“Thank you,” Bray said.
Bray had a habit of saying “thank you” whenever someone described something as being large, long, or delicious. He never said it, but everyone knew he was implying they’d been talking about his manhood. Hawkins had no doubt Bray had picked it up from one of his high school students. Had that vibe. It was funny at first, especially when he did it to Joliet, but the joke was getting old so Hawkins tried not to grin. It would only encourage the man. “Continue, Professor Bray. Educate me.”
“Gladly,” Bray said. “This is where things get freaky.”
“I thought we crossed into ‘freaky’ five minutes ago.”
“It’s far freakier when it’s intentional,” Bray said.
Hawkins couldn’t argue with that. The idea of someone merging a sea snake and draco lizard together just felt wrong. Never mind the fact that they’d also tried to transplant adult human limbs from one person to another.
“The main difference between natural chimerism and laboratory chimerism is that the process can be controlled in a lab. Instead of randomly merging—which, by the way, most often results in both fetuses dying before birth. That the farmer was born and then lived thirty-six years with a twin in his belly is miraculous. Anyway, instead of randomly merging embryos, scientists can select specific embryonic cells from one organism—say, a bird’s wings and breast muscles strong enough to use them—and transplant them onto the embryo of something else. Like a lion.”
“So griffins could be real?” Hawkins asked with a raised eyebrow.
“In theory, yes.”
“But isn’t that just a hybrid? What makes the draco-snakes chimeras?”
“Hybrids are a fusion of gametes.”
“Lost me already,” Hawkins said.
“Did you ever take biology in school?” Bray asked, shaking his head. “Gametes are cells that merge with others cells during fertilization. Eggs. Sperm. Those kinds of things.”
“So humans are hybrids?” Hawkins asked.
Bray nodded. “Kind of, but not really, because we’re talking about gametes from different species, not Mom and Dad. So these gametes come together and form a single zygote. That’s a fertilized egg to the layman. This can pretty much only happen in a lab, or with very closely related species, like lions and tigers.”
“Ligers,” Hawkins said. He’d seen some of the giant cats on TV. They occasionally made the news when an illegal private zoo got shut down. Lions and tigers kept together could mate and have offspring that were equal parts of both species, but often twice the size.
“Exactly,” Bray said. “The end result is a new species with a single, merged genetic code. A chimera is different because each individual part has distinct genetic codes.”
“Like the lady with two blood types?”
“Right. The minidrakes aren’t a new species. They’re still two distinct species with separate genetic codes brought together as a single organism. Like the Trinity. God the Father. Jesus. Holy Spirit. Separate, but joined.”
Hawkins just stared at him.
“Sorry,” Bray said. “Raised Catholic. Forget it. Okay, here’s a question for you. Ever heard of a geep?”
“No.”
“’Course not,” Bray said. “Geep are lab-created goat-sheep. They were created in the eighties. Lived full lives. Gets worse. In China, a human-rabbit chimera was created. They claim to have destroyed the embryos, which I doubt, but the point is, the cells were successfully merged.”
“That’s sick,” Hawkins said.
“Seriously,” Bray said. “A rabbit? Were they trying to make an Easter Bunny? Why not give someone tiger claws? You’re probably thinking that shit went down because it was China. Well, guess what? The University of Nevada School of Medicine made a chimera that was eighty-five percent sheep and fifteen percent human. Now that’s nuts.”
A dull sound suddenly reverberated through the ship. The low, rumbling tone sounded like a fog horn. The lone blast of sound lasted three seconds and then faded.
“Someone must be testing the horn,” Bray said.
A thud on the floor above them turned their heads up.
“Sounds like the horn caught someone by surprise,” Bray said with a grin.
Hawkins just looked at the ceiling like he could see through it.
Bray gave a shrug. “On to the craziest thing you’ll hear all day. Spider silk. Stuff is stronger than steel, but fibrous. Lots of potential applications. Bulletproof vests. Airbags. Hell, someone could probably make space suits out of the stuff. But they can’t harvest it in large quantities. Spiders aren’t only small, but when researchers set up a spider farm, the spiders went on a Highlander-like killing spree.”