‘I don’t have to answer to anyone,’ Victor answered sullenly. Pushing his stool back, he stood up and strode over to the table. He picked up one of the cloned mice, set the little animal on the palm of his hand and pointed it at the dean.
‘This is my answer,’ he said.
Rex stared at Victor in astonishment. It wasn’t his words or his anger that surprised him, but his altered appearance. He now sported a carroty beard, something Rex had never seen on him, and there were heavy blue bags under his eyes, setting off the paleness of the skin on his forehead and cheekbones. He must have gone without shaving for at least a week and probably hadn’t slept much in all that time either.
‘Victor, how long have you been at work?’
Victor glanced at his watch, and then looked away, as if trying to count how many hours he’d been awake. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Victor . . .’
Victor was stroking his beard absent-mindedly.
‘Victor,’ Rex said again, ‘perhaps you should go and rest for a few hours. I’ll stay here and cover for you in the meantime.’
Victor nodded and stared at the mouse on top of his hand. He cautiously ran his finger a few times down the animal’s spine, as if wanting to reassure it before he left. Then he put the mouse back in the cage with the other mice, turned on his heel and walked to the door.
‘Victor, where can I find your report?’ asked Rex. ‘I’d like to read it.’
‘By the fax machine,’ he replied, circling his left hand in the air.
Rex Cremer wondered what all the fuss had been about, for the article was exceptionally explicit and clear. Victor had described the method he’d used thoroughly, step by step. After each step, moreover, he had evaluated the results, and had even posed a few critical questions at the end, as if to involve other scientists in the quest for answers. Furthermore, he had stressed the importance to his method of cytochalasin B, the agent about which Cremer had already published his own article. Finally, he had been able to support all of the results with data that would have been inconceivable before.
When the dean gave the other biologists at the university the news, they were quite indignant at first, but after reading the report they too were forced to admit that the method he described was indeed revolutionary - and, on first perusal, so simple that it was really a wonder nobody had thought of it before. They looked forward to hearing the reaction from the scientific community when the article was published.
That happened on 10 January 1981. Cell published a full-page photo of the cloned mice on its cover, and Victor Hoppe’s piece was the lead article. The reaction was overwhelming. Prominent scientists from all over the world were filled with astonishment, but gave generous praise - the word ‘genius’ was touted more than once - and the news was written up in both national and foreign newspapers. Requests for interviews with Victor Hoppe came pouring in, but he turned down every one, nor was he prepared to pose for any photographs with his mice. After much persuasion he finally did give in somewhat, granting the university permission to circulate the passport photo taken of him when he had been hired, the same one he had on his ID badge. At the time that photo was taken he hadn’t yet had the beard, which he was never to shave off again.
Rex Cremer was the university’s spokesman and, as one might have expected, he was asked by the members of the press if this meant that cloning humans was now a possibility and if Dr Hoppe, or any other scientist, might venture to do so. Rex told them that it was too early even to think about walking on two legs when the science had only just begun to crawl. He also stressed that these clones were clones grown from embryos, and that the cloning of adult animals would be quite another story. For that to happen one would have to use the nuclei of mature cells, cells that had already developed some specific function. We certainly won’t see it happening in this century, he declared, and he believed it too.
Strictly speaking, Victor ought to have repeated his experiment, even if only once, because reproducibility is an essential scientific principle. But his mind didn’t work that way. It told him he had to go on to the next step. If he managed to achieve one thing, then he would have to start on the next. If . . . then. That was what he knew. Not if . . . if. But Rex Cramer, who had tried several times in vain to get Victor to repeat the experiment, didn’t know that.
‘Victor, you must repeat the experiment. You can’t just assume that it will work a second time. Besides, there are a number of questions unanswered. Do cloned mice live as long as other mice? Can they reproduce? Are the offspring fertile? These are points other scientists have already been raising, Victor, and I find myself unable to give them any answers.’
‘Time will tell,’ said Victor.
‘But even then you’ll have to show that your experiment wasn’t just a fluke,’ Rex said, raising his voice. ‘There’s no way round it.’
‘Only circus animals repeat their tricks over and over again.’
‘OK, then what do you want to do, Victor?’
‘I want to clone adult mammals.’
The dean sighed.
‘If I succeed,’ Victor went on, ‘that will be proof enough that my technique works. Isn’t that what they want?’
‘But they won’t wait. It’ll take years.’
‘It won’t take me years.’
‘Victor, be sensible, just this once. I know your abilities, but—’
‘It is feasible, if the donor cells can be deprogrammed,’ Victor broke in. ‘If we can return them to their elemental stage. Back to G0. Another possibility is to alter the programming of the receptor eggs. That can be done by electrical stimulation. Anyway, the cycles have to be synchronised at the moment of fusion, because if not you’ll get abnormal chromosomes.’
For a moment Rex wished he could tell Victor that he was wrong, but he couldn’t. What Victor was saying made eminent sense, and the way he described it made it seem so straightforward that it was almost as if all he had to do was pour some liquids into a bottle and shake them up a bit.
‘Victor, the faculty will never approve . . .’
‘I’m doing it anyway.’
‘That’s not the way we work here. I’ve already told—’
‘If I can’t do it here, then—’
‘Goddamn it, Victor, you’re not making it easy for me! You’re lucky that I’ve always stood by you so far, I hope you realise that!’
‘I’ve never asked you to.’
‘That is true,’ the dean was forced to admit, with a sigh. He realised he was facing a serious dilemma. If he forced Victor to play by the rules, Victor would leave. And that, naturally, would mean a great loss to his department, which had just been given a large grant by the university to continue the research. But if he were to give Victor carte blanche, the other biologists, who did have to be accountable for their work, were sure to raise a ruckus. It might just have been possible to indulge Victor in this if he had shown a little more team spirit and openness with his confrères, but that had not been the case. He was not in any way cut out for teamwork. He would not listen to authority, never took other people into account and never showed appreciation for anything or anyone else. His talent did make up for that to some extent, but for how much longer?
‘Victor, give me some time to think it over.’
‘There is no time.’
‘What difference can a few days make?’
‘God created the world in a few days.’
‘Victor, you’re driving me insane! Listen . . .’
Suddenly Rex pulled himself up short. Once again, Victor had mentioned God, and something clicked in Rex’s mind. He had always considered Victor’s allusions to God as some sort of joke, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure. In the fifteen months that he had known him Victor had never once told a joke. He’d never even laughed at anyone else’s jokes; he took everything seriously. The dean hadn’t really thought about this until now, but it was possible that Victor was entirely serious when he talked about God. Rex did not believe in God himself, he had not been raised religious. His parents were free-thinkers and had always left it up to him whether to believe or not.
‘You don’t have to answer this, but . . .’ he began, and perhaps he was even hoping he would not get an answer: ‘. . . do you believe in God?’
‘As the creator of all living things - yes, I do,’ answered Victor, as if it were a given.
‘And then who created God?’
‘Man.’
For a moment the dean was rattled, not only by the sincerity of Victor’s answer but equally by the response itself. God had made man and man had made God - that was what it boiled down to. The one led to the other, and the other led back to the first. It was extraordinarily simple, as simple as all of Victor’s explanations. It made Rex think of the snake that bites its own tail, devouring more and more of itself until there’s nothing left. It made sense in a logical way, but from a practical standpoint it was impossible. When Rex taught a genetics class, he often used the snake example to demonstrate the difference between religion and science. In religion, proof was immaterial; in science, proof was all that mattered. He had always regarded religion and science as being completely separate things. An unbridgeable chasm lay between them. But evidently that chasm did not exist for Victor; or perhaps it did, but there was a bridge spanning it - with Victor standing on the bridge. Which would also explain his behaviour, and especially his mindset. As he had once said, some things simply had to be taken for granted. That was the religious man speaking, not the scientist. So, in that sense, a single positive result was all the proof Victor needed; and that was why, in his view, further testing was unnecessary.
‘I think I’m beginning to understand, Victor, but that doesn’t mean I agree with you. I’ll have to think it over.’
Victor nodded.
‘I’ll let you know as soon as I can,’ Rex finished, adding, ‘If the world hasn’t come to an end by then.’
Now Victor frowned. Rex stood up with a smile and reached out a hand to touch Victor’s shoulder. ‘Just kidding!’
Rex Cremer thought that he had finally worked out what made Victor Hoppe tick. But if Victor’s nature consisted of many layers, Rex had only scratched off a sliver of the surface. The example of the snake devouring itself was a good one, but that was as far as it went. He was assuming that Victor possessed some measure of self-awareness, but that wasn’t the case. It was much simpler than that, in fact - more logical. The answer lay in the snake itself. Victor was both the head and the tail. He devoured and was being devoured at once. That was it. He had no choice.
Victor did not wait for Rex Cremer to make a decision. He had already started experimenting on adult mammalian cells. He had scraped off a square centimetre of epidermis from his own thigh and had begun culturing the live cells in a number of different mediums. He had done the same thing with the liver cells of an adult mouse as well as some cells that came from the stomach of a bull. He did wonder if he was obliged to inform the dean of his exact plans but decided that it was too soon. He would just tell him that he wanted to clone adult mammals. That was all. At least he wouldn’t be lying.
The solution Rex Cremer came up with, which was approved by the faculty, was that Rex himself would try to reproduce the cloned-mice experiment. That would allow Victor Hoppe to forge ahead with his own experiments. Cremer also arranged it so that Victor would report only to him and that he would then give a full account to the other departmental scientists. The dean thought that in this way he would be the one pulling the strings, but in truth he had hitched himself to the wagon whose course was set by Victor.
In his last year of primary school Victor ended up with a 4 for religion, and even there Brother Rombout had been generous, for Victor had shown very little interest in the subject all year. At least, that was how Brother Rombout interpreted the fact that Victor refused to open a Bible any more and had left the exam sheet blank. The monk had tried to bring his pupil round, but none of his talks had helped. A great shame, he thought, because he would have liked to send Victor to the junior seminary, where the boy might have trained for the priesthood.
But Victor wanted to be a doctor. He had mentioned this several times in passing and had demonstrated a great interest in the natural sciences. He is turning his back on the dogma of the Father, thought Brother Rombout, and opting for the practical laws of Mother Nature instead. Faithful to his own teaching methods, he encouraged Victor’s interest by giving him books and assignments in his chosen field.
That was how Victor escaped being sent to the junior seminary. But he very nearly failed to be offered a place at the normal secondary school of the Christian Brothers’ School. It had nothing to do with his intelligence but everything to do with the spectacle he made of himself during the last week of primary school.
A crazy spectacle - that was what the other students called it; they couldn’t stop talking about it, unanimous in their opinion that they’d never have expected such a thing from Victor, the model student.
A display of blasphemy! That was how the abbot of the monastery described what Victor Hoppe had done. It was an unfortunate choice of words, thought Brother Rombout, since there had certainly been no blasphemy involved; although he had not raised that point in Victor’s defence when he’d gone in to bat to keep his best pupil from being kicked out. He had stressed Victor’s intelligence. He had said that it would be a shame to lose Victor’s talent on account of a single transgression. He did call it a transgression, but only because he couldn’t immediately think of a better word. He had considered using ‘peccadillo’ or ‘slip-up’, but those words didn’t quite seem to fit the bill.
‘Egregious!’ was Abbot Eberhard’s own term for it.