Half Brother (28 page)

I watched, unable to turn away, Zan’s hand clenching mine so hard it was painful. Igor and Sheba, I noticed, had taken off through the tunnel.

“Down!” Helson shouted again at Zeus.

Zeus spat at him.

Helson pulled the trigger. By now I could see it wasn’t a real shotgun but a pellet gun. The shot hit Zeus mid-chest and barely fazed him, though a little blood matted his fur. He displayed again. Helson shot again. Then a third and fourth time, until at last Zeus staggered back, weary and wounded. To my surprise Helson opened the cage and walked in. Zeus fell down on all fours before him.

“Down, Zeus!” Helson shouted.

Zeus bowed his head and extended his arm, wrist limp in submission.

“Good,” said Helson. Over his shoulder he shouted, “Get me the dart gun. We’ll need to sedate him to dig out the shot.”

The chimp house was rank with fury and fear. It was unlike anything I’d ever smelled: the sweat and pheromones of a dozen terrified animals and humans, all mixed up. I turned to the wall and threw up my breakfast.

Later that day we took Zan out to the east paddock again—just me and Peter and Mom and Dad. Zan played in the low branches of the trees, tried to catch the fish in the pond. He seemed happy. Maybe he thought this was just a new home for all of us. He wasn’t crazy about the cage part, or the other chimps (or
black dogs),
but he liked being outside.

“We can’t leave Zan here,” I said. My insides felt empty of anything but anger. “The other chimps are awful. They’ll kill Zan.”

“The paperwork’s been done, Ben,” Dad said. “Siegal University owns Zan now.”

“You’ve seen some pretty harsh stuff,” Peter said. “It’s been hard on me too. I mean, before Project Zan, I knew nothing about chimps. And Zan taught me about
baby
chimps. The bigger ones are different, I know.”

“I hate them all,” I said. “Zan has nothing in common with them.”

“He will, though,” said Mom.

It surprised me, coming from Mom. It was the sort of thing I thought Dad would say. But Mom’s face was kind when she said it.

“He’ll learn he’s one of them, and they’ll accept him.”

Peter said to me, “The other chimps, they really are okay. The second day I got here, one of them died. It was Petra. She was kind of the matriarch. She’d been around the longest, and she’d been sick for a few months, and when she died they let her lie in her cage for a while. It was Mrs. Helson’s idea. She thought it was good for the others to be able to see her dead, and say goodbye. Well, it was Jack’s idea too. He wanted to see what they’d do to a dead body.”

“Probably hoping they’d eat it,” I muttered.

Mom was listening closely. This was the kind of thing she’d been interested in all along.

“What happened?” she asked Peter.

“It was amazing,” he said. “Some of the other chimps wouldn’t go in at all, but almost all the females did. And they tried to wake her, lifting her arms and stuff. Some of the younger ones filled their mouths with water and tried to put it in hers. Then after a while they just sat around her and groomed her, and they were crying. They were making their sad faces and pant-hoots and stroking her fur.”

“Grieving,” said Mom.

“Absolutely,” said Peter. “They care about each other. It’s hard for some of them, because they came from all sorts of different places and families, so it’s difficult for them to feel loyalty. But when they do, it’s phenomenal to see.” He looked at me. “So don’t write them off as monsters yet.”

“Yeah, all right,” I murmured.

“What about Helson?” Mom asked, looking at Dad and then Peter.

“He’s a bit weird. He doesn’t take no for an answer. He’s
strict, but he knows how to take care of the chimps.” “It’s better than medical research,” Dad said. “Way better,” Peter agreed.

I looked at Zan, swinging from a low branch and hooting for me to join him. He still liked to keep us close. “I don’t think he’s safe here.”

“I’ll take care of him,” Peter said.

“Jack said we can come back in the summer and visit, and see how he’s doing,” Mom told me.

“Really?” I looked at Dad. He didn’t say anything.

“As soon as school gets out,” Mom said, “we’ll come back. That’s just two months.”

I nodded, feeling a little better.

The next day Helson agreed to introduce Zan to Rachel. She was eight years old, large and squat and one of the quietest chimps in the colony. Peter said she was sort of like Zan because she’d grown up with a human family for ten months—one of Helson’s cross-fostering experiments. Language had no part in it. He just wanted to see what it did to the chimps—and the people, especially the woman, who wasn’t sure she wanted to have children of her own.

After the humans were finished with Rachel, they’d returned her to Helson, and she had a hard time fitting back into the colony. She was okay with a few of the chimps, but was mostly a loner.

We got her in the cage next to Zan and opened the tunnel.

Just like the first time, the two chimps ignored each other in their separate cages for a good long time. But then, to my surprise, it was Zan who walked through the tunnel to Rachel.

He sat down a few feet away, and every so often shuffled a little closer.

Rachel avoided even looking at him. But when she finally did, Zan signed to her.
Come hug.

Rachel sat still. I swallowed, remembering what Sheba had done to Zan.

Come hug tickle,
Zan signed, very slowly and clearly. No reaction from Rachel.

Slowly, his head bent low, Zan walked on all fours to Rachel and touched her hand. She let him. Before long she was touching his fingers, grooming them.

Zan crawled up into her lap.

I held my breath.

Rachel put one arm around Zan, and they stayed like that for the rest of the afternoon.

On our last day we saw Zan in the afternoon. He’d spent the night in Rachel’s cage and there hadn’t been any problems. Peter was really happy about that.

“We’ll leave them together for a few more days, and then introduce an adult when we think it’s safe.”

“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t really taking much in, because I knew in less than an hour we’d be leaving for the airport.

“He’s a survivor,” Peter told me. “He’ll be fine. I promise you.”

I truly believed Peter would do everything he could to take care of Zan. But it seemed pretty obvious that Helson was running things. Could Peter ever go against his wishes?

“You’ve got the suitcase, right?” I said.

Peter nodded. It was in his apartment. Helson wouldn’t allow the blankets and toys in Zan’s cage any more, but Peter said he’d try to let Zan play with them when they were outside, just the two of them.

We took Zan for one last walk to the field. We thought it would be easier. This way we wouldn’t have to say goodbye to him in a cage. Zan and I played around in the low branches and looked at the fish, and pretty soon it was time to go. Peter made sure to have a treat ready for Zan so we could slip away one by one. He’d brought ginger ale and cake.

Dad shook Peter’s hand. “Thanks, Peter, for all your help on this. I’m sure it won’t be long before I’ll be addressing you as Doctor.”

Peter chuckled. “Thank you, but that’s a ways off yet.” I’m not sure Zan even noticed Dad leaving the paddock. Mom had a good tickle with him, and then she too slipped away.

“This isn’t gonna be easy, man,” Peter said to me. “I know.”

“Remember, you’re coming back in eight weeks.” “Can I call you? So I know how he’s doing?” “Absolutely. Your dad and mom have my phone number. Any time, honest, just call me.”

His eyes looked moist, and I knew that if I saw him cry I’d start bawling, and then getting away from Zan would be hopeless. I looked at Zan, eating happily. I didn’t want to trick him into running off somewhere, like that time in the cage.

I went over and we had a good hug and tickle, but I didn’t say goodbye.

Then Peter got him interested in some horses Helson kept in the neighbouring field.

I walked fast for the gate. I felt like a great rip had opened up inside me, from belly to breastbone. I hadn’t known such pain was possible.

I didn’t talk to my dad all the way to the airport or on the plane home.

I wasn’t going to talk to him for the rest of my life. He’d just left my little brother in a cage.

I
n Zan’s bedroom: his bed, perfectly made, the drawers still stacked with little shorts and sleeveless shirts. In the kitchen: the fridge, emptied of yogourt and milk and ginger ale and vegetables and meat; the cupboards empty, no need to keep them locked now. In his playroom: the red table and chairs. Lined up on shelves were his toys, but not the favourite ones he’d circle around himself every night—they were in the suitcase, in Nevada, in Peter’s apartment, while Zan slept in his cage.

It was bizarre going back to school after that week in Nevada. It was like being a tourist in another country. It had nothing to do with me. All these kids walking around and sitting at desks and listening to teachers talk about stuff that wasn’t the least bit important. I wondered why anyone bothered to show up at all.

I wrote another English assignment using only Zan’s sixty-six words, just to piss Dad off. Mr. Stotsky actually gave me an A– and said I’d achieved something quite poetic. I didn’t give a damn. I muttered. I stared. I skulked.

Weirder still: I was popular again.

Even though Dad had refused to talk to reporters, the local paper had put together a story about how Zan had been shipped off to some university in the States. They printed a really cute picture of him sitting on my lap asking for a drink. So most kids at school knew he wasn’t living with us any more.

First day back, David Godwin came up to me and slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Sorry, Ben, about Zan. I think the whole thing stinks. It wasn’t my dad, you know. He wanted to keep it going, but your father seemed pretty determined to shut it down.”

The girls were the nicest. Girls I didn’t even
know,
in all grades, kept coming up to me and telling me how sorry they were that Zan was gone.

How could they do that?

He was like a kid brother to you!

Why couldn’t he stay?

It’s so unfair!

Some said they really missed him. Even though they’d never
met
him, they felt like they
knew
him, just reading about him and seeing his pictures. Knowing he was gone made them so, so sad. A couple of girls even started crying and threw their arms around me.

I’d just mumble and shrug and sigh.

It wasn’t like I was putting on an act.

But I’d given them a drama that was impossible to resist.

It almost made me laugh. I was a dominant male again. Finally I’d become the mysterious, stoic man with the wounded past.

Even Jennifer gave me sympathetic little smiles in the hallway. But not even my renewed alpha status could bring her back to me. We had no
chemistry.
I knew a lot more about chemistry after the ranch, watching chimps, seeing who had power over whom.

Jennifer and Hugh were all over each other. They were holding hands in school for everyone to see, kissing in the hallways.

“I thought she wasn’t allowed to date until she was sixteen,” I said to David.

He rolled his eyes. “Mom and Dad reconsidered. They think she’s mature enough. And Hugh being older, I guess that helped.”

The pain was a pale echo of what I’d felt leaving Zan behind at Helson’s.

Now that Jennifer and Hugh were going out, I didn’t see her very much with Jane and Shannon. They weren’t necessary to her life any more.

One day after school I was waiting at the bus stop and Shannon came up and said, “I’m really sorry about what happened with Zan. It must’ve been awful.”

She sounded completely sincere, and I remembered that time we’d talked about Zan last year at the rugby party, and how interested she’d seemed. I felt like I was seeing Shannon
through a new lens, undistracted by Jennifer’s nuclear glow. I could see how pretty she really was, how kind her eyes were.

“Yeah,” I said, “thanks. It was really hard.”

And then I said something I’d never said before, even though I’d always known it.

“But I’m going to get him back.”

That night, I came downstairs from doing homework to get a drink. Mom and Dad weren’t in the living room or kitchen, but I heard their voices faintly from Zan’s suite. The door was ajar and I walked closer to listen.

“It’d make a super family room,” said Dad. “Finishing the basement seems daunting, and I hate basements anyway. We’d have room for a TV and the hi-fi. And even a separate home office for you.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about this,” I heard Mom say.

I walked in, and they both turned in surprise. I saw Mom give Dad a kind of disgusted look, like she couldn’t believe he’d even brought the subject up, with me in the house.

“I bet you could fit lots of rats in here too,” I said to Dad. “You could stack three or four rows against that wall probably. Keep an eye on them. That’d be handy.”

“We won’t be doing anything to this room until you’re ready,” Dad said.

“I’m not going to be ready,” I said, and felt my heart start
pumping hard. I’d started to like that feeling, that drumbeat of anger. “Because Zan’s coming back.” “Ben—” Dad began.

“How much did you sell him for?” I demanded. He had his unflappable, psychologist face on. “I didn’t make those arrangements, Ben. It would’ve been the university.” “But how much?”

“There’s no purpose to this discussion. Zan
cannot
come back here to live with us.”

I looked at Mom. “Do you know how much they paid for him?”

“I really don’t, sweetie.”

I said, “I’ve got money. All that money you paid me.” “That wouldn’t be enough,” Dad said. “So you
do
know how much he cost.” “Thousands, Ben.”

I tried to do the math quickly, but couldn’t. “Okay. If you never paid me allowance again, would that be enough?” “Ben …” Mom began sadly.