Free Replaceable: An Alan Lamb Thriller by J.W. Bouchard Page B

say. Is that even possible?”
    “It’s impossible to say,” Marvin said. “Bringing a human embryo to adulthood is light years ahead of anything I’ve read about. A company called Advanced Cell Technology created the first hybrid human clone back in the late nineties, but the embryo was destroyed after twelve days. After Dolly, human cloning became a hot topic and was outlawed by many countries. If someone had managed to perfect a technique, it’s likely we wouldn’t have heard about it given the potential for ethical backlash. Most of the work involving cloning is kept under wraps. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the science had made leaps and bounds without us hearing about it. But this would be extremely advanced.”
    “It doesn’t make sense,” Alan said. “Even if cloning a human was possible, wouldn’t it take years to grow into an adult? Wouldn’t you have to teach it?”
    “Good questions, but I’m afraid I don’t have the answers. As I said, it’s only a theory. And a somewhat farfetched one at that. I could get in touch with several former colleagues and see if they’ve heard of any advances in the last few years.”
    “It seems like a logical assumption,” Lucy said.
    Alan watched Marvin take a sip from his water bottle. He noticed that Lucy took a sip from her own bottle at the same time. It wasn’t accidental. It was called body language mirroring, and Alan had seen it before. It occurred most commonly when two people were interested in each other. It was the same behavior responsible for two people yawning at the same time.
    “Now isn’t the time, Lucy,” Alan said.
    “Now isn’t the time for what?” Lucy asked, screwing the cap back onto her bottle. She appeared utterly perplexed by his statement.
    She probably doesn’t even realize she’s doing it, Alan thought.
    “Nothing,” Alan said. He looked at Marvin. “I’m not convinced that we’re dealing with human cloning here, but let’s just say you’re right. Where would you go from here?”
    Marvin sat in silence as he pondered this. He sat that way for a long while.
    “It would take millions of dollars of lab equipment to get something like that off the ground. Not to mention the cell samples, which wouldn’t be readily available, at least not by a company that wasn’t licensed to conduct that type of research. In the scientific world, things like that are strictly regulated. There would be records of any such purchases. The company would have to be well funded.”
    “Through public grants? We can get that information.”
    “Doubtful. Remember I mentioned the ethical implications. My guess is that they would be private companies, financed by wealthy owners or by donations from an interested third party.”
    Alan leaned forward in his chair. He snapped his fingers and said, “A tiger doesn’t change its stripes.”
    “Huh?” Lucy asked.
    “A legitimate organization wouldn’t perfect a technology for the express purpose of doing something insidious.”
    “Again… huh? ”
    “Whoever is behind this is doing it to commit crimes.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning it would have been a criminal enterprise to begin with.”
    Lucy didn’t try to hide her confusion. She glanced from Alan, to Marvin, and back to Alan again. “Huh?”

    After Marvin left Alan’s office, stealing quick glances around the bullpen as though he expected an unseen predator to pounce out of the shadows on his way to the elevator, Lucy said, “Call me slow, but I still don’t understand what you were getting at.”
    “What I meant was that I don’t believe that any good-hearted company would suddenly become bad. You wouldn’t expend time an effort into scientific research to later put it to nefarious use. So my assumption is that whoever is behind this thing had criminal mischief on the agenda to begin with. It began as a criminal effort and is continuing on that way. Which leads me to believe that the millions of dollars of equipment and