Read Online Lucy by Laurence Gonzales - Free Book Online Page B

development in so far as is appropriate to her age.”
    Flipping through the pages, Jenny read lists of the words that Lucy was saying, such as Leda, Papa, book and ball, and “nana” for banana. There was a discourse on Stone’s attempts to balance his human upbringing of Lucy with allowing Leda to take her into the forest and teach her the ways of her cousins, half siblings (for Leda subsequently gave birth to babies by bonobo fathers), and other relations there. Year by year, he laid out Lucy’s progress.
    Around the time that she was four years old, Stone apparently began to have a crisis of conscience. “Lucy has become a whole and genuine person,” he wrote. “I now recognize that what I did with all good intentions may turn out to be the most monstrous folly. What I conceived of in the passion of my youth as the salvation of the bonobos—and perhaps of mankind—may simply be the worst sort of punishment for this lovely child, who has come into this cruel world through no fault of her own.” So, Jenny thought, he could at least feel remorse. Perhaps he wasn’t a monster.
    Stone went on, as if explaining to himself how he could have come to do such a thing. It had all begun with his passion for the bonobos and his certainty that people were going to drive those marvelous creatures to extinction. The only way to save them, he believed, or some of their best qualities, was to selectively breed them with humans. Although he saw their extinction as inevitable, at least part of their unique and brilliant character might be preserved if he could safely lock the bonobo genes inside humans. “Their extraordinary sweetness and perceptiveness had stolen my heart from the beginning,” he wrote. And Jenny began to see it another way: Perhaps he had not been such a madman. Perhaps Stone was a brilliant primatologist faced with the impending extinction of a beautiful creature to whom he had devoted his life. Jenny had had similar feelings about bonobos. It was what had drawn her back to the jungle year after year despite the dangers. Of course, it had never occurred to her to do what Stone did. She had never even thought through the details as he had. It was just too far-fetched.
    Over the years Stone seemed to vacillate between breast beating and trying to justify himself: “I understand that what I have done will seem beyond the pale to some. But to that charge—and to history—I have this to say: Humankind has destroyed most species with which it has come into contact and is rapidly destroying itself. Something must change in human nature. And I offer Lucy as proof to the world that, even though the ethics of what I’ve done may be questioned, the results are unequivocal. Anyone who meets this fascinating, intelligent, and beautiful girl will have to marvel at her, no matter the means of her creation. Lucy, in short, is the best argument in my defense. The way she has blended human intelligence with a bonobo’s ability to process the richness of sensory signals from The Stream, along with her gentle and loving social instincts, prove that I was right: Lucy is love made manifest. And as her offspring and their offspring continue to reproduce, a new kind of human—more human than human—will evolve.”
    Jenny felt a bizarre blend of admiration and revulsion as she realized that Donald Stone had deliberately brought this sweet, intelligent girl into the world for the purpose, in effect, of breeding. Much as he seemed to love the bonobos and her, there was something twisted and indecent in what he had done, even if, as he said, the result was unequivocally noble and beautiful. And then this thought entered Jenny’s mind: They’re going to kill her if they find out. The right-wing religious nuts. The media. The government busybodies. The crackpots and cranks and white-power mobs. How would she ever manage to protect Lucy if word got out?
    There were many other notebooks, but Jenny was too overwrought to read them.