Mutation (9 page)

     "Precisely!" Victor said, straightening up and getting to his feet. He began to pace. His face had an odd, excited sheen, and Marsha began to feel the beginnings of fear. "I got very interested in the number of nerve cells of normal Aplasia about twelve years ago. At that time I knew, like everyone else, that nerve cells differentiated and proliferated during early embryological development. Since these Aplasia were relatively less complicated than higher animals, I was able to isolate the protein which was responsible for the process which I called nerve growth factor, or NGF. You follow me?" Victor stopped his pacing to look directly at Marsha.

     "Yes," Marsha said, watching her husband. He seemed to be changing in front of her eyes. He'd developed a disturbing messianic appearance. She suddenly felt queasy, with the awful thought that she knew where this seemingly irrelevant lecture was heading.

     Victor recommenced his pacing as his excitement grew. "I used genetic engineering to reproduce the protein and isolate the responsible gene. Then, for the brilliant part . . ." He stopped again in front of Marsha. His eyes sparkled. "I took a fertilized Aplasia egg or zygote and after causing a point mutation in its DNA, I inserted the new NGF gene along with a promoter. The result?"

     "More ganglionic neurons," Marsha answered.

     "Exactly," Victor said excitedly. "And, equally as important, the ability to pass the trait on to its offspring. Now, come back into the main room." He gave Marsha a hand, and pulled her to her feet.

     Dumbly she followed him to a light box, where he displayed some large transparencies of microscopic sections of rat brains. Even without counting, Marsha was able to appreciate that there were many more nerve cells in one photograph than the other. Still speechless, she let him herd her into the animal room itself. Just inside the door he slipped on a pair of heavy leather gloves.

     Marsha tried not to breathe. It smelled like a badly run zoo. There were hundreds of cages housing apes, dogs, cats, and rats. They stopped by the rats.

     Marsha shuddered at the innumerable pink twitching noses and hairless pink tails.

     Victor stopped by a specific cage and unhooked the door. Reaching in, he pulled out a large rat that responded by biting repeatedly at Victor's gloved fingers.

     "Easy, Charlie!" Victor said. He carried the rat over to a table with a glass top, raised a portion of the glass, and dropped the rat into what appeared to be a miniature maze. The rat was trapped just in front of the starting gate.

     "Watch!" Victor said, raising the gate.

     After a moment's pause, the rat entered the maze. With only a few wrong turns the animal reached the exit and got its reward.

     "Quick, huh?" Victor said with a satisfied smile. "This is one of my 'smart' rats. They are rats in which I inserted the NGF gene. Now watch this."

     Victor adjusted the apparatus so that the rat was returned to the start position, but in a section that did not have access to the maze. Victor then went back to the cages and got a second rat. He dropped it inside the table so the two rats faced each other through a wire mesh.

     After a moment or two he opened the gate and the second rat went through the maze without a single mistake.

     "Do you know what you just witnessed?" Victor asked.

     Marsha shook her head.

     "Rat communication," Victor said. "I've been able to train these rats to explain the maze to each other. It's incredible."

     "I'm certain it is," Marsha said with less enthusiasm than Victor.

     "I've done this 'neuronal proliferation' study on hundreds of rats," Victor said.

     Marsha nodded uncertainly.

     "I did it on fifty dogs, six cows, and one sheep," Victor added. "I was afraid to try it on the monkeys. I was afraid of success. I kept seeing that old movie Planet of the Apes  play in my mind." He laughed, and the sound of his laughter echoed hollowly off the animal-room walls.

     Marsha didn't laugh. Instead she shivered. "Exactly what are you telling me?" she asked, although her imagination had already begun to provide disturbing answers.

     Victor couldn't look her in the eye.

     "Please!" Marsha cried, almost in tears.

     "I'm only trying to give you the background so you'll understand," Victor said, knowing that she never would. "Believe me, I didn't plan what happened next. I'd just finished the successful trial with the sheep when you started talking of having another child. Remember when we decided to go to Fertility, Inc. ?"

     Marsha nodded, tears beginning to roll down her cheeks.

     "Well, you gave them a very successful harvest of ova. We got eight."

     Marsha felt herself swaying. She steadied herself, grabbing on to the edge of the maze.

     "I personally did the in-vitro fertilization with my sperm," Victor continued. "You knew that. What I didn't tell you is that I brought the fertilized eggs back here to the lab."

     Marsha let go of the table and staggered over to one of the benches. She wanted to faint. She sat down heavily. She didn't think she could stand hearing the rest of Victor's story. But now that he had begun she realized he was going to tell her whether she liked it or not. He seemed to feel he could minimize the enormity of his sin if he confined himself to a purely scientific description. Could this be the man she married?

     "When I got the zygotes back here," he said, "I chose a nonsense sequence of DNA on chromosome 6 and did a point mutation. Then, with micro-injection techniques and a retro viral vector, I inserted the NGF gene along with several promoters, including one from a bacterial plasmid that coded for resistance to the cephalosporin antibiotic called cephaloclor."

     Victor paused for a moment, but he didn't look up. "That's why I insisted that Mary Millman take the cephaloclor from the second to the eighth week of her pregnancy. It was the cephaloclor that kept the gene turned on, producing the nerve growth factor."

     Victor finally looked up. "God help me, when I did it, it seemed like a good idea. But later I knew it was wrong. I lived in terror until VJ was born."

     Marsha suddenly was overcome with rage. She leaped up and began striking Victor with her fists. He made no attempt to protect himself, waiting until she lowered her hands and stood before him, weeping silently. Then he tried to take her in his arms, but she wouldn't let him touch her. She went out to the main lab and sat down. Victor followed, but she refused to look at him.

     "I'm sorry," Victor said again. "Believe me, I never would have done it unless I was certain it would work. There's never been a problem with any of the animals. And the idea of having a super-smart child was so seductive . . ." His voice trailed off.

     "I can't believe you did something so dreadful," she sobbed.

     "Researchers have experimented on themselves in the past," he said, realizing it was no excuse.

     "On themselves!" cried Marsha. "Not on innocent children." She wept uncontrollably. But even in the depths of her emotion, fear reasserted itself. With difficulty, she struggled to control herself. Victor had done something terrible. But what was done, was done. She couldn't undo it. The problem now was to deal with reality, and her thoughts turned to VJ, someone she loved dearly. "All right," she managed, choking back additional tears. "Now you've told me. But what you haven't told me is why you want VJ to have another neuro-medical work-up. What are you afraid of? Do you think his intelligence has dropped again?"

     As she spoke, her mind took her back six and a half years. They were still living in the small farmhouse and both David and Janice were alive and well. It had been a happy time, filled with wonder at VJ's unbelievable mind. As a three-year-old, he could read anything and retain almost everything. As far as she could determine at the time, his IQ was somewhere around two hundred and fifty.

     Then one day, everything changed. She'd gone by Chimera to pick VJ up from the day-care center, where he was taken after spending the morning at the Crocker Preschool. She knew something was wrong the moment she saw the director's face.

     Pauline Spaulding was a wonderful woman, a forty-two-year-old, ex-elementary-school teacher and ex-aerobics instructor who had found her calling in day-care management. She loved her job and loved the children, who in return adored her for her boundless enthusiasm. But today she seemed upset.

     "Something is wrong with VJ," she said, not mincing any words.

     "Is he sick? Where is he?"

     "He's here," Pauline said. "He's not sick. His health is fine. It's something else."

     "Tell me!" Marsha cried.

     "It started just after lunch," Pauline explained. "When the other kids take their rest, VJ generally goes into the workroom and plays chess on the computer. He's been doing that for some time."

     "I know," Marsha said. She had given VJ permission to miss the rest period after he told her he did not need the rest and he hated to waste the time.

     "No one was in the workroom at the time," Pauline said. "But suddenly there was a big crash. When I got in there VJ was smashing the computer with a chair."

     "My word!" Marsha exclaimed. Temper tantrums were not part of VJ's behavioral repertoire. "Did he explain himself?" she asked.

     "He was crying, Dr. Frank."

     "VJ, crying?" Marsha was astounded. VJ never cried.

     "He was crying like a normal three-and-a-half-year-old child," Pauline said.

     "What are you trying to tell me?" Marsha asked.

     "Apparently VJ smashed the computer because he suddenly didn't know how to use it."

     "That's absurd," Marsha said. VJ had been using the computer at home since he'd been two and a half.

     "Wait," Pauline said. "To calm him, I offered him a book that he's been reading about dinosaurs. He tore it up."

     Marsha ran into the workroom. There were only three children there. VJ was sitting at a table, coloring in a coloring book like any other preschooler. When he saw her, he dropped his crayon and ran into her arms. He started to cry, saying that his head hurt.

     Marsha hugged him. "Did you tear your dinosaur book?" she asked.

     He averted his eyes. "Yes."

     "But why?" Marsha asked.

     VJ looked back at Marsha and said: "Because I can't read anymore."

     Over the next several days VJ had a neuro-medical work-up to rule out any acute neurological problems. The results came back negative, but when Marsha repeated a series of IQ tests the boy had taken the previous year, the results were shockingly different. VJ's IQ had dropped to 130. Still high, but certainly not in the genius range.

     Victor brought Marsha back to the present by swearing that there was nothing wrong with VJ's intelligence.

     "Then why the work-up?" Marsha asked again.

     "I . . . I just think it would be a good idea," Victor stammered.

     "I've been married to you for sixteen years," Marsha said after a pause. "And I know you are not telling me the truth." It was hard for her to believe she had anything worse to discover than what Victor had already told her.

     Victor ran a hand through his thick hair. "It's because of what has happened to the Hobbs' and the Murrays' babies."

     "Who are they?"

     "William Hobbs and Horace Murray work here," Victor answered.

     "Don't tell me you created chimeras out of their children, too."

     "Worse," Victor admitted. "Both of those couples had true infertility. They needed donor gametes. Since I'd frozen the other seven of our zygotes, and since they could provide uniquely qualified homes, I used two of ours."

     "Are you saying that these babies are genetically mine?" Marsha asked with renewed disbelief.

     "Ours," Victor corrected.

     "My God!" Marsha said, staggered by this new revelation. For the moment she was beyond emotion.

     "It's no different than donating sperm or eggs," Victor said. "It's just more efficient, since they have already united."

     "Maybe it's no different to you," Marsha said. "Considering what you did to VJ. But it is to me. I can't even comprehend the idea of someone else bringing up my children. What about the other five zygotes? Where are they?"

     Exhaustedly, Victor stood up and walked across the room to the central island. He stopped next to a circular metal appliance, about the size of a clothes washer. Rubber hoses connected the machine to a large cylinder of liquefied nitrogen.

     "They're in here," Victor said. "Frozen in suspended animation. Want to see?"

     Marsha shook her head. She was appalled. As a physician she knew that such technology existed, but the few times she even thought about it, she considered it in the abstract. She never thought that it would involve her personally.

     "I wasn't planning on telling you all this at once," Victor said. "But now you have it: the whole story. I want VJ to have a neuro-medical work-up so that I can be sure that he has no remedial problems."

     "Why?" said Marsha bitterly. "Has something happened to the other children?"

     "They got sick," Victor said.

     "How sick?" Marsha asked. "And sick with what?"

     "Very sick," Victor answered. "They died of acute cerebral edema. No one knows why yet."

     Marsha felt a wave of dizziness sweep over her. This time she had to put her head down to keep from passing out. Every time she got herself under control, Victor unveiled a further outrage.

     "Was it sudden?" she asked, looking up. "Or had they been ill for a long time?"

     "It was sudden," Victor admitted.

     "How old were they?" Marsha asked.

     "About three years old."

     One of the computer print-out devices suddenly came to life and furiously printed out a mass of data. Then a refrigeration unit kicked in, emitting a low hum and vibration. It seemed to Marsha that the lab was running itself. It didn't need humans.