Xeno Sapiens Read Free Page A

of the
project (as if lawyers had ever given a furry rat’s ass about the
constitution), arguing that slavery was illegal. Listening to the
gutless government attorneys always put Merrifield in mind of an
old joke: “What do you do when you find a lawyer buried up to his
neck in sand? Get more sand.”
    But the secrets of the genetic
structure were being rapidly unraveled and there was a next,
logical step that had to be -and would be- taken by somebody.
Merrifield, always straddling a dicey edge between warmongering
neocons and soylent green liberals, had had to bring all his
considerable power and political leverage to the table to blunt
that challenge.
    As for Ingrid, no one knew if she could be brought into a
project with the sole purpose of creating a “Genetically modified”
human being (and that was as unexciting a term as Merrifield could
come up with). A background check revealed that she was about as
politically motivated as a tree sloth, a rarity among college
students who believed themselves enlightened, but had simply been
indoctrinated by sixties Bolsheviks who had found a home
masquerading as professors at America’s universities. A glance into
the real workings of the power machine -the BIS in Basel, the CFR
and MIC, Bilderbergs and Rothschilds, Wall Street, and The City
-London’s Banking District- was usually enough to send them
scurrying back to their love-ins and protests with their red tails
between their legs. Merrifield would catch Ingrid fresh and show
her the real workings of power without any preconceived notions. And the
time was now. Something big was in the wind, like the scent of
smoke from far away.
    A new term had been floating around in the pentagon,
uttered a little more urgently recently. Asymmetrical warfare. There had been hints
and teases in the intelligence community, the thousand threats
attended to every day given greater weight.
    “ Did you have to twist her arm,”
Merrifield asked.
    Clifton sat down in a well padded
chair, his omnipresent briefcase resting on its own battered hide.
The two of them would have made a fine addition to a den of
Threadneedle Street thieves, smoking fat cigars and swirling hard
liquor around in tumblers.
    “ There’s enough resentment festering
inside her without rubbing salt into the gouge. She’s smart enough
not to turn down two hundred K for being allowed to do exactly what
she wants.”
    “ You left the packet?”
    “ Did I have another
option?”
    Merrifield sighed. “I suppose not. I
never took her for a turnip head. So now Miss Milner knows all.
Will it hold her to the line?”
    Clifton chewed his lip thoughtfully.
“Hard to say. Just don’t let her think we’re using her as a patsy.
She mentioned Robert Oppenheimer. She said that she believed he had
expected to fail in his effort to build the A- bomb, and when he
didn’t, he had a sudden attack of conscience. I think she’s
fighting that already. Are we expecting to become Jonas Salks, or
Hitlers?”
    “ It’s a job, no more,” Merrifield
said. “An important job, but with all that high minded crap aside,
the simple truth remains that we have to do it before someone else
does. I think the benefits of the project will be great enough to
cover us no matter how much shit Josh Hall can sling. May his soul
burn in hell.”
    Josh Hall was the outspoken leader of a
radical religious sect known as the ‘Natural Christians’ publicly,
and privately, by some, as the Neoclassic People’s Temple. Hall,
even with his twelve hundred dollar suits and fleet of Cadillacs,
could still make Jerry Falwell sound like Madlyn Murray
O’Hare.
    He advocated a return to the ‘natural
order’ as God intended. The ‘natural order’ to Merrifield’s mind
was pestilence and suffering. Not so secretly, Merrifield believed
this to be Hall’s agenda. He didn’t want to help; he wanted to burn
down the whole house of cards. Hall didn’t believe in doctors or
science, just prayer. The horror