Gray Matter

“Meaning every enhanced child is now a genius.”

Martin looked at Rachel in wordless amazement. “And how many is that?” she asked.

“Several.” His expression was unreadable.

Trade secret, she thought.

“But what about the ugly stuff,” Martin asked. “Cost?”

Malenko made a bemused smile. “A lot, but nothing we should discuss now. First things first, and that’s letting this all sink in.” He stood up and came around the desk. The meeting was over.

“What I’d like you to do is go home and think about this. Think if this is something you want to go through with, because you’ll be making a lifetime decision for your son, probably the most important in his life and yours. It’s a decision that transcends the merely medical. If you’re uncomfortable with the philosophical or social implications, then this is not for you. If you feel this runs counter to some ethical position you maintain, then this is not for you. But if you take the less global view—that this is your son and that your son has but one life to live—then you may accept the tenet that intelligence is its own reward.”

Rachel and Martin rose.

Malenko walked them out of the office to the front door. “Once again, I must caution you about confidentiality. Security is supremely important. Be it understood that this will not work if people talk. You are not allowed to discuss this with others. You are not allowed to seek others’ opinions. You are not allowed to put anything in writing. There will be no enhancement if I suspect that you will breach confidentiality. Is that understood?”

“Yeah, sure,” Martin said weakly.

Rachel nodded.

“Good. If we agree that this is the best thing for Dylan, then you’ll be asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement, the details to be explained later. Then we’ll discuss the ugly stuff.” He shook their hands. “Now go home and think about all this, and we’ll talk next week.”

Throughout the interview, Rachel had seen in Malenko a man of intimidating self-assurance and intelligence, a man whose polished rhetoric and keen instinct had nearly stripped her of defenses, had maneuvered her and Martin nearly to admit that they were here because of their dissatisfaction with their own son. And while part of her hated how she had bought into the presumption that intelligence was it own reward, this was the first time in their hour-long discussion that she sensed an abstract menace behind the porcelain smile.

Malenko opened the front door. “By the way, is Dylan right-handed or left?”

“Right,” Martin said.

“Good,” Malenko said, but did not elaborate.

“Doctor, I want you to know that before I can make a decision,” Rachel said, “I would have to meet some enhanced children.”

“You already have.”

Then like a half-glimpsed premonition she heard Malenko say: “Lucinda MacPhearson.”

32

“But she’s brilliant?”

“She is now,” Sheila said. “They raised her score by seventy-something points.”

They were at the Dells, in the café just outside the day care center having a muffin and café au lait.

“It’ll be two years in December. We took her in over the Christmas break from preschool, and when she returned her hair had grown back and nobody even knew. Then over the next months, she began to show signs of improvement—talking better, understanding better. In a year she was reading and reasoning and thinking. God, it was like somebody cranked up the rheostat.”

“That’s incredible.”

“You’re telling me? And they can do the same for Dylan. I mean, it’s a miracle. She was this hairless little monkey, and now she’s … Lucinda.”

“Hairless little monkey.” Was that how she regarded Dylan?

“If you don’t mind my asking, what was the nature of her problem?”

“What do you mean?”

“Brain deformities or anomalies or whatever?”

“No.”

“Some kind of accident or trauma?”

“Not really.”

“Well, what made you bring her?”

Sheila looked at her incredulously. “She was slow.”

“Wait a minute. You’re mean these enhancement procedures aren’t just for kids with neurophysical defects?”

Sheila’s face darkened. “Well, a few are.”

“You’re saying that most are kids with no physical abnormalities—lesions, tumors, malformations—or whatever? They’re just … slow?”

Ever since Sheila had hinted at enhancement, Rachel had assumed it was a medical procedure to correct some anatomical defect of the brain. Now she was hearing something else: a secret practice for raising the intelligence of kids who tested low and whose parents had financial resources. In Martin’s words “an IQ jack-up” for the privileged. Rachel was about to articulate those thoughts, when Sheila’s eyes suddenly filled up and her mouth began to quiver.

“I didn’t want to tell you at first,” she whimpered, “but I could see how you were agonizing over his problems. I knew exactly what you were going through, watching your child struggle with things other kids get automatically. Lucinda couldn’t follow the simplest directions. She didn’t understand the simplest concepts. It would kill me to watch her try to put together her little puzzles—baby puzzles—cutouts with the pictures under them. She couldn’t do them,” Sheila said, wiping her eyes. “It ate me up to see how frustrated she’d get and end up throwing pieces across the room. So I knew completely what you were going through. But I really couldn’t say anything.”

Rachel nodded, feeling a vague uneasiness in Sheila’s tearful response.

“So, I’m telling you it’s like a miracle what they did for her, and they can do the same for Dylan.”

“Except I’m not sure I can grapple with manipulating his intelligence. Or even what that means. I thought you were telling me about a procedure to medically correct brain abnormalities.”

“I am, and it means making him smarter, simple as that.”

But it isn’t as simple as that, thought Rachel.

“Look, no two brains are alike—like people’s faces. Slow brains are different from smart brains, is what they told me. So, it’s like a brain lift.” Sheila wiped her eyes and chuckled at her own analogy.

“What do you know about the operation?”

“Just that they make little incisions and implant some kind of neurostimulation like what they do for epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease—stem—cell stuff. I don’t know the details, but what I do know is that after a year or more, the kid’s a little whip. Like day and night.

“At three, Lucinda couldn’t distinguish red from green even though she wasn’t even color-blind-the next year, she was reading at third-grade level. The year after that she was doing fifth-grade math. What can I say? A miracle. She was like a sponge—and still is. Everything she’s taught she learns like that and remembers. And what’s more, she’s a regular Miss Confidence. Sometimes it’s Miss Obnoxious, but she’s got self-esteem up to here. What can I say?”

As she listened to Sheila, Rachel had a mental flash of Lucinda sitting poker-straight at her computer screen, her dual golden ponytails rising from the top of her head like bullwhips, her fingers on the keyboard like a concert pianist, her little pink mouth flapping directions on how best to navigate the search engines. Miss Confidence.

Miss Obnoxious.

Then Rachel saw that fat pink chipmunk face fill with noxious glee.

“That’s not a tiger, it’s a cheetah.”

“You must be taking stupid pills.”

“Hey, Dylan, thanks for the free goal!”

Children could be astonishingly cruel, but Lucinda was a soulless little bitch. “And she’s okay?” Rachel said. “No personality problems, behavioral issues, side effects, headaches?”

“Uh-uh. It’s been great. She’s already talking about being a doctor when she grows up.”

Rachel nodded, studying Sheila’s responses. “And where is it done?”

“They have some off-site location. But they’ll fill you in.”

“And you have no regrets?”

“Regrets? Uh-uh. No way.”

Sheila shook her head a little too much and could not hold on to Rachel’s stare.

“Nor did Harry,” Sheila added.

From what Rachel knew, her late husband was something of an intellect, a great reader and a man who became a chief engineer at Raytheon. He had died a year ago, so she couldn’t get his input. That was unfortunate because Rachel could sense something forced in Sheila’s manner—overwrought confidence.

“Does Lucinda know she’s been enhanced?”

“God, no! And there’s no reason. In fact, the doctor says that it’s best they don’t know. Besides, she was sedated the whole time and remembers absolutely nothing.”

“How long did it take?”

“The operation? A few hours, I guess. They kept her a couple days in recovery, which she slept through, and when she came home she didn’t have a clue. Not even a headache. And when the hair grew back, she stopped asking about the boo-boos.”

“Amazing,” Rachel said. And yet, all she could think of were the countless and dark unknowns. “What about the fact that it’s not legal?”

Sheila rolled her eyes. “Legal-schmegal. Forty years ago abortions weren’t legal, but that didn’t stop people from getting them. It’s just that enhancement isn’t very PC, if you know what I mean.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Stuff like that gets out, it could cause class warfare.” She chuckled nervously at her own glibness.

“But that’s a legitimate ethical concern,” Rachel said. “It’s just one more advantage the rich have over the poor.” And that bothered her. If this was the miracle it appeared to be, then it opened a Pandora’s box of social woes, not the least of which was the fact that it ran counter to everything democracy stood for and to Rachel’s fundamental beliefs in social justice and equality. A secret privileged thing that was tantamount to intellectual apartheid.

“First, enhancement does work. And second, you’re looking at it the wrong way, hon. This is for your son. For his future. That’s where your priorities are. You’re talking about making life better for him, right? Right. Which means if you can afford it, you have a moral obligation to do it. It’s for your one-and-only kid, and that’s what counts, period! In a sense, it’s good for society too, because—who knows?—Dylan may grow up to be a great scientist or doctor. He may even be president someday. Or better still, another Bill Gates.”

“And what about this Dr. Malenko? What do you know about him?”

“Talk about brilliant! The man’s a world-class neuroscientist—a pillar of the community, a member of every civic group. He’s on the board of Mass General Hospital and the Lahey Clinic. A member of the Brain Surgeon’s Society or whatever. What can I say: He’s the cream of the crop, is all.”

Rachel listened and nodded, and took a sip of her coffee. Outside two greenskeepers were leaning against the pickup truck and laughing over some joke. One of them, a man in his fifties, probably had done manual labor most of his life and lived with his wife and kids in one of the humbler towns in the area, or maybe New Hampshire. He couldn’t be earning more than thirty thousand a year. She wondered about his life. She wondered if he was happy being who he was.

“Another thing is the fee. When we asked, he just said it was expensive.”

Sheila’s eyebrows arched. “It is expensive. But you’re making an investment like nothing else in life. You’re buying genius for your son. His enhancement could mean the difference between a so-so life and a great one.

“Think about that and about how much you’ll save in pain, missed opportunities, humiliation, and the rejection your child would suffer—not to mention costs for tutors, therapists, special schools—including Nova Children’s Center—SAT prep courses, et cetera. Or imagine the emotional payback when your kid wins a science fair, or writes the class skit, or is editor of the school newspaper, makes the honor roll, the National Honor Society. Or he graduates at the top of his class at Harvard only to start working at seventy-five thousand dollars a year at the tender age of twenty-two, or younger since he’ll probably skip grades. How do you put a price tag on all that? You can’t. Honey, if you can afford it, then you owe it to him. You owe it to him.”

Inside the playroom, Miss Jean was wrapping up the hour. Lucinda made a wave through the one-way window at Sheila. She couldn’t see her, of course, but she knew she was there. She knew it was a one-way window. Behind her Dylan watched in puzzlement as she waved at a mirror.

They got up to leave. “Do you know other enhanced kids?”

“There aren’t many in the area, but I know a couple.”

“Anyone I know?”

Sheila suddenly seemed torn. “Well, you may know of them.”

“Such as?”

“Look, I’m not supposed to tell,” Sheila whispered. “I mean, everything is très confidential, especially the identity of the children, if you know what I mean.”

“Sheila, if we’re going to consider this, I want to meet other children and talk to the parents.”

Rachel could see her struggling but Sheila was not someone who could sit on a secret.

“Julian Watts,” she whispered.

“You mean Vanessa’s son, the boy who wrote a book on mazes?”

“Uh-huh. He’s like megasmart and talented. I don’t know his case history, but his mother, Vanessa, is this superstar scholar and the father, Brad, he’s an architect. And Julian was born … challenged.”

“We got an invitation to her book party at the club.” A fancy invitation had arrived the other day for a double-header Scholarship Banquet next Saturday night celebrating both caddy scholarship winners and Vanessa Watts’s publication of her new book on George Orwell. Rachel had met Vanessa in passing at the club, although she didn’t know her. Nor her son. “How do we go about meeting them?”

Sheila leaned forward into her conspiratorial huddle again. “Let me first explain that these kids don’t know they’re enhanced, know what I mean? It’s just not a good thing if they think they were made special. I mean their ego, and stuff. So you can’t really talk to them about, you know, before and after.”

“How could they not know they had a brain operation?”

“I’m telling you they don’t. They’ve got this amnesia drug the doctors use—something called ‘ketamine’ or ‘katamine.’ Whatever, it’s used for trauma cases, and whatnot, but it works like magic. They just don’t remember anything including how they were once, you know … different.”

“What about follow-up visits? Dr. Malenko said he checks up on their progress.”

“They only need to be seen two or three times until things level off, which is about a year or so,” Sheila said. “But it’s the same thing. They go in, he gives them the ketamine/katamine stuff. They get checked up and are sent on their way, and they don’t remember a thing. It’s incredible.”

“So these kids don’t even know about other enhanced kids.”

“Not a clue.”

Through the window Rachel could see Dylan put on his backpack. “I’d like to talk with the Wattses and meet Julian.”

“I’ll have to check, but I’m sure it can be arranged.”

As they walked outside to meet the kids, Sheila stopped. “I think you’re making the right decision for him.”

“But we haven’t made a decision yet.”

“Well, I mean you’re thinking about something that will make all the difference. I mean, I know, believe me. It’s like she got over multiple sclerosis or blindness or something.”

They walked into the sunlight. It was bright and warm, and the grass and leaves on the trees seemed to glow. Other mothers were waiting in the shade of the huge elm chatting among themselves.

“You know,” Sheila said as they walked outside, “there was this poll I read about the other day. You know, one of those factoid things you see on CNN? Well, they did a national survey of a few thousand people. They asked a simple question: ‘If there was one thing that you could change about yourself what would it be?’ The choices were to be better looking, younger, taller, nicer, less selfish, more outgoing et cetera. Even wealthier. You know what over eighty percent of the respondents said they wished?”

“What?”

“They said they wished they were smarter.”

Sheila walked away to greet Lucinda who stood like a statue waiting. Behind her Dylan burst out of the door with the others. “Hi, honey,” Rachel said as she stooped to catch Dylan. He gave her a big hug.

“Mom, you know what?”

“What?”

“I know all the days of the week.”

“You do?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Monday, Tuesday, Wegsday, Fursday, Somesday.”

In the distance, Lucinda walked toward the green Jaguar holding Sheila’s hand in her left and a laptop in her right.

33

“D-d-did they love each other?”

“Of course they loved each other,” Richard growled. “What the hell kind of a question is that? They were crazy about each other.”

“I was j-just wondering.”

“You must remember them.”

“Kind of.”

“And if they were alive today, they’d want your ass back in school.”

They had been through this countless times since he quit last year, and Richard looked for every opportunity to nag him about it.

Brendan continued driving without comment, hoping that Richard would just run out of steam. They were coming back from Richard’s men’s club where he’d spend the afternoons playing cards with some of the other Barton old-timers.

“Why don’t you go back in the fall, for cryin’ out loud?” he asked. “You’re not going to get anywhere waiting tables. You’re too damn smart for that. I don’t want to see you waste your life.”

“I d-d-don’t like school.”

“You didn’t give it a try. I almost never saw you crack open a book, except all that poetry stuff.”

Brendan didn’t respond.

“You finish school, go to college, and get yourself a degree like all the other kids. Your parents did. Jeez, if they were still alive they’d kill me for letting you quit. You should do it for their sake, for cryin’ out loud.”

“M-maybe.” Brendan’s mother had been a defense lawyer and his father was a librarian. And, as Richard often reminded him, they were “education-minded” people.

“Otherwise, you’re gonna end up like me, working with your hands and killing yourself for every buck you make.” He held up his hands, now knobbed and bent with arthritis.

“But you liked being a plumber.”

Richard humpfed. “Yeah, I did. But tell that to my joints and lower lumbar.” He rolled his head the way he did when the arthritis in his neck flared up. Richard once said that he had lived most of his life without pain—it had been saved for the end.

Brendan turned down Main Street of Barton. To the right was Angie’s Diner. For a second, he felt his head throb. “Was she pretty?”

“Who?”

“My m-mother.”

“How could you not remember? She was beautiful.” There was a catch in his voice. Richard was Brendan’s mother’s father. “She looked like her mother.”

Brendan gave him a side-glance. Richard was crying. He had not seen Richard cry since his wife, Betty, died some years ago. He envied Richard, because Brendan could not recall ever crying. Maybe it was the medication his doctor had him on. Or maybe he was just dead. “I remember her,” he said.

“You should with your memory, for cryin’ out loud.”

But the truth was that Brendan only recalled his parents during the last few years of their lives. Before that—before he was seven—he drew a near blank, including nothing of his earlier years; yet he could recite most of what he had read or seen and could recall great sweeps of recent experiences in uncannily vivid details. It was as if his life before age seven didn’t exist.

“I w-w-wish I’d known them better.”

Richard nodded and wiped his eyes.

I wish I could cry like you, Brendan thought. If I took your medicine away and let you die, would I cry like that? Would I?

(God! Do I have to think murder to feel human?)

They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then Brendan asked, “When you were in the war, did you ever kill anyone?”

Richard gave him his wincing scowl. “Why the hell you want to know that?”

“I’m just w-w-wondering.” Richard once told him he had spent weeks in Okinawa.

“Yeah, I killed some people. Why, you thinking of killing somebody?”

“I’m just w-w-wondering how it made you feel afterward.”

“They were Japs, and it was war. It was what I was supposed to do.”

“Later on, after the war, did it b-b-bother you when you thought about it? That they were human beings you’d killed?”

“No, because I didn’t think about it. Just as they didn’t think of all my twenty-year-old buddies they killed as human beings.” Richard’s voice cracked again. “Jeez, can we change the subject?”

The thrum of the wheels filled the silence. Then Brendan asked, “Were you scared of dying?”

“Of course I was scared. We all were. What do you think? We were kids, for cryin’ out loud. We had our whole lives ahead of us.”

“What about now?”

Richard humpfed. “I’m seventy-nine, Brendy. That’s a lot of mileage. I’m ready to get off the bus, but I’m not scared. Not at all. Why you asking?”

“Just curious.”

Richard humpfed. “But there’s a few things I want to see get done before I go. Like seeing you getting your ass back in school and going to college. Don’t give me that look. You’re a talented kid—I just don’t want to see you waste your life. That’s the promise I made to your mom, and that’s what I want to take to my grave with me.”

Brendan’s eye fell on the Christopher medal on the dashboard. “D-do you believe in God?”

“What are you doing, writing my obituary or something?”

“J-j-just curious.”

“Yeah, I believe in God.” Richard winced and rolled his head again. Then he chuckled. “But I’m not sure He believes in me.”

Brendan turned down their street, thinking that he might actually miss Richard.

Richard wiped his nose on his handkerchief as they approached the house. “You know, there are a couple boxes of their stuff downstairs in the cellar you might want to go through,” Richard said. “A lot of old papers and things. Maybe even some old photographs. I don’t know what’s in there. Your grandmother had packed them away, but you might want to look. It’ll be good for you.”

Brendan pulled the truck into the driveway and helped Richard into the house. While the old man settled in his La-Z Boy with the newspaper, Brendan went down to the cellar.

The place was a mess. Beside the workbench was an old lawnmower engine on a mount which Brendan had taken apart to rewire. He liked working with machines. Just for the challenge of it, he would disassemble clocks or old motors until he had a heap of parts, then reassemble them from memory. He never missed.

He moved to the very back of the cellar and opened the small storage room which sat under a window through which, in years past, a chute would be lowered to fill the area with coal. Now it was stacked with boxes and old storage chests.

On top lay Richard’s shotgun in its imitation-leather sheath. They had used it for skeet shooting when Brendan was younger. He zipped it open and studied the weapon. It was a Remington classic twelve-gauge pump action piece with contoured vent rib barrels and twin bead sights. It had been fashioned of polished blue steel and American walnut. The wood had lost most of its gloss and the barrel badly needed polishing. But it was still a handsome weapon. As he felt the heft, scenes of skeet and trap shooting with Richard flickered though Brendan’s mind. And the nights when he contemplated blowing his own head off.

He put the gun away and went through the boxes.

Many contained baby effects—clothes, shoes, a set of Beatrix Potter baby dishes and cups. There were also some of Brendan’s early school- and artwork. The drawings were very primitive, stick-figured people and houses barely recognizable. The schoolwork was also unimpressive. He recalled none of it.

After several minutes, he located a carton with papers and photographs. His mother apparently was something of a photographer because she had put together albums chronicling Brendan from his earliest days as an infant up to five years of age. The photographs mostly in color, a few black-and-whites, were arranged chronologically and dated. Brendan spent nearly an hour going through them page by page.

Although he recognized himself and his parents from other photographs upstairs, it was like looking at somebody else’s history. None of the locales, toddler clothes, toys, or even images of his parents seemed to connect to him—none triggered a cascade of recollection. Nor a nostalgic glugging of his throat.

Behind the other storage boxes was a metal strongbox—the only metal container and the only one that was sealed with a lock. The box was heavy and not just from the metal. He had no idea where the key was, of course; but that was no problem since the lock was cheap hardware-store fare. He got some wires and a jackknife from the workbench and popped it open in a matter of moments.

The contents were mostly papers in folders and manila envelopes. There were various medical reports and letters.

One particular folder caught his attention. Inside was a generic medical form for Children’s Hospital Office of Neurology. It had been filled out just after his ninth birthday but for some reason never submitted. The front listed Brendan’s name, address, date of birth, et cetera. On the reverse side was a long checklist of various ailments including several lines at the bottom asking simply for “Other.” The form had been filled out and signed at the bottom by his mother. Brendan stared at the list. She had checked off several boxes including Headaches, Sleep disorders, Depression, Nightmares, and Mood swings. In the margin she had written in: “hears voices” and “verbal outbursts—Tourette syndrome?”

In the spaces at the bottom she had penned “Tried to kill himself.”

He remembered that vividly. He had seen a show on television where some guy committed suicide by sitting in his car in an enclosed garage with the engine running. He had tried that and recalled getting his father’s car keys, going out to the car, closing the door with the remote control attached to the sun visor, turning it on, then sitting and waiting. He even recalled getting sleepy. The next thing he remembered was waking up in the emergency room at Newton Wellesley Hospital.

After that they had upped his meds. He remembered because it was around Thanksgiving. Then a few weeks later, his parents were killed. Then he moved in with his grandparents and they found him a pediatrician who just continued the meds. Soon Brendan began to better mask his problems, internalizing them, developing strategies to keep the demons in low profile.

He continued through the papers.

What caught his attention immediately was a large accordion folder. On the tab, somebody had written BRENDAN. There was a date from when he was five years old. He unfastened the string close and opened it.

Inside was another large envelope containing several black sheets. He removed one and raised it to the light. And for a long moment he looked at the images.

They were X rays of his brain.

34

“You told her about Julian Watts?”

“They want to meet another child and the parents. They won’t consider it otherwise.”

“That’s not the point, Sheila,” Lucius Malenko said. “You were not to say anything until you cleared it with me first.”

“But she insisted.”

“You were not sanctioned to reveal names. Do you understand?”

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she pleaded, “but, you know, he’s a real showcase genius, he’s perfect. And she knows Vanessa.”

“You do not make the decisions, is that clear?” The scalpel-edge of his words cut into her brain.

“Yes, I’m really sorry,” Sheila whimpered into the phone. For several seconds all she could hear was the sound of an open line. While she waited for his response, her insides tightened.

“They’ll have to observe him at school to keep things anonymous,” he said.

“Of course. No other way.”

“You’ll have to arrange that.”

“I can do that, no problem,” Sheila said, feeling her organs settle in place again.

“No private interviews with him.”

“No, of course not. I promise.”

“I’ll handle the parents,” Malenko said. “In the meantime, you will say nothing, you will do nothing. Is that understood?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

Sheila was in her office in the loft on the third floor of her house. Being so high up, she had a commanding view of their backyard. In a few days, the area would be decorated for Lucinda’s birthday party. Sheila had invited ten girls from school, from DellKids, and the neighborhood. At the moment, Lucinda was downstairs playing with her birthday kitten. Sheila could hear her talking to it over the songs on her CD player.

Two days ago, Sheila had given Lucinda the kitten so that she could get used to it before all the kids showed up for the party. It was Lucinda’s first pet—a beautiful little orange and white longhaired twelve-week-old thing with big round blue eyes. Sheila had gotten it from the Salem Animal Shelter. Lucinda had taken to it immediately. Sheila’s mind tripped back:

“She’s so pretty, Mommy,” she had said. “But aren’t cats sneaky?”

“No, they’re not sneaky, hon.”

The kitten sat curled in a basket with a cushion in it, which was how Sheila had presented it to Lucinda.

“What shall we call her?”

“Whatever you like. I’m sure you can think of a clever name.”

Lucinda knelt down beside the basket, and the kitten seemed to cower slightly. It was clearly shy of people. “It has big white paws,” she said. “How about Mittens?”

The kitten looked up at them and made a faint mewing. “That’s a nice name,” Sheila said.

Lucinda’s eyes raked Sheila’s face. Then her expression hardened. “You don’t like the name!”

“Yes I do, honey. Mittens is an adorable name. Just like in the nursery rhyme.”

“No, you don’t like it. I can tell from your expression.”

There was no pretending with Lucinda. She had developed a frustratingly keen instinct for catching her. “I love it,” Sheila insisted. But in truth, she had expected a more imaginative, more creative name from her—and not some trite kiddy moniker from her books. But how do you say that to Lucinda?

“No you don’t,” she said in a scathing voice. “You think it’s a dumb name. You do, you do.”

“No I don’t. Mittens is a lovely name.”

“You’re a dirty rotten liar.”

Although Sheila should have been used to her daughter’s occasional lapses, she was always taken aback. “Don’t talk to me that way, young lady.”

“Then don’t lie to me, old lady. You hate the name. Admit it! ADMIT IT!”

Lucinda’s icy blue stare stuck Sheila like a paralyzing needle. “I don’t hate the name.”

“You do. You do,” she screamed. “I hate you. I hate you. I hope you get cancer and die.” Lucinda then snatched up the kitten from the basket and stormed out of the room. “Stupid bitch!”

As Lucinda headed for her room, Sheila heard Lucinda cry out, “Ouch! Don’t do that, you dummy!” Before Lucinda banged her door closed, the kitten let out a long sharp cry.

Was it worth it? a voice deep in Sheila’s mind whispered.

“Perhaps you can arrange a school tour,” Malenko said, snapping her back to the moment.

“Yes, of course. I know one of the admissions officers.” It would have to be soon since school was nearly out.

“Good.”

There was another pause on the phone, which tugged at Sheila. She had sold hundreds of homes over the years. She had haggled over prices, P&S agreements, split hairs, gone back and forth with buyers and sellers. She was used to talking turkey about price. But with Lucius Malenko, she always felt as if her will were extinguished. “And if they agree … you know, go all the way, then …”

“You’ll get your finder’s fee, Sheila.”

“That’s great, thanks.” Sheila felt a cool rush of relief. He had promised her five percent commission. Five percent didn’t sound like much, but it would help. Harry had been a top electrical engineer, but clueless when it came to financial planning, leaving her only a pittance in death benefits. Given the considerable debt they had gotten into with Lucinda’s enhancement and the weakening real estate market, Sheila was in dire financial straits. So when she had approached Dr. Malenko about Rachel Whitman, he had agreed that if things worked, she would get a commission—a finder’s fee. She only wished there were something in writing. But this was not that kind of contract.

While they continued to talk, Sheila heard something from down below. A kind of muffled whirring sound. It was hard to determine because Lucinda’s CD player was blasting a sound track from 101 Dalmatians. Like all large old houses, this had several different sounds—the hot-water heater, refrigerator, the dishwasher, the washing machine and drier, the water rushing in the pipes, the air-conditioning system—so she wasn’t able to determine what she was hearing under the music.

“By the way,” Sheila said, “I think the husband, Martin, is very interested.”

“So it seems,” Malenko said.

The blender, Sheila thought. Lucinda was using the blender. She liked to make milk shakes with ice cream, milk, and fruit, and Sheila had bought a quart of strawberries yesterday for that purpose. And although Lucinda was only seven, Sheila had shown her how to use the device safely. Besides, the blades could only be activated with the top fastened.

“I will contact Vanessa and get back to you,” Malenko said. “Then we’ll talk about a visit. The sooner the better.”

“Yes, of course,” Sheila said.

“And, once again, you will say nothing until you hear from me.”

“Absolutely.”

Malenko hung up, and Sheila put the phone down, her heart still racing. She had blabbed and felt stupid, and Malenko all but said that. If he wanted to, he could cut her off immediately.

From below, the music was now resonating throughout the house. She didn’t know if the kitchen windows were open, but Sheila’s first concern was not the neighbors but Lucinda’s ears. She could permanently damage her hearing.

Sheila opened the door of her office and headed down. “Lucinda,” she called out. “Is everything okay?”

But the music drowned her out.

“Lucinda?” Sheila rounded the second-floor landing. When she reached the stairs, the music suddenly stopped dead, and a gaping silence filled the house, the only sound being Sheila’s shoes as she came down the stairs.

Before she got to the bottom, she heard Lucinda cry out from the kitchen: “Mommy, Mommy.”

Sheila’s heart nearly stopped. “What is it?” she cried, as she hustled down the hall to the kitchen.

“Mittens ran away.”

“What?”

“I went outside and couldn’t find her,” Lucinda said, grabbing her mother’s hand and pulling her to the back door.

“How did she get out?”

As she opened it, Sheila noticed her hand. There were thin scratches just above the wrist.

“Your hand is bleeding. What happened?”

Through gulping sobs Lucinda said, “I was unloading the dishwasher to get Mittens’ dish when I scratched it on a stupid fork. Then her face hardened. “It’s your fault. You know you’re not supposed to put the forks tines-up but tines-down. You know that, MOMMY.”

“I’m sorry, honey,” Sheila mumbled.

“I had the back door closed, but when Joe the mailman threw in the mail, he left it open and she got out.” Her face crumbled. “He’s a stupid old man, Mommy. I hate him.” And she ran outside.

Sheila followed her, a low-grade humming filling her head. Before she stepped outside, she looked back in the kitchen. She was right: On the counter sat half a bowl of strawberries, and the blender containing the bright red drink. The smell of strawberries laced the air. Everything looked normal—except for the empty cat basket.

“Here, Mittens. Here, Mittens,” Lucinda cried, running across the backyard and making kissing sounds. “Come home, please. Mittens, come home.”

Sheila felt oddly distracted as she watched her daughter go through the motions of finding her kitten. “Did you see which way she ran?”

“Yes, this way. I think she was chasing after a bird.”

“Well, I’m sure she’ll come home.”

Lucinda dragged Sheila into the woods, and they looked and called for the kitten. But after several minutes, Lucinda tired of the search and headed back to the backyard and flopped down on her swing. She stuck her lower lip out. “She’s never going to come home.”

Sheila squatted down beside her. She had splashed some berry juice on her T-shirt. “Yes she will,” Sheila said. “She’s probably out there under a bush watching us right now. She’ll be back.”

But something told her that was not so.

Lucinda looked up at Sheila, her eyes like marbles and her face set the way it got when she was reading Sheila’s manner. Suddenly she broke into a smile and spread her arms. “I love you, Mommy.”

Sheila embraced her. “I love you, too.”

Lucinda then got up and took her mother’s hand and headed back to the house. “You know, I miss her already,” she said, and licked the back of her other hand. “She was such a nice kitty.”

“But she may still come back.”

“I know, but if she doesn’t can we get another one?”

“Sure.”

“And without claws?”

35

“Julian’s just finishing up at school, but I think I can get us a visit.” Sheila once sold a house to the Bloomfield Prep admissions officer. “This way, you can see him in action.”

It was Friday afternoon, and Rachel had picked up Sheila for a three o’clock meeting with Vanessa Watts who lived up the coast a few miles. As they drove along, Rachel kept asking herself why she was doing this when her instincts told her it made no sense, that there were too many unknowns. But she had promised herself to remain open-minded.

The Wattses’ house sat atop a rolling green lawn that looked like a green broadloom carpet. It was a white clapboard-sided Colonial of understated elegance, surrounded by mature foliage that made the place look as if it had naturally grown out of the ground decades ago. Even the row of pine trees along the drive looked just the right size and had been planted in just the right place. Along the front was a low dry stone wall and tidy beds of flowers and decorative grasses. The place bespoke a world that was perfect and good.

Vanessa greeted them at the door. In her forties, she was a tall woman with short golden hair, no makeup and a mobile toothy mouth. She was dressed in chinos, a green golf shirt with the collar up, and white running shoes. She looked very Cambridgey. According to Sheila, she was a professor of English at Middlesex University, and her book on George Orwell was apparently getting considerable attention.

She led them into the living room, a large cheerful space furnished in white—stuffed chairs, sofa, and wall-to-wall carpeting. The carpeting made Rachel conscious of her shoes. It was hard to believe people lived in the house, especially two teenagers. The only colors breaking up the antiseptic effect were two paintings and a shiny black baby grand in one corner. On the key guard of the piano was a Franz Liszt music sheet.

“Who plays?” Rachel asked, trying to make conversation.

“Right now only Julian. Lisa, my daughter, is a violinist, Brad doesn’t play, and what I do doesn’t sound like music.”

“He must be very talented,” Rachel said. “Liszt is very difficult.”

“He’s getting better,” Vanessa said.

Rachel sensed a note of studied coyness in her response. The kid was probably a musical prodigy. Because Dylan loved to sing and was good at it, Rachel had arranged for him to take piano lessons last year. Unfortunately, he lasted only four sessions. His music teacher called in desperation one day for Rachel to pick him up. It just wasn’t working—Dylan was out of control. As much as she had worked to get him to focus on finger exercises, he would not cooperate. And the more she tried, the more frustrated he became. When he finally went into a full-fledged temper tantrum pounding the keys with his fist, Mrs. Crawford called Rachel, and that was it for piano. “Some younger children have problems with drills. But they grow out of it. Maybe next year.” Then as an afterthought she added, “But he’s an adorable little guy, though. Sings beautifully.”

“An adorable little guy, though”: slow, but adorable.

“Here he is,” Sheila said, sounding like a proud aunt. She handed Rachel a framed photograph of Julian.

Wearing scholarly looking rimless glasses and dressed in a blue and white school baseball uniform, a bright gold B on his hat, the thin-faced boy was smiling widely and holding up his index finger. Probably, Rachel thought, to let the world know he was an alpha child—one of the chosen elite who would become a permanent resident on honor rolls, who would score 1600 on his SATs, who would get early admission to Princeton, who would grow up to be Zeus.

“Would you like some coffee or tea?” Vanessa asked.

Rachel could feel her face flush for entertaining such petty jealousy. She hadn’t even met Julian and already she resented the kid. “Coffee would be fine, thank you.”

“Me, too,” Sheila said.

Over the fireplace hung a large photograph of the family—Vanessa and Brad in the background, Julian and his sister, Lisa, a high school junior. They were a handsome family poised on the bow of a windjammer pulling into some tropical harbor. Another photograph showed Julian with his Bloomfield Prep soccer team.

Sheila moved to the corner and punched her cell phone to call her office. “Shoot! The battery’s dead.”

Vanessa nodded to the other side of the house. “You can use the one in Brad’s studio. He’s at the office, of course. You know where it is.”

“Thanks,” Sheila said, and left the room.

When they were alone, Rachel asked Vanessa, “What does your husband do?”

“He’s a commercial architect.”

“Very nice.”

“Except I see him once a month. He works long hours and travels a lot. What about you and your husband?”

“At the moment, I’m just bringing up my son. I used to be a college textbook editor. But I gave that up when Dylan was born,” Rachel said. “My husband has a small recruitment company.”

Vanessa nodded. “How do you like Hawthorne?”

“So far we’re enjoying it.” Rachel tried to force an expression to fit her words.

“Yeah, it has a lot going for it, if you’re the right kind of people.” She kept her voice low so Sheila wouldn’t hear. “I know you’re supposed to be true to your town and all, but it’s become claustrophobic—which, I guess, is the nature of small towns: Everybody knows everybody else’s business.” Vanessa looked as if she didn’t want to elaborate for the newcomer. “Let’s just say the place has its pressure points. We’re thinking of moving.”

“You are?”

“Mmmm, to a place where we won’t have—” She cut off and put her finger to her mouth as Sheila returned. “Get through okay?”

“Yeah, and I wish I hadn’t. The P and S fell through on the Rotella place. We were supposed to have an exclusive, and some unnamed party bid eighty thousand over the asking price.” Sheila shrugged. “That’s the name of the game in this business.” She flopped into her chair. “You win some, you lose some. But it’s one hell of a way to end the week.”

Sheila’s expression said that the commission loss was going to hurt. Vanessa went to the kitchen and returned with a tray of coffee and cookies. “So, you’re interested in the enhancement procedure for your son.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

Vanessa nodded and straightened out a picture on the wall. “What’s his name—your son?”

“Dylan.”

“Well, it worked wonders with ours, the way it has for Lucinda.” She said that as if she were talking about a new acne cream.

“Absolutely,” Sheila added.

“How exactly?”

“Well … I guess for the lack of a better expression, he’s a hell of a lot smarter. He picks things up much faster. He’s quicker in his response to ideas. His memory is greater. And he’s focussed. Oh, boy! Is he ever! When he sets his mind to doing something, he’s … well, like a magnifying glass.” She appeared to catch herself.

“And how was he before the procedure?”

“It’s been some years, of course, but, frankly, Julian could best be described by what he couldn’t do. It’s like night and day. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, he was a happy little boy, but he was miles behind the other kids. I could show you some of his early testing and teachers’ reports. They were pitiful. I mean, he couldn’t read, he couldn’t add, he got totally confused by the simplest directions. His teachers said that he was not working to his capacity. But the sad thing is that he was.”

As Rachel listened, she thought she heard something forced in the woman’s explanation—as if she were trying to convince herself instead of Rachel.

Vanessa fell silent for a moment. Suddenly she flicked her head, and made a bright smile. “Last term he got all As. What can I say? What they did was nothing short of a miracle. Really!” Again she shifted. “So, what’s he like, your son … Darren?”

“Dylan.” Rachel didn’t like making public statements about his problems. “He’s a sweet little boy—active, friendly, considerate.”

As she spoke, Vanessa looked at her with a flat expression as if to say: “They all are, so get to the important stuff.”

“He has some language-processing problems.” And she elaborated a bit.

“Sounds familiar,” Vanessa said when Rachel was finished. “We tried everything: one-on-one tutoring, special classes, and, of course, all the hot meds. But you can’t blame their brains, nor can you fill them up with Ritalin. Yes, they can get special support, blah blah blah, but the bottom line is that they’re handicapped, and will always be. Sure, some of them can be happy and have quote-unquote productive lives. But let’s face it, just how productive can you be if your IQ is seventy-five? What I’m saying is, if it’s important to you to have a smart kid, then this might be for you.”

“Looking back, are you happy you had it done?” Rachel asked. “Any regrets?”

Vanessa made a fast glance at Sheila who took the cue. “The alternative was bringing up a backward child. What can I say?”

“I know I sound rather hardheaded,” Vanessa continued, “but before the procedure—when he was six—he still could barely recognize letters or numbers. And his memory was hopeless: He couldn’t remember basic family facts, like our street address, his own birthday, or his father’s first name. It was very distressing.”

Rachel nodded as her mind slipped into a disturbing recollection from last week. Dylan had just finished watching a video of Pinocchio—a movie he had seen half a dozen times. When she asked him to retell the story for her, he could barely recall the names of the characters—Jiminy Cricket was “the green boy,” and Figaro was “the cat”—or simple words like whale. Nor could he put key plot events in proper sequence. After a few moments, he simply gave up in frustration.

“Now he’s getting terrific grades and winning science fairs,” Vanessa continued. “He’s a different person.”

“Have you noticed any personality or behavior changes?”

“Of course!” Vanessa declared. “You don’t become a genius overnight and not undergo personality changes. Tasks that used to intimidate he now takes to like a fish to water—or maybe shark is closer. I can’t tell you how confident he is—and driven to excel. And he loves school, we’re happy to say—believe me! The same with Lucinda, right?”

“Absolutely,” Sheila shot back without missing a beat. “She can be a Miss Smarty Pants at times, but that’s more of a maturity problem.”

Their enthusiasm bordered on salesmanship, Rachel thought. “About the procedure: It’s an operation of some sort, I understand.”

“Well, I’m sure as Sheila told you we can’t go into those details, not until you move to the next stage. It’s silly, but those are the conditions. We don’t make the rules, but you can understand—revolutionary procedures need to be guarded.”

“Sure, but we’re talking about an invasive procedure of the brain, so you can understand my concern.”

“Of course.”

“What I’m wondering about are the side effects—pain, impairment of functions, personality change, anything like that.”

“He had a minor headache for a couple days but that was it, and no impairment of functions. Except for his cognitive abilities, he’s a typical fourteen-year-old boy who plays video games and does boy things.” She looked to Sheila. “Right?”

“Absolutely.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to meet Julian someday.”

“I have no problem with that, but he’s still at school,” Vanessa said. “But, you know, you can tell a lot about a kid from his room. Would you like a look?”

“Sure.”

Rachel got up and walked over to the wall of photographs. “Are you interested in photography?”

“I do a little.”

A large framed black-and-white shot showed a ragged mountain range backlit by the sun sending shafts of light through heavy clouds with a deep foreground of thousands of brilliant wildflowers. “This really is a great photograph. The composition and lighting are amazing. In fact, it looks like an Ansel Adams.”

“It is. Well, actually, the original is. That’s a painting.”

“A painting! It can’t be.”

Vanessa turned the picture around and unfolded a book photo that was stuck behind the canvas. “This is a copy of the original Adams.” The photo was an exact miniature of the painting. “He copied it from this.”

“Who?”

“Julian.”

“But how did he do it? I can’t see any brush marks.”

Vanessa made a dry chuckle. “With a lot of patience.” Vanessa didn’t elaborate.

Rachel couldn’t separate herself from the picture. She moved from side to side to study it from different angles, barely able to detect surface texture. It was so indistinguishable from the photograph that she wondered if the boy had done it with some fancy computer-art software—scanning the photo then printing up an enlarged version. “That’s remarkable.” Einstein, Van Cliburn, and Maxfield Parrish rolled into one. “Was Julian artistic before?”

“Not really. He had my tin ear and did mostly stick drawings. He really blossomed after enhancement.”

She led them upstairs to a large landing off which were the master bedroom, a bathroom, and two other rooms. One door had flower decals and a porcelain plaque saying LISA. Across the other door was a yellow and black sign: DO NOT ENTER—TRESPASSERS WILL BE EXECUTED.

“I must warn you, he’s something of a neatness freak. If you pick something up, please put it back where you found it.” She opened the door.

The immediate impression was how much stuff there was. The second impression was its preternatural orderliness. One whole wall had floor-toceiling shelves of books—all upright and lined up by size. Another wall was full of space posters—all the same size, all squared with optical precision—one, a shot of the earth, rising over the lunar horizon; another of the Atlantis shuttle. Against the far wall was a huge wall unit containing a television and electronic sound equipment. Beside it was a draftsman’s work board with pens, razor knives, and other tools—all lined up neatly. There was a single bed tightly made with three decorative pillows arranged so precisely that the points lined up. The place looked as if a fussy old woman rather than a fourteen-year-old boy occupied it.

But that was just more sour grapes, Rachel chided herself. Dylan’s room was in a state of perpetual disaster—clothes and toys all over the place. Any straightening out was Rachel’s doing, because he could not catch on to a system of order. Once she had rationalized that the chaos was the result of his being a late starter or immaturity or maybe a male thing—that he had an overactive guy-sloppiness gland. Now she suspected it reflected some haywire brain circuitry.

“If for nothing else, this was worth the fee,” Vanessa said.

Rachel wanted to ask about that, but the subject was off-limits. She smiled, but thought that the excessive neatness was creepy.

Beside the bed sat a large desk with a computer with an oversized monitor and printer—probably used for his cyberart. The screen saver was a continuously changing maze with red balls trying to make their way through the shifting network. It looked like graphics designed to drive the observer mad.

Above the computer hung a framed document announcing that Julian Watts, age eleven, had won first prize in his age group in a regional science fair. The title of his project: “How Different Types of Music Affect the Ability of Mice to Run Mazes.”

On a corner table sat a large flat surface with a maze. Near it was a cage with some mice. “Very impressive,” Rachel said.

“You wouldn’t think so at three in the morning,” Vanessa said. “He played everything from Aïda to Zambian tribal chants. Around the clock.”

“And what did he determine?”

“That mice ran better with the longhairs than with rap. I’m not exactly sure how that affects the rest of the universe, but he had a good time.”

On the bulletin board were Museum of Science membership announcements and a list of upcoming museum shows and movies. Also, some snapshots of Julian’s class at Bloomfield Prep. The room contained all the adolescent accouterments of a kid who was going places. Nerd perfect. The kind of room Martin would love for Dylan.

As Rachel passed through the door, her eye caught on a curious little cartoon figure the boy had drawn and tacked over the light switch. Among all the high-tech paraphernalia it was the sole reminder that Julian was still a boy and not a grad student in astrophysics. It seemed so out of place: a happyfaced blue Dumbo.

“I’m not sure what—” But a loud crash from below cut Vanessa off.

They moved out to the landing. More pounding, then around the bottom of the staircase stormed a teenage girl. She looked very upset.

“Lisa!” Vanessa said. “What happened?”

Lisa looked up at her mother, unrestrained by the presence of the other women. “I told you it wasn’t right!” She slammed down her backpack, and stomped her way up the stairs. She wagged a paper at her mother. “I told you to let me do my own work.”

Vanessa looked mortified by Lisa’s outburst. “Maybe we can talk about this later.”

When the girl reached the top, she stopped nose-to-nose with Vanessa. Rachel noticed that the tips of Lisa’s fingers were all red where the nails had been chewed to the quick.

“Thanks to you, she gave me a fucking Incomplete!” she screamed in her mother’s face. “Now I have to redo it, and the best I can get is a C.”

Vanessa’s cheeks were burning dark red, as if she’d just been slapped. “Lisa, we can work this out, okay?”

“‘The words are too big, the syntax is too sophisticated, the prose is too polished,’” Lisa singsonged in a voice mocking her teacher. “It wasn’t me,” she screamed. “And I’m not Julian. You get it?” She slammed the flat of her hand onto her door. “SHIT! Now I’ll never get into AP English.” Lisa burst into tears and pushed her way to her room.

“Lisa … ?” Vanessa pleaded after her.

“Go fuck yourself!” Lisa cried and slammed the door.

The noise was like a gun blast. A moment later, they could hear more swearing and sobbing.

Vanessa looked at Rachel and Sheila and made a tortured smile. “Now, where were we?”

36

“‘I hate the whole damn charade,’ Rachel said,” as they pulled into the parking lot of Bloomfield Prep.

“Well, it’s the only way we’re going to meet him. He heads for camp next week,” Martin said.

Located an hour and a half west of Boston, it was a school for wealthy whiz kids. “Pretending we’re prospective parents is just so unfair to Dylan.”

“Maybe for the time being.”

She looked at him. He did not appear to be joking.

At ten-fifteen sharp, they met Sheila in the parking lot near the white Colonial that served as the admissions office. Because it was the last week of classes, regular tours were no longer given. However, Sheila knew the admissions officer, Harley Elia, so they could visit different classes including Julian’s, posing as parents seriously considering the school as an option for Dylan.

It was a beautiful place, its brick and stone buildings nestled in fourteen acres of green hills, thick with maples, oaks, and pine that lined paths through ample grassy fields reserved for sports and play. According to Sheila, Bloomfield, which went from fourth through twelfth grade, was on a par with Exeter and Andover Academy.

Lining the walls of the foyer in the admissions office were numerous group photographs of smiling students, some in their team outfits, some at play in the fields, some in graduation robes. Over the fireplace hung an oil painting of the founders, Stratton and Mary Bloomfield. They had started the place in a backyard barn in 1916 “to keep the minds of children alive and open, to instill a love of learning, to provide a life of fullness and rich possibility, to secure freedom of body and spirit.” Like the school, the inscription was inspiring, but it held little promise for Dylan.

While waiting in the reception area for Ms. Elia, Rachel nearly told Martin that she wanted to leave. The place was a sanctum for gifted children, and pretending that Dylan was—or would be—a candidate for admission was self-flagellation. A tour would only heighten her resentment of other kids and sharpen the sting of what she had denied Dylan. But she held back. Martin’s interest was picking up by the minute. He was particularly taken by the catalog’s boast that fifteen percent of the last graduating class went on to MIT. Most of the rest went on to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the other incandescent institutions.

After a few minutes, Ms. Elia emerged from her office. She was an attractive and smartly dressed woman in her forties with bright blond hair and a cheerful face. She embraced Sheila then led Rachel and Martin into her office where she took down information about Dylan. For a painful fifteen minutes, Rachel held forth about how sweet and sociable a child Dylan was and his love for music as the woman avidly took notes. Martin just nodded. She said nothing about his language deficiencies.

When that was over, the woman took them on a tour, outlining the school’s history and accomplishments. Rachel said very little, but Martin engaged Ms. Elia with questions about the science curricula and computer labs. After maybe half an hour, they entered a modern redwood structure with a sign saying GRAYSON BIGGS ART STUDIO. Sheila nudged Rachel that they were heading for Julian Watts’s class. According to Sheila, he was one of only two enhanced children in the school. She would not reveal the name of the other.

“It’s one of the more popular places,” Ms. Elia said. “Kids come here after classes and work on their projects.”

Scattered around the large bright room were about a dozen children. Some were painting; others were in the corner at potter’s wheels. Others still were working with wood carving tools. Two teachers were moving about quietly commenting on the kids’ progress.

The walls were covered with student work—big splotchy impressionistic paintings, simulated rock posters, odd multimedia canvasses thick with paint, fabric, glitter and other materials. Most were colorful, and a few showed some talent and inspiration.

One drawing caught Rachel’s eye—a sepia reproduction of the campus chapel, a small stone Gothic structure. Even the intricate carvings and details on the stained-glass windows were captured. If it were not stretched on a canvas, Rachel would have sworn it was an enlarged photograph. The signature at the bottom was printed in tiny block letters: JULIAN WATTS.

While Ms. Elia chatted with Ms. Fuller, the art teacher, Sheila nudged Rachel and nodded at a bespectacled boy in a blue shirt hunched over a stretched canvas at his table. Rachel walked quietly past some children who broad-stroked gobs of paint across their canvases, moving their brushes like young orchestra conductors in training.

By contrast, Julian sat rigidly, wearing headphones and hunched over a canvas. From a distance, he looked as if he were suffering from tremors, but up close his left hand moved with delicate robotic precision. Rachel had to repress a gasp of amazement. The boy was painting with an architect’s pen. In fact, there were several of different sizes neatly lined up. Awestruck, she and Martin watch him dab away in microscopic detail, occasionally switching instruments. He did not seem to notice their presence.

“The assignment was a self-portrait in any medium or style,” the teacher said. “The only directive was to capture something of their personality.”

Pinned to his easel was a black-and-white photo of Julian that appeared to have been done by himself at arm’s length. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and staring at the camera through his rimless glasses. The intensity on his face was startling—as if he were possessed. Although he had traced the oval of his face with a pencil, in the center of the canvas were two intense eyes so realistically rendered that the canvas appeared to be studying Rachel.

The teacher tapped Julian. The boy looked up and turned off his headphones. The teacher introduced them.

“We didn’t mean to disturb you, but that’s incredible,” Rachel said.

The boy muttered a “Thanks.” He had an edgy shyness, and it was clear he wanted to go back to his canvas.

“How long did it take you to do that?” Martin asked.

The boy reached into his mouth and removed plastic teeth guards. “About three hours.”

Rachel felt a small electric shock pass through her. Julian’s teeth were nearly stubs. Her first thought was that he had had some kind of accident. But they were so evenly ground down—top and bottom—and flattened off as if filed.

Rachel tried to hide her shock and continue as if she hadn’t noticed. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, except the French pointillists.”

“Yeah,” Martin said. “In fact, I thought you were touching up a photograph.”

Rachel wanted to engage him more, but the teacher said he had to get back to work. Julian put the guards back in his mouth, slipped on the headphones, and went back to the canvas.

“He’s something else,” the teacher said. “He’s got a really unique talent.” Then she lowered her voice so the other kids couldn’t hear. “He’s also one of our most gifted students.” And she saucered her eyes for emphasis. “Straight As.”

“Does he always paint with a pen?” Martin asked.

“Yes. It started a couple years ago when we did a unit on pointillism, and that’s now the only medium he works in. We tried to get him to move into brushes and pastels, but he prefers points. You know these dedicated artists.”

During a moment’s silence, Rachel realized that it wasn’t music Julian was listening to but spoken audio. Except that the voice didn’t sound human. She looked at the tape recorder—an unusual-looking unit that was set on fast-forward.

“What is that?” she mouthed to the teacher.

“Spanish. I think it’s Don Quixote.”

“But …”

The teacher nodded knowingly. “Yeah, he’s trained himself to understand it on double speed. Last year he learned Italian that way.” Then she just shook her head in dismay. “What can I say? He’s something else.”

“My God,” Rachel whispered. The fixity of his expression as he jabbed away while absorbing the high-speed prattle sent a shock through her. He looked like some alien creature in the semblance of a boy receiving coded messages from afar.

As they started away, Rachel looked back. Julian’s mouth was moving. At first she thought he was chewing gum until she realized he was tapping his teeth guards in sequence to his hand movement. Then she realized that he wasn’t keeping pace—he was counting.

They visited two more classes and ended up in a psychology lab. All along, Ms. Elia went on about the school and the programs and how ninety percent of the graduating class goes to college, half to the Ivy Leagues. “Four of our graduates are freshmen at Harvard this year.”

“How nice.”

Rachel was anxious to leave. The tour was only an hour long, but it seemed to last all morning because Martin kept asking questions. Sheila was just along for the ride and said very little.

The psychology lab was a large open room with many windows and rows of workbenches all equipped with computers, scales, and dispensers, electronic devices with lots of wires connecting equipment. Along one wall were cages of large white rats with electrodes connected to their heads. The sophisticated setup looked more like a university research center than a lab for high schoolers.

As Ms. Elia led the three of them into the lab, the kids looked up casually, apparently used to prospective parents’ tours. The teacher—a pleasant man, about thirty, dressed in chinos and a blue work shirt—explained the psychology program and what the students were doing. “It’s a term project on operant psychology techniques—a classic conditioned-response study in learning behavior,” he said.

Rachel could not have cared less, but Martin was fascinated, of course.

“At the beginning of the term, each student was given a rat, and over the weeks, they shaped the animals’ responses by rewarding them with small electrical stimulation to their brains. First they learned to press a lever, then a second lever, then a third, until they learned to tap a particular sequence of what the students decide upon—ABCD, CBAD, CBAD, or whatever.”

“So it’s cumulative?” Martin asked.

“Yes, and increasingly complex, which is why it’s taken an entire semester to get to this point. This is their wrap-up day. Their reports are due next week.”

Rachel was ready to scream. But Martin asked, “What does the electricity do?”

“It gives them a two-volt hit to the pleasure centers of their brains.” The teacher pointed to a plastic device beside the computer about the size of a tissue box. “That’s the stimulation chamber which is connected to the animal and the computer, which regulates the parameters—voltage, pulse width, frequency, et cetera. And that’s a printout of the responses.” He pointed to a scroll-paper ink-needle printer.

At various benches, quiet buzzers and lights were going off in the cages as students hooked up their rats and were recording their responses as they tapped the levers.

“Did you have any problems with the animal rights people?” Martin asked.

“I’ll say, but that’s the good thing about Bloomfield. The headmaster agreed to institute an animal care-and-use committee to be in compliance with state regulations. That took some string-pulling, but we eventually got approval as long as the instructor does the implant surgery and supervises the experiments. But the kids put together all the equipment and run the experiments. It’s been great.”

“You can understand that the kids become very attached to their animals,” Ms. Elia said. Nearly every cage had name stickers—Brad, Snowdrop, Vinnie B, Snagglepuss, Bianca, Mousse, Dr. Dawson, Rumplemints, and so on.

“I bet,” Martin said.

“By the way, we have another student from Hawthorne.” Ms. Elia nodded to a tall pretty blonde who was putting her rat into the test cage. Because of her height and bearing, she projected considerable presence. “Nicole DaFoe.”

Rachel didn’t recognize the name.

At the next bench, an Asian girl was fixing something on her printout machine before she set up her rat. Rachel heard her say she was out of paper, and the teacher said to check the supply closet in another room. The girl fidgeted with the machine then left.

“Amy Tran. She’s one of our best,” the teacher whispered to Rachel. Then he said, “You folks have got to see this.” And he led them into the adjoining room.

As Rachel began to follow, she happened to look back. Something about the tall blond girl held Rachel’s attention—the body language and a heightened awareness. Rachel pulled behind a partition as the others left, and through a slot, she watched. The girl looked around until she was certain the visitors had left, then while the other students busied themselves at their stations, she slipped to the nearby computer and ran her fingers across the keyboard. She then went back to her own station and flicked the start switch on her animal’s cage to run the program. The animal tapped a series of buttons until the cage light went on and the animal reared up in pleasure from the stimulation.

A few moments later, the Asian girl returned with the scroll paper, fixed it into her machine, then got her rat whose name was Sigmund. She removed him from his box, gave him a few affectionate strokes with her finger, then put him into the test chamber. She wrote something down on her clipboard, said something that amused the blonde on the next bench, then flicked the external switch.

Picking up the cue, Sigmund moved to the levers and began to tap through a very elaborate sequence. When it apparently finished, a cage light went on to signal the reward. The animal sniffed the air a few times then reared up with pleasure.

Suddenly the animal stiffened and let out a high piercing scream then shot straight up into the air as if launched. There was a terrible sizzling sound, as Sigmund fell onto the cage floor, his body violently twitching and smoke rising from his head.

Amy cried out in horror.

Other kids ran over to her. And a moment later, the teacher reappeared. “What happened?”

The girl was crying. “He’s dead! He’s dead.”

The teacher looked at the rat lying on its side, a pungent odor of cooked flesh filling the air. He went to her computer and tapped some keys. “Jesus, Amy, you had the voltage set for twenty instead of two.”

“No, I set it for two,” Amy gasped in protest through her tears. “I know I did. I know it.”

“Well, it says twenty.” He stepped aside to show her. He looked very upset. “Why didn’t you double-check as you were supposed to?”

“I did.” Then too distraught to continue, the girl broke down.

Nicole put her hand on Amy’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “We all make mistakes.” And she shot Rachel a look that sent a shard of ice through her heart.

“I think she sabotaged her experiment.”

“Based on what?”

“I’m telling you, I saw her do something at the Asian girl’s keyboard.”

“They were sharing computers,” he declared. “She probably turned on her own software. What’s the big deal?”

There it was: his absolutist certitude, and that damning tone that said Rachel didn’t know what she was talking about—that her woman’s intuition was off again. “Martin, it’s how she looked—like she was doing something sneaky,” she said, feeling her own certainty slip. “Two minutes later, the rat dies.”

“Coincidence,” he said. “Besides, why would she do that?”

“I don’t know—maybe she had it in for her. Maybe she’s a bitch.”

“And maybe the Chinese kid just screwed up.”

“The teacher said she’s first in the class—which means she’s not the type to make simple errors. And she’s Vietnamese.”

Martin shrugged. “Whatever. Even whiz kids make mistakes. What can I say?” Then he added, “If you were so sure, then why didn’t you say something?”

“Because … Christ, forget it.”

He smiled. “Like I said in the first place, you were mistaken.”

It was that evening, and Rachel was putting her pajamas on. Martin had put Dylan to bed and was on their bed with the current issue of the MIT alumni magazine. He yawned. “Whatever, that teacher’s ass is grass with the animal-rights people. So is little Suzy Wong’s.”

Rachel went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and scrub away her irritation at Martin. She could still feel the freezing look in that Nicole’s eyes.

When she stepped out, Martin said, “You must admit the little bastards are impressive. I mean, the rat-fry aside, they’re fucking smart. And that Julian is something else with the pointillism stuff. Jesus, the kid’s like a human Xerox machine.”

“I wish we could have talked to him,” she said. “He seemed so obsessed. How do we know that’s not the result of the enhancement?”

“Malenko said there’s no effect on the personality, just cognitive powers. Ms. Elia said he’s nearly a straight-A student.”

“Well, I’ve got a few dozen more questions I want answered.”

“Yeah, like how much. I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“We’ll know soon enough.” They had their next appointment with Malenko tomorrow morning at his Cobbsville office.

Martin turned off the light and pulled Rachel to him. “It’s been so long, I’m not sure if I remember how it’s done.”

She was not in the mood, but said, “I’m sure it will come back to you.”

But halfway into their lovemaking, the telephone rang. “Leave it,” Martin said.

She would have, but she was expecting a call from her mother. She had left a message earlier to see how she was feeling.

Rachel flicked on the light and grabbed the phone. It was her brother Jack. Their mother, Bethany, was going into the hospital in two days for open-heart surgery. She had felt weak for the last few weeks. But when she went in for a checkup the other day because of shortness of breath, the doctor discovered a slight heart murmur. They did an echocardiogram only to discover that she had been born with two aortic valve flaps not the usual three. Because it was a hitherto undetected congenital aberration, Bethany would need a replacement—a routine operation, with expectations of a full recovery since her heart was strong. But it meant that Rachel would fly to Phoenix. The operation was scheduled for four P.M. Monday.

Martin could tell from listening what the call was about. “I want to be with her,” Rachel said when she hung up.

Martin nodded. “Of course.”

She would book herself on a Saturday flight. She climbed back into bed, feeling as if this were some kind of omen.

Martin sidled up to her and began stroking her thigh again. “You haven’t lost it, have you?”

“You and Dylan will be all right without me, won’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t we be?”

“I don’t know,” she said and turned out the lights.

37

“One million dollars?”

“Half to be paid in cash before the procedure, the other half in two months.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Martin said.

“Did you think genius comes cheap?”

It was Thursday, and they were back at Malenko’s Cobbsville office.

“It’s just that, well, frankly, that’s much more than we had expected, or can afford.”

Malenko’s eyebrows shot up. “Those are two different issues, the first more complicated and interesting than the second. I have taken the liberty of doing some research into your financial status, and I must say that you are doing fairly well. You own a house worth one point six million dollars in the current market, and your total business assets amount to six million dollars, which, by the way, is three million less than what you told the bank it was worth when you filed for a business loan last year.”

“Where did you get that from?” Martin said. “You have no right … That’s very private information.”

“So is what you are asking me to do for your child, Mr. Whitman.”

A silence fell on the room.

Malenko rolled back in his chair and peered over his glasses at them. “And because it is so private, there is another aspect to the fee—a guarantee that privacy is maintained at a premium—a security insurance, if you will. Should you decide to go through with enhancement, you will be asked to place another five hundred thousand dollars in an escrow account, half of which will be returned to you in three years, the balance in another three years, interest paid in full.”

“What?”

“If in that time I discover that either of you has breached the nondisclosure terms, you will lose that five hundred thousand dollars and the fee. If, however, in three years I am certain that you have not talked and that you can be trusted, I will return to you half with interest and in six years the balance should you continue to maintain confidentiality.”

“That’s … that’s …”

“Ridiculous may be the word you’re trying to avoid. Even so, these conditions keep lips sealed, yes?” Then Malenko clasped his hands together and leaned toward them over his desk as if sharing a good joke. “Listen to me. You came to me with the single desire to do something about your child’s intelligence. You were offered extensive programs to address his needs with the best LD staff in North America. But you were clearly more interested in a medical procedure with immediate results. You wanted Dylan to have the kinds of advantages brighter kids enjoyed. You didn’t want him to run the race with a clubfoot to use your phrase. You wanted a smarter son.

“That left one option: enhancement—a procedure that is not sanctioned by the FDA or the medical establishment, and one that will raise the backs of ethicists, social workers, the clergy, politicians, and a lot of others. It is also a procedure that could cause a backlash against orthodox science. If we do this, you will be asking me to put my medical license on the line. That I do not do lightly. Nor at a cut rate.”

“I hear you,” said Martin.

Malenko’s manner softened. “Look, you come from a privileged life where people don’t hurt each other, where people are trustworthy. But I come from a place where people hurt each other all the time, where the system was more important than the individual. Where betrayal was rewarded. So I’ve been imprinted with a cynicism about human nature that just won’t go away. Sad, but I cannot be certain that people won’t blab. Thus, the high price tag.”

Martin nodded.

Rachel felt numb. They didn’t have that kind of money.

“Once again, I remind you what this is all about: Your son’s future is in the balance. If you go through with this, Dylan will grow up with a brilliant mind that will profoundly enhance his life, his success as a thinker, his health, his happiness, and his function as a human being. It may also affect his children and his children’s children because, for no other reason, he will value the life of the mind. He will not be the boy you are now raising. If you are not comfortable with that, forget it. If you don’t like the financial conditions, forget it. If you’re not at ease with the sociological, philosophical, bioethical matters or whatever, don’t do it. If you are not comfortable with me, if you fear that I might take your money and run, then don’t do it!

“However, you will have to trust that I won’t take your money and run. As a matter of fact, I like where I am. But if you are nagged by doubts, just say no.” Malenko stood up. They were being dismissed. “Go home and think it over.”

Suddenly everything took on a whole different perspective to Rachel. What started out as some variation of the Hippocratic code had turned into a simple business deal, and little else. The red Porsche, the elegant walnut-burl desk, the sailboat, the summer home on the Maine coast. The man was living the good life but not from tutoring children.

Malenko checked his watch. “Any questions?”

“No,” Martin said.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “If we were to agree to this, what about follow-up treatments for him? Monitoring his progress. What if something goes wrong?”

“You come to me,” he declared. “This is my procedure, and I am the only one who can help him and the only one who is able to monitor his progress.”

Malenko came around his desk. “Let me assure you that I am not going to abandon you like some old-time back-alley abortionist who plies his trade then drops off the planet. We are in this together for your son’s betterment. Enhancement does not end with the operation. Dylan will come in for regularly scheduled examinations like any other patient. Because of the special nature of the procedure, there are very special postoperative treatments to be certain all is going well.”

“And if it’s not?”

“I have done enough of these to be ready for any contingencies.” He extended his hand. “Believe me.”

Rachel took it, thinking that she wanted to believe him with all her heart.

“I understand your concerns, and you probably will think of many more questions. So call me early next week, and we can talk more about this.”

“I’ll be out of town next week,” Rachel said. “My mother is going to the hospital.”

“Well, when you get back. The sooner, the better. There are considerable preparations to be made. I’m also leaving the country in three weeks.”

“Where exactly do you perform the procedure?”

“At an offsite facility.”

He wasn’t going to specify.

“A regular medical facility, fully equipped and staffed?”

“Yes, of course. In fact,” he said, opening one of his desk drawers, “here’s what it looks like.”

He handed her three color blowups of an operating room. It looked like the standard ORs she had seen—operating tables, lights, electronic equipment, and what appeared to be brain-scan monitors. “These are for stereotaxic viewing of the procedure.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning we can view the interior structure of his brain in three-dimension on monitors while we are performing the operation. The real-time coordinate imaging guides us with the probes. It’s standard operating procedure in neurosurgery in the best of institutions including Mass General.”

Rachel nodded. She didn’t know anything about the equipment, but the photographs were impressive. In one, Malenko wore scrubs. No other people were in any of them, of course. She handed them back. “What about the rest of the staff?”

“For obvious reasons, I cannot tell you who they are,” he said. “But working with me will be the best there is, I assure you.”

“Practicing neurosurgeons?”

“Practicing neurosurgeons, anesthesiologists, scrub nurses, circulation nurses—the full complement.”

Rachel nodded, questions jamming her mind. “The other day you mentioned the cocktail of ingredients that you’d be using,” Rachel began, unable to actually say the words injecting into my son’s brain.

“Yes. I won’t bore you with details, but the whole field of implantation is very intricate and complicated. But we use a mixture of certain chemical stimulants, protein growth factors, and dissociated tissue cells which will on their own genetic program create new axonal structures where deficient.”

Rachel nodded with guarded satisfaction. “We will be able to visit him, of course?”

“After the procedure is completed.” He opened the door. “Call me when you get back. Should you decide this is for you, then we’ll answer the rest of your questions.”

“Say we did this,” Martin said. “Just how long would it be before we see results?”

“In about three to six months you will begin to see improvement in his cognitive behavior. Because the process is progressive, it should continue for another six to nine months until it plateaus.”

“Which means in about a year and a half he will …” Martin trailed off.

“He will have an IQ of one hundred forty or more,” Malenko said.

“Oh, wow,” Martin said. His eyes filled up.

It was nearly noon, and Malenko led them out.

As they stepped into the hall, Rachel happened to notice another folder on the reception desk, apparently that of another patient. Rachel couldn’t help but glance at the name printed in black Magic Marker on the outside. BERNARDI.

Even as they walked back to their car behind the Porsche, Rachel did not connect the name. Her mind was too scattered with thoughts about Dylan, enhancement, and her mother to notice. And now there was a damn time constraint to consider. If they were going to put him through this, it had to be done soon.

That was absurd. How does one make a snap decision about subjecting one’s child to a secret brain operation to raise his intelligence and alter him and his life forever?

When the Whitmans left, Malenko went downstairs into the basement where he had set up a gym with weights, treadmill, StairMaster, and a speed bag.

He had never done competition boxing for obvious reasons, though he would have loved to. He knew as a young man he had had it in him to be a fine boxer—the strength, the timing, the aggression, and the deep-seated need to pound another’s face. But that wouldn’t be, so he worked out on the inflated black leather bladder, taking pleasure in the satisfyingly hypnotic rhythm and imagined enemies.

He changed into his sweats and pulled on the gloves while standing in front of a wall mirror. Maybe it was something the Whitman woman had said. Maybe it was what stared back at him in the mirror—that dead outsized pupil of his left eye. The heat of rage had grown cold over the years, but he could still hear those little bully bastards cawing in their stupid peasant dialect. In a flick, the bag was their faces, and he pounded it to a rhythmic blur while his mind slipped back.

Kiev, the Ukraine. It was the day after his eleventh birthday, and he was in Martyr’s Park playground near the Cathedral of St. Sophia trying out his new kite. The bullyboys from the church school were kicking a soccer ball on the nearby field. Young Lucius was like catnip to them.

It began, as usual, with taunts—this time, the bright pink and yellow stripes of his kite—girl colors, homosexual colors. Then they moved to his short stature. Then to his nose—“eagle beak” they had called him. Then inevitably to his mother’s Jewishness. In a matter of moments, word exchanges became blows, and young Lucius Malenko found himself on the ground being punched and kicked. Like the rest of the peasant rabble of the village, these boys harbored a contempt for Jews not because Jews had different rituals or an arcane tongue or because their Sabbath was on Saturday, or even because they were “Christ-killers.” It was because the Malenkos were smart and successful—the source of the unstated resentment that the boys’ parents had passed on to them. And because the locals were poor and stupid.

In one stunning moment, while Oleg Samoilovych and Ivan Vorsk held him down to make a target of his head, Nestor Kravchuk, a fat oaf whose father worked at a foundry, kicked the soccer ball full blast into his face. The blow was so powerful that for several days Lucius could not see out of his left eye. When the vision returned, the blood sac had sunk to the anterior chamber; and given the poor medical care in Kiev, nobody noticed the minor deformation of the pupil. But over the years, the condition gave way to traumatic glaucoma that eventually impaired his vision. Eye surgery years later restored it enough for him to finish medical school and conduct his research. He had even managed to establish his stateside practice that prospered magnificently. But then the darkness began to close in, and he was forced to abandon a lucrative practice for part-time consulting.

The ring of Malenko’s pager stopped him.

He mopped the perspiration from his head and called in for the voice message. Sheila MacPhearson had received the video: All was set for Saturday night.

That was good news. It would be a real surprise party. Too bad he would miss it.

“Where are we going to get that kind of money?” Rachel asked on the way home.

“Do you have any idea what your mother’s open-heart surgery will cost? About two hundred thousand when all is said and done. Maybe more.”

“But insurance will pay for most of that.”

“And thank God,” Martin said. “The point is the operation will probably keep her going for another ten years. Enhancement will benefit Dylan for a lifetime. And it’s not like we don’t have the resources. We could sell some stocks and cash in mutual funds.”

Rachel looked at him while he drove. “You’re serious.”

“Yeah, I’m serious.” And he went on about what an investment it would be—how smart people accomplished more in a lifetime than less brainy ones, which is why so many prodigies become millionaire CEOs by the time they turn thirty.

“There are still too many things I’m uncomfortable with.”

“Like what?”

“Like sending my son off to have a brain operation and not knowing where the hell he is. I want to be outside the operating room. I want to be there when they wheel him to recovery. What if something happens?”

“But they’ve been doing this for a dozen years. Look at their success stories.”

“But something can still go wrong. He could end up brain-dead.” The very thought sent a bolt of electricity through her.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“We don’t know that. Another thing, why all the secrecy if it’s so successful? Why an undisclosed location?”

“He explained that. It’s a revolutionary thing, and he can’t get FDA approval because of all the social stuff. Like he said, think of it as abortion before Roe versus Wade.”

“Yeah, butchers in back alleys.”

“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?”

“Because I don’t like it. We also don’t know anything about Malenko. He could be some kind of a quack.”

Martin laughed. “Quacks don’t have a wall full of degrees and plaques. The guy’s a leading neurosurgeon and child development expert. Besides, look at Lucinda. She was turned into a prodigy. So was Julian Watts. So were dozens of other kids.”

“Yeah, and Lucinda’s a bossy little bitch and Julian’s a human sewing machine who’s ground his teeth to nothing.”

“That’s got nothing to do with enhancement. Lucinda will grow out of that, and Julian might be a little compulsive, nothing that a little Ritalin won’t solve. The point is, two slow kids got turned into geniuses, and that’s what I want for my son.”

He had an answer for everything. And maybe he was right. Maybe deep down she wanted to be convinced. In her mind, she saw the planar cuts of the distorted ventricles of her son’s brain.

Acid kickback.

“What if there’s something about the procedure that’s just not right? Something not medically right. I don’t know … We don’t even know how he does it.”

“Why should he give away trade secrets?”

Rachel stared out the window as they drove down their street. “Maybe I’m just paranoid,” she said. “It’s just that I can’t blithely send him off to have his brain cut open. Besides, he could have a perfectly happy life the way he is.”

“He’s operating on less than three-quarters of normal capacity.”

“Rachel, we live in a meritocracy where an eighty IQ is a formula for losing.”

That was just like Martin: He thought in numbers. They were the fundamental condition of his existence—how he gauged business and people. An IQ was just another way to keep score—like rank in class, sales quotas, revenue figures, stock options, salary.

“That’s not true,” Rachel said, her eyes filling up.

“You know what I mean. Of course, there are happy people with belowaverage intelligence. But they spend their days stocking shelves at Kmart, making eighteen thousand dollars a year and living in tiny apartments watching reruns of Forrest Gump. Frankly, I don’t want that for my son—and we have an opportunity to do something about that—and the money.”

“But a fancy job isn’t the end-all of life.”

“No, but it’s one hell of an advantage.”

And in her mind Rachel heard Martin’s familiar refrain: “Life is hard, but it’s harder when you’re stupid.”

“Think of his self-esteem,” he continued. “You know what it’s like when you meet someone with a mental handicap. You instantly dismiss him: He’s not good enough to take seriously, to do business with, to be my friend. You smile in his face and thank God he’s not you—or yours. It’s sad and cruel, but it’s reality. And I don’t want that for my son—even if it costs me a million dollars.”

As they pulled into their driveway, Rachel suddenly realized that she was trembling. Her eyes fixed on Dylan’s soccer ball that lay on the grass beside his sandbox. While her pursuit of Sheila’s lead had never been whimsical, Rachel had deep down not considered enhancement a real possibility. It was just something in the speculation mode—an option to consider. But nothing was definite, and no irrevocable action was in place. Even their visit to Malenko Rachel had thought of as reconnaissance—a fact-finding mission. Now, in the matter of an hour, Martin was talking about cashing in investments to buy their son a new brain.

She looked at Martin. “You’ve got this all figured out.”

“Rachel,” Martin said, softening his voice, “before we ever heard about Lucius Malenko, we had resigned ourselves to raising a mentally challenged child. Whatever went wrong with the genetic dice, he came out impaired. Now we have a second chance—a privilege open to only a handful of kids. The implications are mind-boggling. So are the possibilities for him. A second chance to begin his life near the top.” His eyes were wet from tears. “Don’t you want to do this for him? Don’t you?”

In a voice barely audible, she said, “I don’t know.”

38

Sheila stood by the kitchen window making hot chocolate for Lucinda’s party.

Two days had passed, and the kitten was still missing. She had searched the backyard woods several times since that first day, without luck.

After the initial shock, Lucinda did not seem to suffer the loss—which Sheila attributed to budding maturity. She had just resigned herself to such mishaps and went on with her little life. Oddly enough, she didn’t bring up a replacement kitten again. And neither did Sheila.

Outside the huge magnolia tree had lost its blossoms, giving way to a profusion of waxy green leaves. Across the branches, Sheila had draped colored streamers, big shiny cardboard Japanese lanterns, and bright animal piñatas—which complemented her marigolds and roses—all in full bloom. Because of mature growth, their backyard was cut off from views of the neighbors, making the yard a magical sylvan grotto—so safe and secret. Lucinda’s own little green world. Storybook perfect.

There used to be a secret passageway connecting their yard to the Sarris family next door, but some unpleasantness had estranged their children. There were two of them, snippy little brats who snitched on Lucinda.

“Lucinda said I’m a dummy.”

“Lucinda made me eat a bug.”

“Lucinda put a frog in the micro.”

Eventually the Sarrises—or Soarasses, as Lucinda called them—

(such a devilish wit, too)

—closed off the passage, erecting a fence and some high bushes, essentially shielding them off as if Lucinda were some kind of poisoned child.

The bastards.

Thankfully, they moved away. They were just a bunch of dumb secondgeneration Greeks anyway.

The backyard scene made Sheila’s heart gulp for the beauty. It was like one of those Hallmark cards: Lucinda in her new pink dress under the magnolia and holding her own party and chattering away at her guests. Today wasn’t officially her birthday. That was last week, but only three kids of the ten invited could come. A few had colds—

some kind of bug going around

—another was visiting her sick grandmother in New York. Somebody had forgotten that it was ballet recital rehearsal. Another couldn’t get over because her asthma was kicking up again. One had an unscheduled riding lesson. Blah blah blah.

Their excuses annoyed Sheila nearly to the point of complaining to the mothers. But if the kids were sick, they were sick. And to call them liars would only make things worse the next time. The only ones who showed were Franny Alemany, Annette Bonaiuto, and MaryLou Sundilson—three cute little girls from school, but not girls she was particularly friendly with. Then again, what children make close friends at seven?

Because it had rained, they moved inside—which was a shame, since Sheila had decked out the backyard. The magician she had hired ended up doing tricks for Lucinda and the three others who sat there like waxed fruit. Half an hour of cake and ice cream, half an hour of magic, and it was all over. The girls had to go—other commitments. Sheila could have screamed.

But deep down she knew the reasons behind the bullshit excuses. The other kids were threatened by Lucinda: She was “bossy” and their mothers thought her “managerial.” The long and short was that Lucinda was head and shoulders above them—smarter, quicker, and more confident. So the mothers kept their boring little dolts away.

But Lucinda didn’t mind. She had her other friends. And Rachel Whitman had sent over a gorgeous doll. It came with a little card, saying her name was Tabitha from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and she loved animals. She was made of a durable plastic compound and was fully poseable with jointed elbows and knees and two outfits, one a red pullover under a jean jacket and beige chinos, and the other which Rachel had ordered specially—the same pink dress Lucinda was wearing today. It must have cost Rachel a small fortune.

More amazing was the doll’s resemblance to Lucinda. Besides the pink dress and thick blond hair, the face looked like hers as a baby—the little pug nose, the huge crystalline blue eyes, the chipmunk cheeks, the cleft in the chin, and the roundness of the forehead. It was uncanny. As if Rachel had it made special from a baby photo.

(She would have to send her a special thank-you note. To Dylan too, since it was technically from him, even though he didn’t have a clue, the poor kid.)

Luckily, today was warm and sunny. Garden-party perfect. And that’s exactly what Miss Lucinda was doing: having a private little rain-check celebration of her own—and perfectly content, thank you. That was the thing about being so advanced: You gained strength from your disappointments and went on with your life—a surprise benefit of enhancement. Lucinda was totally resourceful. Totally comfortable in her own head.

The whistle of the teapot snapped Sheila back into the moment.

She poured the hot water into the porcelain pot from Lucinda’s own tea set and then added the cocoa and stirred. She then dumped the extra hot water down the drain.

A faint foul odor rose up.

Sheila let the cold water run for several seconds. But it was still there—a sharp little curlicue of rot rising out of the hole. She ran the hot water for maybe a full minute. That only made it worse. She reached under the sink and turned on the disposal with the water running. There was that rattle sound as if something were stuck inside, something that wouldn’t break up. Then the disposal shut itself off. It would be several minutes before it could be reset. Sometimes Lucinda accidentally let the plastic cap of an orange-juice carton slip down or a spoon.

For a protracted moment, Sheila looked down at the opening with the black rubber splashguard. Although she had warned Lucinda never ever to do this, Sheila pushed her hand through. Her fingers touched the smooth rounded blades. Blades that under power could grind meat and bones to pulp.

She felt something that had not been completely ground to pulp—some— thing hard and rounded by the blades and snagged in a mat of wet fibers. What felt like the stringy cellulose stuff that made up celery stalks and banana skins—or maybe lemon peels that just hadn’t gone through. And the hard thing was probably a piece of plastic spoon—like what Lucinda was using outside for the ice cream. Of course, Lucinda knew hard objects didn’t go down the drain. But as brilliant as she was, she was still only seven—just barely. Still played with dolls. In fact, she was out there talking up a blue streak with Tabitha and the others.

Sheila slowly pulled her hand out of the garbage disposal drain.

In her fingers was a piece of curved white bone in a wet tangle of fibrous brownish muck and long thick strings of orange hairs. The thing stank of decay.

Sheila stared at it without shock. She did not scream, she only gagged reflexively. Then she dumped the awful finds into paper towels and flushed them down the toilet. She washed her hands and looked in the mirror. She barely recognized her own face.

Dr. Malenko said it had nothing to do with it. That it only affected her intelligence. That her makeup otherwise was as it would have been.

He promised. No change. Just smarter.

She shook away the thoughts and headed back into the kitchen. In a vague trancelike state, she stirred a little more milk into the porcelain server. The set was Sheila’s birthday gift—an eight-piece collection in porcelain and hand-painted with birds and flowers. It had cost her over four hundred dollars—expensive, but exquisite. Besides, Malenko would be paying her the finder’s fee soon. Fifty thousand dollars.

She placed the pot of chocolate on the tray along with the chocolate-chip cookies she had baked earlier. For a brief spell, Sheila paused at the rear door to take in the scene of her daughter sitting outside.

Harry would have said you’re in a state of denial, she thought. That our daughter is a little monster.

Lucinda was sitting at her table with her back to the house under the magnolia.

Not so! And Harry was dead.

Her guests looked on as Lucinda regaled them nonstop. Sheila couldn’t hear Lucinda’s words because her portable CD player was blaring music. Her Disney album—“A Very Merry Unbirthday to You” from Alice in Wonderland.

She’s brilliant. IQ 150. Superior intelligence range.

Incandescent mind.

Sheila took a deep breath and stepped outside with the tray of cookies and hot chocolate.

The air was clear and keen. She crossed the brick walk onto the spread of lawn that connected their splendid little greenworld to the vast, manicured carpet of yardgrass that rolled from neighborhood to neighborhood all the way across the vast green continent.

The closer she got, the clearer Lucinda’s voice. She was fully animated, demonstrating something with her hands. Meanwhile, the music was bubbling out of the player like champagne.

An absolutely magical scene, Sheila thought.

The table had been set for eight, seven places occupied by stuffed animals. Lucinda’s favorite sat to her right: a big old Dumbo they had bought last year at Disney World—a doll that had jumped out at her the moment she laid eyes on it. Sheila still recalled how Lucinda had frozen in place—unmoved by all the Mickeys, Minnies, and other stuffed cartoon characters—as if seeing an apparition.

Sheila moved within a few feet of her daughter’s back. She looked like a peony in her pink dress. The music continued playing, and Lucinda was chattering away to her guests, giving instructions.

For a moment Sheila thought she would drop the tray. But some instant reflex caught her, stunning her in place.

Sitting on the table in front of her was Rachel’s Miss Tabitha doll in pink. Sheila’s first thought was that her daughter had fashioned a punk hairdo for Tabitha. But then it came horridly clear.

With a pair of scissors, Lucinda had cut all the hair off the doll down to its rubbery skull, and with Sheila’s new chrome wine-bottle opener, she had methodically corkscrewed holes into its skull through which she had stuck colored cocktail toothpicks.

“Lucinda … Wha-wha … ?”

Lucinda turned. Her face was an implacable blank. “Oh, how splendid. Mommy brought the chocolate and the cookies. Miss Tabitha is going to be delighted. Aren’t you, Tabitha?”

Then, before Sheila could say something, Lucinda’s voice became some squeaky alien thing: “Yes, I am because it’s my birthday, too.”

“Lucinda … why did you … ?” Then something around the doll’s neck stopped her cold. “What’s that black thing?”

“Oh, it’s Tabitha’s boa,” Lucinda proclaimed. “It’s just like yours, Mommy.”

Sheila reached for it, but her hand froze. It was the kitten’s tail. She could see the white bone cut at the end. Lucinda had colored the fur black with her markers, though the orange still showed at the roots.

“I made it, but it doesn’t fit right,” Lucinda said, and she took the thing in her hand and bent it into a circle—the cracking sounds sending barbs of horror through Sheila. “That’s better,” Lucinda said, fitting it in place.

Sheila tried to catch her breath, but before she did, Lucinda shot her a look of wide-eyed pride. “I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up. So is Miss Tabitha. Aren’t you, Tabitha?”

“Yes, I am,” Tabitha replied. “I’m going to be an anesthesiologist. What kind of doctor do you want to be?”

“Lucinda, what—” Sheila began.

But Lucinda cut her off. “Mother, please don’t interrupt.” Then she turned to Tabitha again. “I want to be a surgeon, because I would like to see the insides of people’s bodies, especially their heads.” Lucinda pushed another pick into Tabitha’s crown. “Did you know that the average adult brain weighs approximately three pounds and an elephant’s brain weighs thirteen pounds?”

“I didn’t know that. How much does my brain weigh?”

“You’re just a newborn, so yours weighs less than a pound, but it’s going to grow very, very fast.” And she stuck in another pick just above the eyebrow.

“That tickles,” Tabitha squealed. “But it’s okay because I’m going to be a smart little girl just like you.”

“And make tons of money, right, Mommy? RIGHT?”

39

Lucius Malenko slid open the glass doors on the balcony and let the cool Atlantic breeze flush over him.

From his perch on the granite cliffs a few miles below Portsmouth, the glittering blue filled his vision. In the gauzy distance, sailing vessels made their way toward the harbor past the small humps of Big Frog and Little Frog Islands. It was a million-dollar view. Or, more exactly, four million, bought and paid for by the upper end of the bell curve.

Malenko took in a cool deep breath of assurance that he had it all—a home by the sea, a remote country estate in the woods, and a fifteenth-century villa in Tuscany where in three weeks he would relax for a month. He had nearly every mode of transportation. On the walls behind him hung original seascape oils by Marshall Johnson, Thomas Birch, and Winslow Homer. Atop pedestals and on shelves sat various objets d’art from his foreign travels. Lighting up the computer monitor in the adjacent room were his investments showing cumulative capital valuations of over forty million dollars. What he called his “Smart Money portfolio”—pun intended.

His was the good life, to use the hoary old American expression—a life that was far beyond the meager earnings of a consulting senior neurologist working two days a week at Nova—and a life that was light-years beyond where he had come from in the Ukraine.

As he stood on the balcony sipping his morning coffee, with the sultry ocean air combing through his hair and the warm sun on his face, he recalled the dark and twisted road that had led him here from the dismal, concrete-poured flats of the Kiev State Research Center of Neurosurgery.

It was the early 1970s, and he had headed up a project with the long-range goal of alleviating the effects of certain human neurological afflictions. The radically new approach involved the transplantation of healthy animal brain tissue into like regions in other animals with various neurological defects. The theory was that primitive rat or monkey brain cells could “reseed” those areas of nerve degeneration and take their cues from existing brain matter to mature into the needed cell types. This way, human neurological diseases—including multiple sclerosis, strokes, or multi-infarct dementia—might eventually be treated by neurotransplantation.

But in the early stages of his research, Malenko made a series of astounding side discoveries. He had located areas of the cortex and hippocampus that affect memory and cognitive performance and which energize other brain systems. When he treated those areas in a control group of newborn mice with a dopamine-protein mix that promoted neuron connections, he discovered that their long-term memory was superior to that of untreated mice. Not only did they run their mazes faster, but also they could speed through complicated new structures as if radar-guided.

An even greater surprise came when he injected a cocktail of growth factors and neural tissue from one maze-whiz mouse into that of an untreated cousin. The injected cells did not produce a glob of cells in one place in the brain. Instead, they migrated to underdeveloped areas of the brain. Remarkably, the recipient mice ended up solving complicated maze problems, shooting through the structures instead of blindly poking their way. He repeated his experiment several times using different control groups until he was absolutely certain of his results: The enhanced neurological circuitry had been passed from harvest to host animals. He had transplanted high-intelligence animal brain matter into the skulls of dim-witted cousins and produced a smarter mouse.

Over the ensuing months, he all but abandoned the Parkinson’s project and moved his experimentation to rhesus monkeys with the similarly amazing results. Once the word got out that his lab had boosted animal intelligence, the Soviet government stepped in to raise the sights.

As always, the interest was purely political. For years, the government had been concerned over the “brain drain” of homegrown scientists to other countries as well as the precipitous drop-off in the number of young people interested in science and mathematics. While blaming the “techno-lag” on the corrupting influence of Western culture, it was clear that the Soviet Union was losing its competitive edge in the world. And for the Defense Ministry, technical inferiority would surely accelerate the decline of the republic’s world status and internal solidarity. That could not be. So, in desperation to salvage the country’s intellectual viability, the Malenko Procedure was given top secret priority. People would be made smarter.

The project had first struck him as foolishly naïve—another scheme of a few old-fart Cold War—niks who measured scientific progress in terms of how to beat the Americans. Two decades earlier, like-minded KGB idiots squandered millions of rubles to finance research in ESP with the dream of creating telepathic superspies. There was no limit to their creative fantasies.

But as the social theoreticians worked on him, pounding him with the bleak statistics on Soviet society, scales seemed to melt from Lucius Malenko’s eyes: Stupid people were toxic to the Soviet system. They were responsible for three-quarters of the crime, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness, higher teenage pregnancies, and diseases. And they produced children destined to create more of the same ad infinitum. Intelligence was the panacea. And he possibly possessed the magic elixir.

Of course, the step from rhesus macaques to the top of the Great Chain of Being was forbidding. The first problem was the lack of human neural cells. At the time, there had been some success in grafting brain tissue from aborted fetuses into adults with Parkinson’s disease. Although there was no shortage of aborted embryos, there were fundamental unknowns such as which regions of the fetal brain to extract from. With pea-sized mouse brains, the challenge was minimal. But human intelligence was a matter of memory and the retrieval of that memory, and those connections ranged globally throughout the brain. He tried extracts from numerous loci, but after four agonizing years of experimentation, he concluded that fetal grafts lacked environmental adaptability and, thus, were ineffective in enhancing human intelligence. Three years later, that failure led him to the needed breakthrough.

Unfortunately, the Soviet Union was in the throes of collapse. So Malenko found himself playing “beat the clock” with perhaps the most extraordinary discovery in the medical world—if not in all of science: a project on par with the splitting of the uranium atom, the discovery of the DNA molecule, and the first moon landing. There he was, a modern-day Paracelsus, converting base materials to gold—only to watch his lab close down.

But all was not lost. A year later, in 1987, he was granted a work visa to the U.S., whose government, hampered by the tenets of democracy, would not approve of his project—at least not publicly. Secretly recruited by a clandestine cell of the National Security Agency, he was eventually given full-citizen status. In exchange, Dr. Lucius Malenko labored to perfect human enhancement—a project that lasted two years until the agency closed him down, claiming the risk factor was too high. Three subjects had died.

In the intervening years, he worked his way up from research assistant in neurology at the Commonwealth Medical Center in Boston to chief surgeon until his eye failed him.

Ironically, he had discovered the keys to the kingdom, unlocking one of nature’s great black boxes—human intelligence—and, except for a handful of people in the world, nobody had a clue, including his colleagues at Nova Children’s Center. He was simply mild-mannered Dr. M. who came in twice a week to consult with his patients.

What they did not know was that he had moved his kingdom underground, which was fine since Lucius Malenko was beyond the need for recognition. Years of clandestine Soviet research had conditioned his ego to darkness. Besides, nothing about enhancement was fit for public consumption. So he did his public persona thing, while on the side he quietly played Shiva.

The telephone rang, bringing him back to the moment. It was Vera asking about the Whitman case.

“We’re still working on that, but it’s moving in the right direction.”

“Good. By the way, this last one is on yellow.”

As usual, Vera was being discreet in her word choice. What she meant was that little Lilly Bellingham was being readied for preop. “I’ll be up tomorrow,” he said. “There are a few things that need to be attended to on this end first.”

“Of course,” she said. “And I assume the package arrived.”

“Yes, it has.”

“I’m sorry I’ll miss all the fun.”

“Likewise, but I’m sure we’ll hear about it.”

40

Brendan felt ridiculous in the tuxedo and white shirt that was required of the wait staff on party nights—like some exotic partridge. He moved through the crowd with trays of fancy dips and canapes.

Nicole DaFoe was there with her parents, looking void of affect as usual. She was wearing an ice-white dress with white high heels. It was the first time Brendan had seen her dressed up.

“Would you like some hors d’oeuvres, Ms. DaFoe?” he whispered. “We have m-m-mushroom caps stuffed with dog vomit and road pizza on a stick. The yellow dip is p-pus, and the brown sauce is—”

“You’re not funny,” Nicole said under her breath. She took a mushroom cap and popped it into her mouth. “Too bad you’re not in school, or you’d have gotten one of these scholarships. You’re poor.”

Brendan’s mind flooded with comebacks, but he did not respond. She started away. “Congratulations, by the way,” he said.

She snapped her head toward him. “What for?”

She was playing coy. It was in the local newspaper. “I guess you got your A in history.”

“Pardon me?”

“You won the Andrew Dale Laurent Fellowship Award. F-first in your class. A perfect four-oh. You aced out Amy Tran.” Amy got honorable mention in the story, which ran with pictures including one with Nicole shaking hands with her history teacher, Michael Kaminsky. Amy’s photo was separate, and he recognized her as the girl in the field-trip photo on Nicole’s wall. The one with the holes in her eyes.

Nicole studied Brendan’s face as if trying to gauge his attitude. Then she said simply, “Thanks.” She started away, then stopped. “What time do you get off?”

“Eleven. Why?”

“Come to my place. I want to show you something. My parents are going to friends’ house after this. I’ll let you in the back way.”

Brendan could not read her expression. “What’s up?”

“Just be there.”

Yes, mein Führer, a voice inside said. “Okay.”

“I’m out of here. By the way, who’s that woman in the green?”

Vanessa Watts was standing with several people, including a woman with a long green dress with her back to them.

“She visited the school the other day.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Don’t move.” She slipped behind him. “I don’t want her to see me.”

“Her n-n-name is Rachel Whitman. She’s new. Moved here about seven months ago. Her husband’s the guy in the olive d-double-breasted Armani. He owns an egghead recruitment company called SageSearches. It’s the same suit on the cover of last month’s GQ with Keanu Reeves. It’s in the m-men’s lounge—”

“I don’t care about his suit,” she snapped. “They were on a parents’ tour. She must have a kid who wants to be a Bloomie.”

“They have a six-year-old son, Dylan, but he’s not Bloomie material. A nice little kid, but he’s kind of 1-1-limited.”

“Do they have other kids?”

“None listed on her m-membership application. Just Dylan—signed up for day care and tennis lessons. Has a good swing. Also sings like an English choirboy.”

“Then how come they were on tour?”

Brendan shrugged. “Maybe the old B-B-Bloomies are becoming more liberal with their standards. A kind of n-noblesse oblige, like the Dellsies with the poor-boy scholarships.”

“Tell me another.”

“Nice perfume, by the way.”

“It’s my mother’s. It’s called Joy.”

“Ah.” And the magazine ads lit up his mind. “Jean Patou. The world’s most expensive fragrance. By the way, do you know how many flowers go into one two-ounce bottle of eau de parfum?”

“No, and I don’t care,” Nicole said.

“Six hundred and seventy-five.”

“Where do you get all this useless information from?”

Before he could answer, somebody called for him—some guy in a grotesque maroon houndstooth sport coat and baby-blue gabardine pants was waving him over for some food. “Have to g-go.”

“Even if Dylan qualifies, I don’t think they’ll send him. There was an accident in psych lab.” She did not explain but flashed him a cool, sly look and headed for the rear exit, while Brendan headed for the houndsteeth.

Rachel watched Brendan LaMotte wend his way through the guests. He was quite dashing in the tuxedo. And, for once, his hair looked washed and neatly bound behind his head. She was tempted to go over and compliment him, but he’d probably discorporate. Or worse, tell her all the ingredients of his canapes.

Rachel was grateful for the party, because it took her mind off the enhancement option, which had left her ill at ease. Holding Martin’s hand, she moved through the crowd. There must have been a hundred people in the grand ballroom, some parents and friends of the scholarship winners, others, associates of Vanessa Watts. Also a few media people, including reporters from local TV stations. At the center of the room was a large table with an ice fountain sculpted as a swan, behind which waiters served champagne and other drinks. Nearby were tables of fancy hors d’oeuvres. In one corner sat a table artfully stacked with copies of Vanessa’s book, plus life-sized displays of the cover. Also behind the podium were blowups of each of the scholarship winners, all Dells caddies. The evening was a double-header billed as Dells’ Scholars Celebration.

At the far end of the room sat a huge television monitor for a video presentation for later. Sheila was by the equipment chatting with some club staffers. When she saw Rachel she fluttered a wave.

Vanessa, who stood nearly six feet tall, was in a clutch of people chatting away. She was dressed in a striking black sheath with boat neck and capped sleeves that accentuated her long tanned arms and chest. A simple strand of pearls hugged her neck. Her golden hair had been elegantly styled with an upward flare adding to her stature. On her feet was a pair of pointy-toed black slides. She looked less like a professor of English and more like a fashion model. Rachel pulled Martin to join her.

“Congratulations,” Rachel said with genuine admiration. Vanessa was a brilliant and accomplished woman, and now the pride of Middlesex University. She had taken several years off to raise Julian, and in her spare time she worked on her book, Dark Visionary: A Literary Biography of George Orwell, which was on its way to becoming an academic and commercial success, a rare accomplishment.

Vanessa thanked Rachel and introduced them to her agent and editor. Before they moved on, Rachel mentioned how they had met Julian at Bloomfield and how impressed they were.

Vanessa nodded. “Are you still thinking of … your own son?” she asked in a low voice.

“Yes, very much,” Martin said.

Vanessa looked at Rachel for a response.

“I still have a lot of questions.”

Vanessa pulled her aside. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she whispered. “We have to talk.” The intensity on her face was almost startling.

“Sure,” Rachel said. “Is there a problem?”

Then somebody pulled Vanessa away to meet another guest. “I’ll call,” she said, leaving Rachel wondering at the urgency.

After nearly an hour of cocktails, a representative from the club announced that the program was to begin. There were ten scholarship recipients—nonmember caddies from area high schools—each of whom would receive a four-year fifteen-thousand-dollar scholarship to the college of their choice. The announcer read off their names and called them to the podium for an envelope and a framed plaque—nine boys and one girl who would be matriculating in the fall, most of them at A-list institutions.

Rachel watched the recipients receive their accolades, smile for the cameras, and return to the hugs and kisses of proud parents. As she scanned the crowd, her eyes landed on Sheila who was studying Rachel from across the room. Sheila smiled and held her gaze, nodding knowingly. If she could have read Rachel’s mind, she would have registered cross-currents of emotions— yes, pained awareness that Dylan would never receive such a plaque and envy that she would never feel the elation of their parents.

Until two weeks ago she would have accepted such a fate. So what? Scholarship isn’t the measure of us.

But that had all changed now. And it wasn’t just the TNT story and the ragged guilt. It was Lucius Malenko. She wished she had never heard of him and his damned enhancement. She wished she had never said anything to Sheila, because all that had done was corrupt her evaluation of her own child and others. She could not go about her daily chores without thinking of people in terms of their IQs—from bank tellers to people stocking shelves at the supermarket. Who was to say that they weren’t happy, productive individuals? Who was to say that a fancy college degree and a fancy job were all there was to living a successful life? And it left her feeling ashamed of herself.

Worse, her exposure to all the little geniuses threatened her appreciation of Dylan. Now when he rummaged for a word or came up with the wrong expression, she felt an irritating impatience, hearing a snippy little voice inside saying: Lucinda or Julian wouldn’t do that. It was awful. She was beginning to resent her own child.

From across the room Sheila flashed her a thumbs-up sign.

“He can be fixed.”

(You bought this. Damaged goods. It’s yours to return.)

Rachel broke the contact and glanced at Martin. But he was grinning and returning Sheila the hand sign.

When the applause died, the host turned to the second part of the program. He made some brief congratulatory remarks about Professor Watts, the segue being a celebration of new scholars to a professional who was a model for the younger generation to emulate. He then introduced Vanessa’s editor who commented briefly on how impressed he was with the manuscript and how he knew instantly that it was an important work which would be appreciated by an audience beyond academia.

The host returned to the microphone. Before introducing Vanessa, he announced a special surprise congratulation. When the lights dimmed, the huge TV monitor was turned on. To instant applause, the screen lit up with the face of the governor of the commonwealth, who congratulated Vanessa on a fine book. Following the applause, the picture shifted to the department chairman and the president of Middlesex who also added their congratulations and best wishes. Then a group shot of her colleagues in the department all saying “Congratulations” in unison and waving and blowing kisses.

Across the room Rachel could see Vanessa beaming and thanking people.

A scrambled void filled the monitor with snow as if the tape had been roughly edited. The screen went black for a moment, and somebody said “Is that it?” when the monitor again lit up, this time on the face of a serious-looking man about forty with a VanDyke beard. Nobody seemed to recognize him. And Rachel glanced at Vanessa who looked frozen in place.

“My name is Joshua Blake, and I was a graduate student of Vanessa Watts fifteen years ago at Middlesex University. At the time I was pursuing my doctorate in English, and Professor Watts was my advisor. My thesis, which was completed in 1988 and published in monograph form two years later, was entitled In Defense of the Defensible: An Intertextual Study of the Dystopian Politics of George Orwell.

“Some weeks ago, a reviewer for The Modern Novel Quarterly sent me an advance copy of Professor Watts’s book to inform me that she had plagiarized my dissertation.”

A murmur rose up from the crowd. Rachel looked over to Vanessa who appeared stunned.

“At first I was incredulous, since I remember Professor Watts as a brilliant and honorable scholar. Yet, after reviewing her book, I can only conclude with shock and great disappointment that she had engaged herself in massive and deliberate theft of my research, my conclusions, and my words. In fact, there are pages of identical or parallel passages, including whole paragraphs lifted word for word.”

Across the room, Vanessa slumped into herself. Amazingly she did not protest but stood glaring at the screen in strange resignation. A stunned hush fell on the crowd, which stood transfixed at the split screen with pages from Blake’s dissertation juxtaposed with those from Vanessa Watts’s book.

“Aside from a few feeble attempts at rewording, large passages are nearly identical, as you can see,” Blake continued. “I don’t know what your motives were, Professor Watts. Perhaps you had just assumed that because I was a lowly grad student you could help yourself to my material while I disappeared into the world and my dissertation molded away in the basement of Middlesex Library. What amazes and saddens me even more is that nowhere in your book am I acknowledged—not a single word of attribution. It pains me, but I accuse you of gross theft of intellectual property, and a violation of trust.”

Vanessa put her hand over her eyes, while her husband tried to comfort her. Meanwhile, the tape continued. “I have informed my attorneys to file suit against—”

“Turn the goddamn thing off,” Brad Watts shouted. “Turn it off!”

The picture went dead.

While the crowd looked on in disbelief, Vanessa pulled herself free of her husband and walked out of the room without a word. Brad began to follow, but she waved him back and left.

“My God,” whispered Rachel to Martin. “That poor woman.”

Vanessa rode around for nearly two hours hoping to find her center again. She had no place to go, nor did she want to drive home and face her family. Although Lisa was sleeping over at a girlfriend’s house and Julian would be doing his silent-troll routine (he couldn’t care less about her), Brad would want a full explanation.

In one stunning moment, she had been totally and permanently destroyed. And tomorrow, to forestall litigation, her publisher would publicly express embarrassment and apologize for the gross act of plagiarism and announce that it was halting distribution of her book, and that all fifty thousand copies would be taken off the market and destroyed—and that the twenty thousand scheduled for release in the UK and Europe next month would also be junked. The press would crackle with scathing indictments, contempt, and ridicule from colleagues and associates at Middlesex and other institutions around the country. Some would speculate on reasons—arrogance, entitlement, and academic pressure. Others would offer up the “death wish” theory, since this was such a careless, wholesale case of plagiarism.

The president would apologize while expressing concern for the kind of example this set for students and faculty alike, declaring something to the effect: “Originality like free expression is sacred in the academic world. This is an utter abuse of our trust as well as an affront to the academy and an example of intellectual corrosion.”

For the next several days, her telephone would ring off the hook with reporters scrambling for a statement—for the scoop on her ruination. There would be an inquiry at the university; and in a few weeks she’d be relieved from her teaching post. Meanwhile, her publisher would demand reimbursement of the $70,000 advance and present a bill for another few hundred thousand dollars to cover the cost of the worldwide withdrawal and destruction of her books.

By this time next week, she, like her book, would be pulped.

As she drove around in the thick of the night, the reality of it all had hit her, rising up from that warm protected recess of her mind where she had packed it away for all these years. Joshua Blake was right: She was a plagiarist. She had stolen his work. And in the world of academic publications, that was the highest crime—tantamount to murder and suicide.

murder and suicide

She had taken his material not because it was so much better than hers, but because she was desperate to get the book into production and out in time for the 2003 George Orwell centennial. Adding to the pressure was her publisher’s insistence that the book had high sales potential—a promise, which realized, could reduce the enormous debt incurred by Julian’s enhancement and pricey education.

She had done it for him, she told herself. For Julian. She’d been on an unpaid leave of absence, racing to meet deadlines so he could nurture his genius. For her son. A mother’s sacrifice.

As for the actual plagiarism, she was certain she could have come up with Blake’s very insights. He had not made any conclusions of which she was incapable. In fact, she had felt entitled to them—more so for being his former advisor. And, yes, she had assumed he had disappeared and would never know.

Denial: the curse of the species.

And she had done it before. At Littleton College in New York where she had plagiarized a paper on Jonathan Swift in a graduate eighteenth-century course. At the time she was a doctoral student and a TA, and under tremendous pressure to excel at both. But she was young and foolish and for twenty dollars bought a paper on Jonathan Swift from one of those term-paper houses. Unfortunately, the same paper had been turned in the year before to the same professor. She had done stuff like that in undergraduate school, but this time she was given a term’s suspension—a permanent note on her transcript.

We are what we ever were, she thought. We never change. murder and suicide

Vanessa’s insides were wracked with agony, but she did not go directly home. Instead she drove in the dark talking into her portable tape recorder, the one she kept in her car and used while working on her book. Her remarks were brief and pointed. When she was through, she drove to the home of the Whitmans and dropped off the recorder with tape in the glove compartment of Rachel’s Maxima. Luckily the car was unlocked.

She then drove home.

Brad had left the downstairs lights on, but the rest of the interior was dark. All but Julian’s room.

Shit.

She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see anybody. All she wanted to do was go into a deep sleep and not come out of it. Thankfully, Brad had probably given up waiting and gone to bed.

She looked up at Julian’s bedroom.

What the hell is he doing up at this hour? Christ, it’s nearly two.

She pulled the car into the garage. Julian’s skis were hanging up along the back wall. New parabolics that had cost over seven hundred dollars. They had been used once, on their winter vacation in Vail last year. He had no interest in skiing, and the entire week he spent inside the condo doing his pictures—stippling away like some crazed gnome. He had gotten soft and flabby, and given up everything physical. At school he was known as “Dots.”

She unlocked the door and pushed her way inside. Except for the hum of the refrigerator, the place was dead quiet. The only relief from the dark was the light strip under Julian’s door at the top of the stairs.

Vanessa climbed the stairs, feeling old and weary. On the landing she looked into the master bedroom. Brad was asleep. She then stopped just outside of Julian’s door and listened. Nothing. No CD, no television, no sound of some mindless video game. He had probably fallen asleep on his bed. Good. She’d just flick off his light and let him sleep out the night.

She tapped quietly. Although he slept little, he would occasionally pass out from sheer exhaustion. She tapped again, and still nothing. Gently she turned the knob and pushed open the door.

Julian was not in bed but at his workbench.

The halogen lamp glowed brilliantly over the tilt board. His back was to her and his head was hunched below his shoulders. For a moment she thought that he had fallen asleep in place, because he did not move as she entered. But as she moved closer, she noticed his left hand.

“You’re still up.” She tried to sound pleasant, but the effort was strained. The public humiliation had its source in him; and at the moment it took every fiber of her being to feign civility.

Her eye fell on a photo of her and Julian at his music summer camp last year in the Berkshires. He had just finished his recital to a standing ovation. They were posed at the piano, she with her arm around his shoulder and smiling proudly, he standing limp and glowering at the camera with one of his pained grimaces. That photo was so much them, she thought: her needy pride, and his refusal to give. Such a pathetic symbiosis. To think what she had sacrificed to get him in that picture—the money and years, the leave of absence—just to be available to guide him, to drive him to his music and art lessons, getting him into one of the best prep schools in the country. And what does she get back at the height of his achievement? A fucking scowl. He had perfected the art of rejection. The ungrateful little prick.

Looking at him frozen in that old-man hunch, she could feel her blood pressure rise. To think what he had put her through to raise him up from the quagmire of mediocrity. To think how she was ruined because of him. King Lear was right: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child!”

“Julian, I’m talking to you.”

Still nothing.

She took a deep breath. The only thing keeping her from exploding was a voice in her head: He’s your son. He’s your own flesh and blood. Love him for what he is.

But another cut in: Would this still have been my Julian?

The question was unanswerable.

“It’s rather late,” she said, straining to keep her voice neutral.

But Julian still did not respond—not even a stir. That was strange. Ordinarily he would tell her to leave his room. For whatever reasons, he never allowed her to see what he was working on. Even with a vacation school project, he’d lock himself in here, then wrap it up and take it back to school, never once allowing her a peek. That’s the way he was: self-absorbed and totally ungiving.

Only once did he let Vanessa see a work-in-progress. It was a year and a half ago when out of the blue he called her upstairs into his room.

“Well?” he had said in a flat voice, letting her look over his shoulder. Vanessa remembered her surprise at the subject matter: a bowl of fruit on a table by a curtained window. His subject matter back then—and still—had been fantasy superheroes with massive bodies of rippling musculature, swords, gee-whiz weaponry, and disturbing bug-eyed alien heads, all done in garish color. While Vanessa had spurned the subject matter, technically his work was extraordinary, given that it had been done completely in pinpoint dots. So a simple bowl of fruit was a delightful departure. Maybe at last he was moving into his postimpressionist phase, she had thought.

“It’s beautiful,” she had said, tempering her praise so as not to take it away from him. “Is it a class project?”

He flashed her a hurt, truculent look. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, I don’t know, it’s just different from what you usually do. That’s all.”

“You mean, the usual crap.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s your birthday present,” he said in a dead voice.

“Oh, Julian, how sweet of you.” She was taken aback and felt tears rise. “How considerate.”

“You don’t like it.”

“What do you mean? I love it. I love it. I’m telling you, it’s beautiful. Really. And I’m flattered, I’m touched.” And she was. This was the first time in years that he had even remembered her birthday, let alone given her something that he’d created. Last year she had to remind him, and he went out and bought her a key chain.

“Well, I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s stupid.”

“No it’s not.”

“It’s stupid!” And with that he slashed the drawing with his razor knife.

“What are you doing?” she had cried, trying to stop him. But he slashed and slashed the paper until it was hopelessly shredded.

Then without a word he pushed himself from the bench and went downstairs, leaving Vanessa standing over the torn-up picture, crying to herself.

“Do you know what time it is?” She moved deeper into the room. “Two-fifteen.”

Still nothing. Not even a turn of the head to acknowledge her presence. He was pulling his silent treatment on her again. She didn’t need this shit. She didn’t need his sour, precious fucking rejection routine. Not after what she had been through.

“Julian, I’m speaking to you.” She crossed the room.

He was wearing that awful black shirt with the hideous Roaring Skulls picture on the front and their disturbing slogan on the back: LIFE SUCKS scribed in ghetto scrawl, as she called it. God! When the hell was he finally going to grow into his own talent? Here he was an accomplished musician who could play Shostakovich and Lizst, and he went around in heavy-metal shirts emblazoned with unseasoned nihilism. (Thank God Bloomfield had a dress code.) Moreover, his artistic talent was such that he could get into the finest art schools in the nation, and he wasted his hours on testosterone brutes. “It’s time you went to bed.”

He still did not respond, and she felt herself heat up.

You bastard.

“Lights out.”

She marched up to him. Still he did not turn or say anything, but continued stippling away. She glanced at the easel.

At first, she thought it was another of his fantasy characters. But as her eyes adjusted to the figure on the sheet, she felt a shock of recognition. It was a self-portrait, except that Julian’s face looked like that of a snake or lizard. The thing’s head had the same general shape as his own, just as the mouth and eyes were clearly Julian’s. But the features were all somehow stretched into a distinctly reptilian impression. The face was elongated, and there were scales covering its head and body. But it was Julian for sure. It was grotesque, but like all of his works it was precisely crafted.

What struck her was the color—reddish—brown, not black, his usual color.

He took out his mouth guards and laid them on a dish. “It’s a self-portrait,” he said. “Like it? I mean it’s not Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte or anything, but it has a nice likeness, don’t you think, Mother?”

He had said Mother as if he’d spit something up. She was forming a response, when Julian slid back.

Vanessa let out a gasp. Julian’s right hand was a bight red mess of pinpricks from his knuckles up to his elbow. He was stippling the portrait with his own blood.

“What are you doing?” she screamed.

“Ms. Fuller says that I should work in different mediums.” And he took his point and jabbed it into the back of his wrist.

“Stop that!”

But he continued stabbing himself with the point so that beads of blood rose up. He then dipped in the pen tip and began tapping away on the picture.

“I said to stop that!”

But he continued.

“STOP THIS MINUTE!”

Slowly Julian turned his face up toward hers. And in a scraping whisper he said, “I can’t.”

A bright shock froze Vanessa in place.

“Because of what you did to me, Mother.”

“What? What do you mean what I did to you?”

“What you let them do to my head.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My head, Mother. They did something to my head. My brain.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about or why the hell you’re doing that to yourself. But I want you to stop. Do you understand me, Julian? It’s goddamn sick, and you’re going to give yourself blood poisoning.” It crossed her mind to tell him not to drip on the wall-to-wall carpet she had spent a fortune on.

Julian laid down the pen and raised his bloody hands to his head and parted a section of hair above his hairline. Then he stuck his head under the lamp. “Look. Look at the scars, Mother.”

Vanessa felt as if she were suddenly treading on barbed wire. “What about them?”

“Where did they come from?”

“You know perfectly well. I told you that you fell off your stepstool in the bathroom and hit your head on the radiator when you were two.”

“These are little spots, not a regular scar,” he said. “You’re lying, because I remember. Besides, how could I fall from a six-inch stool and land on the top of my head?” His eyes fixed her.

“You don’t remember anything.”

“I remember going to a hospital and having some kind of operation. I remember being bandaged up and seeing things. And taking tests and stuff. And other kids.” Then his voice became a bizarre falsetto: “‘Mr. Nisha wants you to be happy. Just relax and watch the video. For Mr. Nisha.’”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You took tests to see if there was any brain damage. And, thank goodness, there wasn’t,” she added, feigning motherly relief.

“But there was, and it wasn’t because I hit my head. It’s because you had me fixed.”

“Julian, I’m in no mood for your crap, okay? This conversation is over.”

As she started to leave, Julian shot to his feet. Because he was still small for his age, Vanessa towered over him by a foot.

“What if I did that to your head, huh? What if I operated on your head to make you smarter? Huh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I remember being tested. Aptitude tests—intelligence tests. Three years straight of tests. I’m still taking them. And why? Well, I put it all together. I wasn’t supposed to remember, but I did. How would you like it if I did that to you?”

She did not respond.

“I asked you a question, Vanessa?” he said, in perfect mimicry of her. “I’m speaking to you. Answer me. Count back from twenty, Vanessa!”

She turned. He was standing there with one of his pens in his hand, the point aimed at her. “Don’t you threaten me, you little—” But she stopped short.

“What? Say it. ‘Little creep,’ right? Is that the expression you’re searching for, huh? LITTLE CREEP. That’s what they all say. ‘Julian the little creep.’ Why should you be any different?” He took a step toward her. “How would you like it if I operated on your head because I didn’t like how your brain worked? Huh? How would you like it if I cut you up to make you smarter? HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF I MADE YOU A FUCKING LITTLE CREEP?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice like acid. “And don’t you speak to me that way. Not after what I’ve put myself through for you.”

“You know what I’m talking about. You had me fixed because I wasn’t good enough for you and your fancy friends at the club and university. You wanted a little superstar to parade around. Well, you got him, Vanessa! You got yourself your little genius, and his teeth are all ground down, and he’s taking five different medications because he’s a little GENIUS.”

As he screamed at her, his tongue flashed against the row of yellow stumps in bright red gums and spittle shot from his mouth. His face filled with blood and his eyes bulged like hens’ eggs. He looked positively grotesque. “How would you like a little brain surgery, Mother? Then you’d know what a miserable hell it is to be me—what it’s like to be possessed. What it’s like to hate you the way I do.”

As he approached, his face filled her vision. “HOW WOULD YOU LIKE THAT, MOTHER?”

As if to the snap of her own mind, Vanessa felt herself lurch forward.

“You little bastard!” she heard herself scream. “Because of you I’m ruined. They did this to me. They set me up. Because of you. Yes, because you’re such a fucking monster. BECAUSE OF YOU!”

Her hand shot to the jar of tools and pulled up a long sharp metal ice-picklike thing. The next instant, she buried it in the crown of Julian’s head.

Instantly blood geysered out of the boy’s skull as he let out a faint cry.

For a telescoped moment, she watched in numbed horror as Julian jerked about and rose in place on his toes as if trying to follow his own blood, his eyes widening in utter dismay, his mouth slack-jawed and moving wordlessly like a marionette’s trying to form a question. An involuntary pocket of air bubbled out of his throat as blood streamed down his face and onto his shirt. Then just as he seemed about to gain stature, his mouth spread into a hideous grin, and he collapsed backward onto his tilt board, the long instrument still stuck in place. Because of the internal pressure, blood shot out across the self-portrait picture, bedewing the paper in a postimpressionist spray.

Panting uncontrollably, Vanessa tried to comprehend what her hand had done. She did not cry out nor did she touch her son. She just stood there gasping for air and watched him die.

When she heard the deep-throated gurgle, she turned. Without deliberation, she removed a razor knife from the scattered implements.

They did this to me, she told herself.

She didn’t know how they knew about Blake’s paper, but she knew they had set her up tonight, contacted the prick and arranged for that video. It was their doing. Because she had wanted her son back. Because she had insisted they undo what they’d done to him. Because she threatened to blow the whistle when they refused to even try, filling him full of useless chemicals that made him even worse.

“When dealing with the human mind, there’s no way to predict collateral effects.”

Such bullshit. Collateral effects! He was a freak. She had threatened to take him elsewhere, so they brought her down in public. On her night of nights.

She moved to Julian’s bed and sat against the bolster. She glanced once across the room at her son dead on his tilt board, his blood streaming onto the carpet.

For a second, the image of him nursing at her breast flitted across her mind. She let out a long pathetic groan.

Then she slashed her wrists.

For the next several minutes, with her knees clutched to her chest, and her wrists bleeding into a pillow, she whimpered softly and rocked herself to death.

41

Brendan had been in the kitchen cleaning up when the video exposure of Vanessa Watts was going on. He had only learned about it from another waiter on his way out.

Around eleven-thirty, he parked the pickup down the street from the DaFoe house so it wouldn’t be noticed. The only car in the garage was a Lexus SUV. It was green, the color of money, which Nicole’s parents had in abundance.

Unlike the simple little six-room Cape that he shared with his grandfather, Nicole’s home was a big white Colonial with a sweeping lawn, fancy shrubbery, and that European beech elm where he had spent several nights watching her undress, and one having sex with her history teacher.

Nicole let him in the back door. She had changed into green jeans and a yellow top. She looked like a daffodil. She was holding a glass of orange juice.

“You stink,” she said as if announcing the sky was black.

“From the g-g-garlic in the crab cakes’ dip. Carlos always adds too m-much. I’ll w-w-wash up.”

“And work on that stutter while you’re at it.” She led him upstairs to her bathroom.

He said nothing, inured to her bluntness. On one level, it fascinated him that she was so lacking in social cues. He at least had some residual instinct. She waited by the door as he washed up. “You missed quite a scene.” He told her about the plagiarism charge. “That’s not going to go over big with the administration at Middlesex U.”

Nicole shrugged. “I didn’t like her anyway. And her son’s a dweeb.”

Brendan opened his backpack. “By the way, c-close your eyes.”

“You’ve got a surprise for me?”

“Not that kind of surprise—I mean g-g-giftwise. Just keep your eyes closed, and inhale and tell me w-what comes to mind.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“No.”

She closed her eyes and faced him, and he placed the bottle under her nose. “Okay, inhale and tell me if the odor reminds you of anything.”

She sniffed and snapped her head back. “Smells like …” She opened her eyes and snatched at the small glass container. “Extract of almond.” She glared at him.

“Well? Does it remind you of anything?”

“No.”

“But you didn’t even try.”

“I smelled it,” she snapped.

“No associations, no recollections, no images come to mind?”

“No.”

“Think hard.” And he held it to her nose again.

She pushed it away. “I said no. It reminds me of nothing.”

He stared at her for a moment then screwed the cap back on and stuffed it in his pocket. “How about Mr. Nisha?”

“I told you I never heard of Mr. Nisha.”

“Okay, forget it.” Something about her reaction bothered him. She was too quick to reject it. “I just get some really weird vibes from the odor. So what’s up?”

“Your turn. Close your eyes.”

“What?” Hesitantly he closed his eyes, then heard her leave the room.

“Keep them closed,” she said from the other room. A few moments later he heard her return.

“Okay, open them.”

Brendan opened his eyes. Nicole was stark naked.

“W-w-w-what are you doing?”

Her eyes were small, no dilation in her pupils. No affect in her manner. No warmth in her response. “See if you can figure it out.”

All he could think was: Why is she doing this? But it came out: “W-w-w-w- … ?”

“Why do you think?”

Brendan suddenly wished he were home, that he had not agreed to come over. That this was not turning out well. “I d-d-dunno.”

“Is that the best you can do?”

He scanned her body. “You’re very p-p-pretty,” he said, hoping that she’d put her clothes back on.

“P-p-pretty?”

“Okay, b-beautiful.”

“So,” she said, spreading her legs slightly and leaning on a hip. “Is Mr. LaMotte still a virgin?”

She was a thousand Internet images—a thousand pixel pixies. She wants something, he told himself. Nicole is hell-bent to succeed in life, so she wants something.

“Well?”

It was not a question he wanted to answer. Nor did she wait for one, no doubt assuming he was. She undid his belt and unzipped his fly. He stood there as if he had been shot with a stun gun. He wanted to stop her, and he wanted her to continue—not because he was getting aroused, but because he wasn’t.

She slipped her hand into his pants and rubbed his genitals. He could feel himself stir slightly, but he did not sprout an erection. In fact, the only erections he ever had resulted from unconscious friction with his bedding, but never from sexual musings, or sex magazines or Web porn sites. Naked women, men, children: nothing. Nada. His mojo wasn’t working. He couldn’t even properly masturbate if he wanted to; and the only orgasms were those in his sleep, unattended by raucous adolescent dreams—pure and simple biology: the press of backed-up sperm.

Not getting any reaction, Nicole pressed herself against his groin. He drew back because it hurt. “W-w-why are you doing this? I didn’t c-come here for this.”

“Because I f-f-felt like it.” She made a mirthless laugh. “I remember how you looked at me the other night in my room.”

That was a phony response—one reserved for the legions of normal heterosexual males whose hopeful glances told them she was “hot.” That was not his look. He did not have the hunger. Nor could he imagine that she liked him. They weren’t friends, nor had she ever shown him any interest except to make fun of his stuttering. In fact, whenever she addressed him he felt as if he were being razor-gashed. Besides, being the looker she was, Nicole should be pursuing the alpha studs—those cool, smart jocky dudes everybody else looked up to. He was surely not one of those. Yes, he was smart and tall, but two hundred and sixty pounds of baby fat surmounted by a long shiny black ponytail, braces, facial blemishes, and enough tics to make the Top Ten Geek List. Nicole did not give herself away for nothing. No, it wasn’t how he had looked at her in the bedroom. It was what he had seen in there.

Suddenly she took his hand and put it on her crotch.

My God! He thought. The Mound of Venus. The Delta of Desire. Ad glorium pudendum. And his mind flooded with lines from a dozen erotic poems.

It was the first time he had ever touched female genitalia, but he felt nothing inside—not a bloody damn flicker. He could have been fondling her kneecap.

She planted her mouth on his and pushed her tongue through his teeth, moving in deliberate cadence with the grinding motion against his hand.

“Orange juice,” he said. “You t-taste of orange juice.”

“Because I just had a glass, asshole.”

acetaldehyde

alpha terpineol

ethyl decanoate

“Did you know that orange juice contains over two hundred different chemical compounds?”

pentane diethal ether

myrcene

“No, and please don’t tell me,” she said, grinding her pubis against him.

valencene

methylene chloride

limonene

3-ethanoxy 1-propanol

He wished he had not mentioned the orange juice, because his mind was now ticking off a slew of hydrocarbons, alcohols, aldehydes, and esters.

2-methyl propanic acid

methal octanoate

He squeezed down to force the runoff into a rear-brain compartment, which he sealed off and bolted. Then he strained to get back to the moment. But that was the real problem, because although he could recite the most obscure facts, he did not know how to react to Nicole. He knew he was supposed to “feel” things, to enjoy a flood of emotions, but he could not react accordingly.

ethyl butyrate

4-vinyl guaiacol

And, yet, he was fascinated by her performance. While she came on as sexually precocious, her moves seemed studied. Her lips, which were full and fleshy, opened and closed around his like a suckerfish in the throes of some mating ritual. Part of him liked the bizarre, almost nursing, sensation—something she had cultivated in her considerable experience. However, he was not sure he liked her tongue swabbing out his mouth. He could faintly detect the orange juice behind other tastes.

As he feared, his mind filled with biology-class videos of microbes teeming in human saliva. Then he became fixed on the disgusting white bacterial gunk that collects on the back of human tongues from the lack of oxygen and makes for sulfur-foul breath.

Then he saw her as one of those colored anatomy-book drawings of the digestive system—her insides a pack of shiny red organs and alimentary tubes leading from her mouth down through twenty feet of twisty yellow intestines partly full of feces.

He squeezed down on those images, pressed them into a small box, and stomped it with his heel. And for a blessed moment, the assault was over.

As Nicole moved against his hand and closed her eyes to groaning sounds, Brendan could not help but think that he was engaged in one of the highest fantasies of the male breed: fondling the sex of a gorgeous, compliant sixteen-year-old. He knew he should feel special, even privileged—for some men would kill for the opportunity. And while he watched Nicole writhe, he could not help but wonder at human sexuality—how in the zoological kingdom we were the only species that copulated face-to-face: An evolutionary marvel whose anatomy had evolved for the look of love-face-to-face, man to woman: passion by design.

And he had none.

“Do you like that?”

No, he thought. “Mmmm,” he mumbled.

“How ‘bout this?” And she then slipped to her knees and lowered his shorts.

God, this too?

His penis stuck out from his pubic hairs like an overgrown slug. It was mortifying. Here was Nicole DaFoe, the teenage equivalent to the Whore of Babylon, his own momentary Lolita on her knees performing the supreme male fantasy, and he couldn’t even summon a glandular twitch.

God, if you can hear me, PLEASE!

Nicole tried everything, rubbing her breasts against him, twiddling him, even kissing him. Still nothing, though he was straining with all he had to engorge himself with blood. But nothing. It was awful. Where were the fires of spring? The eternal fever? Andrew Marvell’s “rough strife”?

She did everything possible—humming, moaning and groaning. It was horrible—the ultimate curse, but for old men, like Richard, not a healthy adolescent who should be pulsing with magma heat.

As he pushed with all he had to stiffen himself, fighting the damning humiliation, a side-pocket awareness struck him: Not how experienced Nicole was, but how rote her movement. As he watched her head move below him, she appeared to him as a mechanical doll running through a naughty little program, not aroused, just studied. Robotic. Even her kissing lacked genuine heat. She didn’t even breathe heavily.

He was about to push her head away, when in the light his eyes caught something in her hair. He put his hands on her head pretending to caress her. As he spread her hair, he could see a cluster of small white nubbinlike scars barely visible about an inch behind her forehead hairline and running across the side of her head.

Suddenly Nicole froze. “What are you doing?” Instantly she was upright.

“Y-you’ve got the same scars I have.”

Nicole’s face shifted as if trying to land on the right expression. “What?”

He lowered his head and parted his hair where the nurse had shaved. “See?” he said, showing her in the mirror. Then he moved his hand to show her what he’d seen under her hair, but she pulled away. “Let me show you.”

“Get out,” she said. He could not tell if the blaze in her eyes meant that she was angry with him for the aborted sex, or scared.

“Let me show you. Th-they’re little white dots.”

“From chicken pox.”

“Chicken pox? No,” he insisted. “Ch-chicken pox scars would be r-r-random. These are bunched together. And they’re in the same place as mine.”

Nicole’s face hardened. “I told you I had chicken pox. I remember it was all over my face and head.”

Brendan shook his head. “Not chicken pox.”

“Then what are they?”

“Somebody did something to our heads when we were kids.”

“Shut up. Scars are long lines not little white dots.”

“I don’t know how, but somebody did something—to both of us. I have images and d-dreams of hospital rooms, of w-w-white lights and monitors, of people with surgical masks. And you’ve got the same scars and that t-t-tattoo I keep seeing. Elephants with hands grabbing at me.”

She started away. “That’s your problem.”

He caught her arm. “N-no. It’s too much of a coincidence. I’m t-telling you we’re c-connected somehow. Maybe we were out of hand, and they did some kind of lobotomy or s-something on us.”

Nicole’s eyes got very small, like ball bearings. “You’re nuts. You’re also a faggot.”

“No I’m not.”

“You’re a goddamn faggot, and that’s what this is all about.” It was the first time he heard a tinge of emotion in her voice. But he wasn’t sure if it was anger or fear.

“No.” I’m nothing, a voice in his head whispered.

“Between the desire

And the spasm …

Falls the Shadow”

“That’s not it.” He pulled his pants back up and zipped his fly.

“You’re gay, and you’re giving me all this other shit.”

“No, I’m not gay.”

I am a hollow man.

“Then you’re a chickenshit virgin. The big love-poetry guy can’t get it up for a first-class BJ.”

It wasn’t her bluntness that surprised him, but the edge in her words.

As she started away again, he said, “What about you? Is it worth it?”

Her head snapped around for an explanation. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I know why you’re doing this, because I saw you with your teacher. This is your way of b-b-buying my silence.”

Nicole opened her mouth to protest, but caught herself.

“If the word got out you were having an affair with your teacher, you’d lose your grade, and the award, and he’d be out of a job. That’s what this is all about. Not because you like me, or even sex.”

Expressions flitted across her face like the things that scurried under a rock in damp soil. In a low menacing voice, she said, “Don’t you dare say anything.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Ever!” And she gave his genitals a hard squeeze.

The wincing pain nearly took his breath away. She wrapped a towel around herself. “You d-d-d-don’t even enjoy it.”

“Enjoy what?”

“S-sex.”

“What do you know?”

“I th-think you don’t. I th-think you don’t enjoy this. I th-think sex is just how you g-g-get what you want. How you end up number one.”

“I’m where I’m at because I’ve got a brain and know how to use it.”

“But you don’t feel anything.”

“Get out of here.”

“You weren’t even breathing hard. You weren’t even excited.”

“Because you don’t turn me on. Because you’re a fat ugly shit.”

“M-m-maybe so, but I think you’re a f-f-fake. I think you’re like me—impotent. Dead. That you j-j-just go through the motions like a robot, pretending, experimenting with other people’s emotions because you’ve got none of your own.”

“I have emotions,” she said. But her voice was void of protest. Dead.

She started to leave, but he took her arm. “Nicole, somebody messed with our heads. I don’t know who or why, but we’re different. I’ve got a brain that won’t let me forget anything. I can quote you a hundred poems from start to finish but I can’t feel them, Nicole. I CAN’T FEEL THEM! I can’t feel anything. Like I’m emotionally dead. Like I’m another species.” He fought down the urge to confess how he actually contemplated killing Richard just to see if he’d feel remorse.

“That’s your problem.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” He slid back the mirrored panel on the side wall and pulled out a bag full of prescription vials—all serotonin-reuptake inhibiting (SRI) drugs : Luvox, Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Anafranil—drugs for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, seizures, for “bad thoughts”—all with her name on them, all old friends to Brendan. “It’s why we’re taking all this crap: We’re damaged goods, Nicole. We’re freaks. We’re freaks.”

She swiped the bag from his hand and tossed it on the shelf. “Get out of here!” Her eyes clouded over but not with tears, because she was incapable of them—something else.

He stepped out onto the landing at the top of the stairs. “They did something to our heads and left us dead inside.”

She did not respond—as if someone had pulled her plug out of the wall.

He stepped back from her, and for a long moment before he started down the stairs, she glared wordlessly at him through unmoving orbs of ice.

“One must have a mind of winter to behold the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is …”

42

“Middlesex University English professor Vanessa Rizzo Watts and her son Julian, fourteen, were found dead in their Hawthorne home in what police say appears to be a murder-suicide initiated by Professor Watts …”

Lucius Malenko muted the radio as he rolled down the window to pay the toll. It was the middle of the next morning, and he was at the New Hampshire border on northbound 1-95. In seconds, he had the Porsche purring at eighty-five in the fast lane again. He unmuted the radio as a country club official claimed that the Blake excerpt was not part of the original sent by the university. “My only guess is that somebody swapped videos with the intention of embarrassing Professor Watts. We don’t know who or why, but we’re looking into it.”

“You do that,” Malenko said and changed stations.

The world was abuzz with the story—headline news in The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald, the radio-news lead. Throughout the day experts on criminology and psychology would try to make sense of “the terrible family tragedy” that had hit affluent Hawthorne where such things just don’t happen. Fuzzy-haired pundits would speculate about the severe competition to publish within institutions of higher learning; others would hold forth on the evils of the patriarchal academic establishment whose excessive pressure on women invariably led to such disasters. Others still would wonder why so bright and talented a woman as Professor Watts would need to plagiarize.

Malenko had expected a resolution, but not a double death—convenient as it was. The intention was to send her a definitive statement that her actions must desist immediately. He knew that the woman was fragile, at the edge with misgivings about her son. Clearly the public humiliation had pushed her over—more than he had hoped for. And it took the proverbial two birds with one stone.

Eighteen months ago, she had complained that Julian was not right, that he could not free himself of his obsessions—how he would slice his food into neat little cubes before eating them; how he had to do things just so, according to his little odd rituals; how he counted everything—cars on the street, birds, houses, telephone poles, dots. The worst of his obsessions was his pointillist paintings. She complained that he’d work hours on end, sometimes skipping sleep. That he wore his teeth to stumps.

Malenko could not be certain that such obsessions were the consequence of enhancement. In spite of his suspicions, he claimed that Julian’s OC behavior was genetic.

Yes, they had had their failures—mostly from the early vintage of clients, before Malenko had perfected multiple stereotaxic insertions. Although they had been rendered brilliant, some developed unfortunate behavior problems. Three years ago, the son of an airline executive committed suicide, apparently having developed temporal lobe epilepsy. Another, a female, died of an embolism. Another still was convicted of murdering his parents, claiming that beetles were eating his brain.

But those were sad exceptions. Most enhanced children developed into highly intelligent and socially adjusted people—the summum bonum of the species. In his office, Malenko had a private photo album of “his children” who were scattered across the continent and beyond. Only a few lived in the area, and they were doing well. One was still at Bloomfield—Nicole DaFoe, whose high cerebral wattage was matched by genuine beauty. She wanted to be a physician when she grew up, possibly even a neurosurgeon. There was also young Lucinda MacPhearson—another prodigy, skilled in computers.

Because the brain is a black box of wonders, something went wrong with Julian Watts—perhaps some collateral damage from probes into the right frontal lobe. Nonetheless, the symptoms were treatable with medication, and Malenko had prescribed a variety. But the boy had refused, complaining that they just dulled his senses and diffused his focus. Then his mother threatened to take him to other neurophysicians to see what could be done. Although enhancement was too subtle to detect by any scans, he feared she would tell all. That could not be, and Malenko had reminded her of their contractual agreement, her escrow bond, and her willingness to accept any risks to enhance her son. “I don’t care about that!” she had declared. “I want my son back!” That was when they sent the anonymous package to Professor Joshua Blake containing side-by-side photocopies of his book and hers.

Experience had taught him the hard way to protect his security against bigmouthed parents. Some years ago, after a difficult couple made noise about going to the authorities because their little darling was acting oddly, Malenko resorted to Oliver’s “wet work” skills. They were eliminated in a car accident one icy Christmas Eve. From that moment on, there were no more mistakes.

Now in screening candidates, they investigated strengths—ideological and financial—as well as useful weaknesses—legal, financial, marital, psychological, even medical—as backup insurance against sudden impulses to blow the whistle. Dirty little secrets—fathers who liked young girls or who had some business indiscretions; mothers who cheated or who had problems with drugs or alcohol. Whatever would dampen impulses to blab.

The background check on Vanessa Rizzo Watts had revealed that as a graduate student she had been suspended for plagiarism. Because she had been a popular TA, the episode made the student newspaper, a copy of which was attainable from the archives of the L. U. News by Malenko’s private investigator Oliver Vines, a doggedly persistent agent. Although Ms. Rizzo had been reinstated, that episode told the story of a bright but driven woman who needed to prove herself, who needed to excel, perhaps to overcome deep-seated suspicions that she was not as clever as she appeared on paper. And human nature being what it is, Malenko had a hunch that she would revert to her old habits in pursuit of recognition and easy success.

When her book was published, they parsed the entire text for key words and phrases. Then using a Boolean search engine, they scanned the Web for database matches to key word strings including the name George Orwell. In a process of elimination, one solitary record had multiple hits—the Web site of Mr. Joshua Blake who had included with his curriculum vitae a link to his doctoral thesis for perusal by interested scholars. It did not take long to realize that Vanessa Watts had lifted whole chunks from Mr. Blake.

As the Porsche hummed its way up the coast, Malenko’s mind turned to the Whitmans. With the same degree of scrutiny they had investigated the husband’s financial dealings with Cape Ann Banking and Trust where he had filed a fallacious claim about the worth of SageSearch on his bank loan application. The other useful piece of information was that Whitman knew nothing about the wife’s TNT past or her guilt. To his mind, their son’s disabilities came up in the genetic dice roll. But not a clue how Mom had loaded them. All of which meant that he had some goods on each of the Whitmans.

A little before one, Malenko turned onto Exit 7, which would take him to smaller routes that would eventually branch off to an ancient logging road that led to the compound.

Camp Tarabec was nestled in the woods at the edge of Lake Tarabec, a large and private body of water with its own woodland island about a half-mile offshore. The place was Maine-idyllic, with neat log cabins, a central meeting ground, flagpole, playing fields, climbing apparatus, and a little beach which was barricaded a hundred yards offshore to keep swimmers and canoeists from wandering into deep water.

Only seven years old, the camp was operated by a private organization founded and directed by Lucius Malenko. Although it was advertised as a summer camp for “special” kids, to those few in the know it was a “genius camp”—where gifted children went for in-depth, hands-on learning in disciplines from astronomy to zoology.

It was a little after two when Malenko arrived, so it was “free time,” which meant that the kids were engaged in outdoor activities—canoeing, swimming, tennis or baseball, archery, et cetera. After that it was snacks and back inside to the computer labs or science projects. Because the children here were gifted, the counselors sometimes had to pry them away from their terminals or labs to go out and be physical. Malenko parked the Porsche and went into the main office.

A boy about sixteen behind the reception desk smiled as Malenko entered. “Hey, Dr. M.”

“Hello, Tommy. How’s the boy today?”

“Pretty good. How’s the Red Menace? Still doing zero to sixty in five point eight?”

“Only when the police aren’t looking. And it’s five point two.”

“But who counts?” Tommy said and laughed.

He had been coming to the camp for the last three summers, ever since his parents had him enhanced. They had been dissatisfied with his poor analytical skills, particularly with math and logic. At their wit’s end, they came all the way from Chicago to the Nova Children’s Center where they met Dr. Malenko. When all else failed, they put up an expensive summer home as collateral. Now Tommy was a sophomore math major at Cornell. He was also a computer wizard who taught compu lab here. It was he who had done the Boolean search that linked Vanessa Watts to Joshua Blake. Her own little Big Brother.

He stepped into the main office behind the reception desk and said hello to Karl who managed the camp. He handed Malenko some mail. “Oliver’s waiting for you.”

Malenko took his material and stepped back outside. On the baseball field across the way, two teams in red and black T-shirts were at play. At one end of the first-baseline bench, some second-stringers were at a laptop, probably working out the odds for a hit based on the batter’s record and pitcher’s ERA.

Some kids in the tennis court across the dirt road saw him and waved. “Hi, Dr. M.,” one of the boys in white shouted. “How about a game?” The girl across the court waved at him.

Malenko smiled and waved back. “Maybe some other time.”

The boy’s name was Fabiano. He was the son of the Brazilian ambassador to the United States. Eight years ago he had an IQ of 75 and was a boarder at a school in New York City for the learning disabled. Today at sixteen, he was entering his sophomore year at Columbia with interests in astrophysics. And the young girl was interested in international law. As with all the Tarabec children, they would be getting the intensive exposure and training that would propel them toward their goals. Next week, for instance, they would be guests of astronomers at the observatory at the U. of Maine where they had use of the large reflector telescope.

Malenko got back into the Porsche. Some of the kids hooted him on to peel out. That would not set a very good example, he thought, but he trounced the accelerator and lurched forward in a cloud of dirt. In the rearview mirror, the kids waved and cheered.

Malenko pulled down a small dirt road to the water and into an old boathouse that also served as his garage. He parked, took his bags, and headed down to the dock.

As Karl had said, Oliver was waiting in the boat, a long white twin-engine outboard. He took Malenko’s bags and started the engines. “You made good time.” Oliver removed the ropes.

“Traffic was light.” Malenko took the passenger seat behind the windshield. Oliver maneuvered the boat through the little channel and around the floats that forged the barricade to the open water. In a few seconds, the big Mercury engines were cutting a wake to the island.

Oliver Vines was a carryover from their NSA days—a onetime operative who had assisted Malenko in the enhancement project, which back then was known as “Project Headlight”—a dumb name, but that was governmental skulduggery for you. Once that was terminated, Oliver and Malenko went their separate ways until ten years ago when Malenko set up his private practice. What made Oliver particularly valuable were his connections—from former government ops to private investigators to small-time crooks. He also had a total lack of compunction about performing matters that made others squeamish. Like excessive exposure to radium, governments did that to people. But it also meant that he left no trails—such as that snatcher he had hired in Florida.

Oliver had two passions—money and flying, the former he shared with his wife Vera, a former nurse’s aide who watched over the children. Of late, he had done considerable flying—little midnight excursions.

As they rounded the eastern flank of the island, the blue and white DeHavilland Beaver came into view at its berth on the small dock just offshore from the compound. If the weather held, Oliver would make another run in the plane later that evening. And because he would mostly be over water, he needed a clear sky to fly.

Oliver pulled the boat up to the dock then took one of Malenko’s shoulder bags as they climbed the dirt lane to the main building, a large brown structure that had once been a fishing and hunting lodge.

Before he entered, Malenko waved to Vera who was in the backyard playground with some of the children. Oliver led him inside where they were met by Phillip who poured Malenko a cup of coffee he had just made. In spite of the fact they were brothers, Phillip looked nothing like Karl back at the camp. Phillip Moy, a former private investigator who had run afoul of the law, had been recruited by Oliver. Phillip was proficient at running background checks on people. He was also handy with machinery and computers, which made him very useful keeping things in operating condition. On occasion he worked with the kids or accompanied Oliver in the dirty work.

“How’s Miss Amber doing?” Malenko asked, sipping his coffee.

“A little dopey,” Phillip said.

“Of course.”

As with all the patients, she had been administered an IV containing a mild tranquilizer that diminished anxiety over being away from home. They had also given her cyclohexylamine, also known as Ketamine, an anesthetic that produced amnesia, effectively blotting out all recall of the enhancement procedure. It was a remarkable drug, almost one hundred percent effective.

While Oliver took the bags upstairs to the bedroom, Malenko followed Phillip down the main hallway to the door in the rear storage room off the kitchen. He unlocked it and the next door at the opposite end, and they descended the stairs to the cellar.

They proceeded into the long bright tunnel that ran nearly a hundred feet under the backyard woods. At the far end was the operating room. Along the tunnel walls were windows spaced a dozen feet apart—one for each dormer. A dormer for each patient. The glass on the windows was thick and one-way visible, a reflecting surface on the obverse side giving the impression of a simple wall mirror, framed to complete the illusion. Because they were underground, the air was cooler and less humid than above. It was also filtered against dust and microbes.

Malenko stopped at the first room and pulled up the blinds on the one-way glass.

Inside was a little girl of six dressed in blue shorts and a white and blue pullover. He tapped the door lightly then let himself in with a master key.

Amber Bernardi. She was a plain child with large dark eyes and black hair. She was also the daughter and only child of Leo and Yolanda Bernardi, owners of Bernardi Automotive Enterprises which had Volkswagen and Porsche dealerships all over New England. Three days ago, they had dropped her off to be enhanced. There was the usual separation crisis: The child cried and fussed until they sedated her after her parents left. Then she was driven here for preop procedures.

To fill her time and minimize distress, they had provided her with television, videos, toys, games, and books. Vera or Phillip would occasionally drop in to chat or take her to the playground. Because of the sedatives, she was quite manageable.

“So, how is Miss Amber today?”

“Fine,” she said, drawing out the syllable.

She was sitting on a chair looking at a book while holding one of the stuffed dancing dolls. Years ago they had ordered a couple dozen of them from overseas because they proved to be a hit with the children. It seemed an appropriate choice, since it was a nearly life-sized version of Ganesha, the elephant god of India.

According to Hindu legend, Ganesha was born as a normal child to Shiva and the goddess Parvathi. But Shiva liked to roam the world. After his son was conceived, he went on a journey and did not return for several years. Because Ganesha had never seen his father, he did not recognize him while guarding his mother’s house. Since his mother was taking a bath, Ganesha demanded that Shiva go away. Angered that the young stranger told him to leave his own house, Shiva chopped off Ganesha’s head and went inside. Realizing that Shiva had killed his own son, Parvathi wailed in grief and demanded that Shiva bring Ganesha back to life. When he confessed that the boy’s head was severed, Parvathi instructed him to take the head off the first living thing he saw and attach it to Ganesha’s body so he could live again. It so happened that an elephant walked by. Instantly, Shiva beheaded the animal and attached its head to his son. Today Ganesha is revered as the god of wisdom.

It was the symbolism that had originally attracted Malenko to the creature. The kids referred to him as Mr. Nisha.

Amber flipped through the book looking at the pictures because, of course, she could not read. “When am I going home?”

“In three days.” Malenko held up his fingers. “How’s that?”

“But I wanna go home now,” she said, her voice thin and distant.

“Well, not for another three days.”

“How come?” she whined.

“Because.”

Because, he thought, you’re a stupid little girl and your parents have dropped a million dollars so you won’t grow up to be a stupid woman who will get herself knocked up by some equally stupid boy and end up wasting away your family’s fortune because you were incapable of a decent education and couldn’t get a decent job and would spend your life producing stupid babies, at least one of whom would go to prison to the tune of $40,000 per year. That’s how come.

“Would you like some milk and cookies?” he asked sweetly.

“Nah. I have some,” she said, and pointed to a paper cup and plate on the floor. She looked at him with flat vacant eyes. “I want some Saltines. I want some Salteeeens.” She began to blubber.

“We’ll get you some in a minute,” he said and got up. He gave her a lasting look. In twelve months, she would be completely transformed—almost another species. After all these years, it still awed him what he could accomplish here. They were right: He was a miracle worker. Perhaps Shiva. Or maybe Jesus, raising the dead. Or Jesus’ father, creating new life.

As he closed the door on Amber, Malenko’s mind tripped back to when the miracles began.

It was 1985, and Lucius had been summoned to the headquarters of the Kiev State Police where two KGB agents led him to a one-way glass wall that looked into an interrogation room within which sat two men in prison clothes smoking cigarettes. The older agent, a Vladimir Kovalyov, explained, “The one on the right is a former researcher from the Steklov Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences. He was caught selling secrets. The other man shoveled sand in a cement factory in Zhytomyr. He killed a policeman in an antigovernment rally.”

Six days later, the two men were lying side by side on tables in a makeshift operating room the government had set up in the basement of Malenko’s lab. The physicist’s name was Boris Patsiorkovski. He was fortyfour and the father of one. The stupid man’s name was Alexei Nedogoda. He was twenty-nine and the father of two. They were enemies of the state, Malenko told himself, and he sawed off the tops of their heads.

A hundred and twelve political prisoners later, Malenko had perfected surgical methodologies and had experimented with unilateral and bilateral implantation, using different harvest sites, different implants, different proportions, different postoperative drug therapies, and so forth. With each operation he learned something new about transplantation and the brain’s capacity to respond.

But the hope that tissue grafted from high-IQ brains into duller ones to produce smarter people was dashed. No enhanced cognitive powers were detected in the recipients. Thirty-three subjects had died, most of the rest had been rendered brain-damaged. After four years the project was terminated.