Xeno Sapiens Read Free

genuinely puzzled. His
glasses slipped back on his nose when he looked up.
    “ Top drawer projects,” he said,
“demand top drawer salaries.”
    “ But you can’t tell me these things.
Isn’t there something I should sign? An oath of allegiance or
something?”
    “ I haven’t told you anything,” he
said. “The only specific I’ve given you is your salary. I had
planned to propose further meetings to inform you gradually. Until
you’re willing to commit, we can’t tell even you most things.”
    She mentally ran over the points
Clifton had made. He had gabbed on and on and told her nothing. She
had almost gotten to like him, but he now seemed to be nothing more
than a silver tongued devil of the Fed. She would keep that in mind
and not be taken in by his flashes of boyish
ingenuousness.
    “ I hope you don’t mind my speaking
frankly like this,” he went on, all warmth and teddy bear cuddly.
“My bosses and I haven’t always met on level ground, but I believe
in being honest with people.” He gave another hopeful
smile.
    Ingrid returned it with a less than
welcoming stare.
    “ I can’t give you an answer right now.
I have to know what’s expected of me. Picking up and shoving off
for three years is a big step.”
    “ We weren’t expecting an answer right
away. Could we meet again next week? That will give you time to
examine the issues. If you’re favorably inclined, we could get into
a few more specifics then.”
    “ Fine.”
    “ Wonderful.” Clifton stood and placed
his glasses in a black case. He rummaged in his briefcase and
pulled out a form.
    “ I’d like for you to read this and, if
you have no objection, sign it.”
    “ What is it?”
    “ Boiler plate stuff. All it says is
that you agree not to discuss the content of this meeting with
anyone else. It doesn’t obligate you in any other way.”
    She scanned the form. It was just as
Clifton said. She scribbled her name at the bottom. The page
vanished into Clifton’s briefcase.
    “ It’s been a pleasure,” Clifton said.
“You have my card. Please call if you need to change the
appointment.”
    Ingrid led him to the door. They stood
there a few moments, the warm salt air blowing through the
portal.
    “ You haven’t really told me anything,
you know. About the most I got out of this meeting was your
name.”
    Clifton considered. His eyes took on a
sage gleam that would have looked more at home behind his
spectacles. He retreated to the coffee table, selected a manila
folder from his briefcase, and gave it to Ingrid.
    “ I guess I don’t need to tell you that
you can never tell anyone what is in that folder. More than just my
job is on the line.”
    He left quickly, without even saying
good bye. She watched him through the bamboo blinds of her living
room window as he drove away. She looked with some hesitation at
the folder on her coffee table, foolishly imagining that it was
some kind of Pandora’s box that would loose evils on the world once
she opened it.
    Still, with a sigh, she sat down to
read it.
2
    Clifton drove downtown to the Burbank
Electra office building where Parker, Usher and Foster technologies
had rented an entire floor of the twenty story building for a short
term, three month lease. Half an hour after leaving Ingrid, Clifton
made his report to Merrifield.
    “ I think we can sign her
on.”
    Merrifield was pleased. His boast he
would recruit the best bioengineer money could buy now seemed to
have more substance than shadow.
    There had been misgivings about the
project in general; no one in the sacred halls of government wanted
to assume the moral authority for the results. Merrifield had
little tolerance for the soul searching and wrangling that went on
amongst the bioethicists and cadres of lawyers. It had been his
experience that the progress of science steamed along its course
with its own sort of manifest destiny and anything else was simply
a holding action.
    The lawyers had bitched about the constitutionality