Candace shrugged. “I’ll give them back all the stock, options included. I can live without it. I’ll just have to see how I feel. I’d be much happier if we were using pigs. When we put that last bonobo under anesthesia, I could have sworn he was trying to communicate with us. We had to use a ton of sedative.”

“Oh, come on!” Kevin snapped, suddenly furious. His face was flushed.

Melanie’s eyes opened wide. “What in heaven’s name has gotten into you?”

Kevin instantly regretted his outburst. “Sorry,” he said. His heart was still pounding. He hated the fact that he was always so transparent, or felt he was.

Melanie rolled her eyes for Candace’s benefit, but Candace didn’t catch it. She was watching Kevin.

“I have a feeling you were as bummed out as I was,” she said to him.

Kevin breathed out noisily then took a bite of hamburger to avoid saying anything he’d later regret.

“Why don’t you want to talk about it?” Candace asked.

Kevin shook his head while he chewed. He guessed his face was still beet-red.

“Don’t worry about him,” Melanie said. “He’ll recover.”

Candace faced Melanie. “The bonobos are just so human,” she commented, going back to one of her original points, “so I guess we shouldn’t be shocked that their genomes differ by only one and a half percent. But something just occurred to me. If you guys are replacing the short arms of chromosome six as well as some other smaller segments of the bonobo genome with human DNA, what percentage do you think you’re dealing with?”

Melanie looked at Kevin while she made a mental calculation. She arched her eyebrows. “Hmmm,” she said. “That’s a curious point. That would be over two percent.”

“Yeah, but the one and a half percent is not all on the short arm of chromosome six,” Kevin snapped again.

“Hey, calm down, bucko,” Melanie said. She put down her soft drink, reached across the table and put her hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “You’re out of control. All we’re doing is having a conversation. You know, it’s sort of normal for people to sit and talk. I know you find that weird since you’d rather interact with your centrifuge tubes, but what’s wrong?”

Kevin sighed. It went against his nature, but he decided to confide in these two bright, confident women. He admitted he was upset.

“As if we didn’t know!” Melanie said with another roll of her eyes. “Can’t you be more specific? What’s bugging you?”

“Just what Candace is talking about,” Kevin said.

“She’s said a lot of things,” Melanie said.

“Yeah, and they’re all making me feel like I’ve made a monumental mistake.”

Melanie took her hand away and stared into the depths of Kevin’s topaz-colored eyes. “In what regard?” she questioned.

“By adding so much human DNA,” Kevin said. “The short arm of chromosome six has millions of base pairs and hundreds of genes that have nothing to do with the major histocompatibility complex. I should have isolated the complex instead of taking the easy route.”