Half Brother Read Free Page B

machinery, but it was dusk by then, and I didn’t feel like wandering out there.
    So I headed for home. In the distance I saw the lights of the city, and felt a hunger to be down there, to be a part of that light. Back home in Toronto, Mom and Dad had just started letting me go downtown with my friends on the streetcar. I wondered how long it would be until I had someone to do that with here.
    A few days ago, Mom had let me call up Will and Blake on the phone. It was good to hear their voices, but sometimes it got awkward and we didn’t know what to say. Sometimes the line was crackly and there were delays in our voices and it made them seem even farther away. I’d probably never see them again, thanks to Dad.
    “I think we should start using sign language with Zan now,” Dad said over breakfast one morning in mid-July.
    I looked at him over my spoonful of cornflakes. “He’s only, like, three weeks old.”
    “I think it’s a good idea,” said Mom. “Just so he gets used to seeing the signs.”
    “We’ll have the whole team of research students by fall,” said Dad, “and that’s when we’ll start teaching him properly. But for now I’ve drawn up a short list of high-frequency words. These’ll be his first words, so if we can give him a head start, so much the better.” He nodded at the big kitchen bulletin board, where he’d tacked up a list.
    Up. Drink. Give. More. Eat. You. Me.
    “Hang on,” I said.
“I’m
supposed to learn sign language, too?”
    “It’s pretty easy, Ben,” said Dad. “And it would really help Zan. And the project.”
    I shrugged. “It’s not
my
project.” I shovelled more cornflakes into my mouth, staring down into my bowl. Mom and Dad didn’t say anything, but from the corner of my eye I saw them glance at each other, then back at me. Dad had his calm, psychologist expression on.
    “I know all this change has been tough on you, Ben,” he said, “and it’s perfectly normal to feel jealous of—”
    “I’m
not
jealous of Zan!” I said, looking at him, sucking happily on a bottle in Mom’s arms. Zan was fine: I didn’t feel much about him, one way or another. But I was sick to death of the
project.
I’d been hearing about it for months and months back in Toronto and, for the past two weeks, it waspretty much all Mom and Dad talked about. They’d dragged me across the country for it, I had no friends—and now I was supposed to help them out?
    “I don’t ask you guys to do my homework,” I muttered.
    Mom laughed. “He’s got a point,” she said to Dad.
    Dad nodded patiently. “It is an unusual project, Ben, I know. But Mom and I wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think it was going to be something truly remarkable. Think about it,” he said, and I couldn’t help looking up from my cereal to meet his gaze. “This isn’t a typical animal behaviour study. This is the first proper human attempt to talk, actually
talk,
with another species. Chimps are our closest relatives, and they’re extremely smart, but we’ve never had a conversation with them! If we can give them the tools of language, imagine what they might tell us, teach us! It’s incredible.”
    Some of this I’d heard before, but it did sound exciting. It was like something from a sci-fi movie. One day people would read about it in
Popular Science,
and I could be a part of it. I caught myself nodding as Dad carried on, his eyes bright, his hands grasping at the air for emphasis.
    “And that’s why the project’s whole design is so radical,” he said. “We’re trying to teach another species our language. Human language. So we need to raise Zan like a human baby, so he can learn language just like a human would. No cages. No labs. He’s one of us now. He has a crib and clothes and toys. And most important he has a family. He has a mother and a father—and a big brother too.”
    “Ben,” Mom called up the stairs, later that morning. “There’s someone here for you.”
    “Who?”