“Nope, it’s certainly not a retro virus,” Robert said. “In fact, it’s some kind of artificially fabricated gene.” Then with a laugh he added, “I’d have to call it a Chimera gene. Within the sequence is an internal promoter that I’ve used myself on a number of occasions—one taken from the SV40 simian virus. But the rest of the gene had to come from some other microorganism, either a bacterium or a virus.”
There was a pause.
“Are you still there, Dr. Frank?” Robert asked, thinking the connection had broken.
“You’re sure about all this?” Victor asked, his voice wavering. The implications were becoming all too clear.
“Absolutely,” Robert said. “I was surprised myself. I’ve never heard of such a thing. My first guess was that these people picked up some kind of DNA vector and it got into their bloodstreams. That seemed so strange that I gave it a lot more thought. The only possible mechanism that I could come up with involves red-blood-cell bags filled with this infective gene. As soon as the Kupffer cells in the liver picked them up, the infective particles inserted themselves into the cell’s genome. The new genes then turned proto-oncogenes into oncogenes, and bingo: liver cancer. But there’s only one problem with this scenario. You know what it is?”
“No, what?”
“There’s only one way that RBC membrane bags could get into somebody’s bloodstream,” Robert said, oblivious to the effect all this was having on Victor. “They would have to be injected. I know that—”
Robert never had a chance to finish his sentence. Victor had hung up.
The mounting evidence was incontrovertible. There was no denying it: David and Janice had died of liver cancer caused by a piece of foreign DNA inserting itself into their chromosomes. And on top of that, there was the instructor from Pendleton Marsha had told him about. All these people were intimately related to VJ. And VJ was a scientific genius with an ultramodern, sophisticated laboratory at his disposal.
Colleen poked her head in. “I was waiting for you to get off the phone,” she said brightly. “Your wife is here. Can I send her in?”
Victor nodded. Suddenly he felt extremely tired.
Marsha came into the room and closed the door forcibly. The wind rustled the papers on Victor’s desk. She walked directly over to Victor and leaned forward over his blotter, looking him directly in the eye.
“I know you would rather not do anything,” she said. “I know you don’t want to upset VJ, and I know you are excited about his accomplishments, but you are going to have to face the reality that the boy is not playing by the rules. Let me tell you about my latest discovery. VJ is involved with a group of Colombians who are supposedly opening a furniture import business in Mattapan. I met these men and let me tell you, they don’t look like furniture merchants to me.”
Marsha stopped abruptly. Victor wasn’t reacting. “Victor?” Marsha said questioningly. His eyes had a dazed, unfocused look.
“Marsha, sit down,” Victor said, shaking his head with sad, slow deliberation. He cradled his head in his hands and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk. Then he ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed his neck, and straightened up. Marsha sat down, studying her husband intently. Her pulse began to race.
“I’ve just learned something worse,” Victor said. “A few days ago I got samples of David’s and Janice’s tumors. Robert has been working on them. He just called to tell me that their cancers had been artificially induced. A foreign cancer-causing gene was put into their bloodstreams.”
Marsha cried out, bringing her hands to her mouth in dismay. Even though she had begun to suspect as much, the confirmation was as horrifying as if she’d been given the news cold. Coming from Victor, who’d fought her tooth and nail when it came to hear fears and apprehensions, made it all the more damning. She bit her lower lip while she quivered with a combination of anger, sadness, and fear. “It had to be VJ!” she whispered.
Victor slammed his palm on top of his desk, sending papers flying. “We don’t know that for sure!” he shouted.
“All these people knew VJ intimately,” Marsha said, echoing Victor’s own thoughts. “And he wanted them out of the way.”
Victor shook his head in grim resignation. How much blame lay at his door, and how much lay at VJ’s? He was the one who’d ensured the boy’s brilliance. But did he stop for one second to think what might go hand in hand with that genius? If David and Janice and that teacher had died by VJ’s hand, Victor wasn’t sure he could live with his conscience.
Marsha began hesitantly, but her conviction made her strong. “I think we have to know exactly what VJ is doing in the rest of that lab of his.”
Victor let his arms fall limply to his side and stared out the window. He looked at the clock tower, knowing that VJ was working there right now. He turned to Marsha and said, “Let’s go find out.”
14
Monday Afternoon
MARSHA had to run to keep up with Victor as he made his way toward the river. The two soon left the renovated part of the complex behind. In broad daylight the abandoned buildings did not look quite so sinister.
Entering the building, Victor went straight to the trapdoor, bent down, and rapped sharply on the floor several times.
In a minute or two the trapdoor came up. A man in a Chimera security uniform eyed Victor and Marsha warily, then motioned for them to descend.
Victor went first. By the time Marsha was down the stairs, Victor had rounded the paddle wheel and was heading toward the intimidating metal door barring the entrance to the unexplored portion of VJ’s lab. For Marsha, the lab itself was as forbidding as it had been the last time she’d been there. She knew that the fruits of scientific research could be put to good or evil use, but something about the eerie basement quarters gave Marsha the feeling that the research conducted here was for a darker purpose.
“Hey!” yelled one of the guards, seeing Victor approach the restricted door. He jumped up and sprinted across the room diagonally, and grabbed Victor by the arm. He pulled him around roughly. “Nobody’s allowed in there,” he snarled in his strong Spanish accent.
To Marsha’s surprise, Victor put his hand squarely on the man’s face and pushed him back. The gesture took the man by surprise, and he fell to one knee, but he maintained a hold on Victor’s jacket sleeve. With a forcible yank, Victor shook free of the man’s grasp and reached around to the door.
The security guard pulled a knife from his boot and flicked it open. A flash of light glinted off its razor surface.
“Victor!” Marsha screamed. Victor turned when he heard her scream. The guard came at him, holding the knife out in front of his body like a miniature rapier. Victor parried the thrust but the man got hold of his arm. The knife rose menacingly.
“Stop it!” VJ yelled as he burst through the door toward which Victor had been heading. The two other security men who were in the room got between the two combatants, one restraining Victor, the other dealing with the knife-wielding guard.
“Let my father go!” VJ commanded.
“He was going into the back lab,” the guard with the knife cried.
“Let him go,” VJ ordered even more sternly than before.
Victor was released with a shove. He staggered forward, trying to maintain his balance. Doing so, he made another move for the door. VJ reached out and grasped his arm just as Victor was about to push through to the other side.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” VJ asked.
“I want to see it all,” Victor said flatly.
“Remember the Tree of Knowledge?”
“Of Good and Evil,” countered Victor. “You can’t talk me out of this.”
VJ pulled his hand back. “Suit yourself, but you may not appreciate the consequences.”
Victor looked to Marsha, who nodded for him to go. Turning again to the door, he pulled it open. Pale blue light flooded out. Victor stepped over the threshold with Marsha right behind him. VJ followed, then pulled the door
closed.
The room was about fifty feet long and rather narrow. On a long bench built of rough-hewn lumber sat four fifty-gallon glass tanks. The sides were fused with silicone. The tanks were illuminated by heat lamps and gave off the eerie blue light as it refracted through the contained fluid.
Marsha’s jaw dropped in horror when she realized what was in the tanks. Inside each one and enveloped in transparent membranes were four fetuses, each perhaps eight months old, who were swimming about in their artificial wombs. They watched Marsha as she walked down the aisle, their blue eyes fully open. They gestured, smiled, and even yawned.
Casually, but with an air of arrogant pride, VJ gave a cursory explanation of the system. In each tank the placentas were plastered onto a plexiglass grid against a membrane bag connected to a sort of heart-lung machine. Each machine had its own computer, which was in turn attached to a protein synthesizer. The liquid surface of each tank was covered with plastic balls to retard evaporation.
Neither Marsha nor Victor could speak, so appalled were they by the sight of the gestating children. Although they had tried to prepare themselves for the unexpected, this was a shock too outrageous to behold.
“I’m sure you’re wondering what this is all about,” VJ said, moving up to one of the tanks and checking one of the many read-out devices. He hit it with his fist and a stuck needle indicator sprang into the green-painted normal zone. “My early work on implantation had me modeling wombs with tissue culture. Solving the implantation problem also solved the problems of why a uterus was needed at all.”
“How old are these children?” Marsha asked.
“Eight and a half months,” VJ said, confirming Marsha’s impression. “I’ll be keeping them gestating a lot longer than the usual nine months. They will be easier to raise the longer I keep them in their tanks.”
“Where did you get the zygotes?” Victor asked, although he already knew the answer.
“I’m pleased to say that they are my brothers and sisters.”
Marsha’s incredulous gaze went from the fetuses in the tanks to VJ.
VJ laughed at her expression. “Come now, this can’t be that much of a surprise. I got the zygotes from the freezer in Father’s lab. No sense letting them go to waste or letting Dad implant them in other people.”
“There were five,” Victor said. “Where’s the fifth?”
“Good memory,” VJ said. “Unfortunately, I had to waste the fifth on an early test of the implantation protocol. But four is plenty for statistical extrapolation, at least for the first batch.”
Marsha turned back to the gestating children. They were her own!
“Let’s not be too surprised at all this,” VJ said. “You knew this technology was on its way. I’ve just speeded it up.”
Victor went up to one of the computers as it sprang to life and spewed out a half page of data. As soon as it was finished printing, the protein synthesizer turned on and began making a protein.
“The system is sensing the need for some kind of growth factor,” VJ explained.
Victor looked at the print-out. It included the vital signs, chemistries, and blood count of the child. He was astounded at the sophistication of the setup. Victor knew that VJ had had to artificially duplicate the fantastically complicated interplay of forces necessary to take a fertilized egg to an entire organism. The feat represented a quantum leap in biotechnology. A radically new and successful implantation technology was one thing, but this was entirely another. Victor shuddered to consider the diabolic potential of what his creation had created.
Marsha timidly approached one of the tanks and peered in at a boy-child from closer range. The child looked back at her as if he wanted her; he put a tiny palm up against the glass. Marsha reached out with her own and laid her hand over the child’s with just the thickness of the glass separating them. But then she drew her hand back, revolted. “Their heads!” she cried.
Victor came up beside her and leaned toward the child. “What’s the matter with his head?”
“Look at the eyebrows. Their heads slant back without foreheads.”
“They’re mutated,” VJ explained casually. “I removed Victor’s added segment, then destroyed some of the normal NGF loci. I’m aiming at a level of intelligence similar to Philip’s. Philip has been more helpful in aiding me in all my efforts than anyone else.”
Marsha shuddered, gripping Victor’s hand out of VJ’s sight. Victor ignored her and pointed to the door at the end of the room. “What’s beyond that door?”
“Haven’t you seen enough?” VJ asked.
“I’ve got to see it all,” Victor said. He left Marsha and walked down the length of the room. For a moment Marsha stared at the tiny boy-child with his prominent brow and flattened head. It was as if human evolution had stepped back five hundred thousand years. How could VJ deliberately make his own brothers and sisters—such as they were—retarded? His Machiavellian rationale made her shudder.
Marsha pulled herself away from the gestation tanks and followed Victor. She had to see everything too. Could there really be anything worse than what she had just seen?
The next room had huge stainless-steel containers lined in a row. They looked like giant kettles she’d seen at a brewery when she was a teenager. It was warmer and more humid in this room. Several men without shirts labored over one of the vats, adding ingredients to it. They stopped working and looked back at Victor and Marsha.
“What are these tanks?” Marsha asked.
Victor could answer. “They’re fermentors for growing microorganisms like bacteria or yeast.” Then he asked VJ, “What’s growing inside?”
“E. coli bacteria,” VJ said. “The workhorse of recombinant DNA technology.”
“What are they making?” Victor said.
“I’d rather not say,” VJ answered. “Don’t you think the gestational units are enough for one day?”
“I want to know everything,” Victor said. “I want it all out on the table.”
“They are making money,” VJ said with a smile.
“I’m not in the mood for riddles,” Victor said.
VJ sighed. “I had the short-term need for a major capital infusion for the new lab. Obviously, going public wasn’t an alternative for me. Instead, I imported some coca plants from South America and extracted the appropriate genes. I then inserted these genes into a lac operon of E. coli, and using a plasmid that carried a resistance to tetracycline, I put the whole thing back into the bacteria. The product is marvelous. Even the E. coli love it.”
“What is he saying?” Marsha asked Victor.
“He’s saying that these fermentors are making cocaine,” Victor said.
“That explains Martinez Enterprises,” Marsha said with a gasp.
“But this production line is purely temporary,” VJ explained. “It is an expedient means of providing immediate capital. Shortly the new lab will be running on its own merit without the need for contraband. And yes, Martinez Enterprises is a temporary partner. In fact, we can field a small army on a moment’s notice. For now, a number of them are on the Chimera payroll.”
Victor walked down the line of fermentors. The degree of sophistication of these units also amazed him. He could tell at a glance they were far superior to what Chimera was using. Victor pulled away from them with a heavy sigh and rejoined Marsha and VJ.
“Now you’ve seen it all,” said VJ. “But now that you have, we have to have a serious talk.”
VJ turned and walked back toward the main room with Victor and Marsha following. As they passed through the gestation room, the fetuses again moved to the glass. It seemed they longed for human company. If VJ noticed, he didn’t show it.
Without a word, VJ led them through the main room, back into the living quarters. Victor realized then that even here there was space he had not seen. There was a smaller room off the main area. Judging fróm the decor and journals, Victor guessed this was where VJ stayed. There was one bed, a card table with foldi
ng chairs, a large bookcase filled with periodicals, and a reading chair. VJ motioned toward the card table and sat down.
Victor and Marsha sat down as well. VJ had his elbows on the table with his hands clasped. He looked from Victor to Marsha, his piercingly blue eyes sparkling like sapphires. “I have to know what you are planning to do about all this. I’ve been honest with you, it’s time you were honest with me.”
Victor and Marsha exchanged glances. When Victor didn’t speak, Marsha did: “I have to know the truth about David, Janice, and Mr. Cavendish.”
“At the moment, I’m not interested in peripheral issues,” VJ said. “I’m interested in discussing the magnitude of my projects. I hope you can appreciate the enormity of these experiments. Their value transcends all other issues that otherwise might be pertinent.”
“I’m afraid I have to know about these people before I can judge,” Marsha said calmly.
VJ glanced at Victor. “Is this your opinion also?”
Slowly, Victor nodded.
“I was afraid of this,” VJ murmured. He eyed them both severely, as though he was their parent and they were his erring children. Finally he spoke. “All right, I’ll answer your questions. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. The three people you mentioned were planning to expose me. At that point it would have been devastating for my work. I tried to keep them from finding out much about the lab and my experiments, but these three were relentless. I had to let nature handle it.”
“What does that mean?” Victor asked.
“Through my extensive research on growth factors involved in solving the problem of the artificial womb, I discovered certain proteins that acted as powerful enhancers for proto-oncogenes. I packed them in RBC sacs, then let nature take over.”
“You mean you injected them,” Victor said.
“Of course I injected them!” VJ snapped. “That’s not the kind of thing you can take orally.”
Marsha tried to remain calm. “You’re telling me you killed your brother. And you felt nothing?”
“I was only an intermediary. David died of cancer. I pleaded with him to leave me alone. But instead he followed me, thinking he could bring me down. It was his jealousy that drove him.”