Dark Inheritance

By W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear
Warner Books $25.95
 

Meet Umber, a bonobo ape who wears colorful clothes, cooks, reads and writes, communicates in sign language and with a speech synthesizer, and even philosophizes about death. Umber was raised alongside anthropologist Dr. Jim Dutton's daughter, Brett. For all intents and purposes, she and Brett are twelve-year-old sisters. But Umber is an "augmented" ape and she belongs to Smyth-Archer Chemists, the conglomerate which has sunk billions into their ultra-secret augmentation project.

How is Umber different? Jim Dutton doesn't know (but he suspects, correctly) that she was conceived with a healthy dose of human DNA. In fact, Umber's brain is virtually of human dimensions. And therein lies the heart of W. Michael and Kathleen O'Neal Gear's newest novel, a thriller with all too real horrific implications in this age of genetic manipulation.

Only a couple months ago, monkeys carrying jellyfish DNA hit the news. Jellyfish DNA today, mammal DNA tomorrow - can human DNA be far off? Recently we met a sheep named Dolly, but manipulation of apes promises even greater controversy, since only one chromosome differentiates apes and humans. Ape augmentation is virtually unavoidable - but will the resulting apes be people or animals, free beings or property? What rights will they have?

The tender portrait of innocent, intelligent Umber makes a strong case for equal rights, a further controversy.

The Gears, astute authors of the First North Americans series, rip these possibilities from the headlines to posit a done deal in this engrossing scientific thriller. Umber may be more human than ape, but Smyth-Archer Chemists insists that the next step of their program is her reintroduction to the wild. Faced with the loss of his daughter, Jim Dutton and Brett manage to accompany Umber to SAC's African facility. But things have begun to unravel in Compound D, populated by apes kept secret even from most employees. Herein lies the horror, for as always man worsens natural situations.

What has gone wrong with these blue-eyed apes? Why is the project's director so afraid of publicity? Why is Brett's estranged mother, a famous investigative journalist, suddenly headed for Africa? What are SAC's motives? And once there, can Dutton keep his family together - and alive?

Navigating comfortably within the perimeter staked out by allegorical classics such as Pierre Boulle's "PLANET OF THE APES" and John Goulet's "OH'S PROFIT," "DARK INHERITANCE" sounds clear a warning bell. Well-researched and gripping at its best, this novel handles its hot-button topic with enviable sureness and empathy. Is it horror? When you consider the implications of our genetic experimentation, I'd say it's all pretty darn scary.