Authors: Nothing Human
Dr. Asrani’s office was small as a paralegal’s cubicle. Keith knew that she had another, more spacious office in the physicians’ building adjourning the hospital; this one must be some sort of waystation, a place to leave papers or close her eyes for a moment or talk to patients’ relatives in privacy. He sat on the edge of a gray upholstered chair and waited.
“The article was posted by a physician in Pittsburgh,” Dr. Asrani said. She had a very faint, musical accent. “He describes a semi-active trance state with no external communication, like Lillie’s. And the brain specs … here, look.”
She hiked her chair closer to Keith’s and spread the printout on the arm of his chair. He could see that she took reassurance from the charts and graphs: so verifiable, so unambiguous. She would not have made a good lawyer.
“See, here is the PLI of the Pittsburgh patient, a twelve-year-old boy. Here, in this dark area, is the same anomalous thick growth of nerve cells that Lillie has at the base of the frontal lobe. It’s right against the glomeruli, which processes olfactory signals and relays them all over the brain to centers involved in memory, learning, emotion, fear responses —pretty much everything important except muscular control.
“Now here on this page is the boy’s neural firing pattern for that region. It is like Lillie’s, which is to say, minimal activity in the entire area. Nothing going on in this complex structure. Very odd.”
And that was the understatement of the year, Keith thought. An inert, non-malignant, non-functioning but very substantial growth squeezed into Lillie’s skull and this boy’s, doing nothing.
Dr. Asrani shuffled her printouts. “Now, the DNA chart shows many differences between Lillie and the boy, of course. They have entirely different genetic inheritances. See, Lillie carries the allele for Type AB blood and the boy is A. Lillie has E2 and E3 alleles in her APO genes, and the boy has two E4—a risk of heart disease there in later life. And so on. But look here, Mr. Anderson, on chromosome six. Both children have this very long—almost two million base pairs!—sequence of genes that is utterly unknown. No one has ever seen this in any other human genome. Not ever.”
“Of course,” Keith said, grasping at a vagrant straw, “you haven’t exactly examined every other human genome in the entire world.”
Dr. Asrani peered at him as if she thought he might be joking. “Hardly. Genome sequencing is only thirteen years old, after all. There is still much we don’t know. In fact, we know hardly anything.”
Much as Keith liked her honesty, it didn’t help him clarify any feelings about Lillie’s genetic anomaly. Which now she apparently shared with an unknown twelve-year-old boy somewhere in Pittsburgh. He gazed helplessly at the abbreviated version of the kid’s genetic chart, full of esoteric symbols and swooping lines.
“There is one thing more,” Dr. Asrani said, and at her tone he raised his gaze from the printout. “I almost was not going to mention it because it may sound so misleading. But I will say it, after all. Both Lillie and this boy are the products of
in vitro
fertilization.”
Keith’s mind blanked, then raced. “Where? What clinic?”
“Mr. Anderson, I cannot tell you that. I don’t even know it, as the publishing physician has naturally respected patient confidentiality and not included even the boy’s name in his article. But I want to caution you that this coincidence is
not
meaningful. No one thirteen years ago — or even today! — could have deliberately altered a fetal genome to somehow lead to Lillie’s condition. It is simply not possible. We are far, far too ignorant.”
“May I have that printout?” Keith asked, and held out his hand.
She hesitated only a moment. “Of course.”
“Thank you,” Keith said. “Is there anything more, or shall I return to Lillie?”
She watched him go, her face apprehensive and helpless. She knew what he was going to do: extremely perceptive, Shoba Asrani. She might have made a decent lawyer after all.
It was too hot for upstate New York in early July, especially for early evening, especially if you didn’t want to be there in the first place. Keith knew he had no right to grumble; summers everywhere were getting hotter and the newspapers said New York City was broiling in its own juices. He longed for his cool sleek apartment on East Sixty-third, acquired only six months ago. He was moving up.
Barbara and Lillie, meanwhile, had moved upstate to Utica. “Beginning a new life,” she’d told Keith. “Starting over.” To Keith her new life looked quite a bit like the old one.
“Isn’t this fun?” Barbara said.- “It’s so good to see you again, Keith! Lillie, don’t go any closer to the water, you hear me?”
Lillie, ten years old, made a face but stopped obediently short of the park “pond” thirty feet across and probably all of two feet deep. Children sailed boats in it. However, since there was no wind moving the sticky, heavy air, this was a losers’ game. On her skinny, bony body Lillie wore a halter top and shorts of violent orange. Her dark brown hair hung in sticky tangles.
Barbara and Keith sat on an old blanket spread under a maple tree dying of some slow blight. They’d finished dinner, deli sandwiches and fruit and homemade brownies. At least Barbara hadn’t expected him to grill anything. The air was thick with a weird soup of barbecue smoke, portable microwave beeps, pagers, cell phones, Net music, and e-harness alarms shrieking from toddlers or dogs.
“Welcome to a state of nature,” Keith said.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Keith, I’ve got something to tell you.” Barbara lowered her lashes. She looked much as she had when Lillie was born. A forty-six-year-old pixie. “Something I hope you’ll be glad to hear.”
“Yes?” Keith said neutrally. Her expression, glimpsed through the gathering dusk, made him uneasy.
“It’s wonderful, really. A wonder I didn’t expect again.”
“Spit it out, Babs.”
Lillie had come up beside them. She blurted, “Mom is going to get married!”
Barbara looked briefly vexed that Lillie had become the news-giver, but then vexation vanished in enthusiasm. “Yes, and he’s the most terrific man in the world! Kind, generous, sexy as hell, fun to be with — “
“You’ve only been with him three times,” Lillie said judiciously, not upset, merely pointing out the facts. “So you don’t know if he’s all those things.”
“I know he’s kind because he was so good to you, Miss Smarty Pants,” Barbara retorted. “And he’s generous because he paid for both our plane tickets to visit him — all three times! And I know he’s fun because we laugh a lot, and — “
“You left out ‘sexy as hell,’” Lillie said, still without bias.
“Barbara,” Keith managed to get out, “how long have you known this guy? And where did you meet him?”
“She met him on-line,” Lillie said.
“And what if I did? You can tell a lot about a person on-line, now that I have that live-video feed. Keith, we talk every night, for hours and hours. I’ve never felt I knew anyone so well, not even you. Bill is the most wonderful — “
Keith interrupted her. “How long ago did you meet on-line?”
“Six weeks and three days ago. And already he’s brought Lillie and me to New York three times … that’s one of the best parts! He lives in Manhattan, in a great old apartment on West End Avenue, bonus witchy, so we’ll be near you again!”
Bonus witchy.
Keith hated it when his sister used teenage slang. But, then, he hated everything about this setup. Still, he kept his reactions in check, saying carefully, “What does Bill do?”
“Graphic designer for the Net.”
Which could mean anything. Barbara rushed on, burbling away about Bill’s apartment, the wonderful restaurant he’d taken them to, how he’d consulted Lillie and shown every concern for her opinion, what a great time they’d had. Keith let her run down while he figured out what to say first.
“Barbara, what’s Bill’s address? West End is long, and pretty varied.”
“He’s near Seventieth,” she said, which also could mean anything. A very mixed neighborhood. “What’s his last name?”
She laughed. “Checking out his ethnicity? It’s Brown. Go ahead, counselor, derive clues from that!”
He smiled. “When do I meet him?”
“Whenever you like. We’ll be in New York again next week for the wedding, so ―”
“Next
week?”
“Yes, we … is that your phone?”
It was. Keith wouldn’t have taken the call except it was his investigator’s number, with the priority they’d agreed to use only if Jamal found the big evidence they were looking for. The case was complicated. His client was an alternative-energy company who’d lost two workers to an accident that simply wasn’t foreseeable. Jamal had indeed found what he was looking for, and Keith’s mood climbed as they discussed it.
By the time he’d finished, the fireworks had started. “Oh, look!” Barbara cried as a silver and green pinwheel exploded in the sky. “Isn’t it beautiful! Come on, Keith, move out from under the tree so we can see better!”
She hopped forward and plunked herself, laughing, beside the pond. Keith stayed where he was. He was a little surprised that Lillie remained seated sedately beside him.
“Uncle Keith, was that phone call about the trial you told us about? With the new kinds of energy?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Our teacher told us about people trying to make new kinds of energy. Safe fusion and solar energy and even that nuclear reactor they’re building way out in space. Is your law company connected with that?”
“No. I wish we were.”
“Why?”
“Well, lots of money, for one thing. But also it’s a fascinating project.”
“I think so, too,” she said, sounding so grown-up that Keith wanted to laugh. A Roman candle exploded above them. Lillie ignored it.
“Uncle Keith, you said that two people died on your energy case.”
“Yes, they did.” He was curious to see where this was going.
“Was it worth it? Two people dead, and everybody else gets lots of energy?”
“We don’t look at it like that,” Keith said, startled by the starkness of her viewpoint. “Although unfortunately new technologies always seem to cost lives at first. Railroads, air travel, heart transplants. Probably even the discovery of fire. Still, it’s more a question of whether the energy company could have anticipated that the accidents might happen.” Did she know the word “anticipate”? He had no idea what vocabulary a ten-year-old might have.
“I see,” she said primly. And then, “I think two deaths is worth it.”
He was strangely shocked. Was that normal for a little girl? Weren’t children supposed to be sentimental? Peering at Lillie’s face through the gloom, he saw her expression: sad and thoughtful. Her gold-flecked gray eyes gave back a reflection of his own face.
“But,” she added, “the energy company should give the families of the dead people a lot of money. And medals, too. Hero’s medals. Uncle Keith, you’re going to have that man you were talking to on the phone, that Jamal, investigate Bill, aren’t you?”
“Why, Lillie ―”
“That’s why you really wanted Bill’s name and address.”
“I―”
“It’s a good idea,” Lillie said. “Mom doesn’t know him very well. But, Uncle Keith, you shouldn’t worry too hard. Because I look out for Mom, you know.”
It was that moment, a decade after her birth, that Keith fell in love with his niece. Her serious, half-seen little face, intermittently lit by fireworks, gazed at him with everything Barbara had never had: judgment, reason, sense. She was an amazing little girl. More, she moved at that moment from being an abstract—“my niece”—to being a real, living, individual person. Herself.
But all he said was, “How did you know I was going to have Bill Brown investigated?”
“Because that’s what they do in the movies,” she said, grinning with ten-year-old glee, and his capture was complete.
“Hey!” Barbara called, ducking under the maple, “come out and watch the fireworks, you two! You’re missing everything good!”
The Pittsburgh physician’s name was Samuel Silverstein. Keith flew to Pittsburgh International and took a cab for the long ride to Silverstein’s office. The office was neither shabby nor luxurious, a solid, reassuring setting located in a new medical building. The door greeted him respectfully by name when he pushed it open, even though he was half an hour early.
“I’m told this is not a medical appointment, Mr. Anderson,” Silverstein said. His schedule ran right on time. Silverstein was short, overweight, with intelligent brown eyes.
“No, doctor. I read the article you posted on CaseNet and — “
“You are not a physician.”
“No. It was shown to me by my niece’s physician, Dr. Shoba Asrani at New York-Presbyterian. My niece Lillie has exactly the same condition as your patient, and exactly the same PLI and DNA charts.” He passed Lillie’s printouts to Silverstein.
The doctor studied them intently, paging through the stack of papers with methodical attention. When he looked up, Keith said, “Lillie was also the result of
in vitro
fertilization. Like your patient. I would like to know if her fertilization was done at a place called the ChildGive IVF Institute. I don’t know where the Institute was located, and no records are available.” Barbara had lost all the paperwork. All she had remembered about the location was “some town north of the city.”
Silverstein looked at Keith a long time. Then he said quietly, “Give it up, Mr. Anderson. It isn’t possible.”
“So I’m told,” Keith said grimly.
“You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
Silverstein ignored that question, answering instead one that Keith hadn’t asked yet. “It
is
against patient confidentiality for me to identify the clinic. Or the patient.”
“Can you at least tell me if there are any others? Besides Lillie and this boy?”
Silverstein hesitated. Finally he said, “Yes, there are others. Two more.”
“So far. Doctor, I will sign anything you like attesting to the fact that I will not sue the clinic. That’s not my aim. I just have to know what happened. Lillie is my niece, my legal ward since her mother died. Anything I can learn, from anyone, might help her physician to understand her condition better, and that of the other three children, too. I’m in a much better position than you to run a discreet investigation, believe me. And I’m prepared to supply you with all sorts of references so you can check me out first.”
Silverstein was shaking his head. “Not necessary. I cannot tell you the names, and I wish you could believe that it wouldn’t help your niece if I could. I’m sorry.”
Keith tried another approach, and then another. Nothing worked, and Silverstein was becoming annoyed. Finally Keith left his card.
So it would have to be an investigation without help. More expensive, longer. But certainly possible. He flew back to New York.
During the year after the July Fourth picnic, Keith saw Lillie often. Barbara married Bill Brown, who turned out to be an ordinary, noncriminal, reasonably solvent guy whom Keith didn’t like very much. He was handsome in a thuggish sort of way, with deep-set blue eyes and a heavy beard. Barbara seemed crazy about him. She and Lillie moved into Bill’s West Side apartment and Lillie began exploring the city by subway.
“She’s too young,” Barbara said, running her hand through her short hair and making it stand up in spikes. Barbara had lost even more weight since moving back to New York. “She’s only eleven years old!”
“Kids that age go all over by subway,” Keith said, “and Lillie’s a sensible girl. I’ll teach her the ropes.”
He did. They went to the Museum of National History, to the ballet at Lincoln Center, for walks in the Park, to overpriced little restaurants in SoHo. Lillie was fun, enough of a child to be impressed by everything and enough of an adult to provide actual companionship. One Saturday just before Halloween they met at an Irish pub for a plowman’s lunch. Lately Lillie had insisted on meeting him at their excursion destinations, rather than his picking her up at home. “I like to study the people on the subway,” she said. “I’m going to be a film-maker when I grow up, you know.”
“Last week it was a diplomat.”
She remained unperturbed. “I have lots of time to decide. Uncle Keith, do you believe in angels?”
“No.”
“How about ghosts?”
“No.”
“Space aliens?”
“Could be. But there’s no evidence either way.”
“Demons?”
“No. Lillie, what’s this all about?”
“Oh,” she said, turning her head away, “Mom’s on a new kick.”
He looked at her harder. “What sort of new kick?”
“She thinks the apartment is haunted.”
Keith groaned inwardly. That was all Barbara needed — a “haunting.” He said to Lillie, “What does Bill say?”
Lillie’s face tightened. “He’s not there much anymore.”
After barely a year. Keith ran over his schedule: He could maybe go see Barbara Monday night. It was too late today, he had a date tonight. And all day tomorrow he had to work. He took his niece’s hand across the wooden table. “Lillie, are you all right? With their … their marriage problems?”
“I have to be,” she said pragmatically, and with no trace of self-pity. But clearly she didn’t want to talk about it. “Uncle Keith, tell me again about SkyPower.”
“Well, it’s a nuclear reactor in stable orbit, as you know. When it’s finished it will generate enormous amounts of energy that will be beamed down to Earth as microwaves. We’ll get all the benefits of nuclear power without the contamination risks.”
“You mean the owners of it will,” Lillie said, and Keith laughed. He enjoyed her shrewdness. She’d pulled her hand away from his; she was getting old enough to feel self-conscious about touching. The day was cold and she wore a bright red jacket. Sometime, he hadn’t noticed when, she’d had her ears pierced. Two tiny red hearts nestled in her ear lobes.
She said, “And you’re the lawyer for SkyPower.”
“Well, one of them.” His firm had only recently been named corporate counsel: a coup.
“If anything goes wrong, you defend the company.”
“So far nothing has gone wrong. Knock on wood.”
She did, rapping on the pub table and saying, “Hello? Come in?” She laughed uproariously. Keith did, too, not because it was funny but because it was so good to see her throw back her head and guffaw. A second later, however, she glanced at the watch he’d given her. “I gotta go. Thanks for lunch!”
“Don’t you want dessert?”
“I can’t. Mom’s getting home soon. Thanks again!”
Home from where? Keith wondered, but Lillie was gone, whirling out the door in a swirl of red. He must call Barbara tomorrow, not wait until Monday, find out what the current crisis was.
But Sunday he had a casual, non-involving date. Monday turned out to be spent putting down brush fires. By the time he called his sister, it was too late.