Perfect People

24

Shortly before midnight, Naomi was violently sick. John knelt beside her in the bathroom, holding her forehead, the way his mother used to hold his when he was a child.

She had thrown up everything inside her, and now it was just bile coming out. And she was shedding tears.

‘It’s OK,’ he said gently, struggling hard against the smell not to retch, too. ‘It’s OK, darling.’

He wiped her mouth with a wetted towel, dabbed her eyes, then helped her back to bed. ‘Feel better?’ he asked anxiously.

She nodded, eyes open wide, bloodshot, expressionless. ‘How much longer’s this bloody sickness going to go on for? I thought it was meant to be morning sickness?’

‘Maybe it was something you ate?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

John turned off the light and lay still, feeling the damp heat coming off her body, his stomach still queasy from the smell of vomit.

‘What do you really think it was?’ she asked, suddenly.

‘Think what was?’

‘What made the helicopter crash. Do you think it was a bomb?’

There was a long silence. John listened to her breathing; it was steadily becoming less jerky, more rhythmic. Then, just as he thought she was deeply asleep, she spoke again.

‘He had enemies.’

‘A lot of scientists have enemies.’

‘Do you have enemies, John?’

‘I’m not well enough known. I’m sure if I was, there’d be a bunch of fanatics violently opposed to my views. Anyone who dares to stick their head above the parapet and be counted is going to have enemies. But there’s a big step between disliking what someone does and blowing them to pieces.’

After some moments she said, ‘What do you suppose is going to happen to his lab – ship?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘There must be someone there dealing with admin. They’re going to have to cancel new patients – there must be someone you can get hold of who can look at our records and find out what’s happened, surely?’

‘I’ll try again in the morning. I’m going to try to speak to Dr Leu – he seemed pretty on the ball.’

He closed his eyes but his brain was racing. Dettore would have kept detailed records of exactly what he had done to every foetus. It would all be there in his files. Dr Leu would have the answers; of course he would.

‘Maybe it’s God’s way.’ She spoke so gently, like a child.

‘ God’s way – what do you mean?’

‘Perhaps He’s angry about – you know – about what we did – about what people are trying to do. And this is His way of balancing things up.’

‘By making you sick and by killing Dr Dettore?’

‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean-’

There was a long silence.

John climbed out of the bed. He needed more water, tablets, sleep. He desperately needed more sleep.

‘Maybe God decided we should have a girl, not a boy,’ Naomi said.

‘What’s this talk about God, suddenly? I thought you weren’t too impressed with God?’

‘Because – I’m wondering – maybe Dr Dettore didn’t make a mistake. Maybe God intervened?’

John was aware that pregnancy messed around with a woman’s hormones and they in turn could mess around with the brain. Maybe it was that. ‘Darling.’ He sat down on the bed. ‘Dettore screwed up. I don’t think this is God intervening. This is a scientist doing something wrong.’

‘And we don’t know how wrong?’

‘We don’t know for sure it’s wrong at all. I still think Rosengarten is an arrogant man and he could have made a mistake that he won’t admit to. We’ll get a second opinion. I don’t think we should worry too much at this stage.’

‘Why don’t we have its – her – entire genome read?’

‘Apart from the cost, it’s not just getting it read, it’s the analysis that’s complex. There are over twelve hundred genes responsible for the prostate; seven hundred for breasts; five hundred for ovaries. It’s a massive task.’

‘If Dr Dettore was able to do it, surely – I mean, how could he have done it so far ahead? And kept it quiet?’

‘Happens in science all the time. You get someone way ahead – sometimes so way ahead people don’t appreciate the discovery. He is – was – awesomely smart. He had unlimited money to throw at it.’ And, he thought, but did not tell her, not wanting to worry her more, Dettore very definitely had some kind of a hidden agenda. He wasn’t covering his costs of running the floating clinic – and that was without his own fees. Let alone the huge time commitment.

Altruism? For the good of mankind? Or He drifted into troubled sleep.

It seemed only moments later that the phone was ringing.