Frameshift

by Robert J. Sawyer

CGT

  Aspartic

  Acid

  GAC

  GAT

  Asparagine

  AAC

  AAT

  Cysteine

  TGC

  TGT

  Glutamic

  Acid

  GAA

  GAG

  Glutamine

  CAA

  CAG

  Glycine

  GGA

  GGC

  GGG

  GGT

  Histidine

  CAC

  CAT

  Isoleucine

  ATA

  ATC

  ATT

  Leucine

  CTA

  CTC

  CTG

  CTT

  TTA

  TTG

  Lysine

  AAA

  AAG

  Methionine

  (START)

  ATG

  Phenyl-

  alanine

  TTC

  TTT

  Proline

  CCA

  CCC

  CCG

  CCT

  Serine

  AGC

  AGT

  TCA

  TCC

  TCG

  TCT

  Threonine

  ACA

  ACC

  ACG

  ACT

  Tryptophan

  TGG

  Tyrosine

  TAC

  TAT

  Valine

  GTA

  GTC

  GTG

  GTT

  STOP

  TAA

  TAG

  TGA

  Shari came over to stand next to him. “Well, just as in English, the genetic language has synonyms.” She pointed at the first box on the chart. “GCA, GCC, GCG, and GCT all specify the same amino acid, alanine.”

  “Right. But why do these synonyms exist? Why not just use twenty words, one for each amino?”

  Shari shrugged. “It’s probably a safety mechanism, to reduce the likelihood of transcription errors garbling the message.”

  Pierre waved at the chart. “But some aminos can be specified by as many as six different words, and others by only one. If synonyms protected against transcription errors, surely you’d want some for every word. Indeed, if you were designing a sixty-four-word code simply for redundancy, you might devote three words apiece to each of the twenty amino acids, and use the four remaining words for punctuation marks.”

  Shari shrugged. “I guess. But the DNA system wasn’t designed; it evolved.”

  “True, true. Still, nature tends to come up with optimized solutions through trial and error. Like the double helix itself—remember how Crick and Watson knew they’d found the answer to how DNA was put together? It wasn’t because their version was the only possible one. Rather, it was because it was the most beautiful one. Why would some aspects of DNA be absolutely elegant, while others, including something as important as the actual genetic code, be sloppy? My bet is that God or nature, or whatever it was that put DNA together, is not sloppy.”

  “Meaning?” said Shari.

  “Meaning maybe the choice of which synonym is used when specifying an amino acid actually encodes additional information.”

  Shari’s delicate eyebrows went up. “Like, if we’re an embryo, insert this amino, but if we’ve already been born, don’t insert it!” She clapped her hands together. The mystery of how cells differentiated throughout the development of a fetus still hadn’t been solved.

  Pierre held up his hand. “It can’t be anything as direct as that, or geneticists would have noticed it long ago. But the choices of synonyms over a long stretch of DNA—be it in the active portions, or in the introns—might indeed be significant.”

  “Or,” said Shari, now pouting slightly at having her idea rejected, “it might not.”

  Pierre smiled. “Sure. But let’s find out, one way or the other.”

  A Sunday morning.

  Molly Bond loved going over to San Francisco—loved its seafood restaurants, its neighborhoods, its hills, its cable cars, its architecture.

  The street Molly was on was deserted; not surprising, given how early it was. Molly had come to San Francisco to attend the Unitarian fellowship there; she wasn’t particularly religious, and had found the hypocrisy of most of the clergy she’d met in her life unbearable, but she did enjoy the Unitarian approach, and today’s guest speaker—an expert on artificial intelligence—sounded fascinating.

  Molly had parked a few blocks from the fellowship hall. The meeting didn’t start until nine o’clock; she thought she might go into McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin beforehand—her one vice that she periodically but only halfheartedly tried to break was her fondness for fast food. As she headed along a steeply angled sidewalk approaching the restaurant, she noticed an old man up ahead at the side of the road in a black trench coat. The man was bent over, poking with a walking stick at something lying at the base of a tree.

  Molly continued along, enjoying the crisp early-morning air. The sky was cloudless, a pristine bowl of blue arching over the stuccoed buildings.

  She was now only a dozen paces or so from the man in black. His trench coat was an expensive London Fog model, and his black shoes had recently been polished. The man was eighty if he was a day, but tall for a man that age. He was wearing a navy blue watch cap that pressed his ears against his head. He also had the collar of his trench coat turned up, but his neck was thick, with loose folds of skin hanging from it. The old guy was too absorbed in what he was doing to notice her approach. Molly heard a small whimpering sound. She looked down and her mouth dropped in horror. The black-clad man was poking at a cat with his stick.

  The cat had obviously been hit by a car and left to die. Its coat, mottled white, black, orange, and cream, was smeared down the entire left side with blood. It had clearly been hit some time ago—much of the blood had dried to a brown crust—but it was still oozing thick red liquid from one long cut. One of the cat’s eyes had popped partway from its skull and was clouded over in tones of bluish gray.

  “Hey!” Molly shouted at the man in black. “Are you crazy? Leave that poor thing alone!”

  The man must have stumbled on the cat by accident, and had apparently been enjoying the pathetic cries it made each time he jabbed it with his stick. He turned to face Molly. She was disgusted to see that his ancient bone-white penis, erect, was protruding from his unzipped trousers, and that his other hand had been on it. “Blyat!” cried the man in an accented voice, his dark eyes narrowing to slits. “Blyat!”

  “Get out of here!” Molly yelled. “I’m going to call the police!”

  The man snapped “Blyat” at her once more, then hobbled away. Molly thought about going after him and detaining him until the police could arrive, but the very last thing in the world she wanted to do was touch the vile character. She loomed in to look at the cat. It was in terrible shape; she wished she knew a way to put it quickly out of its misery, but anything she might try would probably just torture the poor creature more. “There, there,” she said in soothing tones. “He’s gone. He won’t bother you anymore.” The cat moved slightly. Its breathing was ragged.

  Molly looked around; there was a pay phone at the end of the block. She hurried over to it, called directory assistance, and asked for the SPCA emergency number. She then dialed that. “There’s a cat dying at the side of the road,” she said. She craned her neck to see the street signs. “It’s just off the sidewalk on Portola Drive, a half block up from the corner of Swanson. I think it was hit by a car, perhaps an hour or two ago…No, I’ll stay with the animal, thanks. Thanks ever so—and please hurry.”

  She sat cross-legged on the sidewalk next to the cat, wishing she could find it in her heart to stroke the poor animal’s fur, but it was too disgusting to touch. She looked down the street, furious and distraught. The black-clad old man was gone.

  C h a p t e r

&nb
sp; 11

  Three weeks later.

  Pierre sat in his lab, looking at his watch. Shari had said she might be late getting back from lunch, but it was now 14:45, and a three-hour lunch seemed excessive even by West Coast standards. Perhaps he’d been crazy hiring someone who was just about to get married. She’d have a million things to do before the wedding, after all, and…

  The door to the lab opened, and Shari walked in. Her eyes were bloodshot and although she’d obviously taken a moment to attempt to fix her makeup, she’d clearly been crying a lot.

  “Shari!” said Pierre, rising to his feet and moving over to her. “What’s wrong?”

  She glanced at Pierre, her lower lip trembling. Pierre couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone look so sad. Her voice was low and quavering. “Howard and I broke up.” Tears were welling again at the corners of her eyes.

  “Oh, Shari,” said Pierre. “I’m so sorry.” He hadn’t known her that long and wasn’t sure if he should pry—and yet, she probably needed somebody to talk to. Everything had been fine before she left for lunch; Pierre’s might very well be the only friendly face she’d seen since whatever had happened.

  “Did you—did you have a fight?”

  Tears rolled slowly down Shari’s cheeks. She shook her head.

  Pierre was at a loss. He thought about drawing her close to him, trying to comfort her, but he was her employer—he couldn’t do that. Finally he settled on, “It must hurt.”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly. Pierre led her over to a lab stool. She sat on it, placing her hands in her lap. Pierre noticed the engagement ring was gone. “Everything was going so well,” she said, her voice full of anguish. She was quiet for a long time. Again, Pierre thought about reaching out to her—a hand on her shoulder, say. He hated to see anyone in such pain. “But—but my parents came over from Poland after World War II, and Howard’s parents are from the Balkans.”

  Pierre looked at her, not understanding.

  “Don’t you see?” she said, sniffing. “We’re both Ashkenazi.”

  Pierre lifted his shoulders slightly, helpless.

  “Eastern European Jews,” said Shari. “We had to go for counseling.”

  Pierre didn’t really know much about Judaism, although there were lots of English-speaking Jews in Montreal. “Yes?”

  “For Tay-Sachs,” said Shari, sounding almost angry that it had to be spelled out.

  “Oh,” said Pierre very softly, understanding at last. Tay-Sachs was a genetic disease that resulted in a failure to produce the enzyme hexosaminidase-A, which, in turn, caused a fatty substance to accumulate in the nerve cells of the brain. Unlike Huntington’s, Tay-Sachs manifested itself in infancy, causing blindness, dementia, convulsions, extensive paralysis, and death—usually by the age of four. It was almost exclusively found among Jews of Eastern European extraction. Four percent of American Jews descended from there carried the gene—but, again unlike Huntington’s, the Tay-Sachs gene was recessive, meaning a child had to receive genes from both parents to get the disease. If both the father and the mother carried the gene, any child of theirs had a 25 percent chance of having Tay-Sachs.

  Still—maybe Shari had misunderstood. Yes, she was a genetics student, but…“So you both have the gene?” asked Pierre gently.

  Shari nodded and wiped her cheeks. “I had no idea that I carried it. But Howard—he suspected he carried the gene, and never said a word to me.” She sounded bitter. “His sister discovered she had it when she got married, but it was okay, because her fiancé didn’t have it. But Howard knew that since his sister had it, he himself had to have a fifty-percent chance of being a carrier—and he never told me.” She looked briefly at Pierre, then dropped her gaze down to the floor. “You shouldn’t keep secrets from someone you love.”

  Pierre thought about himself and Molly, but said nothing. There was quiet between them for perhaps half a minute.

  “Still,” said Pierre at last, “there are options. Amniocentesis can determine if a fetus has received two Tay-Sachs genes. If you found that it had, you could have an…” Pierre couldn’t quite bring himself to say “abortion” out loud.

  But Shari simply nodded. “I know.” She sniffed a few times. She was quiet for a moment, as if considering whether to go on. “But I’ve got endometriosis; my gynecologist warned me years ago that I’m going to have a very hard time conceiving. I told Howard that when we got serious. I really, really want to have children, but it’s going to be an uphill battle, and…”

  Pierre nodded. And there was no way she could afford to have pregnancies terminated.

  “I’m so sorry, Shari, but…” He paused, not sure if it was his place to say anything more.

  She looked at him, her face a question.

  “You could adopt,” said Pierre. “It’s not so bad. I was raised by someone who wasn’t my biological father.”

  Shari blew her nose, but then laughed a cold laugh. “You’re not Jewish.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Pierre shook his head.

  She exhaled noisily, as if daunted by the prospect of trying to explain so much. Finally, she said, “Six million Jews were killed during World War II—including most of my parents’ relatives. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been brought up to believe that I’ve got to have children of my own, that I have to do my part to help restore my people.” She looked away. “You don’t understand.”

  Pierre was quiet for a while. Then, at last, he said softly, “I am sorry, Shari.” He did, finally, touch her shoulder. She responded at once, collapsing against his chest, and sobbed softly for a very long time.

  C h a p t e r

  12

  Pierre and Molly were sitting side by side on his green-and-orange living-room couch, his arm around her. It had reached the point where they were spending almost every night together, as often at his place as at hers. Molly snuggled her back into the crook of his shoulder. Shafts of amber from the setting sun streamed in through the windows. Pierre had actually vacuumed today, the second time since he’d moved in. The low angle of the sunlight highlighted the paths his Hoover had made.

  “Pierre,” Molly said, but then fell silent.

  “Hmm?”

  “Oh, nothing. I—no, nothing.”

  “No, go ahead,” Pierre said, eyebrows raised. “What’s on your mind?”

  “The question,” said Molly, slowly, “is more what’s on your mind?”

  Pierre frowned. “Eh?”

  Molly seemed to be wrestling with whether to go on. Then, all at once, she sat up straight on the couch, took Pierre’s arm from her shoulder, and brought it into her lap, intertwining her fingers with his. “Let’s try a little game. Think of a word—any English word—and I’ll try to guess it.”

  Pierre smiled. “Anything at all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now concentrate on the word. Con—it’s ‘aardvark.’”

  “C’est vrai,” said Pierre, shocked. “How’d you do that?”

  “Try again,” said Molly.

  “Okay—I’ve got one.”

  “What’s pie—pie-rim-ih-deen? Is that French?”

  “How did you do that?”

  “What’s that word mean?”

  “Pyrimidine. It’s a type of organic base. How did you do that?”

  “Let’s try it again.”

  Pierre disengaged his hand from hers. “No. Tell me how you did that.”

  Molly looked at him. They were sitting so close together that her gaze kept shifting from his left eye to his right. She opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it, then tried again. “I can…” She shut her eyes. “God, I thought telling you about my stupid bout with gonorrhea was hard. I’ve never told anyone this before.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I can read minds, Pierre.”

  Pierre tipped his head to one side. His mouth hung slightly open. He clearly didn’t know what to say.

  “It’s true,” said
Molly. “I’ve been able to do it since I was thirteen.”

  “Okay,” Pierre said, his tone betraying that he felt this was all some trick that could be exposed if enough thought were given to it. “Okay, what am I thinking now?”

  “It’s in French; I don’t understand French. Voo—lay—voo…coo, something…The word ‘moi’—I know that one.”

  “What’s my Canadian Social Insurance number?”

  “You’re not thinking about the actual number. I can’t read it unless you’re actually thinking of it.” A pause. “You’re saying the numbers in French. Cinq—that’s five, right? Huit—eight. Deux—two. Um, you’re repeating it to yourself; it’s hard to keep track. Just run through it once. Cinq huit deux…six un neuf, huit trois neuf.”

  “Reading minds is…” He stopped.

  “‘Not possible’ is what you were about to say.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Pierre was quiet for a long time, sitting absolutely still. “Do you have to be in physical contact with the person?” he said at last.

  “No. But I do have to be close—the person has to be within what I call my ‘zone,’ no more than about three feet away. It’s been very difficult to do any empirical studies, being both the experimenter and the experimental subject, and without revealing to those I’m with what I’m trying to do, but I’d say the—the effect—is governed by the inverse-square law. If I move twice as far away from you, I only hear—if ‘hear’ is the correct word—your thoughts a quarter as…as ‘loudly,’ so to speak.”