Mutation

Robin Cook

Prologue.
1. March 19, 1989
2. March 19, 1989
3. March 20, 1989
4. Later Monday Morning
5. Monday Evening
6. Tuesday Morning
7. Later Tuesday Night
8. Thursday Morning
9. Friday Morning
10. Saturday Morning
11. Saturday Afternoon
12. Sunday Morning
13. Monday Morning
14. Monday Afternoon
15. Monday Afternoon
Epilogue.

Mutation
by Robin Cook

   Thanks to Jean, who provided lots of literal and figurative nourishment

   To Grandparents

   For Mae and Ed, whom I wish I had known better
   For Esther and John, who welcomed me into their family
   For Louise and Bill, who adopted me out of pure generosity




   “How dare you sport thus with life.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
“Frankenstein” (1818)



   Energy had been building within the millions of neurons since they’d first formed six months previously. The nerve cells were sizzling with electrical energy steadily galvanizing toward a voltaic threshold. The arborization of the nerve cells’ dendrites and the supporting microglia cells had been increasing at an exponential rate, with hundreds of thousands of new synaptic connections arising every hour. It was like a nuclear reactor on the brink of hypercriticality.
   At last it happened! The threshold was reached and surpassed. Microbolts of electric charges spread like wildfire through the complicated plexus of synaptic connections, energizing the whole mass. Intracellular vesicles poured forth their neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, increasing the level of excitation to another critical point.
   Out of this complex microscopic cellular activity emerged one of the mysteries of the universe: consciousness! Mind had once more been born of matter.
   Consciousness was the faculty that provided foundation for memory and meaning; and also terror and dread. Withconsciousness came the burden of knowledge of eventual death. But at that moment, the consciousness created was consciousness without awareness. Awareness was next and soon to come.

Prologue.
October 11, 1978

   “Oh, God!” Mary Millman said, gripping the sheets with both hands. The agony was starting again in her lower abdomen, spreading rapidly into her groin and into her lower back like a shaft of molten steel.
   “Give me something for the pain! Please! I can’t stand it!” Then she screamed.
   “Mary, you’re doing fine,” Dr. Stedman said calmly. “Just take deep breaths.” He was putting on a pair of rubber gloves, snapping the fingers into place.
   “I can’t take it,” Mary cried hoarsely. She twisted herself into a different position, but it didn’t provide any relief. Each second the pain intensified. She held her breath and, by reflex, contracted every muscle in her body.
   “Mary!” Dr. Stedman said firmly, grabbing Mary’s arm. “Don’t push! It won’t help until your cervix is dilated. And it might hurt the baby!”
   Mary opened her eyes and tried to relax her body. Her breath came out in an agonized groan. “I can’t help it,” she whimpered through tears. “Please—I can’t take it. Help me!” Her words were lost in another shriek.
   Mary Millman was a twenty-two-year-old secretary who worked for a department store in downtown Detroit. When she’d seen the advertisement to be a surrogate mother, the idea of the money had seemed like a godsend—a perfect way for her to finally settle the seemingly endless debts left from her mother’s long illness. But never having been pregnant or seen a birth, except in movies, she’d had no idea what it would be like. At the moment she couldn’t think about the thirty thousand dollars she was to receive when it was all over, a figure much higher than the “going” fee for surrogacy in Michigan, the one state where an infant could be adopted before birth. She thought she was going to die.
   The pain peaked, then leveled off. Mary was able to snatch a few shallow breaths. “I need a pain shot,” she said with some difficulty. Her mouth was dry.
   “You’ve already had two,” Dr. Stedman answered. He was preoccupied with removing the pair of gloves he’d contaminated by grabbing her arm, replacing them with a new and sterile pair.
   “I don’t feel them,” Mary moaned.
   “Maybe not at the height of a contraction,” Dr. Stedman said, “but just a few moments ago you were asleep.”
   “I was?” Mary looked up for confirmation into the face of Marsha Frank, one of the adoptive parents, who was gently wiping her forehead with a cool, damp washcloth. Marsha nodded. She had a warm, empathetic smile. Mary liked her and was thankful Marsha had insisted on being present at the birth. Both Franks had made that a condition of the agreement, though Mary was less enthusiastic about the prospective father, who was constantly barking orders at her.
   “Remember, the baby gets whatever medications you get,” he was now saying sharply. “We can’t jeopardize his life just to ease your pain.”
   Dr. Stedman gave Victor Frank a quick look. The man was getting on his nerves. As far as Dr. Stedman was concerned, Frank was the worst prospective father he’d ever allowed in the labor room. What made it particularly astounding was that Frank was a physician himself and had had obstetric training before going into research. If he had had such experience, it certainly didn’t show in his bedside manner. A long sigh from Mary brought Dr. Stedman’s attention back to his patient.
   The grimace that had distorted Mary’s face slowly faded. The contraction was obviously over. “Okay,” Dr. Stedman said, motioning for the nurse to lift the sheet covering Mary’s legs. “Let’s see what’s going on.” He bent over and positioned Mary’s legs.
   “Maybe we should do an ultrasound?” Victor suggested. “I don’t think we’re making much progress.”
   Dr. Stedman straightened up. “Dr. Frank! If you don’t mind . . .” He let his sentence trail off, hoping that his tone conveyed his irritation.
   Victor Frank looked up at Dr. Stedman, and Stedman suddenly realized the man was terrified. Frank’s face was porcelain white, with beads of perspiration along his hairline. Perhaps using a surrogate was a unique strain even for a doctor.
   “Oh!” exclaimed Mary. There was a sudden gush of fluid onto the bed, drawing Dr. Stedman’s attention back to his patient. For the moment he forgot about Frank.
   “That’s the rupture of the membranes,” Dr. Stedman said. “It’s entirely normal, as I explained before. Let’s see where we are with this baby.”
   Mary closed her eyes. She felt fingers going back inside of her. Lying in sheets drenched with her own fluid, she felt humiliated and vulnerable. She’d told herself she was doing this not just for the money but to bring happiness to a couple who couldn’t have another baby. Marsha had been so sweet and persuasive. Now she wondered if she’d done the right thing. Then another contraction forced all thought from her head.
   “Well, well!” Dr. Stedman exclaimed. “Very good, Mary. Very good indeed.” He snapped off the rubber gloves and tossed them aside. “The baby’s head is now engaged and your cervix is almost entirely dilated. Good girl!” He turned to the nurse. “Let’s move the show into the delivery room.”
   “Can I have some pain medicine now?” Mary asked.
   “Just as soon as we get in the delivery room,” Dr. Stedman said cheerfully. He was relieved. Then he felt a hand on his arm.
   “Are you sure the head isn’t too big?” asked Victor abruptly, pulling Dr. Stedman aside.
   Dr. Stedman could feel a tremor in the hand that gripped his arm. He reached up and peeled away the fingers. “I said the head was engaged. That means the head has passed through the pelvic inlet. I’m certain you remember that!”
   “Are you sure the head is engaged?” asked Victor.
   A wave of resentment wafted through Dr. Stedman. He was about to lose his temper, but he saw that Frank was trembling with anxiety. Holding his anger in check, Stedman just said, “The head is engaged. I’m certain.” Then he added: “If this is upsetting you, perhaps it would be best if you went to the waiting room.”
   “I couldn’t!” Victor said with emphasis. “I’ve got to see this thing through.”
   Dr. Stedman gazed at Dr. Frank. From the first meeting, he’d had a strange feeling about this man. For a while, he’d attributed Frank’s uneasiness to the surrogacy situation, but it was more than that. And Dr. Frank was more than the worried father. “I’ve got to see this thing through” was a strange comment for a father-to-be, even a surrogate one. He made it sound as if this was some kind of mission, not a joyous—if traumatic—experience involving human beings.
   Marsha was vaguely aware of her husband’s curious behavior as she followed Mary’s bed down the hall to the delivery room. But she was so absorbed in the birth itself she didn’t focus on it. With all her heart she wished it were she in the hospital bed. She would have welcomed the pain, even though the birth of their son, David, five years earlier had ended in such a violent hemorrhage her doctor had had to perform an emergency hysterectomy to save her life. She and Victor had so desperately wanted a second child. Since she could not bear one, they had weighed the options. After some deliberation, they settled on surrogacy as the preferable one. Marsha had been happy about the arrangement, and glad that even before birth, the child was legally theirs, but she still would have given anything to have carried this much-longed-for baby herself. For a moment she wondered how Mary could bear to part with him. For that reason she was particularly pleased about Michigan law.
   Watching the nurses move Mary to the delivery table, Marsha said softly, “You’re doing just fine. It’s almost over.”
   “Let’s get her on her side,” said Dr. Whitehead, the anesthesiologist, to the nurses. Then, gripping Mary’s arm, she said: “I’m going to give you that epidural block we discussed.”
   “I don’t think I want epidural,” said Victor, moving to the opposite side of the delivery table. “Especially not if you’re planning on using a caudal approach.”
   “Dr. Frank!” Dr. Stedman said sternly. “You have a choice: either stop interfering or leave the delivery room. Take your pick.” Dr. Stedman had had enough. He’d already put up with a number of Frank’s orders, such as performing every known prenatal test, including amniocentesis and chorionic villus biopsy. He’d even permitted Mary to take an antibiotic called cephaloclor for three weeks in the early part of the pregnancy. Professionally, he’d felt none of these things were indicated, but he’d gone along with them because Dr. Frank had insisted and because the surrogacy status made the situation unique. Since Mary did not object, saying it was all part of the deal she’d struck with the Franks, he didn’t mind complying. But that was during the pregnancy. The delivery was a different story, and Dr. Stedman was not about to compromise his methodology for a neurotic colleague. Just what kind of medical training had Frank gone through? he wondered. Surely he could abide by standard operating procedures. But here he was questioning each of Stedman’s orders, second-guessing every step.
   For a few tense seconds, Victor and Dr. Stedman stood glaring at each other. Victor’s fists were clenched, and for a brief moment Dr. Stedman thought that the man was about to strike him. But the moment passed, and Victor slouched away to stand nervously in the corner.
   Victor’s heart was racing and he felt an unpleasant sensation in his abdomen. “Please make the baby normal,” he prayed to himself. He looked over at his wife as his eyes clouded with tears. She had wanted another baby so much. He felt himself begin to tremble again. He chided himself inwardly. “I shouldn’t have done it. But please, God—let this baby be all right.” He looked up at the clock. The second hand seemed to drag slowly around the face. He wondered how much longer he could stand the tension.
   Dr. Whitehead’s skilled hands had the caudal analgesic in place in seconds. Marsha held Mary’s hand, smiling encouragement as the pain began to ease. The next thing Mary knew was that someone was waking her, telling her it was time to push. The second stage of labor went quickly and smoothly, and at 6:04 P.M. a vigorous Victor Frank Jr. was born.
   Victor was standing directly behind Dr. Stedman at the moment of birth, holding his breath, trying to see as best he could. As the child came into view, he rapidly scanned the infant as Dr. Stedman clamped and cut the cord. Stedman handed the infant to the waiting resident pediatrician, whom Victor followed to the thermostatically controlled infant care unit. The resident put the silent infant down and began to examine him. Victor felt a rush of relief. The child appeared normal.
   “Apgar of ten,” the resident called out, indicating that Victor Jr. had the highest possible rating.
   “Wonderful,” said Dr. Stedman, who was busy with Mary and the imminent delivery of the afterbirth.
   “But he’s not crying,” questioned Victor. Doubt clouded his euphoria.
   The resident lightly slapped the soles of Victor Jr.’s feet, then rubbed his back. Still the infant stayed quiet. “But he’s breathing fine.”
   The resident picked up the bulb syringe and tried to suction Victor Jr.’s nose once again. To the doctor’s astonishment, the newborn’s hand came up and yanked the bulb away from the fingers of the resident and dropped it over the side of the infant care unit.
   “Well that settles that,” said the resident with a chuckle. “He just doesn’t want to cry.”
   “Can I?” asked Victor, motioning toward the baby.
   “As long as he doesn’t get cold.”
   Gingerly, Victor reached into the unit and scooped up Victor Jr. He held the infant in front of him with both hands around his torso. He was a beautiful baby with strikingly blond hair. His chubby, rosy cheeks gave his face a picturesquely cherubic quality, but by far the most distinctive aspect of his appearance was his bright blue eyes. As Victor gazed into their depths he realized with a shock that the baby was looking back at him.
   “Beautiful, isn’t he?” said Marsha over Victor’s shoulder.
   “Gorgeous,” Victor agreed. “But where did the blond hair come from? Ours is brown.”
   “I was blond until I was five,” Marsha said, reaching up to touch the baby’s pink skin.
   Victor glanced at his wife as she lovingly gazed at the child. She had dark brown hair peppered with just a few strands of gray. Her eyes were a sultry gray-blue; her features quite sculptured: they contrasted with the rounded, full features of the infant.
   “Look at his eyes,” Marsha said.
   Victor turned his attention back to the baby. “They are incredible, aren’t they? A minute ago I’d have sworn they were looking right back at me.”
   “They are like jewels,” Marsha said.
   Victor turned the baby to face Marsha. As he did so he noticed the baby’s eyes remained locked on his! Their turquoise depths were as cold and bright as ice. Unbidden, Victor felt a thrill of fear.

   The Franks felt triumphant as Victor pulled his Oldsmobile Cutlass into the crushed stone driveway leading to their clapboard farmhouse. All the planning and anguish of the in-vitro fertilization process had paid off. The search for an appropriate surrogate mother, the dreary trips to Detroit had worked. They had a child, and Marsha cradled the infant in her arms, thanking God for His gift.
   Marsha watched as the car rounded the final bend. Lifting the child up and pulling aside the edge of the blanket, she showed the boy his home. As if comprehending, Victor Jr. stared out of the car windshield at the pleasant but modest house. He blinked, then turned to smile at Victor.
   “You like it, huh, Tiger?” said Victor playfully. “He’s only three days old but I’d swear he’d talk to me if he could.”
   “What would you have him say?” Marsha asked as he lowered VJ into her lap. They had nicknamed him that to help distinguish him from his father, Victor Sr.
   “I don’t know,” said Victor, bringing the car to a stop at the front door. “Maybe say he wanted to grow up and become a doctor like his old man.”
   “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Marsha, opening the passenger-side door.
   Victor jumped out to help her. It was a beautiful, crystal-clear October day, filled with bright sunshine. Behind the house the trees had turned a brilliant profusion of fall colors; scarlet maples, orange oaks and yellow birches all competed with their beauty. As they came up the walk the front door opened and Janice Fay, their live-in nanny, ran down the front steps.
   “Let me see him,” she begged, stopping short in front of Marsha. Her hand went to her mouth in admiration.
   “What do you think?” Victor asked.
   “He’s angelic!” Janice said. “He’s gorgeous, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such blue eyes.” She held out her arms. “Let me hold him.” Gently she took the child from Marsha and rocked him back and forth. “I certainly didn’t expect blond hair.”
   “We didn’t either,” Marsha said. “We thought we’d surprise you like he surprised us. But it comes from my side of the family.”
   “Oh sure,” kidded Victor. “There were a lot of blonds with Genghis Khan.”
   “Where’s David?” asked Marsha.
   “Back in the house,” said Janice without taking her eyes from VJ’s face.
   “David!” Marsha called.
   The little boy appeared at the doorway, holding one of his previously discarded teddy bears. He was a slight child of five with dark, curly hair.
   “Come out here and see your new brother.”
   Dutifully David walked out to the cooing group.
   Janice bent down and showed the newborn to his brother. David looked at the infant and wrinkled his nose. “He smells bad.”
   Victor chuckled, but Marsha kissed him, saying that when VJ was a little older he’d smell nice like David.
   Marsha took VJ back from the nanny and started into the house. Janice sighed. It was such a happy day. She loved newborn babies. She felt David take her hand. She looked down at the boy. He had his head tilted up toward hers.
   “I wish the baby hadn’t come,” he said.
   “Shush now,” said Janice gently, hugging David to her side. “That’s not a nice way to act. He’s just a tiny baby and you are a big boy.”
   Hand in hand, they entered the house just as Marsha and Victor were disappearing into the newly decorated baby’s room at the top of the stairs. Janice took David into the kitchen where she had started dinner preparation. He climbed up onto one of the kitchen chairs, placing the teddy bear on the one just opposite. Janice went back to the sink.
   “Do you love me more or the baby?”
   Janice quickly put down the vegetables she was rinsing and picked David up in her arms. She leaned her forehead on his and said: “I love you more than anybody in the whole world.” Then she hugged him forcefully. David hugged her back.
   Neither realized that they only had a few more years to live.

1. March 19, 1989
Sunday, Late Afternoon

   Long, lacy shadows from the leafless maple trees lining the driveway inched across the broad cobblestone courtyard that separated the sprawling white colonial mansion from the barn. A wind had sprung up as the dusk approached, moving the shadows in undulating patterns and making them look like giant spiderwebs. Despite the fact it was almost officially spring, winter still gripped the land in North Andover, Massachusetts.
   Marsha stood at the sink in the large country kitchen, staring out at the garden and the fading light. A movement by the driveway caught her eye, and she turned to see VJ peddling home on his bicycle.
   For a second, she felt her breath catch in her throat. Since David’s death nearly five years ago, she never took her family for granted. She would never forget the terrible day the doctor told her that the boy’s jaundice was due to cancer. His face, yellow and wizened from the disease, was etched on her heart. She could still feel his small body clinging to her just before he died. She had been certain he had been trying to tell her something, but all she’d heard was his uneasy gasps as he tried to hold on to life.
   Nothing had really been the same since then. And things got even worse just a year later. Marsha’s extreme concern for VJ stemmed partly from the loss of David, and partly from the terrible circumstances surrounding Janice’s death only a year after his. Both had contracted an extremely rare form of liver cancer, and despite assurances that the two cancers were in no way contagious, Marsha couldn’t shake the fear that lightning, having struck twice, might flash a third time.
   Janice’s death was all the more memorable because it had been so gruesome.
   It had been in the fall, just after VJ’s birthday. Leaves were falling from the trees, an autumn chill was in the air. Even before she got sick, Janice had been behaving strangely for some time, only willing to eat food that she prepared herself and which came from unopened containers. She’d become fiercely religious, embracing a particularly fanatic strain of born-again Christianity. Marsha and Victor might not have put up with her had she not become practically one of the family in the many years she’d worked for them.
   During David’s final, critical months, she’d been a godsend. But soon after David’s passing, Janice started carrying her Bible everywhere, pressing it to her chest as if it might shield her from unspeakable ills. She’d only put it aside to do her chores, and then reluctantly. On top of that, she’d become sullen and withdrawn, and would lock herself in her room at night.
   What was worse was the attitude that she’d developed toward VJ. Suddenly she’d refused to have anything to do with the boy, who was five at the time. Even though VJ was an exceptionally independent child, there were still times when Janice’s cooperation was needed, but she refused to help. Marsha had had several talks with her, but to no avail. Janice persisted in shunning him. When pressed, she’d rave about the devil in their midst and other religious nonsense.
   Marsha was at her wits’ end when Janice got sick. Victor had been the first to notice how yellow her eyes had become. He brought it to Marsha’s attention. With horror, Marsha realized Janice’s eyes had the same jaundiced cast that David’s had had. Victor rushed Janice to Boston so that her condition could be evaluated. Even with her yellow eyes, the diagnosis had come as a tremendous shock: she had liver cancer of the same particularly virulent type that David had died of.
   Having two cases of such a rare form of liver cancer in the same household within a year prompted extensive epidemiological investigations. But the results had all been negative. There was no environmental hazard present. The computers determined that the two cases were simply rare chance occurrences.
   At least the diagnosis of liver cancer helped explain Janice’s bizarre behavior. The doctors felt she might have already suffered brain metastasis. Once she was diagnosed, her downhill course proved swift and merciless. She’d rapidly lost weight despite therapy, became skin and bones within two weeks. But it had been the last day before she’d gone to the hospital to die that had been most traumatic.
   Victor had just arrived home and was in the bathroom off the family room. Marsha was in the kitchen preparing dinner, when the house had reverberated with a blood-chilling scream.
   Victor shot out of the bathroom. “What in God’s name was that?” he yelled.
   “It came from Janice’s room,” said Marsha, who’d turned very pale.
   Marsha and Victor exchanged a knowing, fateful glance. Then they dashed out to the garage and up the narrow stairs to Janice’s separate studio apartment.
   Before they reached her room, a second scream shattered the silence. Its primeval force seemed to rattle the windows.
   Victor reached the room first with Marsha on his heels.
   Janice was standing in the middle of her bed, clutching her Bible. She was a sorry sight. Her hair, which had become brittle, stood straight out from her head, giving her a demonic appearance. Her face was hollow, her jaundiced skin stretched tautly across her all-too-visible bones. Her eyes were like yellow neon lights and they were transfixed.
   For an instant, Marsha was mesmerized by this vision of Janice as a harpy. Then she followed the woman’s line of sight. Standing in the doorway to Janice’s rear entry was VJ. He didn’t even blink but calmly returned Janice’s stare with one of his own.
   Marsha immediately surmised what had happened: VJ had innocently come up Janice’s back stairs, apparently frightening her. In her illness-induced psychosis, Janice had screamed her terrible scream.
   “He is the devil!” Janice snarled through clenched teeth. “He is a murderer! Get him away from me!”
   “You try to calm Janice,” Marsha shouted, running for VJ. She scooped the six-year-old up into her arms, and retreated down the stairs, rushing him into the family room and kicking the door shut behind her. She pressed VJ’s head against her chest, thinking how stupid she’d been to keep the crazed woman at home.
   Finally Marsha released VJ from her bear hug. VJ pushed away from her and looked up at her with his crystal eyes.
   “Janice doesn’t mean what she said,” Marsha told him. She hoped this awful moment would have no lasting effect.
   “I know,” VJ said with amazingly adult maturity. “She’s very sick. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
   Since that day, Marsha could never relax and enjoy her life as she had before. If she did she was afraid God might strike again and if anything happened to VJ, she didn’t think she could bear the loss.
   As a child psychiatrist, she knew she could not expect her child to develop in a certain way, but she often found herself wishing VJ were a more openly affectionate child. Since he had been an infant he had been unnaturally independent. He would occasionally let her hug him, but sometimes she longed for him to climb onto her lap and cuddle the way David had.
   Now, watching him get off his bike, she wondered if VJ was as self-absorbed as he sometimes appeared. She waved to get his attention but he didn’t look up as he snapped off the saddlebags, letting them fall to the cobblestones. Then he pushed open the barn door and disappeared from sight as he parked his bike for the night. When he reappeared he picked up the saddlebags and started toward the house. Marsha waved again, but although he was walking directly toward her he did not respond. He had his chin pressed down against the cold wind that constantly funneled through the courtyard.
   She started to knock on the window, then dropped her hand. Lately she had this terrible premonition there was something wrong with the boy. God knows she couldn’t have loved him more if she’d delivered him herself, but sometimes she feared he was unnaturally cold and unfeeling. Genetically he was her own son, but he had none of the warmth and carefree ways she remembered in herself as a child. Before going to sleep she was often obsessed with the thought that being conceived in a petri dish had somehow frozen his emotions. She knew it was a ridiculous idea, but it kept returning.
   Shaking off her thoughts, she called, “VJ’s home,” to Victor, who was reading in front of a crackling fire in the family room next to the kitchen. Victor grunted but didn’t look up.
   The sound of the back door slamming heralded VJ’s entrance into the house. Marsha could hear him taking off his coat and boots in the mud room. Within minutes he appeared at the doorway to the kitchen. He was a handsome boy, about five feet tall, somewhat large for a ten-year-old. His golden blond hair had not darkened like Marsha’s had, and his face had retained its angelic character. And just like the day he was born, his most distinctive feature remained his ice-blue eyes. For as cherubic as he seemed, those intense eyes hinted at an intelligence wiser than his years.
   “All right, young man,” Marsha scolded in mock irritation. “You know you are not supposed to be out on your bike after dark.”
   “But it’s not dark yet,” VJ said defensively in his clear, soprano voice. Then he realized his mother was joking. “I’ve been at Richie’s,” he added. He put his saddlebags down and came over to the sink.
   “That’s nice,” Marsha said, obviously pleased. “Why didn’t you call? Then you could have stayed as long as you liked. I’d have been happy to come and get you.”
   “I wanted to come home anyway,” VJ said as he picked up one of the carrots Marsha had just cleaned. He took a noisy bite.
   Marsha put her arms around VJ and gave him a squeeze, aware of the strength in his wiry young body. “Since you have no school this week I’d have thought you would have wanted to stay with Richie and have some fun.”
   “Nah,” VJ said as he wormed his way out of his mother’s grasp.
   “Are you worrying your mother again?” Victor asked in a teasing tone. He appeared at the doorway to the family room, holding an open scientific journal, his reading glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose.
   Ignoring Victor, Marsha asked, “What about this week? Did you make some plans with Richie?”
   “Nope. I’m planning on spending the week with Dad at the lab. If that’s okay, Dad?” VJ moved his eyes to his father.
   “Fine by me as usual,” Victor said with a shrug.
   “Why in heaven’s name do you want to go to the lab?” Marsha asked. But it was a rhetorical question. She didn’t expect an answer. VJ had been going to the lab with his father since he’d been an infant. First to take advantage of the superb day-care services offered at Chimera, Inc., and later to play in the lab itself. It had become a routine, even more so after Janice Fay had died.
   “Why don’t you call up some of your friends from school, and you and Richie and a whole group do something exciting?”
   “Let him be,” Victor said, coming to VJ’s assistance. “If VJ wants to come with me, that’s fine.”
   “Okay, okay,” Marsha said, knowing when she was outnumbered. “Dinner will be around eight,” she said to VJ, giving his bottom a playful slap.
   VJ picked up the saddlebags he’d parked on the chair next to the phone and headed up the back stairs. The old wooden risers creaked under his seventy-four-pound frame. VJ went directly to the second-floor den. It was a cozy room paneled in mahogany. Sitting down at his father’s computer, he booted up the machine. He listened intently for a moment to make sure his parents were still talking in the kitchen and then went through an involved procedure to call up a file he’d named STATUS. The screen blinked, then filled with data. Zipping open each saddlebag in turn, VJ stared at the contents and made some rapid calculations, then entered a series of numbers into the computer. It took him only a few moments.
   After completing the entry, VJ exited from STATUS, zipped up the saddlebags, and called up Pac-Man. A smile spread across his face as the yellow ball moved through the maze, gobbling up its prey.

   Marsha shook the water from her hands, then dried them on the towel hanging from the refrigerator handle. She couldn’t get her growing concern for VJ out of her mind. He wasn’t a difficult child; there certainly weren’t any complaints from teachers at school, yet tough as it was to put her finger on it, Marsha was increasingly certain something was wrong. It was time she brought it up. Picking up Kissa, their Russian Blue cat who’d been doing figure eights around her legs, Marsha walked into the family room where Victor was sprawled on the gingham couch, perusing the latest journals as was his habit after work.
   “Can I talk to you for a moment?” Marsha asked.
   Victor lowered his magazine cautiously, peering at Marsha over the tops of his reading glasses. At forty-three, he was a slightly built, wiry man with dark wavy, academically unkempt hair and sharp features. He’d been a reasonably good squash player in college and still played three times a week. Chimera, Inc., had its own squash courts, thanks to Victor.
   “I’m worried about VJ,” Marsha said as she sat down on the wing chair next to the couch, still petting Kissa, who was momentarily content to remain on her lap.
   “Oh?” said Victor, somewhat surprised. “Something wrong?”
   “Not exactly,” Marsha admitted. “It’s a number of little things. Like it bothers me that he has so few friends. A few moments ago when he said he’d been with this Richie boy, I was so pleased, like it was an accomplishment. But now he says he doesn’t want to spend any time with him over his spring break. A child VJ’s age needs to be with other kids. It’s an important part of normal latency development.”
   Victor gave Marsha one of his looks. She knew he hated this kind of psychological discussion, even if psychiatry was her field. He didn’t have the patience for it. Besides, talk of any problems related to VJ’s development had always seemed to fuel anxieties Victor preferred not to fire. He sighed, but didn’t speak.
   “Doesn’t it worry you?” Marsha persisted when it was apparent Victor wasn’t about to say anything. She stroked the cat, who took the attention as if it were a burden.
   Victor shook his head. “Nope. I think VJ is one of the best-adapted kids I’ve ever met. What’s for dinner?”
   “Victor!” Marsha said sharply. “This is important.”
   “All right, all right!” Victor said, closing his magazine.
   “I mean, he gets along fine with adults,” Marsha continued, “but he never seems to spend time with kids his own age.”
   “He’s with kids his own age at school,” Victor said.
   “I know,” Marsha admitted. “But that’s so highly structured.”
   “To tell the truth,” Victor said, knowing he was being deliberately cruel, but given his own anxiety about VJ—anxiety very different from his wife’s—he couldn’t bear to stay on the subject, “I think you’re just being neurotic. VJ’s a great kid. There’s nothing wrong with him. I think you’re still reacting to David’s death.” He winced inwardly as he said this, but there was no getting around it: the best defense was an offense.
   The comment hit Marsha like an open-hand slap. Emotion bubbled up instantly. Blinking back tears, she forced herself to continue. “There are other things besides his apparent lack of friends. He never seems to need anyone or anything. When we bought Kissa we told VJ it was to be his cat, but he’s never given her a second glance. And since you’ve brought up David’s death, do you think it normal that VJ has never mentioned his name? When we told him about David he acted as if we’d been talking about a stranger.”
   “Marsha, he was only five years old. I think you’re the one who’s disturbed. Five years is a long time to grieve. Maybe you should see a psychiatrist.”
   Marsha bit her lip. Victor was usually such a kind man, but any time she wanted to discuss VJ, he just cut her off.
   “Well, I just wanted to tell you what was on my mind,” she said, getting up. It was time to go back into the kitchen and finish dinner. Hearing the familiar sounds of Pac-Man from the upstairs den, she felt slightly reassured.
   Victor got up, stretched, and followed her into the kitchen.

2. March 19, 1989
Sunday, Early Evening

   Dr. William Hobbs was looking across the chessboard at his son, marveling over him as he did most every day, when the boy’s intensely blue eyes rolled back into his head, and the child fell backward off his seat. William didn’t see his son hit the floor, but he heard the sickening thud.
   “Sheila!” he screamed, jumping up and rushing around the table. To his horror, he saw that Maurice’s arms and legs were flailing wildly. He was in the throes of a grand mal seizure.
   As a Ph.D., not an M.D., William was not certain what to do. He vaguely remembered something about protecting the victim’s tongue by putting something between his teeth, but he had nothing appropriate.
   Kneeling over the boy, who was just days short of his third birthday, William yelled again for his wife. Maurice’s body contorted with surprising force; it was hard for William to keep the child from injuring himself.
   Sheila froze at the sight of her husband juggling the wildly thrashing child. By this time Maurice had bitten his tongue badly, and as his head snapped up and down, a spray of frothy blood arched onto the rug.
   “Call an ambulance!” shouted William.
   Sheila broke free of the paralyzing spell and rushed back to the kitchen phone. Maurice hadn’t felt well from the moment she’d picked him up from Chimera Day Care. He’d complained of a headache—one of a pounding variety, like a migraine. Of course most three-year-olds wouldn’t describe a headache that way, but Maurice wasn’t most three-year-olds. He was a true child prodigy, a genius. He’d learned to talk at eight months, read at thirteen months, and now could beat his father at their nightly chess game.
   “We need an ambulance!” shouted Sheila into the phone when a voice finally answered. She gave their address, pleading with the operator to hurry. Then she rushed back into the living room.
   Maurice had stopped convulsing. He was lying quite still on the couch where William had placed him. He’d vomited his dinner along with a fair amount of bright red blood. The awful mess had become matted in his blond hair and drooled from the corners of his mouth. He’d also lost control of his bladder and bowels.
   “What should I do?” William pleaded in frustration. At least the child was breathing and his color, which had turned a dusky blue, was returning to normal.
   “What happened?” Sheila asked.
   “Nothing,” William answered. “He was winning as usual. Then his eyes rolled up and back and he fell over. I’m afraid he hit his head pretty hard on the floor.”
   “Oh, God!” Sheila said, wiping Maurice’s mouth with the corner of her apron. “Maybe you shouldn’t have insisted he play chess tonight with his headache and everything.”
   “He wanted to,” William said defensively. But that wasn’t quite true. Maurice had been lukewarm to the idea. But William couldn’t resist an opportunity to watch the child use his phenomenal brain. Maurice was William’s pride and joy.
   He and Sheila had been married for eight years before they finally were willing to admit they were unable to conceive. Since Chimera had its own fertility center, Fertility, Inc., and since William was an employee of Chimera, he and Sheila had gone there free of charge. It hadn’t been easy. They had to face the fact that both of them were infertile, but eventually, via a surrogate and gamete-donation plans, they got their long-awaited child: Maurice, their miracle baby with an IQ right off the charts.
   “I’ll get a towel and clean him up,” Sheila said, starting for the kitchen. But William grabbed her arm.
   “Maybe we shouldn’t move him around.”
   The couple sat watching the child helplessly, until they heard the ambulance scream down their street. Sheila rushed to let the medics in.
   A few moments later, William found himself balancing on a seat in the back of the lurching vehicle with Sheila following behind in the family car.
   When they reached Lowell General Hospital, the couple waited anxiously while Maurice was examined and evaluated, then declared stable enough for transfer. William wanted the child to go to Children’s Hospital in Boston, about a half hour’s drive. Something told him that his child was deathly ill. Maybe they had been too proud of his phenomenal brilliance. Maybe God was making them pay.

   “Hey, VJ!” Victor shouted up the back stairs. “How about a swim!” He could hear his voice carom off the walls of their spacious house. It had been built in the eighteenth century by the local landowner. Victor had bought and renovated it shortly after David’s death. Business at Chimera had begun to boom after the company had gone public, and Victor felt Marsha would be better off if she didn’t have to face the same rooms where David had grown up. She’d taken David’s passing even harder than he had.
   “Want to go in the pool?” Victor shouted again. It was at times like this that he wished they’d put in an intercom system.
   “No, thanks,” came VJ’s answer echoing down the stairwell.
   Victor remained where he was for a moment, one hand on the handrail, one foot on the first step. His earlier conversation with Marsha had reawakened all his initial fears about his son. The early unusual development, the incredible intelligence which had made him a chess master at three years of age, the precipitous drop in intelligence before he was four; VJ’s was by no means a standard maturation. Victor had been so guilt-ridden since the moment of the child’s birth that he had been almost relieved at the disappearance of the little boy’s extraordinary powers. But now he wondered if a normal kid wouldn’t jump at the chance to swim in the family’s new pool. Victor had decided to add a pool for exercise. They’d built it off the back of the house in a type of greenhouse affair. Construction had just been completed the previous month.
   Making up his mind not to take no for an answer, Victor bounded up the stairs two at a time in his stocking feet. Silently, he whisked down the long hall to VJ’s bedroom, which was located in the front of the house overlooking the driveway. As always, the room was neat and orderly, with a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica lining one wall and a chemical chart of the elements on the wall opposite. VJ was lying on his stomach on his bed, totally absorbed in a thick book.
   Advancing toward the bed, Victor tried to see what VJ was reading. Peering over the top of the book, all he could make out was a mass of equations, hardly what he expected.
   “Gotcha!” he said, playfully grabbing the boy’s leg.
   At his touch, VJ leaped up, his hands ready to defend himself.
   “Whoa! Were you concentrating or what?” Victor said with a laugh.
   VJ’s turquoise eyes bore into his father. “Don’t ever do that again!” he said.
   For a second, Victor felt a familiar surge of fear at what he had created. Then VJ let out a sigh and dropped back onto the bed.
   “What on earth are you reading?” Victor asked.
   VJ closed the book as if it had been pornography. “Just something I picked up on black holes.”
   “Heavy!” Victor said, trying to sound hip.
   “Actually, it’s not very good,” VJ said. “Lots of errors.”
   Again Victor felt a cold chill. Lately he had wondered if his son’s precocious intelligence wasn’t returning. Attempting to shrug off his worries, Victor said firmly, “Listen, VJ, we’re going for a swim.”
   He went over to VJ’s bureau and extracted a pair of bathing trunks and tossed them at his son. “Come on, I’ll race you.”
   Victor walked down to his own bedroom, where he pulled on a bathing suit, then called for VJ. VJ appeared and came down the hall toward his father. Victor noted with pride that his son was well built for a ten-year-old. For the first time Victor thought that VJ could be an athlete if he were so inclined.
   The pool had that typical humid chlorine smell. The glass that comprised the ceiling and walls of its enclosure reflected back the image of the pool; the wintry scene outside was not in view. Victor tossed his towel over the back of an aluminum deck chair as Marsha appeared at the door to the family room.
   “How about swimming with us?” Victor asked.
   Marsha shook her head. “You boys enjoy yourself. It’s too cold for me.”
   “We’re going to race,” Victor said. “How about officiating?”
   “Dad,” VJ said plaintively. “I don’t want to race.”
   “Sure you do,” Victor said. “Two laps. The loser has to take out the garbage.”
   Marsha came out onto the deck and took VJ’s towel, rolling her eyes at the boy in commiseration.
   “You want the inside lane or the outside one?” Victor asked him, hoping to draw him in.
   “It doesn’t matter,” VJ said as he lined up next to his father, facing down the length of the pool. The surface swirled gently from the circulator.
   “You start us,” Victor said to Marsha.
   “On your mark, get set,” Marsha said, pausing, watching her husband and her son teeter on the side of the pool. “Go!”
   After backing up to avoid the initial splash, Marsha sat down in one of the deck chairs and watched. Victor was not a good swimmer, but even so she was surprised to see that VJ was leading through the first lap and the turn. Then, on the second lap, VJ seemed to hold back and Victor won by half a length.
   “Good try,” Victor said, sputtering and triumphant. “Welcome to the garbage detail!”
   Perplexed at what she thought she had witnessed, Marsha eyed VJ curiously as he hoisted himself from the water. As their eyes met, VJ winked, confusing her even more.
   VJ took his towel and dried himself briskly. He really would have liked to be the sort of son his mother longed for, the kind David had been. But it just wasn’t in him. Even times he tried to fake it, he knew he didn’t get it quite right. Still, if moments like this one at the pool gave his parents a sense of family happiness, who was he to deny them?

   “Mother, it hurts even more,” Mark Murray said to Colette. He was in his bedroom on the third floor of the Murray townhouse on Beacon Hill. “Whenever I move I feel pressure behind my eyes and in my sinuses.” The precise terms were a startling contrast to the tiny toddler’s palms with which the child clutched his head.
   “It’s worse than before dinner?” Colette asked, smoothing back his tightly curled blond hair. She was no longer startled by her toddler’s exceptional vocabulary. The boy was lying in a standard-size bed, even though he was only two and a half years old. At thirteen months he’d demanded that the crib be put in the basement.
   “It’s much worse,” Mark said.
   “Let’s take your temperature once more,” Colette said, slipping a thermometer into his mouth. Colette was becoming progressively alarmed even though she tried to reassure herself it was just the beginning of a cold or flu. It had started about an hour after her husband, Horace, had brought Mark home from the day-care center at Chimera. Mark told her he wasn’t hungry, and for Mark that was distinctly abnormal.
   The next symptom was sweating. It started just as they were about to sit down to eat. Although he told his parents that he didn’t feel hot, the sweat poured out of him. A few minutes later he vomited. That was when Colette put him to bed.
   As an accountant who’d been too queasy even to take biology in college, Horace was happy to leave the sickroom chores to Colette, not that she had any real experience. She was a lawyer and her busy practice had forced her to start Mark at day care when he was only a year old. She adored their brilliant only child, but getting him had been an ordeal the likes of which she had never anticipated.
   After three years of marriage, she and Horace had decided to start a family. But after nearly a year of trying with no luck, they’d both gone in for fertility consultation. It was then they learned the hard truth: Colette was infertile. Mark resulted from their last resort: in-vitro fertilization and the use of a surrogate mother. It had been a nightmare, especially with all the controversy generated by the Baby M case.
   Colette slipped the thermometer from Mark’s lips, then rotated the cylinder, looking for the column of mercury. Normal. Colette sighed. She was at a loss. “Are you hungry or thirsty?” she asked.
   Mark shook his head. “I’m starting not to see very well,” he said.
   “What do you mean, not see very well?” she asked, alarmed. She covered Mark’s eyes alternately. “Can you see out of both eyes?”
   “Yes,” Mark responded. “But things are getting blurry. Out of focus.”
   “Okay, you stay here and rest,” Colette said. “I’m going to talk with your father.”
   Leaving the child, Colette went downstairs and found Horace hiding in the study, watching a basketball game on the miniature TV.
   When Horace saw his wife in the doorway, he guiltily switched it off. “The Celtics,” he said as an explanation.
   Colette dismissed a fleeting sense of irritation. “He’s much worse,” she said hoarsely. “I’m worried. He says he can’t see well. I think we should call the doctor.”
   “Are you sure?” Horace asked. “It is Sunday night.”
   “I can’t help that!” Colette said sharply.
   Just then an earsplitting shriek made them rush for the stairs.
   To their horror, Mark was writhing around in the bed, clutching his head as if in terrible agony, and screaming at the top of his lungs. Horace grabbed the child by the shoulders and tried to restrain him as Colette went for the phone.
   Horace was surprised at the boy’s strength. It was all he could do to keep the child from hurling himself off the bed.
   Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the screaming stopped. For a moment, Mark lay still, his small hands still pressed against his temples, his eyes squeezed shut.
   “Mark?” Horace whispered.
   Mark’s arms relaxed. He opened his blue eyes and looked up at his father. But recognition failed to register in them and when he opened his mouth he spouted pure gibberish.

   Sitting at her vanity, brushing her long hair, Marsha studied Victor in the mirror. He was at the sink, brushing his teeth with rapid, forceful strokes. VJ had long since gone to bed. Marsha had checked him when she’d come upstairs fifteen minutes earlier. Looking at his angelic face, she again considered his apparent ploy in the pool.
   “Victor!” she called suddenly.
   Victor spun around, toothpaste foaming out of his mouth like a mad dog. She’d startled him.
   “Do you realize VJ let you win that race?”
   Victor spat noisily into the sink. “Now just a second. It might have been close, but I won the contest fair and square.”
   “VJ had the lead through most of the race,” Marsha said. “He deliberately slowed down to let you win.”
   “That’s absurd,” Victor said indignantly.
   “No it’s not. He does things that just don’t make sense for a ten-year-old. It’s like when he was two and a half and started playing chess. You loved it, but it bothered me. In fact, it scared me. I was relieved when his intelligence dropped, at least after it stabilized at its high normal. I just want a happy, normal kid.” Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes. “Like David,” she added, turning away.
   Victor dried his face quickly, tossed the towel aside, and came over to Marsha. He put his arms around her. “You’re worrying about nothing. VJ’s a fine boy.”
   “Maybe he acts strange because I left him with Janice so much when he was a baby,” Marsha said, fighting her tears. “I was never home enough. I should have taken a leave from the office.”
   “You certainly are intent on blaming yourself,” Victor said, “even if there’s nothing wrong.”
   “Well,” Marsha said, “there is something odd about his behavior. If it were one episode, it would be okay. But it’s not. The boy just isn’t a normal ten-year-old. He’s too secretive, too adult.” She began to weep. “Sometimes he just frightens me.”
   Leaning over to comfort his wife, Victor remembered the terror he’d felt when VJ had been born. He’d wanted his son to be exceptional, not abnormal in any kind of deviant way.

3. March 20, 1989
Monday Morning

   Breakfast was always casual at the Franks’. Fruit, cereal, coffee, and juice on the run. The major difference on this particular morning was that it wasn’t a school day for VJ so he wasn’t in his usual rush to catch the bus. Marsha was the first to leave, around eight, in order to give her time to see her hospital patients before starting office hours. As she went out the door she passed Ramona Juarez, the cleaning lady who came on Mondays and Thursdays.
   Victor watched his wife get into her Volvo station wagon. Each exhale produced a transient cloud of vapor in the crisp morning air. Even though spring was supposed to arrive the next day, the thermometer registered a chilly 28 degrees.
   Upending his coffee mug in the sink, Victor turned his attention to VJ, who was alternately watching TV and leafing through one of Victor’s scientific journals. Victor frowned. Maybe Marsha was right. Maybe the boy’s initial brilliance was returning. The articles in that journal were fairly sophisticated. Victor wondered just how much his son might be gleaning.
   He debated saying something, then decided to leave it alone. The kid was fine, normal. “You sure you want to come to the lab today?” he asked. “Maybe you could find something more exciting to do with your friends.”
   “It’s exciting to come to the lab,” said VJ.
   “Your mother thinks you ought to spend more time with kids your own age,” Victor said. “That’s the way you learn to cooperate and share and all that kind of stuff.”
   “Oh, please!” VJ said. “I’m with kids my own age every day at school.”
   “At least we think alike,” Victor said. “I told your mother the same thing. Well, now that we have that cleared up, how do you want to get to the lab—ride with me or bike?”
   “Bike,” VJ answered.

   Despite the chill in the air, Victor had the sunroof open on his car and the wind tousled his hair. With the radio turned to the only classical station he could get, he thundered over an ancient bridge spanning the swollen Merrimack River. The river was a torrent of eddies and white water, and it was rising daily thanks to winter snow melting in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a hundred miles to the north.
   On the street before Chimera, Inc., Victor turned left and drove the length of a long brick building that crowded the side of the road. At the end of the building, he took another left, then slowed as he drove past a manned security checkpoint. Recognizing the car, the uniformed man waved as Victor passed under the raised black and white gate onto the grounds of a vast private biotechnology firm.
   Entering the nineteenth-century red-brick mill complex, Victor always felt a rush of pride that came with ownership. It was an impressive place, especially since many of the buildings had had their exteriors restored rather than renovated.
   The tallest buildings of the compound were five stories high, but most were three, and they stretched off in both directions like studies in perspective. Rectangular in shape, they enclosed a huge inner court which was spotted with newer buildings in a variety of shapes and sizes.
   At the western corner of the property and dominating the site was an eight-story clock tower designed as a replica of Big Ben in London. It soared above the other buildings from the top of a three-story structure built partially over a concrete dam across the Merrimack. With the river as swollen as it was, the millpond behind the dam was filled to overflowing. A thunderous waterfall at the spillway in the center of the dam filled the air with a fine mist.
   Back in the old days when the mill turned out textiles from southern cotton, the clock tower building had been the power station. The entire complex had been run by waterpower until electrification had shut the main sluice and quieted the huge paddle wheels and gears in the basement of the building. The Big Ben replica had chimed its last years before, but Victor was thinking of having it restored.
   When Chimera had purchased the abandoned complex in 1976, it had renovated less than half of the available square feet, leaving the rest for future expansion. In anticipation of growth, however, all the buildings had been equipped with water, sanitation, and power. There was no doubt in Victor’s mind that it would be easy to get old Big Ben going again. He made a mental note to bring it up at the next development meeting.
   As Victor pulled into his assigned parking spot in front of the administration building and pulled the sunroof shut, he paused to review his day. Despite the pride the expansive site evoked, he recognized he had some mixed feelings about the success of Chimera. In his heart Victor was a scientist, yet as one of the three founding partners of Chimera, he was required to assume his share of the administrative responsibilities. Unfortunately, these obligations were increasingly taking more time.
   Victor entered the building through the elaborate Georgian entranceway, replete with columns and pediments. The architects had paid painstaking attention to detail in the restoration. Even the furnishings were from the early nineteenth century. The lobby was a far cry from the utilitarian halls of MIT where Victor was teaching back in 1973 when he first started talking with a fellow academician, Ronald Beekman, about the opportunities afforded by the explosion of biotechnology. Technically, it was a good marriage, since Victor was in biology and Ronald was in biochemistry. They had combined forces with a businessman by the name of Clark Fitzsimmons Foster, and in 1975 founded Chimera. The result was better than their wildest expectations. In 1983, under the guidance of Clark, the company went public and they’d all become enormously wealthy.
   But with success came responsibilities that kept Victor away from his first love: the lab. As a founding partner, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the parent company, Chimera. He was also senior vice president of the same company in charge of research. At the same time he was acting director of the Department of Developmental Biology. In addition to those duties he was the president and managing director of the enormously lucrative subsidiary, Fertility, Inc., which owned an expanding chain of infertility clinics.
   Victor paused at the top of the main stairs and gazed out of the multipaned arched window at the sprawling factory complex that had been brought back to life. There was no doubt about the satisfaction he felt. In the nineteenth century the factory had been a huge success, but it had been based on exploitation of an immigrant working class. Now its success rested on firmer ground. Chimera’s foundation stood on the laws of science and the ingenuity of the human mind in its endeavor to unlock the mysteries of life. Victor knew that science in the form of biotechnology was the wave of the future, and he gloated that he was at the epicenter. In his hands was a lever that could move the world, maybe the universe.

   VJ whistled as he freewheeled down Stanhope Street. He had his down parka zipped up to keep out the cold wind, and his hands were crammed into mittens filled with the same insulation the astronauts used.
   Switching his bike into the highest gear possible, he caught up to the pedals. With the swish of the wind and the whine from the tires, he felt like he was going a hundred miles an hour. He was free. No more school for a week. No more need to pretend in front of the teachers and those kids. He could spend his time doing what he’d been born to accomplish. He smiled a strange, unchildlike grin. His blue eyes blazed and he was happy his mother was nowhere near to see him. He had a mission, just like his father. And he could not let anything interfere.
   VJ had to slow when he reached the small town of North Andover. He pedaled up the center of the main shopping street and stopped in front of the local bank, where he parked his bike in a metal rack and locked it with his Kryptonite lock. Slinging his saddlebags over his shoulder, he climbed the three brownstone steps and went inside.
   “Good morning, Mr. Frank,” the manager said, twisting around in his swivel desk chair. His name was Harold Scott and VJ generally tried to avoid him, but since his desk was just to the right of the entrance, it was difficult. “May I talk with you, young man?”
   VJ paused, considered his options, then reluctantly detoured to the man’s desk.
   “I know you are a good customer of the bank,” Harold said, “so I thought it would be appropriate if I discussed with you some of the benefits of banking here. Do you understand the concept of interest, young man?”
   “I believe so,” VJ answered.
   “If so, then I wanted to ask why you don’t have a savings account for your paper route money?”
   “Paper route?” VJ questioned.
   “Yes,” Harold answered. “You told me some time ago that you had a paper route. I assume you still have it since you are still coming into the bank on a fairly regular basis.”
   “Of course I still have it,” VJ answered. Now he remembered having been previously cornered by the same man. It must have been a year ago.
   “Once your money is in a savings account, it begins to work for you. In fact your money grows. Let me give you an example.”
   “Mr. Scott,” VJ said as the manager got some paper from a drawer at his desk. “I don’t have a lot of time. My father expects me at his lab.”
   “This won’t take long,” Harold said. He then proceeded to show Victor what happened to twenty dollars left in The North Andover National Bank for twenty years. When he was finished, he asked: “What do you say? Does this convince you.”
   “Absolutely,” VJ said.
   “Well then,” Harold said. He took some forms from another drawer and quickly filled them in. Then he pushed them in front of VJ and pointed to a dotted line near the bottom. “Sign here.”
   Dutifully VJ took the pen and signed his name.
   “Now then,” Harold repeated. “How much would you like to deposit?”
   VJ chewed his cheek, then extracted his wallet. He had three dollars in it. He took them out and gave them to Harold.
   “Is this all?” Harold questioned. “How much do you make a week with your paper route? You have to start a habit of savings early in your life.”
   “I’ll add to it,” VJ said.
   Taking the forms and the bills, Harold went behind the teller’s window. He had to be buzzed in through the plexiglass door. When he returned, he handed VJ a deposit slip. “This is an important day in your life,” Harold said.
   VJ nodded, pocketed the slip, then went to the rear of the bank. He watched Mr. Scott. Thankfully a customer came in and sat down at his desk.
   VJ buzzed for the attendant for the safe deposit vault. A few minutes later he was safely in one of the privacy cubicles with his large safe deposit box. Putting his saddlebags carefully on the floor, he unzipped them. They were filled with tightly bound stacks of hundred-dollar bills. When he was finished adding them to those already there, he had to use both hands to heave the box back up and into its slot in the vault.
   Back on his bike, VJ left North Andover, heading west. He pedaled steadily and was soon in Lawrence. Crossing the Merrimack, he eventually entered the grounds of Chimera. The security man at the gate waved with the same kind of respect he reserved for Dr. Frank.

   As soon as Victor reached his office, his very pretty and very efficient secretary, Colleen, cornered him with a stack of phone messages.
   Victor silently groaned. Mondays were all too frequently like this, keeping him from the lab, sometimes for the entire day. Victor’s current and primary research interest involved the mysteries of how a fertilized egg got implanted in a uterus. No one knew how it worked and what were the factors necessary to facilitate it. Victor had picked the project many years ago because its solution would have major academic and major commercial importance. But with his current rate of progress he would be working on it for many years to come.
   “This is probably the most important message,” Colleen said, handing over a pink slip.
   Victor took the paper, which said for him to call Ronald Beekman ASAP. “Oh, wonderful,” Victor thought. Although he and Ronald had been the best of friends during the initial phases of the founding of Chimera, Inc., their relationship was now strained over their differing views about the future of the company. Currently they were arguing about a proposed stock offering that was being championed by Clark Foster as a means of raising additional capital for expansion.
   Ronald was adamantly opposed to any dilution of the stock, fearing a hostile takeover in the future. It was his belief that expansion should be tied directly to current revenues and current profits. Once again, Victor’s vote was to be the swing vote, just as it had been back in 1983 over the question of going public. Victor had voted against Ronald then, siding with Clark. Despite the incontrovertible success of going public, Ronald still felt Victor had sold out his academic integrity.
   Victor put Ronald’s message in the center of his blotter. “What else?” he asked.
   Before Colleen could respond, the door opened and VJ stuck his head in, asking if anybody had seen Philip.
   “I saw him earlier at the cafeteria,” Colleen said.
   “If anybody sees him,” VJ said, “tell him that I’m here.”
   “Certainly,” Colleen said.
   “I’ll be around,” VJ said.
   Victor waved absently, still wondering what he would say to Ronald. Victor was certain they needed capital now, not next year.
   VJ closed the door behind him.
   “No school?” Colleen questioned.
   “Spring vacation,” Victor said.
   “Such an exceptional child,” Colleen said. “So undemanding. If my son were here, he’d be underfoot the entire time.”
   “My wife thinks differently,” Victor said. “She thinks VJ has some kind of problem.”
   “That’s hard to believe,” Colleen said. “VJ is so polite, so grown up.”
   “Maybe you should talk to Marsha,” Victor said. Then he stuck his hand out, anxious to move on. “What’s the next message?”
   “Sorry,” Colleen said. “This is the phone number for Jonathan Marronetti, Gephardt’s attorney.”
   “Lovely!” Victor said. George Gephardt was the director of personnel for Fertility, Inc., and had been supervisor of purchasing for Chimera until three years ago. Currently, he was on a leave of absence, pending an investigation regarding the disappearance of over one hundred thousand dollars from Fertility, Inc. Embarrassingly enough, it had been the IRS that had first discovered that Gephardt was banking the paychecks of a deceased employee. As soon as he had heard, Victor ordered an audit of the man’s purchasing bills for Chimera from 1980 to 1986. Sighing, Victor put the attorney’s number behind Ronald’s.
   “What next?” Victor asked.
   Colleen shuffled through the remaining messages.
   “That’s about all the important ones. The rest of these I can handle.”
   “That’s it?” Victor questioned with obvious disbelief.
   Colleen stood up and stretched. “That’s all the messages, but Sharon Carver is waiting to see you.”
   “Can’t you handle her?” Victor asked.
   “She’s demanded to see you,” Colleen said. “Here’s her file.”
   Victor didn’t need the file, but he took it and placed it on his desk. He knew all about Sharon Carver. She’d been an animal handler in Developmental Biology before she’d been “terminated because of dereliction of duty.” “Let her wait,” Victor said, standing up. “I’ll see her after I see Ronald.”
   Using the rear entrance to his office, Victor started off for his partner’s office. Maybe Ronald would be reasonable face to face.
   Rounding a corner, Victor spotted a familiar figure backing out of a doorway and pulling a cart. It was Philip Cartwright, one of the retarded persons whom Chimera had hired to work to the extent of their abilities; they were all valuable employees. Philip did custodial and messenger work, and had been popular from his first day on. In addition, he’d taken a particular liking to VJ over the years and had spent lots of time with him, particularly before VJ started school. They made an improbable pair. Philip was a big, powerfully built man with scant hair, closely set eyes, and a broad neck that sloped from just behind his ears to the tip of his shoulders. His long arms ended in spadelike hands, with all the fingers the same length.
   As soon as Philip saw Dr. Frank, there was a wide smile of recognition, displaying a mouthful of square teeth. The man could have been frightening, but he had such a pleasant personality, his demeanor overcame his appearance.
   “Good morning, Mr. Frank,” Philip said. He had a surprisingly childlike voice despite his size.
   “Good morning, Philip,” Victor said. “VJ is here someplace and was looking for you. He’ll be here all week.”
   “That makes me happy,” Philip said with sincerity. “I’ll find him right away. Thank you.”
   Victor watched him hurry off with his cart, wishing all the Chimera employees were as dependable as Philip.
   Reaching Ronald’s office, which was a mirror image of his, Victor said hello to Ronald’s private secretary and asked if her boss was available. She kept Victor waiting for a few minutes before ushering him in.
   “Does Brutus come to praise Caesar?” Ronald asked, looking up at Victor from under bushy brows. He was a heavyset man with a thick mat of unkempt hair.
   “I thought we could discuss the stock offering,” Victor suggested. From Ronald’s manner and tone, it was clear he was in no mood for conversation.
   “What’s there to talk about?” Ronald said with thinly disguised resentment. “I’ve heard you’re for a dilution of stock.”
   “I’m for raising more capital,” Victor said.
   “It’s the same thing,” Ronald said.
   “Are you interested in my reasons?” Victor asked.
   “I think your reasons are very clear,” Ronald said. “You and Clark have been plotting against me since we went public!”
   “Oh, really?” Victor questioned, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice. Such ridiculous paranoia began to give him the idea the man was cracking under the strain of his administrative duties. He certainly had as much if not more than Victor and neither one of them was trained for such work.
   “Don’t ‘oh, really’ me!” Ronald said, heaving his bulk to his feet. He leaned forward on his desk. “I’m warning you, Frank. I’ll get even with you.”
   “What on earth are you talking about?” Victor said with disbelief. “What are you going to do to me, let the air out of my tires? Ronald, it’s me, Victor. Remember?” Victor waved his hand in front of Ronald’s face.
   “I can make your life just as miserable as you’re making mine,” Ronald snapped. “If you continue to press me to sell more stock, I promise I’ll get even with you.”
   “Please!” Victor said, backing up. “Ronald, when you wake up, call me. I’m not going to stand here and be threatened.”
   Victor turned and left the office. He could hear Ronald start to say something else, but Victor didn’t stop to hear it. He was disgusted. For a moment he considered throwing in the towel, cashing in his stock, and going back to academia. But by the time he got back to his desk, he felt differently. He wasn’t about to let Ronald’s personality problems deny him access to the excitement of the biotechnology industry. After all, there were limitations in academia as well; they were just of a different sort.
   Staring up at Victor from his desk blotter was the telephone number for Jonathan Marronetti, Gephardt’s attorney. Resigned, Victor dialed the number and got the lawyer on the phone. The man had a distinctive New York accent that grated on Victor’s nerves.
   “Got good news for you people,” Jonathan said.
   “We can use some,” Victor said.
   “My client, Mr. Gephardt, is willing to return all the funds that mysteriously ended up in his checking account, plus interest. This is not to imply guilt; he just wants the matter to be closed.”
   “I will discuss the offer with our attorneys,” Victor said.
   “Wait, there’s more,” Jonathan said. “In return for transferring these funds, my client wants to be reinstated, and he wants all further harassment ceased, including any current investigation of his affairs.”
   “That’s out of the question,” Victor said. “Mr. Gephardt can hardly expect reinstatement without our completing the investigation.”
   “Well,” Jonathan said, pausing, “I suppose I can reason with my client and talk him out of the reinstatement proviso.”
   “I’m afraid that wouldn’t make much difference,” Victor said.
   “Listen, we’re trying to be reasonable.”
   “The investigation will proceed as scheduled,” Victor said.
   “I’m sure there is some way—” Jonathan began.
   “I’m sorry,” Victor interrupted. “When we have all the facts, we can talk again.”
   “If you’re not willing to be reasonable,” Jonathan said, “I’ll be forced to take action you may regret. You are hardly in a position to play holier than thou.”
   “Good-bye, Mr. Marronetti,” Victor said, slamming down the phone.
   Slumping back in his chair, Victor buzzed Colleen and told her to send in the Carver woman. Even though he was familiar with the case, he opened up her folder. She’d been a problem practically from the first day on the job. She had been undependable, with frequent absences. The folder contained five letters from various people complaining about her poor performance.

   Victor looked up. Sharon Carver came into the room wearing a skin-tight mini with a silk top. She oozed into the chair opposite Victor, showing a lot of leg.
   “Thank you for seeing me,” she whispered.
   Victor glanced at the Polaroid shot in her file. She’d been dressed in baggy jeans and a flannel shirt.
   “What can I do for you?” Victor asked, looking her directly in the eye.
   “I’m sure you could do a lot of things,” Sharon said coyly. “But what I’m most interested in right now is having my job back. I want to be rehired.”
   “That’s not possible,” Victor said.
   “I believe it is,” Sharon persisted.
   “Miss Carver,” Victor began, “I must remind you that you were fired for failing to perform your job.”
   “How come the man I was with when we were caught in the stockroom wasn’t fired?” Sharon asked, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward defiantly. “Answer me that!”
   “Your amorous activities on your last day were not the sole basis for your termination,” Victor explained. “If that had been the only problem, you would not have been fired. And the man you mentioned had never neglected his responsibilities. Even on the day in question he was on his official break. You were not. At any rate, what is done is done. I’m confident you will find employment elsewhere, so if you will excuse me . . .” Victor rose from his seat and motioned toward the door.
   Sharon Carver did not move. She looked up at Victor with cold eyes. “If you refuse to give me my job back I’ll serve you with a sex-discrimination suit that will make your head spin. I’ll make you suffer.”
   “You’re already doing a pretty good job,” Victor said. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”
   Like a cat about to attack, Sharon rose slowly from the chair, glaring at Victor out of the corner of her eye. “You’ve not seen the last of me!” she spat.
   Victor waited until the door closed before buzzing Colleen to tell her that he was heading over to his lab and that she shouldn’t call him for anybody less than the Pope.
   “Too late,” said Colleen. “Dr. Hurst is in the waiting room. He wants to see you and he’s quite upset.”
   William Hurst was the acting chief of the Department of Medical Oncology. He, too, was the subject of a newly ordered investigation. But contrary to Gephardt’s, Hurst’s involved possible research fraud, a growing menace in the scientific world. “Send him in,” Victor said reluctantly. There was no place to hide.
   Hurst came through the door as if he planned to assault Victor, and rushed up to the desk. “I just heard that you ordered an independent lab to verify the results on the last paper I published in the journal.”
   “I don’t think that’s surprising in light of the article in Friday’s Boston Globe,” Victor said. He wondered what he’d do if this maniac came around behind the desk.
   “Damn the Boston Globe!” Hurst shouted. “They based that cockamamie story on the remarks of one disgruntled lab tech. You don’t believe it, do you?”
   “My beliefs are immaterial at this point,” Victor said. “The Globe reported that data in your paper were deliberately falsified. That kind of allegation can be detrimental to you and Chimera. We have to nip such a rumor before it gets out of hand. I don’t understand your anger.”
   “Well then, I’ll explain,” Hurst snapped. “I expected support from you, not suspicion. The mere ordering of a verification of my work is tantamount to ascribing guilt. Besides, some insignificant graphite statistics can sneak into any collaborative paper. Even Isaac Newton himself was later known to have improved some planetary observations. I want that verification request canceled.”
   “Look, I’m sorry you’re upset,” Victor said. “But Isaac Newton notwithstanding, there is no relativity when it comes to research ethics. The public’s confidence in research—”
   “I didn’t come in here to get a lecture!” Hurst yelled. “I tell you I want that investigation stopped.”
   “You make yourself very clear,” Victor said. “But the fact remains that if there is no fraud, you have nothing to fear and everything to gain.”
   “Are you telling me that you will not cancel the verification?”
   “That’s what I’m telling you,” Victor said. He’d had enough of trying to appease this man’s ego.
   “I’m shocked by your lack of academic loyalty,” Hurst said finally. “Now I know why Ronald feels as he does.”
   “Dr. Beekman advocates the same ethics of research as I do,” said Victor, finally letting his anger show. “Good-bye, Dr. Hurst. This conversation is over.”
   “Let me tell you something, Frank,” said Hurst, leaning over the desk. “If you persist in dragging my name through the mud, I’ll do the same to you. Do you hear me? I know you’re not the ‘white knight’ scientific savior you pretend to be.”
   “I’m afraid I’ve never published falsified data,” Victor said sarcastically.
   “The point is,” Hurst said, “you’re not the white knight you want us to believe.”
   “Get out of my office.”
   “Gladly,” Hurst said. He walked to the door, opened it and said: “Just remember what I’ve told you. You’re not immune!” Then he slammed the door behind him with such force that Victor’s medical school diploma tilted on its hanger.
   Victor sat at his desk for a few moments, trying to regain a sense of emotional equilibrium. He’d certainly had enough threats for one day. He wondered what Hurst was referring to when he said that Victor was not a “white knight.” What a circus!
   Pushing back his chair, Victor got up and pulled on his white lab coat. He opened the door, expecting to lean out and tell Colleen he was heading over to the lab. Instead he practically bumped into her as she was on her way in to see him.
   “Dr. William Hobbs is here and he’s an emotional wreck,” Colleen said quickly.
   Victor tried to see around Colleen. He spotted a man sitting in the chair next to her desk, hunched over, holding his head.
   “What’s the problem?” Victor whispered.
   “Something about his son,” Colleen said. “I think something has happened to the boy and he wants to take some time off.”
   Victor felt perspiration appear in the palms of his hands and a constriction in his throat. “Send him in,” he managed.
   He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of empathy, having gone through the same extraordinary measures to get a child himself. The thought that something might now be wrong with the Hobbs boy revived all of his apprehensions concerning VJ.
   “Maurice . . .” Hobbs began, but he had to stop while he choked back tears. “My boy was about to turn three. You never met him. He was such a joy. The center of our life. He was a genius.”
   “What happened?” Victor asked, almost afraid to hear.
   “He died!” Hobbs said with sudden anger breaking through his sadness.
   Victor swallowed hard. His throat was as dry as sandpaper. “An accident?” he asked.
   Hobbs shook his head. “They don’t know exactly what happened. It started with a seizure. When we got him to the Children’s Hospital, they decided he had edema of the brain: brain swelling. There was nothing they could do. He never regained consciousness. Then his heart stopped.”
   A heavy silence hung over the office. Finally, Hobbs said, “I’d like to take some time off.”
   “Of course,” said Victor.
   Hobbs slowly got up and went out.
   Victor sat staring after him for a good ten minutes. For once the last place in the world he wanted to go was the lab.

4. Later Monday Morning

   The small alarm on Marsha’s desk went off, signaling the end of the fifty-minute session with Jasper Lewis, an angry fifteen-year-old boy with a smudge of whiskers along his chin line. He was slouched in the chair opposite Marsha’s, acting bored. The fact of the matter was that the kid was heading for real trouble.
   “What we haven’t discussed yet is your hospitalization,” Marsha said. She had the boy’s file open on her lap.
   Jasper hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward Marsha’s desk. “I thought that bell means the session is over.”
   “It means it is almost over,” Marsha said. “How do you feel about your three months in the hospital now that you are back home?” Marsha’s impression was that the boy had benefited from the hospital’s structured environment, but she wanted to learn his opinion.
   “It was okay,” Jasper said.
   “Just okay?” asked Marsha encouragingly. It was so tough to draw this boy out.
   “It was like fine,” Jasper said, shrugging. “You know, no big deal.”
   Obviously it was going to take a bit more effort to extract the boy’s opinion, and Marsha made a note of reminder to herself in the margin of the boy’s file. She’d start the next session with that issue. Marsha closed the file and made eye contact with Jasper. “It’s been good to see you,” Marsha said. “See you next week.”
   “Sure,” Jasper said, avoiding Marsha’s eyes as he got up and awkwardly left the room.
   Marsha went back to her desk to dictate her notes. Flipping open the chart, she looked at her preadmission summary. Jasper had had a conduct disorder since early childhood. Once he hit age eighteen, the diagnosis would change to an antisocial personality disorder. On top of that, he also had what appeared to Marsha as a schizoid personality disorder.
   Reviewing the salient features of the boy’s history, Marsha noted the frequent lying, the fights at school, the record of truancy, the vindictive behavior and fantasies. Her eye stopped at the statement: cannot experience affection or show emotion. She suddenly pictured VJ pulling away from her embrace, looking at her coldly, his blue eyes frigid as mountain lakes. She forced her eyes back down on the chart. Chooses solitary activities, does not desire close relationships, has no close friends.
   Marsha’s pulse quickened. Was she reading a summary of her own son? With trepidation, she reread the review of Jasper’s personality. There were a number of uncomfortable correlations. She was happy when her train of thought was interrupted by her nurse and secretary, Jean Colbert, a prim and proper New Englander with auburn hair. As she looked up, her eye caught a sentence that she had underlined in red: Jasper was essentially reared by an aunt, since his mother worked two jobs to support the family.
   “You ready for your next patient?” Jean asked.
   Marsha took a deep breath. “Remember those articles I saved on day care and its psychological effects?” she asked.
   “Sure do,” Jean said. “I filed them in the storage room.”
   “How about pulling them for me,” Marsha said, trying to mask her concern.
   “Sure,” Jean said. She paused, then asked: “Are you okay?”
   “I’m fine,” Marsha said, picking up the next chart. As she scanned her recent notes, twelve-year-old Nancy Traverse slunk into the room and tried to disappear into one of the chairs. She pulled her head low into her shoulders like a turtle.
   Marsha moved over to the therapy area, taking the seat opposite Nancy. She tried to remember where the girl had left off at the previous visit, describing her forays into sex.
   The session began and dragged on. Marsha tried to concentrate, but fears for VJ floated at the back of her mind along with guilt for having worked when he had been little. Not that he’d ever minded when she’d left. But as Marsha well knew, that in itself could be a symptom of psychopathology.

   After Hobbs left, Victor tried to busy himself with correspondence, partly to avoid the lab, partly to take his mind off the terrible news that Hobbs had told him. But his thoughts soon drifted back to the circumstances of the boy’s death. Edema of the brain, meaning acute brain swelling, had been the immediate cause. But what could have been the cause of the edema? He wished Hobbs had been able to give him more details. It was the lack of a specific diagnosis that fed Victor’s fears.
   “Damn!” Victor yelled as he slammed his open palm on the top of his desk. He stood up abruptly and stared out the window. He had a good view of the clock tower from his office. The hands had been frozen in the distant past at quarter past two.
   “I should have known better!” Victor said to himself, pounding his right fist into his left palm with enough strength to make them both tingle. The Hobbs child’s death brought back all the concern Victor had had for VJ—concern he had finally put to rest. While Marsha fretted over the boy’s psychological state, Victor’s worries had more to do with the boy’s physical being. When VJ’s IQ dropped, then stabilized at what was still an exceptional level, Victor had felt terror. It had taken years for him to overcome his fear and relax. But the Hobbs boy’s sudden death raised his fears again. Victor was particularly concerned since the parallels between VJ and the Hobbs boy did not stop with their conception. Victor understood that, like VJ, the Hobbs boy was something of a child prodigy. Victor had been keeping surreptitious tabs on the child’s progress. He was curious to see if the boy would suffer as precipitous a drop in IQ as VJ had. But now, Victor only wanted to learn the circumstances of the child’s tragic death.
   Victor went to his computer terminal and cleared the screen. He called up his personal file on Baby Hobbs. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, he just thought that if he scanned the data, some explanation for the child’s death might occur to him. The screen stayed dark past the usual access time. Confused, Victor hit the Execute button again. Answering him, the word SEARCHING blinked in the screen’s lower-right-hand corner. Then, to Victor’s surprise, the computer told him there was no such file.
   “What the devil?” Victor said. Thinking he might have made an entry error, Victor tried again, typing BABY-HOBBS very deliberately. He pressed Execute and after a pause during which the computer searched all its storage banks, he got the exact same response: NO FILE FOUND.
   Victor turned off the computer, wondering what could have happened to the information. It was true that he hadn’t accessed it for some time, but that shouldn’t have made a difference. Drumming his fingers on the desk in front of the keyboard, Victor thought for a moment, then accessed the computer again. This time he typed in the words BABY– MURRAY.
   There was the same pause as with the Hobbs file and ultimately the same response appeared: NO FILE FOUND.
   The door to the office opened and Victor twisted around. Colleen was standing in the doorway. “This is not a day for fathers,” she said, gripping the edge of the door. “You have a phone call from a Mr. Murray from accounting. Apparently his baby isn’t doing well either and he’s crying too.”
   “I don’t believe it,” Victor blurted. The timing was so coincidental.
   “Trust me,” Colleen said. “Line two.”
   Dazed, Victor turned to his phone. The light was blinking insistently, each flash causing a ringing sensation in Victor’s head. This couldn’t be happening, not after everything had gone so well for so long. He had to force himself to pick up the receiver.
   “I’m sorry to bother you,” Murray managed, “but you’ve been so understanding when we were trying to get a baby. I thought you’d want to know. We brought Mark to the Children’s Hospital and he is dying. The doctors tell me there is nothing they can do.”
   “What happened?” Victor asked, barely able to speak.
   “Nobody seems to know,” Horace said. “It started with a headache.”
   “He didn’t hit his head or anything?” Victor questioned.
   “Not that we know of,” Horace said.
   “Would you mind if I came over?” Victor asked.

   A half hour later, Victor was parking his car in the garage opposite the hospital. He went inside and stopped at the information desk. The receptionist told him Mark Murray was in the surgical intensive-care unit, and gave him directions to the waiting room. Victor found Horace and Colette distraught with worry and lack of sleep. Horace got to his feet when he saw Victor.
   “Any change?” Victor asked hopefully.
   Horace shook his head. “He’s on a respirator now.”
   Victor conveyed his condolences as best he could. The Murrays seemed touched that Victor had taken the time to come to the hospital, especially since they never socialized.
   “He was such a special child,” Horace said. “So exceptional, so intelligent . . .” He shook his head. Colette hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders began to quiver. Horace sat back down and put an arm around his wife.
   “What’s the name of the doctor taking care of Mark?” Victor asked.
   “Nakano,” Horace answered. “Dr. Nakano.”
   Victor excused himself, left his coat with the Murrays, and departed the waiting room with its anxious parents. He walked toward Pediatric Surgical Intensive Care, which was at the end of the corridor, behind a pair of electronic doors. As Victor stepped on the rubberized area in front of the doors, they automatically opened.
   The room inside was familiar to Victor from his days as a resident. There was the usual profusion of electronic gear and scurrying nurses. The constant hiss of the respirators and bleeps of the cardiac monitors gave the room an aura of tension. Life here was in the balance.
   Since Victor acted at ease in the environment, no one questioned his presence, despite the fact that he was not wearing an ID. Victor went to the desk and asked if Dr. Nakano was available.
   “He was just here,” a pert young woman replied. She half stood and leaned over the counter to see if she could spot him. Then she sat down and picked up the phone. A moment later the page system added Dr. Nakano’s name to the incessant list that issued from speakers in the ceiling.
   Walking about the room, Victor tried to locate Mark, but too many of the kids were on respirators that distorted their faces. He returned to the desk just as the ward clerk was hanging up the phone. Seeing Victor, she told him that Dr. Nakano was on his way back to the unit.
   Five minutes later, Victor was introduced to the handsome, deeply tanned Japanese-American. Victor explained that he was a physician and friend of the Murray family, and that he hoped to get some idea of what was happening to Mark.
   “It’s not good,” Dr. Nakano said candidly. “The child is dying. It’s not often we can say that, but in this case the problem is unresponsive to any treatment.”
   “Do you have any idea of what’s going on?” Victor asked.
   “We know what’s happening,” Dr. Nakano said, “what we don’t know is what’s causing it. Come on, I’ll show you.”
   With the hurried step of a busy doctor, Dr. Nakano took off toward the rear of the ICU. He stopped outside a cubicle separated from the main portion of the ICU.
   “The child’s on precautions,” Dr. Nakano explained. “There’s been no evidence of infection, but we thought just in case . . .” He handed Victor a gown, hat, and mask. Both men donned the protective gear and entered the small room.
   Mark Murray was in the center of a large crib with high side rails. His head was swathed in a gauze bandage. Dr. Nakano explained that they’d tried a decompression and a shunt, hoping that might help, but it hadn’t.
   “Take a look,” Dr. Nakano said, handing Victor an ophthalmoscope. Leaning over the stricken two-year-old, Victor lifted Mark’s eyelid and peered through the dilated, fixed pupil. Despite his inexperience with the instrument, he saw the pathology immediately. The optic nerve was bulging forward as if being pushed from behind.
   Victor straightened up.
   “Pretty impressive, no?” Dr. Nakano said. He took the scope from Victor and peered himself. He was quiet for a moment, then straightened up. “The disappointing thing is that it is getting progressively worse. The kid’s brain is still swelling. I’m surprised it’s not coming out his ears. Nothing has helped; not the decompression, not the shunt, not massive steroids, not mannitol. I’m afraid we’ve just about given up.”
   Victor had noticed there was no nurse in attendance. “Any hemorrhage or signs of trauma?” he asked.
   “Nope,” Dr. Nakano said simply. “Other than the swelling, the kid’s clean. No meningitis as I said earlier. We just don’t understand. The man upstairs is in control.” He pointed skyward.
   As if responding to Dr. Nakano’s morbid prediction, the cardiac monitor let out a brief alarm, indicating that Mark’s heart had paused. Mark’s heart rate was becoming irregular. The alarm sounded briefly again. Dr. Nakano didn’t move. “This happened earlier,” he said. “But at this point it’s a ‘no-code’ status.” Then, as an explanation, he added: “The parents see no sense in keeping him alive if his brain is gone.”
   Victor nodded, and as he did so, the cardiac monitor alarm came on and stayed on. Mark’s heart went into fibrillation. Victor looked over his shoulder toward the unit desk. No one responded.
   Within a short time the erratic tracing on the CRT screen flattened out to a straight line. “That’s the ball game,” Dr. Nakano said. It seemed like such a heartless comment, but Victor knew that it was born more of frustration than callousness. Victor remembered being a resident too well.
   Dr. Nakano and Victor returned to the desk where Dr. Nakano informed the secretary that the Murray baby had died. Matter-of-factly the secretary lifted the phone and initiated the required paperwork. Victor understood you couldn’t work here if you let yourself become upset by the frequent deaths.
   “There was a similar case last night,” Victor said. “The name was Hobbs. The child was about the same age, maybe a little older. Are you familiar with it?”
   “I heard about it,” Dr. Nakano said vaguely. “But it wasn’t my case. I understand many of the symptoms were the same.”
   “Seems so,” Victor said. Then he asked: “You’ll get an autopsy?”
   “Absolutely,” Dr. Nakano said. “It will be a medical examiner’s case, but they turn most over to us. They’re too busy downtown, especially for this kind of esoteric stuff. Will you tell the parents or do you want me to do it?”
   Dr. Nakano’s rapid change of direction in his conversation jarred Victor. “I’ll tell them,” he said after a pause.
   “And thanks for your time.”
   “No problem,” Dr. Nakano said, but he didn’t look at Victor. He was already involved with another crisis.
   Stunned, Victor walked out of the ICU, appreciating the quiet as the electronic doors closed behind him. He returned to the waiting room where the Murrays guessed the bad news before he could tell them. Gripping each other, they again thanked Victor for coming. Victor murmured a few words of condolence. But even as he spoke a frightful image gripped his heart. He saw VJ white and hooked up to a respirator in the bed where Mark had lain.
   Cold with terror, Victor went to Pathology and introduced himself to the chief of the department, Dr. Warren Burghofen. The man assured Victor that they would do everything in their power to get the two autopsies, and get them as soon as possible.
   “We certainly want to know what’s going on here,” Burghofen said. “We don’t want any epidemic of idiopathic cerebral edema ravaging this city.”
   Victor slowly returned to his car. He knew there was little likelihood of an epidemic. He was only too conscious of the number of children at risk. It was three.

   As soon as Victor got back to his office he asked Colleen to contact Louis Kaspwicz, the head of Chimera’s data processing, and have him come up immediately.
   Louis was a short, stocky man with a shiny bald head, who had a habit of sudden unpredictable movements. He was extremely shy and rarely looked anyone in the eye, but despite his quirky personality, he was superb at what he did. Chimera depended upon his computer expertise for almost every area, from research to production to billing.
   “I have a problem,” Victor said, leaning back against his desk, his arms folded across his chest. “I can’t find two of my personal files. Any idea how that could be?”
   “Can be a number of reasons,” Louis said. “Usually it’s because the user forgets the assigned name.”
   “I checked my directory,” Victor said. “They weren’t there.”
   “Maybe they got in someone else’s directory,” Louis said.
   “I never thought of that,” Victor admitted. “But I can remember using them, and I never had to designate another path to call them up.”
   “Well, I can’t say unless I look into it,” Louis said. “What were the names you gave the files?”
   “I want this to remain confidential,” Victor emphasized.
   “Of course.”
   Victor gave Louis the names and Louis sat down at the terminal himself.
   “No luck?” asked Victor after a few minutes when the screen remained blank.
   “Doesn’t seem so. But back in my office I can look into it by using the computer to search through the logs. Are you sure these were the designated file names?”
   “Quite sure,” Victor said.
   “I’ll get right on it if it’s important,” Louis said.
   “It’s important.”
   After Louis left, Victor stayed by the computer terminal. He had an idea. Carefully he typed onto the screen the name of another file: BABY-FRANK. For a moment he hesitated, afraid of what might turn up—or what might not. Finally he pushed Execute and held his breath. Unfortunately his fears were answered: VJ’s file was gone!
   Sitting back in his chair, Victor began to sweat. Three related but uncrossreferenced files could not disappear by coincidence. Suddenly Victor saw Hurst’s engorged face and remembered his threat: “You’re not the white knight you want us to believe . . . . You’re not immune.”
   Victor got up from the terminal and went to the window. Clouds were blowing in from the east. It was either going to rain or snow. He stood there for a few moments, wondering if Hurst had anything to do with the missing files. Could he possibly suspect? If he did, that might have been the basis for his vague threat. Victor shook his head. There was no way Hurst could have known about the files. No one knew about them. No one!

5. Monday Evening

   Marsha looked across the dinner table at her husband and son. VJ was absorbed in reading a book on black holes, barely looking up to eat. She would have told him to put the book away, but Victor had come home in such a bad mood she didn’t want to say anything that would make it worse. And she herself was still troubled about VJ. She loved him so much she couldn’t bear the thought that he might be disturbed, but she also knew she couldn’t help him if she didn’t face the truth. Apparently he’d spent the whole day at Chimera, seemingly by himself because Victor admitted, when she’d specifically asked, that he’d not seen VJ since morning.
   As if sensing her gaze, VJ abruptly put down his book and took his plate over to the dishwasher. As he rose, his intense blue eyes caught Marsha’s. There was no warmth, no feeling, just a brilliant turquoise light that made Marsha feel as if she were under a microscope. “Thank you for the dinner,” VJ said mechanically.
   Marsha listened to the sound of VJ’s footsteps as he ran up the back stairs. Outside the wind suddenly whistled, and she looked out the window. In the beam of light from over the garage she could see that the rain had changed to snow. She shivered, but it wasn’t from the wintry landscape.
   “I guess I’m not too hungry tonight,” Victor offered. As far as Marsha remembered, it was the first time he’d initiated conversation since she’d gotten home from making her hospital rounds.
   “Something troubling you?” Marsha asked. “Want to talk about it?”
   “I don’t need you to play psychiatrist,” Victor said harshly.
   Marsha knew that she could have taken offense. She wasn’t playing psychiatrist. But she thought that she’d play the adult, and not push things. Victor would tell her soon enough what was on his mind.
   “Well, something is troubling me,” Marsha said. She decided that at least she’d be honest. Victor looked at her. Knowing him as well as she did, she imagined that he already felt guilty at having spoken so harshly.
   “I read a series of articles today,” Marsha continued. “They talked about some of the possible effects of parental deprivation on children being reared by nannies and/or spending inordinate amounts of time in day care. Some of the findings may apply to VJ. I’m concerned that maybe I should have taken time off when VJ was an infant to spend more time with him.”
   Victor’s face immediately reflected irritation. “Hold it,” he said just as harshly, holding up both hands. “I don’t think I want to hear the rest of this. As far as I’m concerned, VJ is just fine and I don’t want to listen to a bunch of psychiatric nonsense to the contrary.”
   “Well, isn’t that inappropriate,” Marsha stated, losing some of her patience.
   “Oh, save me!” Victor intoned, picking up his unfinished dinner and discarding it in the trash. “I’m in no mood for this.”
   “Well, what are you in the mood for?” Marsha questioned.
   Victor took a deep breath, looking out the kitchen window. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”
   “In this weather?” Marsha questioned. “Wet snow, soggy ground. I think something is troubling you and you’re unable to talk about it.”
   Victor turned to his wife. “Am I that obvious?”
   Marsha laughed. “It’s painful to watch you struggle. Please tell me what’s on your mind. I’m your wife.”
   Victor shrugged and came back to the table. He sat down and intertwined his fingers, resting his elbows on his place mat. “There is something on my mind,” he admitted.
   “I’m glad my patients don’t have this much trouble talking,” Marsha said. She reached across to lovingly touch Victor’s arm.
   Victor got up and went to the bottom of the back stairs. He listened for a moment, then closed the door and returned to the table. He sat down, and he leaned toward Marsha: “I want VJ to have a full neuro-medical work-up just like he did seven years ago when his intelligence fell.”
   Marsha didn’t respond. Worrying about VJ’s personality development was one thing, but worrying about his general health was something else entirely. The mere suggestion of such a work-up was a shock, as was the reference to VJ’s change in intelligence.
   “You remember when his IQ fell so dramatically around age three and a half?” Victor said.
   “Of course I remember,” Marsha said. She studied Victor intently. Why was he doing this to her? He had to know this would only make her concerns worse.
   “I want the same kind of work-up as we did then,” Victor repeated.
   “You know something that you are keeping from me,” Marsha said with alarm. “What is it? Is there something wrong with VJ?”
   “No!” Victor said. “VJ is fine, like I said before. I just want to be sure and I’d feel sure if he had a repeat work-up. That’s all there is to it.”
   “I want to know why you suddenly want a work-up now,” Marsha demanded.
   “I told you why,” Victor said, his voice rising with anger.
   “You want me to agree to allow our son to have a full neuro-medical work-up without telling me the indications?” Marsha questioned. “No way! I’m not going to let the boy have all those X-rays etcetera without some explanation.”
   “Damn it, Marsha!” Victor said gritting his teeth.
   “Damn it yourself,” Marsha returned. “You’re keeping something from me, Victor, and I don’t like it. You’re trying to bulldoze right over my feelings. Unless you tell me what this is all about, VJ is not having any tests, and believe me, I have something to say about it. So either you tell me what’s on your mind or we just drop it.”
   Marsha leaned back in her chair and inhaled deeply, holding her breath for a moment before letting it out. Victor, obviously irritated, stared at Marsha, but her strength began to wear him down. Her position was clear, and by experience he knew she’d not be apt to change her mind. After sixty seconds of silence, his stare began to waver. Finally he looked down at his hands. The grandfather clock in the living room chimed eight times.
   “All right,” he said finally as if exhausted. “I’ll tell you the whole story.” He sat back and ran his fingers through his hair. He established eye contact with Marsha for a second, then looked up at the ceiling like a young boy caught in a forbidden act.
   Marsha felt a growing sense of impatience and concern about what she was about to hear.
   “The trouble is I don’t know where to begin,” Victor said.
   “How about at the beginning,” Marsha suggested, her impatience showing again.
   Victor’s eyes met hers. He’d kept the secret surrounding VJ’s conception for over ten years. Looking at Marsha’s open, honest face, he wondered if she would ever forgive him when she learned the truth.
   “Please,” Marsha said. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
   Victor lowered his eyes. “Lots of reasons,” he said. “One is you might not believe me. In fact, for me to tell you we have to go to my lab.”
   “Right now?” questioned Marsha. “Are you serious?”
   “If you want to hear.”
   There was a pause. Kissa surprised Marsha by jumping up on her lap. She’d forgotten to feed him. “All right,” she said. “Let me feed the cat and say something to VJ. I can be ready in fifteen minutes.”

   VJ heard footsteps coming down the hall toward his bedroom. Without hurrying, he closed the cover of his Scott stamp album and slipped it onto the shelf. His parents knew nothing about philately, so they wouldn’t know what they were looking at. But there was no reason to take any chances. He didn’t want them to discover just how large and valuable his collection had become. They had thought his request for a bank vault more childish conceit than anything else and VJ saw no reason to make them think otherwise.
   “What are you doing, dear?” Marsha asked as she appeared in his doorway.
   VJ pursed his lips. “Nothing really.” He knew she was upset, but there was nothing he could do about it. Ever since he was a baby he realized there was something she wanted from him, something other mothers got from their children that he couldn’t give her. Sometimes, like now, he felt sorry.
   “Why don’t you invite Richie over one night this week?” she was saying.
   “Maybe I will.”
   “I think it would be nice,” Marsha said. “I’d like to meet him.”
   VJ nodded.
   Marsha smiled, shifted her weight. “Your father and I are going out for a little while. Is that okay with you?”
   “Sure.”
   “We won’t be gone long.”
   “I’ll be fine.”
   Five minutes later VJ watched from his bedroom window as Victor’s car descended the drive. VJ stood for a while looking out. He wondered if he should be concerned. After all, it was not usual for his parents to go out on a weekday night. He shrugged his shoulders. If there was something to worry about, he’d hear about it soon enough.
   Turning back into his room, he took his stamp album from the shelf and went back to putting in the mint set of early American stamps he’d recently received.
   The phone rang a long time before he heard it. Finally, remembering that his parents were out, he got up and went down the hall to the study. He picked up the receiver and said hello.
   “Dr. Victor Frank, please,” the caller said. The voice sounded muffled, as if it was far away from the receiver.
   “Dr. Frank is not at home,” VJ said politely. “Would you care to leave a message?”
   “What time will Dr. Frank be back?”
   “In about an hour,” VJ answered.
   “Are you his son?”
   “That’s right.”
   “Maybe it will be more effective if you give him the message. Tell your father that life will be getting progressively unpleasant unless he reconsiders and is reasonable. You got that?”
   “Who is this?” VJ demanded.
   “Just give your father the message. He’ll know.”
   “Who is this?” VJ repeated, feeling the initial stirrings of fear. But the caller had hung up.
   VJ slowly replaced the receiver. All at once he was acutely aware that he was all alone in the house. He stood for a moment listening. He’d never realized all the creaking sounds of an empty house. The radiator in the corner quietly hissed. From somewhere else a dull clunking sounded, probably a heating pipe. Outside the wind blew snow against the window.
   Picking up the phone again, VJ made a call of his own. When a man answered he told the person that he was scared. After being reassured that everything would be taken care of, VJ put down the phone. He felt better, but to be on the safe side, he hurried downstairs and methodically checked every window and every door to make sure they were all securely locked. He didn’t go down into the basement but bolted the door instead.
   Back in his room he turned on the computer. He wished the cat would stay in his room, but he knew better than to bother looking for her. Kissa was afraid of him, though he tried to keep his mother from realizing the fact. There were so many things he had to keep his mother from noticing. It was a strain. But then he hadn’t chosen to be what he was, either.
   Booting up the computer, VJ loaded Pac-Man and tried to concentrate.

   The fluorescent lights blinked, then filled the room with their rude light. Victor stepped aside and let Marsha precede him into the lab. She’d been there on a few occasions, but it had always been during the day. She was surprised how sinister the place looked at night with no people to relieve its sterile appearance. The room was about fifty feet by thirty with lab benches and hoods along each wall. In the center was a large island comprised of scientific equipment, each instrument more exotic than the next. There was a profusion of dials, cathode ray tubes, computers, glass tubing, and mazes of electronic connectors.
   A number of doors led from the main room. Victor led Marsha through one to an L-shaped area filled with dissecting tables. Marsha glanced at the scalpels and other horrid instruments and shuddered. Beyond that room and through a glass door with embedded wire was the animal room, and from where Marsha was standing she could see dogs and apes pacing behind the bars of their cages. She looked away. That was a part of research that she preferred not to think about.
   “This way,” Victor said, guiding her to the very back of the L, where the wall was clear glass.
   Flipping a switch, Victor turned on the light behind the glass. Marsha was surprised to see a series of large aquariums, each containing dozens of strange-looking sea creatures. They resembled snails but without their shells.
   Victor pulled over a stepladder. After searching through a number of the tanks, he took a dissecting pan from one of the tables and climbed the ladder. With a net, he caught two creatures from separate tanks.
   “Is this necessary?” asked Marsha, wondering what these hideous creatures had to do with Victor’s concern about VJ’s health.
   Victor didn’t answer. He came down the stepladder, balancing the tray. Marsha took a long look at the creatures. They were about ten inches long, brownish in color, with a slimy, gelatinous skin. She choked down a wave of nausea. She hated this sort of thing. It was one of the reasons she’d gone into psychiatry: therapy was clean, neat, and very human.
   “Victor!” Marsha said as she watched him impale the creatures into the wax-bottomed dissecting pan, spreading out their fins, or whatever they were. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
   “Because you wouldn’t believe me,” Victor said. “Be patient for a few moments more.” He took a scalpel and inserted a fresh, razor-sharp blade.
   Marsha looked away as he quickly slit open each of the animals.
   “These are Aplasia,” Victor said, trying to cover his own nervousness with a strictly scientific approach. “They have been used widely for nerve cell research.” He picked up a scissor and began snipping quickly and deliberately.
   “There,” he said. “I’ve removed the abdominal ganglion from each of the Aplasia.”
   Marsha looked. Victor was holding a small flat dish filled with clear fluid. Within, floating on the surface of the liquid, were two minute pieces of tissue.
   “Now come over to the microscope,” Victor said.
   “What about those poor creatures?” Marsha asked, forcing herself to look into the dissecting pan. The animals seemed to be struggling against the pins that held them on the bottom of the tray.

 “The techs will clean up in the morning,” Victor said, missing her meaning. He turned on the light of the microscope.
   With one last look at the Aplasia, Marsha went over to Victor, who was already busily peering down and adjusting the focus on the two-man dissecting scope.
   She bent over and looked. The ganglia were in the shape of the letter H with the swollen crosspiece resembling a transparent bag of clear marbles. The arms of the H were undoubtedly transsected nerve fibers. Victor was moving a pointer, and he told Marsha to count the nerve cells or neurons as he indicated them.
   Marsha did as she was told.
   “Okay,” Victor said. “Let’s look at the other ganglion.”
   The visual field rushed by, then stopped. There was another H like the first. “Count again,” Victor said.
   “This one has more than twice as many neurons as the other.”
   “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.
   “Did the children who died have the same NGF gene as VJ?” Marsha asked.
   Victor nodded.