The Willies | Page 3

arbitrary level on his neck where he
clear-cut with a razor every morning. The top of his head, however,
was lightly ringed with black chick-fluff.
Oswald ran up beside Ted and put an arm around his shoulder. His tall
frame topped with a thick pile of wavy blonde 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