Frameshift

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Helen smiled. “I saw him on TV once—he looks old enough to have firsthand knowledge of that.”

  Pierre laughed and looked around the room. Like just about every lab he’d ever been in, this one had some Far Side cartoons taped to the filing cabinets. “Nice equipment you’ve got here,” he said.

  Helen looked at the centrifuges, microscopes, and other hardware, as if appraising them herself. “It does the trick. We don’t get to do nearly as much DNA work in-house as I’d like, but it’s quite exciting when I get to testify in court. We nailed a serial rapist last week. Doesn’t get much better than that.”

  Pierre nodded. “I read about that case in the Chronicle. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, I’m wondering if you can help me out. I—I was assaulted last week; that’s why I’m down here. I’m trying to find out why that particular person might have gone after me and, well…”

  “And they told you to take a hike downstairs, right?”

  Pierre smiled. “Exactly.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “One of the officers who came to investigate said the guy who attacked me was a neo-Nazi, and he had a long record. I was wondering if there was any other info I could see about him.”

  Helen frowned. “Are you really with the Human Genome Center?”

  Pierre was about to reach for his wallet, but then decided against it. Instead, he smiled. “Try me.”

  Helen’s eyes twinkled. “Let’s see…What’s a riflip?”

  “Restriction-fragment-length polymorphism,” said Pierre at once. “The variation from person to person in the sizes of DNA pieces snipped out by a specific restriction enzyme.”

  Helen smiled. “I’d love a tour of your lab, Pierre.”

  This time Pierre did pull out his wallet. He removed a business card—he’d gotten new ones the previous month, when the lab had changed its name from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—and handed it to her. “Anytime.”

  She walked over to her desk and slipped the card into a little metal card box. She then moved over to her computer terminal. “What would you like to know?”

  “The man who attacked me was named Chuck Hanratty. I’m still trying to figure out why he went after me in particular. It’s a bit unnerving, having somebody try to kill you.”

  Helen tapped at the keyboard with two fingers. Her delicate eyebrows went up. “You offed him.”

  “He fell on his own knife, actually. Does it really say I killed him?”

  “No, no. Sorry. It says he was killed in a struggle with his intended victim. What do you want to know?”

  “Anything at all. Anybody else he’d ever attacked, for instance.”

  “I’ll print you out a copy of his rap sheet; just don’t ever tell anyone where you got it. And—that’s interesting. After he died, some of our people went over his rooming house. Guy lived in the Tenderloin—rough neighborhood. Anyway, among the things they found was a wallet containing credit cards belonging to a fellow named Bryan—that’s with a Y—Proctor. Cross-reference in the file says that Proctor was shot to death here in SF by an unknown intruder two days before the attack on you. They found a gun at Hanratty’s place, too. Ballistics confirmed it was the murder weapon in the Proctor case.”

  “Did this Proctor leave any family behind?”

  Helen touched some more keys. “A wife.”

  “Is there any way I could speak to her?”

  Helen shrugged. “That’d be up to her.”

  C h a p t e r

  19

  “Pierre Tardivel?”

  Pierre was bent over his lab countertop. He looked up. “Yes?”

  A short man with a bulldog face and blue-gray stubble entered the room. “My name is Avi Meyer.” He snapped open an ID case, flashed a photo card. “I’m a federal agent, Department of Justice. I’d like to have a word with you.”

  Pierre straightened up. “Ah—sure. Sure. Have a seat.” Pierre indicated a lab stool.

  Avi continued to stand. “You’re not an American—”

  “No, I’m—”

  “From Canada, right?”

  “Yes, I was born—”

  “In Quebec.”

  “Québec, yes. Montréal. What’s this all—?”

  “What brings you to the States?”

  Pierre thought about saying “Air Canada,” but decided against it. “I’m on a postdoctoral fellowship.”

  “You’re a geneticist?”

  “Yes. Well, my Ph.D. is in molecular biology, but—”

  “What is your association with the other geneticists here?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean. They’re my colleagues; some are my friends—”

  “Professor Sinclair—what’s your association with him?”

  “With Toby? I like him well enough, but I hardly know him.”

  “What about Donna Yamasaki?”

  Pierre raised his eyebrows. “She’s nice, but her name—”

  “Did you know her before coming to Berkeley?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You work under Burian Klimus.”

  “Yes. I mean, there are several layers between him and me, but, sure, he’s the top person here.”

  “When did you first meet him?”

  “About three days after I started here.”

  “You didn’t know him beforehand?”

  “Well, his reputation, of course, but—”

  “You’re not related to him, are you?”

  “To Klimus? He’s Czech, isn’t he? No, I’m not—”

  “Ukrainian, actually. You had no contact with him prior to coming to Berkeley?”

  “None.”

  “Do you belong to any of the same groups as any of the other geneticists here?”

  “Most of us are in some of the same professional associations. Triple-A-S, stuff like that, but—”

  “No. Outside your profession.”

  “I don’t belong to any outside groups.”

  “None?”

  Pierre shook his head.

  “You were attacked a short time ago.”

  “Is that what this is about? Because—”

  “Did you know—”

  “—I gave the police a full report. It was self-defense.”

  “—the man who attacked you?”

  “Know him? Personally, you mean? No, I’d never seen him before in my life.”

  “Then why did he attack you? You of all people?”

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  “So you don’t think it was just a random attack?”

  “The police certainly believe so, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Nothing, really. It just—”

  “Do you have reason to think it wasn’t a random attack?”

  “—seemed to me…what? No, no, not really. Just—no.”

  “And you’d never seen the attacker around this lab before?”

  “I’d never seen him anywhere before.”

  “Never seen him with, say, Professor Klimus?”

  “No.”

  “Ever see him with Dr. Yamasaki? Dr. Sinclair?”

  “No. Look, what’s this all about?”

  “The man who attacked you belonged to a neo-Nazi organization.”

  “The Millennial Reich, yes.”

  “You know the group?” said Avi, eyes narrowing.

  “No, no, no. But one of the police officers mentioned it.”

  “You have any connection with the Millennial Reich?”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “What are your politics, Mr. Tardivel?”

  “NDP. What diff—”

  “What the hell is ‘NDP’?”

  “A Canadian democratic-socialist party. What possible difference—”

  “Socialist? As in National Socialist?”

  “No, no. The NDP is—”

  “What do you feel about, say, immi
gration?”

  “I am an immigrant. I came here less than a year ago.”

  “Yes, and you’ve already killed an American citizen.”

  “It was self-defense, damn it. Ask the police.”

  “I’ve seen the report,” said Avi. “Why would a neo-Nazi want to attack you, Mr. Tardivel?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You have no connection to neo-Nazi organizations?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “There are a lot of anti-Semites among the Montreal French.”

  Pierre sighed. “You’ve been reading too much Mordecai Richler; I’m not anti-Semitic.”

  “What about the other geneticists here?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Do any of the geneticists here at Lawrence Berkeley—or down at the university—have connections that you know of to Nazi organizations?”

  “Of course not. I mean, well—”

  “Yes?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Mr. Tardivel, your evasiveness is trying my patience. You’re not yet a citizen here; you wouldn’t want any special annotations in your immigration record. I could have you back in Canada faster than you can say Anne Murray.”

  “Christ, I—look, the only guy who even comes close to being a Nazi is…”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want to get him in any trouble, but…well, Felix Sousa is a professor at UCB.”

  “Sousa? Anyone else?”

  “No. You know Sousa?”

  Avi grimaced. “The whites-are-superior-to-blacks guy.”

  Pierre nodded. “Tenured prof. Nothing they can do to shut him up. But if anybody’s a Nazi here, it’s him.”

  Avi nodded. “All right, thank you. Don’t mention this conversation to anyone.”

  “I still don’t know—”

  But Avi Meyer was already out the door.

  “Susan? It’s Avi. Yeah—yeah. What? Corrina, Corrina, with Whoopi Goldberg. Yeah, it was okay; better than the food anyway. Yes, I saw Tardivel this afternoon. He didn’t come out and say it, but I think he feels the attack was aimed right at him, which makes the connection even tighter. I’m going to spend tomorrow going over the files at the SFPD and the Alameda County sheriff’s office on the Millennial Reich. No, I’m avoiding Klimus, at least for the time being. Don’t want to tip our hand…”

  C h a p t e r

  20

  “Since we’re going to have a baby,” said Molly, sitting on their living-room couch, “there’s something I want you to do.”

  Pierre put down the remote control. “Oh?”

  “I’ve never had anyone study my—my gift. But since we are going to have a child, I think maybe we should know some more about it. I don’t know if I want the child to be telepathic or not; part of me hopes it is, part of me hopes it isn’t. But if it does turn out to share my ability, I want to be able to warn him or her before it develops. I went through hell when it started happening to me when I turned thirteen—thought I was losing my mind.”

  Pierre nodded. “I’ve certainly been curious about the science behind what you can do, but I didn’t want to pry.”

  “And I love you for that. But we should know. There must be something different in my DNA. Can you find what it is?”

  Pierre frowned. “It’s almost impossible to find the genetic cause of something with only one sample. If we knew of a large group of people who had your ability, we might be able to track down the gene responsible. That’s how the Huntington’s gene was found, after all. They used blood samples from seventy-five families around the world that had Huntington’s sufferers. But with you being the world’s only known legitimate telepath, I don’t think there’s anything we can do in terms of looking for a gene.”

  “Well,” said Molly, “if we can’t find it by working from the DNA up, what about reverse engineering? My guess is that there’s something chemically different in my brain—a neurotransmitter, say, that no one else has, a chemical that perhaps allows me to use my brain’s neuronal wiring as a receiver. If we could isolate it and establish its amino-acid sequence, could you search my DNA for the code that specifies those amino acids?”

  Pierre lifted his shoulders. “I suppose that might be possible, if it’s a protein-based neurotransmitter. But neither of us has the expertise to do that kind of work. We’d have to get someone else involved, to take the fluid samples and to separate out the neurotransmitters. And even then, it’s just a hunch that that’s the cause of your telepathy. Still,” he said, his voice taking on a faraway tone, “if we could identify the neurotransmitter, maybe someday they could synthesize it. Maybe all anyone needs to read minds is the right chemicals in the brain.”

  But Molly was shaking her head. “I don’t mean to sound sexist,” she said, “but I’ve always suspected the only reason I’ve survived this long is because I’m a woman. I shudder to think what some testosterone-crazed male would do when he picked up offensive thoughts—probably kill everyone around him.” She brought her gaze back to meet Pierre’s. “No. Maybe someday far in the future, humanity might be able to handle something like this. But not now; it’s not the right time.”

  Pierre was setting up an electrophoresis gel when the phone in his lab rang for the third time that morning. He sighed, wheeled across the room on his chair, and picked up the handset.

  “Tardivel,” he snapped into the mouthpiece.

  “Hi, Pierre. This is Jasmine Lucarelli, over in endocrinology.”

  Pierre’s tone immediately warmed. “Oh, hi, Jasmine. Thanks so much for getting back to me.”

  “Uh-huh. Listen—where did you say you got that fluid sample you sent over?”

  Pierre hesitated slightly. “Ah, it was from a woman.”

  “I’ve never quite seen anything like it. The specimen contained all the usual neurotransmitters—serotonin, acetylcholine, GABA, dopamine, and so on—but there was one protein in there I’d never seen before. Quite complex, too. I’m only assuming it’s a neurotransmitter because of its basic structure—choline is one of its chief constituents.”

  “Have you worked out its full makeup?”

  “Not personally,” said Dr. Lucarelli. “One of my grad students did it for me.”

  “Can you send me a copy?”

  “Sure. But I’d still like to know where this came from.”

  Pierre exhaled. “It’s—it’s a prank, I think. A biochem student cobbled it together, trying to make a monkey out of his prof.”

  “Shit,” said Lucarelli. “Kids today, eh?”

  “Yeah. Anyway, thanks for looking at it. If you’d send me your notes on its chemical structure, I’d be grateful—I, ah, want to put a copy in the student’s file, in case he tries a stunt like this again.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Thanks very much, Jasmine.”

  “No problem.”

  Pierre hung up the phone, his heart pounding.

  Pierre had spent the last fourteen days studying the unusual neurotransmitter from Molly’s brain. Whether it was the key to her telepathy or just a by-product of it, he didn’t know. But the substance, despite its complexity, was just another protein, and like all proteins it was built up from amino acids. Pierre worked out the various sequences of DNA that could code for the creation of the most distinctive chain of aminos in the molecule. There were many possible combinations, because of codon synonyms, but he calculated them all. He then built up segments of RNA that would complement the various sequences of DNA he was searching for.

  Pierre took a test tube full of Molly’s blood and used liquid nitrogen to freeze it to minus seventy degrees Celsius. That ruptured the cell membranes of the red corpuscles, but left the hardier white corpuscles intact. He then thawed the blood out, the ruptured reds dissolving into lightweight fragments.

  Next, he spun the tube in a centrifuge at 1600 rpm. The millions of white corpuscles—the only large objects left in the blood sample now—were forced down to the end of the
tube, forming a solid white pellet. He removed the pellet and soaked it for a couple of hours in a solution containing proteinase K, which digested the white corpuscles’ cell membranes and other proteins. He then introduced phenol and chloroform, which cleared away the protein debris in twenty minutes, then added ethanol, which over the next two hours precipitated out the delicate fibers of Molly’s purified DNA.

  Pierre then worked on adding his special RNA segments to Molly’s DNA, and looked to see if they clamped on anywhere. It took over a hundred tries before he got lucky. It turned out that the sequence that coded for the production of the telepathy-related neurotransmitter was on the short arm of chromosome thirteen.

  Pierre used his terminal to log on to GSDB—the Genome Sequence Database, which contained all the genetic sequences that had been mapped out by the hundreds of labs and universities worldwide working on decoding the human genome. He wanted to see what that part of chromosome thirteen looked like in normal people. Fortunately, the gene that occurred there had been sequenced in detail by the team at Leeds. The normal value was CAT CAG GGT GTC CAT, but Molly’s specimen began TCA TCA GGG TGT CCA—completely different, which—

  No.

  No, not completely different. Just shifted one place to the right, one nucleotide—a T, in this case—having been accidentally added in the copying of Molly’s DNA.

  A frameshift mutation. Add or remove one nucleotide, and every genetic word from that point on is altered. Molly’s TCA TCA GGG TGT CCA coded for the amino acids serine, serine, glycine, cysteine, and proline, whereas the standard CAT CAG GGT GTC CAT coded for histidine, glutamine, glycine, valine, and arginine; both chains had glycine in the middle because GGG and GGT were synonyms.

  Frameshifts usually garbled everything, turning the genetic code into gibberish. Many human embryos spontaneously abort very early on, before their mothers even know they’re pregnant; frameshifts were a likely reason for many of those failures. But this one—

  A frameshift mutation that might cause telepathy.

  Pierre sagged back in his chair, stunned.

  C h a p t e r

  21

  Although the ground had recently been broken for a dedicated genome facility to be built at LBNL, at the moment the Human Genome Center was shoehorned onto the third floor of building 74, which was part of the Life Sciences Division. Medical research was also done in this building, meaning they didn’t even have to go outside to find a small operating theater.