The Willies | Page 3

hair completed Hugh's picture of the couple. He'd known them since he'd moved downtown and lived for a while in the building next to their bed and breakfast. Sometimes they were too much -- or, rather, Oswald was too much. Hugh wondered how Ted the tough little contractor ever wound up with such a strange, feathery bird. But they'd been loyal friends to him, so loyal that he felt bad for dropping in and out of their lives as it suited him.
"So what's the big deal with this koala thing, anyway?" asked Oswald, turning back to Hugh.
"It's a panda," Hugh replied, then quoted the newspaper article verbatim without making any attempt at remembering, telling about the difficulty getting pandas to breed, their eventual extinction, and the decision to apply for clemency from the Asilomar 2 Treaty in order to create a clone. The application was approved, but conventional cloning techniques failed to produce any offspring. "Clone," Hugh continued, "from the Greek klwn meaning 'twig' has come to refer to asexual reproduction. It occurs naturally with plant cuttings and in some animals like the armadillo that produce genetically identical twins in every litter. But what's special about this panda is that it doesn't have a mother. Scientists froze an egg from the last female panda before she died. Then they generated the genetic code for a whole panda, inserted it into the egg, and brought it to term."
"Sounds complicated," said Oswald. Ted had already lost interest and wandered away to the concession stand.
"Well--" Hugh was about to resume the recitation, but was distracted by a typo in the article. He could picture it there in the second-last paragraph. He looked up at Oswald, who seemed genuinely interested in understanding what they were about to see. Hugh felt embarrassed; he didn't like it when people noticed his memory. Merely remembering didn't mean he understood. All his life others had mistaken his memory for extreme intelligence, but he was all too aware of being quite ordinary in that respect.
"You know, Oswald, I barely understand it myself." He combed a hand through the mess of soft brown hair at the top of his high forehead, pushing it over to one side. He cocked his head and looked up at Oswald. "I think it's like a craps game. Normally, with two parents, each of their genes is like one of the dice. You roll them together, and you're going to get different combinations. But when you make a clone, the dice are already down -- you've got an adult. You can just pick up those dice and put them back down again."
"Okay, I get that," said Oswald. Hugh was glad because he couldn't think of another analogy. "So why don't they do this all the time?"
"The article I read this afternoon talked about Asilomar 2, that international treaty to stop genetic research. After all the stuff that went wrong, with Dolly the sheep dying, gene therapy killing people, and then that cult that kept trying to make babies, the consensus was that cloning is just too dangerous."
"Besides which, it doesn't work," interjected Ted as he joined them, handing them each a white paper bag of popcorn. "They tried this panda a thousand times and the things kept dying before they were born." He led them forward, down a small asphalt path with faded animal footprints of different colours on it.
"Right," said Hugh, "until this new group submitted an offer to produce a panda clone. But they'd only do it on the condition that they wouldn't have to say who they were or how they did it. No one's even been able to see the thing before today, other than the handlers, so there are a lot of skeptics in the crowd."
A little man pushed his way past them, muttering urgently to himself. He wore a long, dark green padded overcoat. Hallmark of the insane, thought Hugh, the year-round parka.
They walked in respectful silence past the lions' den, an attempt at a savanna that looked more like a dead lawn. The cats, more grey than lion-coloured lay around in a bored and melted-looking state. Oswald was the first to speak: "I always forget how pathetic-looking zoo animals are." As if in defiance, one of the lionesses got up and stretched, unfortunately revealing a large patch of mange on her hind quarters. Oswald turned to them with one long hand up as a blinker. "This is making me sad. Can we go to the gift shop or something?" They agreed, and took the closest route back, which, unfortunately, led them past a flock of flamingos that looked over-laundered.
~
A thick crowd surrounded the panda display, which was curiously better-kept than the other faux landscapes. Bamboo trees stood in a semblance of wildness around a small pond, some soft