million years ago. Maybe back then the critical mutations responsible for the change occurred in the developmental genes I’ve subsequently learned are on the short arm of chromosome six.”

Candace found herself blankly gazing out the window, while her mind replayed the scene two days previous in the OR when the bonobo was about to be inducted under anesthesia. He’d made curious humanlike sounds and tried desperately to keep his hands free so that he could continue to make the same wild gesture. He’d been constantly opening and closing his fingers and then sweeping his hands away from his body.

“You’re talking about some early hominidlike creature, something on the order of Homo erectus,” Melanie said. “It’s true we noticed the infant transgenic bonobos tended to walk upright more than their mothers. At the time we just thought it was cute.”

“Not so early a hominid as not to have used fire,” Kevin said. “Only true early man has used fire. And that’s what I’m worried I’ve been seeing on the island: campfires.”

“So, to put it bluntly,” Candace said, turning away from the window. “We’ve got a bunch of cavemen out there like back in prehistoric time.”

“Something like that,” Kevin said. As he’d expected the women were aghast. Strangely, he actually felt a little better now that he’d voiced his anxieties.

“What are we going to do?” Candace demanded. “I’m certainly not going to be involved with sacrificing any more until this is resolved one way or the other. I was having a hard enough time dealing with the situation when I thought the victim was an ape.”

“Wait a sec,” Melanie said. She spread her hands with fingers apart. Her eyes were blazing anew. “Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions here. There’s no proof of all this. Everything we’ve been talking about is circumstantial at best.”

“True, but there’s more,” Kevin said. He turned back to the computer and instructed it to display the locations of all the bonobos on the island simultaneously. Within seconds, two red splotches began pulsating. One was in the location where Melanie’s double had been. The other was north of the lake. Kevin looked up at Melanie. “What does this data suggest to you?”

“It suggests there are two groups,” she said. “Do you think it is permanent?”

“It was the same earlier,” Kevin said. “I think it is a real phenomenon. Even Bertram mentioned it. That’s not typical of bonobos. They get along in larger social groups than chimps, plus these are all relatively young animals. They should all be in one group.”

Melanie nodded. Over the previous five years she’d learned a lot about bonobo behavior.

“And there is something else more upsetting,” Kevin said. “Bertram told me one of the bonobos killed one of the pygmies on the retrieval of Winchester’s double. It wasn’t an accident. The bonobo aggressively threw a rock. That kind of aggression is more associated with human behavior than with bonobos.”

“I’d have to agree,” Melanie said. “But it’s still circumstantial. All of it.”

“Circumstantial or not,” Candace said, “I’m not going to have it on my conscience.”

“I feel the same way,” Melanie said. “I’ve spent today getting two new female bonobos started on the egg-collection protocol. I’m not going to proceed until we find out if this wild idea about these possible protohumans is valid or not.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” Kevin said. “To prove it, somebody has to go to the island. The trouble is there are only two people who can authorize a visit: Bertram Edwards or Siegfried Spallek. I already tried to talk with Bertram, and even though I brought up the issue about the smoke, he made it very clear that no one was allowed near the island accept for a pygmy who brings supplementary food.”

“Did you tell him what you are worried about?” Melanie asked.