Mutation

6 Tuesday Morning

They took separate cars to drive to Boston since Victor wanted to return directly to Chimera. VJ chose to ride with Marsha.

The ride itself was uneventful. Marsha tried to get VJ to talk, but he answered all her questions with a curt yes or no. She gave up until they were a few minutes away from Children’s Hospital.

“Have you been having any headaches?” she asked, breaking the long silence.

“No,” VJ said. “I told you I’m fine. Why the sudden concern about my health?”

“It’s your father’s idea,” Marsha said. She couldn’t think of any reason not to tell the truth. “He calls it preventive medicine.”

“I think it’s a waste of time,” VJ said.

“Have you had any change in your memory?” Marsha asked.

“I’m telling you,” VJ snapped, “I’m entirely normal!”

“All right, VJ,” Marsha said. “There is no reason to get angry. We’re glad that you’re healthy and we want you to stay that way.” She wondered what the boy would think if he were told he was a chimera, and that he had animal genes fused into his chromosomes.

“Do you remember back when you were three and suddenly couldn’t read?” Marsha asked.

“Of course,” VJ said.

“We’ve never talked much about that period,” Marsha said.

VJ turned away from Marsha and looked out the window.

“Were you very upset?” Marsha asked.

VJ turned to her and said, “Mother, please don’t play psychiatrist with me. Of course it bothered me. It was frustrating not being able to do things that I’d been able to do. But I relearned them and I’m fine.”

“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m available,” Marsha said. “Just because I’ve never brought it up doesn’t mean I don’t care. You have to understand that it was a stressful time for me too. As a mother I was terrified that you were ill. Once it was clear you were all right, I guess I tried not to think about it.”

VJ just nodded.

They all met in the waiting room of Dr. Clifford Ruddock, Chief of the Department of Neurology. Victor had beat them by fifteen minutes. As soon as VJ sat down with a magazine, Victor took Marsha aside. “I spoke with Dr. Ruddock as soon as I arrived. He’s agreed to compare VJ’s current neurological status with what he found at the time VJ’s IQ dropped. But he is a little suspicious about why we brought him in today. Obviously, he knows nothing about the NGF gene, and I do not plan to tell him.”

“Naturally,” said Marsha.

Victor shot her a look. “I hope you are planning to be cooperative.”

“I’m going to be more than cooperative,” Marsha said. “As soon as VJ is finished here, I’m planning to take him to my office and have him go through a battery of psychological tests.”

“What on earth for?” Victor asked.

“The fact that you have to ask means that I probably couldn’t explain it to you.”

Dr. Ruddock, a tall, slender man with salt and pepper hair, called all the Franks into his office for a few minutes before the examination. He asked if the boy remembered him. VJ told the man that he did, particularly his smell.

Victor and Marsha chuckled nervously.

“It was your cologne,” VJ said. “You were wearing Hermès after-shave.”

Somewhat taken aback by this personal reference, Dr. Ruddock introduced everyone to Dr. Chris Stevens, his current fellow in pediatric neurology.

It was Dr. Stevens who examined VJ. In deference to the fact that both parents were physicians, Dr. Stevens allowed Victor and Marsha to remain in the room. It was as complete a neurological exam as either had ever witnessed. After an hour just about every facet of VJ’s nervous system had been evaluated and found to be entirely normal.

Then Stevens started the lab work. He drew blood for routine chemistries, and Victor had several tubes iced and put aside for him to take back to Chimera. Afterward, VJ was subjected to both PET and NMR scanning.

The PET scanning involved injecting harmless radioactive substances which emitted positrons into VJ’s arm while his head was positioned inside a large doughnut-shaped apparatus. The positrons collided with electrons in VJ’s brain, releasing a burst of energy with each collision in the form of two gamma rays. Crystals in the PET scanner recorded the gamma rays, and a computer tracked the course of the radiation, creating an image.

For the second test, the NMR scanning, VJ was placed inside a six-foot-long cylinder surrounded by huge magnets supercooled with liquid helium. The resultant magnetic field, which was sixty thousand times greater than the earth’s magnetic field, aligned the nuclei of the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules of VJ’s body. When a radio wave of a specific frequency knocked these nuclei out of alignment, they sprang back, emitting a faint radio signal of their own which was picked up in radio sensors in the scanner and transformed by computer into an image.

When all the tests were done, Dr. Ruddock summoned Victor and Marsha back to his office. VJ was left outside in the waiting room. Victor was plainly nervous, crossing and uncrossing his legs and running his hand through his hair. Throughout the testing neither Dr. Stevens nor the technician made any comment. By the end, Victor was almost paralyzed with tension.

“Well,” Dr. Ruddock began, fingering some of the print-outs and images from the tests, “not all the results are back, specifically the blood work, but we do have several positive findings here.”

Marsha’s heart sank.

“Both the PET and the NMR scans are abnormal,” Dr. Ruddock explained. He held up one of the multicolored PET scan images with his left hand. In his right hand he held a Mont Blanc pen. Carefully pointing to different areas, he said, “There is a markedly elevated but diffuse uptake of glucose in the cerebral hemispheres.” He dropped the paper and picked up another colored image. “In this NMR scan we can see the ventricles quite clearly.”

With her heart pounding, Marsha leaned forward to get a better look.

“It’s quite obvious,” Dr. Ruddock continued, “that these ventricles are significantly smaller than normal.”

“What does this mean?” Marsha asked hesitantly.

Dr. Ruddock shrugged. “Probably nothing. The child’s neurological exam is entirely normal according to Dr. Stevens. And these findings, although interesting, most likely have no effect on function. The only thing I can think of is that if his brain is using that much glucose, maybe you should feed him candy whenever he’s doing much thinking.” Dr. Ruddock laughed heartily at his own attempt at humor.

For a moment both Victor and Marsha sat there numbly, trying to make the transition from the bad news they’d expected to the good news they’d received. Victor was the first to recover. “We’ll certainly take your advice,” he said with a chuckle. “Any candy in particular?”

Dr. Ruddock laughed anew, enjoying that his humor was so well received. “Peter Paul Mounds is the therapy I recommend!”

Marsha thanked the doctor and ran out the door. Catching VJ unaware, she had him in a bear hug before he could move away. “Everything is fine,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re okay.”

VJ extracted himself from her grasp. “I knew I was fine before we came. Can we go now?”

Victor tapped Marsha on the shoulder. “I’ve got some other business here and then I’ll go directly to work. I’ll see you at home, okay?” Victor said.

“We’ll have a special dinner,” Marsha said, turning back to VJ. “We can leave but you, young man, are not finished. We are going to my office. I have a few more tests for you.”

“Oh, Mom!” whined VJ.

Marsha smiled. He sounded just like any other ten-year-old.

“Humor your mother,” Victor said. “I’ll see you both later.” He gave Marsha a peck on the cheek and tousled VJ’s hair.

Victor crossed from the professional building to the hospital proper and took the elevator to Pathology. He found Dr. Burghofen’s office. The man’s secretary was nowhere to be seen so Victor looked inside. Burghofen was typing with his two index fingers. Victor knocked on the doorjamb.

“Come in, come in!” Burghofen said with a wave. He continued to peck at the typewriter for a few moments, then gave up. “I don’t know why I’m doing this except my secretary calls in sick every other day, and I’m constrained from firing her. Administering this department is going to be the death of me.”

Victor smiled, reminding himself to remember that academia had its own limitations the next time he got fed up with office problems at Chimera.

“I was wondering if you had finished the autopsies on the two children who died of cerebral edema,” Victor said.

Dr. Burghofen scanned the surface of his cluttered desk. “Where’s that clipboard?” he asked rhetorically. He spun around in his chair, finding what he was searching for on the shelf directly behind him. “Let’s see,” he said, flipping over the pages. “Here we are: Maurice Hobbs and Mark Murray. Are those the ones?”

“Yup,” Victor said.

“They were assigned to Dr. Shryack. He’s probably doing them now.”

“All right if I go look?” asked Victor.

“Suit yourself,” he said, checking the clipboard. “It’s amphitheater three.” Then as Victor was about to leave, he asked, “You did say you were a medical doctor, didn’t you?”

Victor nodded.

“Enjoy yourself,” Dr. Burghofen said, returning to the typewriter.

The pathology department, like the rest of the hospital, was new, with state-of-the-art equipment. Everything was steel, glass or Formica.

The four autopsy rooms looked like operating rooms. Only one was in use and Victor went directly inside. The autopsy table was shining stainless steel, as were the other implements in sight. Two men standing on either side of the table looked up as Victor entered. In front of them was a young child whose body was splayed open like a gutted fish. Behind them on a gurney was the small, covered body of another.

Victor shuddered. It had been a long time since he’d seen an autopsy and he’d forgotten the impact. Particularly when viewing a child.

“Can we help you?” the doctor on the right asked. He was masked like a surgeon, but instead of a gown, he wore a rubberized apron.

“I’m Dr. Frank,” Victor said, struggling to suppress nausea. Besides the visual assault, there was the fetid odor that even the room’s modern air conditioning could not handle. “I’m interested in the Hobbs baby and the Murray baby. Dr. Burghofen sent me down.”

“You can watch over here if you like,” the pathologist said, motioning Victor over with his scalpel.

Tentatively, Victor advanced into the room. He tried not to look at the tiny eviscerated body.

“Are you Dr. Shryack?” asked Victor.

“That’s me.” The pathologist had a pleasant, youthful voice and bright eyes. “And this is Samuel Harkinson,” he said, introducing his assistant. “These children your patients?”

“Not really,” Victor said. “But I’m terribly interested in the cause of their deaths.”

“Join the group,” Dr. Shryack said. “Strange story! Come over here and look at this brain.”

Victor swallowed. The child’s scalp had been cut and pulled down over the face. Then the skull had been sawed around the circumference of the head, and the crown lifted off. Victor found himself looking at the child’s brain, which had risen out of its confinement, giving the child the appearance of some sort of alien being. Most of the gyri of the cerebral cortices had been flattened where they had pressed against the inside of the skull.

“This has to be the worst case of cerebral edema I’ve ever seen,” Dr. Shryack said. “It makes getting the brain out a chore and a half. Took me half an hour with the other one.” He pointed toward the shrouded body.

“Till you figured out how to do it,” Harkinson said with a faint Cockney accent.

“Right you are, Samuel.”

With Harkinson holding the head and pushing the swollen brain to the side, Dr. Shryack was able to get his knife between the brain and the base of the skull to cut the upper part of the spinal cord.

Then, with a dull, ripping sound, the brain pulled free. Harkinson cut the cranial nerves, and Dr. Shryack quickly hoisted the brain and placed it in the pan of the overhead scale. The pointer swung wildly back and forth, then settled on 3.2.

“It’s a full pound more than normal,” Dr. Shryack said, scooping the brain back up with his gloved hands and carrying it over to a sink that had continuous running water. He rinsed the clotted blood and other debris from the brain, then put it on a wooden chopping block.

With experienced hands, Dr. Shryack carefully examined the brain for gross pathology. “Other than its size, it looks normal.”

He selected a carving knife from a group in a drawer, and began slicing off half-inch sections. “No hemorrhage, no tumors, no infection. The NMR scanner was right again.”

“I was wondering if I could ask a favor,” Victor said. “Would it be at all possible for me to take a sample back to my own lab to have it processed?”

Dr. Shryack shrugged. “I suppose, but I wouldn’t want it to become common knowledge. It would be a great thing to get into the Boston Globe that we’re giving out brain tissue. I wonder what that would do to our autopsy percentage?”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

“You want this case, which I think is the Hobbs kid, or do you want the other one?” Dr. Shryack asked.

“Both, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I suppose giving you two specimens is no different than giving you one,” said Dr. Shryack.

“Have you done the gross on the internal organs yet?” asked Victor.

“Not yet,” Shryack said. “That’s next on the agenda. Want to watch?”

Victor shrugged. “Why not. I’m here.”

VJ was even less communicative on the ride back to Lawrence than he’d been on the ride into Boston that morning. He was obviously mad about the whole situation, and Marsha wondered if he would be cooperative enough to make psychological testing worthwhile.

She parked across from her office. They waited for the elevator even though they were going up only one floor because the stairwell door was locked from the inside. “I know you’re angry,” Marsha said. “But I do want you to take some psychological tests, yet it’s not worth your time or Jean’s unless you cooperate. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” VJ said crisply, fixing Marsha with his dazzlingly blue eyes.

“Well, will you cooperate?” she asked as the elevator doors opened.

VJ nodded coldly.

Jean was overjoyed to see them. She’d had a terrible time juggling Marsha’s patients, but she’d managed in her usual efficient way.

As for VJ, she was really happy to see him, even though he greeted her without much enthusiasm, then excused himself to use the bathroom.

“He’s a bit out of sorts,” Marsha explained. She went on to tell Jean about the neuro work-up and her desire to have him take their basic battery of psychological tests.

“It will be hard for me to do it today,” Jean said. “With you out all morning the phone has been ringing off the hook.”

“Let the service handle the phone,” Marsha advised. “It’s important I get VJ tested.”

Jean nodded and immediately began getting out the forms and preparing their computer to grade and correlate the results.

When VJ returned from the bathroom, Jean had him sit right down at the keyboard. Since he was familiar with some of the tests, she asked him which kind he wanted to take first.

“Let’s start with the intelligence tests,” VJ said agreeably.

For the next hour and a half, Jean administered the WAIS-R intelligence test, which included six verbal and five performance subtests. From her experience she knew that VJ was doing well, but nowhere near what he’d done seven years previously. She also noted that VJ tended to hesitate before he answered a question or performed a task. It was like he wanted to be doubly sure of his choice.

“Very good!” Jean said when they’d reached the completion. “Now how about the personality test?”

“Is that the MMPI?” VJ asked. “Or the MCMI?”

“I’m impressed,” Jean said. “Sounds like you have been doing a little reading.”

“It’s easy when one of your parents is a psychiatrist,” VJ said.

“We use both, but let’s start with the MMPI,” Jean said. “You don’t need me for this. It’s all multiple choice. If you have any problems, just yell.”

Jean left VJ in the testing room, and went back to the reception desk. She called the service and got the pile of messages that had accumulated. She attended to the ones that she could and when Marsha’s patient left, gave her the messages she had to handle herself.

“How’s VJ doing?” Marsha asked.

“Couldn’t be better,” Jean reported.

“He’s being cooperative?” Marsha asked.

“Like a lamb,” Jean said. “In fact, he seems to be enjoying himself.”

Marsha shook her head in amazement. “Must be you. He was in an awful mood with me.”

Jean took it as a compliment. “He’s had a WAIS-R and he’s in the middle of an MMPI. What other tests do you want? A Rorschach and a Thematic Apperception Test or what?”

Marsha chewed on her thumbnail for a moment, thinking. “Why don’t we do that TAT and let the Rorschach go for now. We can always do it later.”

“I’ll be happy to do both,” Jean said.

“Let’s just do the TAT,” Marsha said as she picked up the next chart. “VJ’s in a good mood but why push it? Besides, it might be interesting to cross check the TAT and the Rorschach if they are taken on different days.” She called the patient whose chart she was holding and disappeared for another session.

After Jean finished as much paperwork as she could, she returned to the testing room. VJ was absorbed in the personality test.

“Any problems?” Jean asked.

“Some of these questions are too much,” VJ said with a laugh. “A couple of them have no appropriate answers.”

“The idea is to select the best one possible,” Jean said.

“I know,” VJ said. “That’s what I’m doing.”

At noon, they broke for lunch and walked to the hospital. They ate in the coffee shop. Marsha and Jean had tuna salad sandwiches while VJ had a hamburger and a shake. Marsha noted with contentment that VJ’s attitude had indeed changed. She began to think she had worried for nothing; the tests he was taking would probably result in a healthy psychological portrait. She was dying to ask Jean about the results so far, but she knew she couldn’t in front of VJ. Within thirty minutes they were all back at their respective tasks.

An hour later, Jean put the phone back on service and returned to the testing room. Just as she closed the door behind her, VJ spoke up: “There,” he said, clicking the last question. “All done.”

“Very good,” Jean said, impressed. VJ had gone through the five hundred and fifty questions in half the usual time. “Would you like to rest before the next test?” she asked.

“Let’s get it over with,” VJ said.

For ninety minutes, Jean showed the TAT cards to VJ. Each contained a black and white picture of people in circumstances that elicited responses having psychological overtones. VJ was asked to describe what he thought was going on in each picture and how the people felt. The idea was for VJ to project his fantasies, feelings, patterns of relationships, needs, and conflicts.

With some patients the TAT was no easy test to administer. But with VJ, Jean found herself enjoying the process. The boy had no trouble coming up with interesting explanations and his responses were both logical and normal. By the end of the test Jean felt that VJ was emotionally stable, well adjusted, and mature for his age.

When Marsha was finished with her last patient, Jean went into the office and gave her the computer print-outs. The MMPI would be sent off to be evaluated by a program with a larger data base, but their PC gave them an initial report.

Marsha glanced through the papers, as Jean gave her own positive clinical impression. “I think he is a model child. I truly can’t see how you can be concerned about him.”

“That’s reassuring,” Marsha said, studying the IQ test results. The overall score was 128. That was only a two-point variation from the last time that Marsha had had VJ tested several years previously. So VJ’s IQ had not changed, and it was a good, solid, healthy score, certainly well above average. But there was one discrepancy that bothered Marsha: a fifteen-point difference between the verbal and the performance IQ, with the verbal lower than the performance, which suggested a cognitive problem relating to language disabilities. Given VJ’s facility in French, it didn’t seem to make sense.

“I noticed that,” Jean said when Marsha queried it, “but since the overall score was so good I didn’t give it much significance. Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Marsha said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a result like this before. Oh well, let’s go on to the MMPI.”

Marsha put the personality inventory results in front of her. The first part was called the validity scales. Again something immediately aroused her attention. The F and K scales were mildly elevated and at the upper limit of what would be considered normal. Marsha pointed that out to Jean as well.

“But they are in the normal range,” Jean insisted.

“True,” Marsha said, “but you have to remember that all this is relative. Why would VJ’s validity scales be nearly abnormal?”

“He did the test quickly,” Jean said. “Maybe he got a little careless.”

“VJ is never careless,” Marsha said. “Well, I can’t explain this, but let’s go on.”

The second part of the report was the clinical scales, and Marsha noted that none were in the abnormal range. She was particularly happy to see that scale four and scale eight were well within normal limits. Those two scales referred to psychopathic deviation and schizophrenic behavior respectively. Marsha breathed a sigh of relief because these scales had a high degree of correlation with clinical reality, and she’d been afraid they would be elevated, given VJ’s history.

But then Marsha noted that scale three was “high normal.” That would mean VJ tended toward hysteria, constantly seeking affection and attention. That certainly did not correlate with Marsha’s experience.

“Was it your impression that VJ was cooperating when he took this test?” Marsha asked Jean.

“Absolutely,” Jean said.

“I suppose I should be happy with these results,” Marsha said, as she gathered the papers together, then stood them on end, tapping them against the desk until they were lined up.

“I think so,” Jean said encouragingly.

Marsha stapled the papers together, then tossed them into her briefcase. “Yet both the Wechsler and the MMPI are a little abnormal. Well, maybe unexpected is a better word. I’d have preferred they be unqualifyingly normal. By the way, how did VJ respond to the TAT with the man standing over the child with his arm raised?”

“VJ said he was giving a lecture.”

“The man or the child?” Marsha asked with a laugh.

“Definitely the man.”

“Any hostility involved?” Marsha asked.

“None.”

“Why was the man’s arm raised?”

“Because the man was talking about tennis, and he was showing the boy how to serve,” Jean said.

“Tennis? VJ has never played tennis.”

As Victor drove onto the grounds of Chimera, he noted that none of the previous night’s snow remained. It was still cloudy but the temperature had risen into the high forties.

He parked his car in the usual spot, but instead of heading directly into the administration building, he took the brown paper bag from the front seat of the car and went directly to his lab.

“Got some extra rush work for you,” he said to his head technician, Robert Grimes.

Robert was a painfully thin, intense man, who wore shirts with necks much too large for him, emphasizing his thinness. His eyes had a bulging look of continual surprise.

Victor pulled out the iced vials of VJ’s blood and sample bottles containing pieces of the dead children’s brains. “I want chromosome studies done on these.”

Robert picked up the blood vials, shook them, then examined the brain samples. “You want me to let other things go and do this?”

“That’s right,” Victor said. “I want it done as soon as possible. Plus I want some standard neural stains on the brain slices.”

“I’ll have to let the uterine implant work slide,” Robert said.

“You have my permission.”

Leaving the lab, Victor went to the next building, which housed the central computer. It was situated in the geometric center of the courtyard, an ideal location since the building had easy access to all other facilities. The main office was on the first floor, and Victor had no trouble locating Louis Kaspwicz. There was some problem with a piece of hardware, and Louis was supervising several technicians who had the massive machine open as if it were undergoing surgery.

“Have any information for me?” Victor asked.

Louis nodded, told the technicians to keep searching, and led Victor back to his office where he produced a loose-leaf notebook containing the computer logs. “I’ve figured out why you couldn’t call up those files on your terminal,” Louis said. He began to flip the pages of the computer log.

“Why?” Victor asked, as Louis kept searching through the book.

Not finding what he was looking for, he straightened up and glanced around his office. “Ah,” he said, spying a loose sheet of paper and snatching it from the desk top.

“You couldn’t call up the files on Baby Hobbs or Baby Murray because they’d been deleted on November 18,” he said, waving the paper under Victor’s nose.

“Deleted?”

“I’m afraid so,” Louis said. “This is the computer log for November 18, and it clearly shows that the files were deleted.”

“That’s strange,” Victor said. “I don’t suppose you can determine who deleted them, can you?”

“Sure,” Louis said. “By matching the password of the user.”

“Did you do that?”

“Yes,” Louis said.

“Well, who was it?” Victor asked irritably. It seemed like Louis was deliberately making this difficult.

Louis glanced at Victor, then looked away. “You, Dr. Frank.”

“Me?” Victor said with surprise. That was the last thing he expected to hear. Yet he did remember thinking about deleting the files, maybe even planning on doing it at some time, but he could not remember actually having done it.

“Sorry,” Louis said, shifting his weight. He was plainly uncomfortable.

“It’s quite all right,” Victor said, embarrassed himself. “Thank you for looking into it for me.”

“Any time,” Louis said.

Victor left the computer center, perplexed at this new information. It was true that he’d become somewhat forgetful of late, but could he have actually deleted the files and forgotten about it? Could it have been an accident? He wondered what he’d been doing November 18. Victor went back to the administration building and slowly climbed the back stairs. As he walked down the second-floor corridor toward the rear entrance of his office, he decided to check back over his calendar. He took off his coat, hung it up, and then went to talk to Colleen.

“Dr. Frank, you frightened me!” she exclaimed when Victor tapped her on the shoulder. She’d been concentrating on typing with dictation headphones on. “I had no idea you were here.”

Victor apologized, saying that he’d come in the back way.

“How was the visit to the hospital?” Colleen asked. Victor had called her early that morning to explain why he wouldn’t be in until afternoon. “I hope to God VJ is okay.”

“He’s fine,” Victor said with a smile. “The tests were normal. Of course, we are waiting on a group of blood tests. But I feel confident they’ll be fine as well.”

“Thank God!” Colleen said. “You scared me when you called this morning: a full neuro work-up sounded pretty serious.”

“I was a little worried myself,” Victor admitted.

“I suppose you want your phone messages,” Colleen said as she peeked under some papers on her otherwise neat desk. “I’ve got a ton of them for you somewhere here.”

“Hold the messages a minute,” Victor said. “Would you haul out the calendar for 1988? I’m particularly interested in November 18.”

“Certainly,” Colleen said. She detached herself from her dictation machine and headed for the files.

Victor went back into his office. While he waited, he thought about the harassing phone call that VJ had unfortunately received, and he debated what to do about it. Reluctantly, he realized there was little he could do. If he asked any of the people he was having a problem with, they’d obviously deny it.

Colleen came into his office carrying the calendar already opened to November 18, and stuck it under Victor’s nose. It had been a fairly busy day. But there was nothing that had anything even slightly to do with the missing files. The last entry noted that Victor had taken Marsha into Boston to eat at Another Season and go to the Boston Symphony.

Removing her robe, Marsha slid into the deliciously warm bed. She turned down the controls of the electric blanket from high to three. Victor had edged as far away from the heat as possible. His side of the electric blanket was never used. He’d been in bed for over a half hour and was busy reading from a stack of professional journals.

Marsha rolled on her side, studying Victor’s profile. The sharp line of his nose, the slightly hollow cheeks, the thin lips were as familiar to Marsha as her own. Yet he seemed like a stranger. She still hadn’t fully accepted what he’d done to VJ, vacillating between disbelief, anger, and fear, with fear being paramount.

“Do you think those tests mean VJ’s really all right?” she asked.

“I’m reassured,” Victor said without looking up from his magazine. “And you acted pretty happy in Dr. Ruddock’s office.”

Marsha rolled over on her back. “That was immediate relief that nothing obvious showed up, like a brain tumor.” She looked back at Victor. “But there still is no explanation for his dramatic drop in intelligence.”

“But that was six and a half years ago.”

“I’m still worried that the process will start again.”

“Suit yourself,” Victor said.

“Victor!” Marsha said. “Can’t you put whatever it is you’re reading aside for a moment to talk with me?”

Letting the open journal drop, he said, “I am talking to you.”

“Thank you,” Marsha said. “Of course I’m glad VJ’s physical exam was normal. But his psychological exams weren’t. They were unexpected, and a little contradictory.” Marsha then went on to explain her findings, finishing with VJ’s relatively high score on the hysteria scale.

“VJ’s not emotional,” Victor said.

“That’s the point,” Marsha said.

“Seems to me the result says more about psychological tests than anything else. They probably aren’t accurate.”

“On the contrary,” Marsha said. “These tests are considered very reliable. But I don’t know what to make of them. Unfortunately they just add to my uneasiness. I can’t help feeling that something terrible is going to happen.”

“Listen,” Victor said. “I took some of VJ’s blood back to the lab. I’m going to have chromosome six isolated. If it hasn’t changed, I’ll be perfectly satisfied. And you should be as well.” He reached out as if to pat her thigh but she moved her leg away. Victor let his hand fall back to the bed. “If VJ has some mild psychological problems, well that’s something else and we can get him some therapy, okay?” He wanted to reassure her further, but he didn’t know what else to say. He certainly wasn’t about to mention the missing files.

Marsha took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try to relax. You’ll tell me about the DNA study as soon as you look at it?”

“Absolutely,” Victor said. He smiled at her. She managed to smile back weakly.

Victor raised his journal and tried to read. But he kept thinking about the missing files. Victor wondered again if he could have deleted them. It was a possibility. Since they weren’t cross-referenced, it was unlikely someone else could have deleted all three.

“Did you find out what caused the death of those poor babies?” Marsha asked.

Victor let the journal drop once more. “Not yet. The autopsies aren’t complete. The microscopic hasn’t been done.”

“Could it have been cancer?” Marsha asked nervously, remembering the day David got sick. That was another date that Marsha would never forget: June 17, 1984. David was ten, VJ five. School had been out for several weeks and Janice was planning to take the children to Castle Beach.

Marsha was in her study, getting her things ready to take to the office when David appeared in the doorway, his thin arms hanging limply at his sides.

“Mommy, something is wrong with me,” he said.

Marsha didn’t look up immediately. She was trying to find a folder she’d brought from the office the day before.

“What seems to be the trouble?” she asked, closing one drawer and opening another. David had gone to bed the night before complaining of some abdominal discomfort, but Pepto-Bismol had taken care of that.

“I look funny,” David said.

“I think you are a handsome boy,” Marsha said, turning to scan the built-in shelves behind her desk.

“I’m getting yellow,” David said.

Marsha stopped what she was doing and turned to face her son, who ran to her and buried his face in her bosom. He was an affectionate child.

“What makes you think you’re turning yellow?” she asked, feeling the first stirrings of fear. “Let me see your face,” she said, gently trying to pull the boy away from her. She was hoping that he was wrong and there would be some silly explanation for his impression.

David would not let go. “It’s my eyes,” he said, his voice muffled against her. “And my tongue.”

“Your tongue can get yellow from a lemon candy,” Marsha said. “Come, now. Let me see.”

The light in her study was poor, so she walked him into the hall where she looked at David’s eyes in the light streaming through the window. Marsha caught her breath. There was no doubt. The boy was severely jaundiced.

Later that day a CAT scan showed a diffuse tumor of the liver. It was an enormously aggressive cancer that destroyed the child’s liver within days of making the diagnosis.

“Neither baby seemed to have cancer,” Victor was saying, rousing Marsha from her reverie. “The gross studies showed no signs of malignancy.”

Marsha tried to shake away the haunting image of David’s yellow eyes looking at her from his gaunt face. Even his skin had rapidly turned yellow. She cleared her throat. “What do you think the chances are that the babies’ deaths were caused by the foreign genes you inserted?”

Victor didn’t answer immediately. “I’d like to think the problem was unrelated. After all, none of the hundreds of animal experiments resulted in any health problems.”

“But you can’t be sure?” Marsha asked.

“I can’t be sure,” Victor agreed.

“What about the other five zygotes?” Marsha asked.

“What do you mean?” Victor asked. “They are stored in the freezer.”

“Are they normal or did you mutate them too?” Marsha asked.

“All of them have the NGF gene,” Victor said.

“I want you to destroy them,” Marsha said.

“Why?” Victor asked.

“You said you were sorry for what you’d done,” Marsha said angrily. “And now you are asking why you should destroy them?”

“I’m not going to implant them,” Victor said. “I can promise you that. But I might need them to help figure out what went wrong with the Hobbs and Murray babies. Remember, their zygotes had both been frozen. That was the only difference between them and VJ.”

Marsha studied Victor’s face. It was a horrible feeling to realize that she didn’t know if she believed him or not. She did not like the idea of those zygotes being potentially viable.

Before she could argue further, a crash shattered the night. Even before the sound of the broken glass faded, a high-pitched scream reverberated from VJ’s room. Marsha and Victor leaped from the bed and ran headlong down the hall.