Frameshift

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Thank you for seeing me again,” said Pierre.

  “I was just teasing,” said the plump woman with the golf-ball chin. She’d had her hair cut since the last time Pierre had been here. “Come in, come in.” She stepped aside and motioned Pierre into the living room. The old TV set was on, showing The Price Is Right.

  “I just wanted to ask you a question about your husband,” Pierre said, taking a seat on the couch. “If you—”

  “Jesus, man. Are you drunk?”

  Pierre felt his face growing flush. “No. I have a neurological disorder, and—”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She shrugged. “We get a lot of drunks around here. Bad neighborhood.”

  Pierre took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. “I just have a quick question. This may sound funny, but did your husband have any sort of genetic disorder? You know—anything that his doctor ever said was inherited? High blood pressure, diabetes, anything like that?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Pierre pursed his lips, disappointed. Still…“Do you know what his parents died of? If either of them had died of heart disease, for instance, Bryan could have inherited those bad genes.”

  She looked at Pierre. “That’s a thoughtless remark, young man.”

  Pierre blinked, confused. “Sorry?”

  “Bryan’s parents are both still alive. They live in Florida.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry they’re alive?”

  “No, no, no. Sorry for my mistake.” Still—still—“Are they in good health? Either of them have Alzheimer’s?”

  Mrs. Proctor laughed. “Bryan’s dad plays eighteen holes a day down there, and his mother is sharp as a tack. No, there’s nothing wrong with them.”

  “How old are they?”

  “Let’s see. Ted is…eighty-three or eighty-four. And Paula is two years younger.”

  Pierre nodded. “Thank you. One final question: did you ever know a man named Burian Klimus?”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “Ukrainian. He’s an old man, in his eighties, bald, built like a wrestler.”

  “No, nobody like that.”

  “He might have used a different name. Did you ever know an Ivan Marchenko?”

  She shook her head.

  “Or someone named Grozny? Ivan Grozny?”

  “Sorry.”

  Pierre nodded and got up off the couch. Maybe Bryan Proctor was a red herring—maybe Chuck Hanratty had just been after his tools or his money. After all, it sounded like the guy had had a fine genetic profile, and—

  “Umm, could I use your bathroom before I go?”

  She pointed down a short corridor, illuminated by a single bulb inside a frosted white sphere attached to the ceiling.

  Pierre nodded and made his way slowly into the room, which had pale blue walls and dark green fixtures. He closed the door behind him, having to push a bit to get it to fit the frame; it had apparently warped from years of exposure to steaming showers. Feeling like an absolute heel, he opened the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet and looked inside. There! A man’s Gillette razor. He slipped it into his pocket, made a show of flushing the toilet and running the sink for a few moments, then headed out.

  “Thank you very much,” said Pierre, wondering if he looked as embarrassed as he felt.

  “Why were you asking all this?”

  “Oh, nothing,” he said. “Just a crazy idea. Sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I won’t be bothering you again.”

  “No problem. I’ve been sleeping a lot easier since you—since that Hanratty guy died. You’re welcome here anytime.” She smiled. “’Sides, I like Columbo.”

  Pierre made his way out of the apartment building and headed for San Francisco police headquarters.

  Molly had taken a two-year maternity leave from classroom teaching (the maximum the faculty-association agreement allowed without loss of seniority), but still went into the campus for a half day once a week to meet with the students for whom she was thesis adviser and to attend departmental meetings. Since Pierre was off in San Francisco, Mrs. Bailey was looking after Amanda.

  After her last student appointment, Molly took advantage of the PC in her office to do some on-line research using Magazine Database Plus, the joys of which Pierre had introduced her to.

  She was about to log off when a thought occurred to her. She had tried to digest everything Dr. Gainsley had said, but she still didn’t understand it all. She typed in a query on the topic of “speech disorders,” but saw that there were over three hundred articles. She cleared that query, and thought. What was it that Gainsley had said? Something about the hyoid bone? Molly wasn’t even sure how to spell that word. Still, it was worth a try. She selected “Search for words in article text,” then tapped out HYOID. The screen immediately filled with citations for fourteen articles. She stared at the screen, reading and rereading three of the citations:

  “Quoth the cavemen: nevermore” (laryngeal structures in human ancestors), Speech Dynamics, January-February 1997, v6 n2 p24(3). Reference #A19429340. Text: Yes (1551 words); Abstract: Yes.

  “Neanderthal neck bone sparks cross talk” (hyoid fossil may indicate capacity for speech), Science News, April 24, 1993, v143 n17 p262(1). Reference #A13805017. Text: Yes (557 words); Abstract: Yes.

  “Neanderthal language debate: tongues wag anew” (new reconstruction of La Chapelle Neanderthal skull), Science, April 3, 1992, v256 n5053 p33(2). Reference #A12180871. Text: Yes (1273 words); Abstract: No.

  She selected each of the articles in turn, and read them through.

  There’d long been a debate among anthropologists over whether Neanderthals could speak, but it was difficult to resolve the issue since no soft tissues had been preserved. In the 1960s, linguist Philip Lieberman and anatomist Edmund Crelin had made a study of the most famous Neanderthal of all, the La Chapelle-aux-Saints specimen found in 1908. Based on that specimen, they concluded that Neanderthals had a larynx high in their throats, with the air path curving gently down from the back of the mouth, meaning they would have lacked the vocal range of modern humans.

  This view was challenged in 1989, when a Neanderthal skeleton dubbed Moshe was discovered near Israel’s Mount Carmel. For the first time ever, a Neanderthal hyoid bone had been found. Although somewhat larger than a modern human’s hyoid, the proportions were the same. Unfortunately, Moshe’s skull was missing, making a complete reconstruction of his vocal tract—including the all-important positioning of the hyoid—impossible.

  The Science article contained a quote from the University of Pennsylvania’s Alan Mann, who said that given the current contradictory evidence, he didn’t see “how a dispassionate observer could make a choice” between the pro-Neanderthal-speech and anti-Neanderthal-speech positions. Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History agreed, saying most anthropologists were in “bystander mode,” awaiting some new evidence.

  Molly’s whole body was shaking by the time she’d finished reading it all. It looked horribly, incredibly, unthinkably as though Burian Klimus had found a way to bring just such new evidence to light.

  “Hello, Helen.”

  Helen Kawabata looked up. “Jesus, Pierre, we should really get you your own parking space.”

  Pierre smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “But you’ve got one more favor to ask.”

  “One of these days I’m going to stop by just to say hello.”

  “Yeah, right. What is it this time?”

  Pierre fished the razor out of his jacket pocket. “I got this from Mrs. Proctor. It’s Bryan Proctor’s razor, and I thought maybe you could see if a DNA sample could be lifted from it. I’m no expert at getting samples from dried blood specks or things like that.”

  Helen walked over to a cupboard, pulled out a plastic specimen bag, came over to Pierre, and held it out with its mouth open. “Drop it in.”

  Pierre
did so.

  “It’ll be a few days before I get a chance to look at it.”

  “Thank you, Helen. You’re a peach.”

  She laughed. “A peach? You need a more recent edition of Berlitz, Pierre. Nobody talks like that anymore.”

  Molly, furious at what Klimus had possibly done, was on her way out of the campus, walking by North Gate Hall, when she first heard the argument. She looked around to see where the sounds were coming from. About twenty yards away, she saw a couple of students, one male and one female, both twenty or so. The male had long brown hair gathered into a ponytail. His face was round and full and, just now, rather flushed. He was yelling at a petite woman with frosted blond hair. The woman was wearing stonewashed jeans and a yellow Simpsons sweatshirt. The man was wearing black jeans and a corduroy jacket, which was unzipped, showing a white T-shirt beneath. He was shouting at the woman in a language that Molly didn’t recognize. As he spoke, he drove home each point by thrusting a finger toward the woman’s face.

  Molly slowed her walking a little. There was a never-ending problem with female students being harassed, and Molly wanted to ascertain if she should intervene.

  But the woman seemed to be holding her own. She shouted back at the man in the same language. The woman’s body language was different from the man’s, but equally hostile: she held both hands out in front of her, fingers splayed, as if wanting to wrap them around his throat.

  Molly only intended to watch long enough to satisfy herself that it wasn’t going to become violent, and that the woman was a willing participant in the exchange. A few other passersby had stopped to watch as well, although many more were continuing on after gawking for only a moment or two. The woman pulled a ring off her hand. It wasn’t a wedding or engagement ring; it came off the wrong finger. Still, it clearly had been a gift from the man. She threw it at him and stormed away. It bounced off his chest and went flying into the grass.

  Molly turned to go, but as the man went to his knees, trying to find the ring, he shouted “Blyat!” at the departing woman. Molly froze. Her mind flashed back to that long-ago day in San Francisco: the old geezer tormenting the dying cat. The word she’d just heard was precisely what that horrible man had yelled at Molly then.

  Molly took off after the woman, who was marching purposefully toward the doors of the nearest building, her head held defiantly high, ignoring the stares of onlookers. The man was still rooting in the grass for the ring. Molly caught up with the woman just as she was pulling on one of the vertical tubular door handles, polished smooth by the hands of a thousand students each day.

  “Are you okay?” asked Molly.

  The woman looked at her, face still red with anger, but said nothing.

  “I’m Molly Bond. I’m a professor in the psych department. I’m just wondering if you’re okay.”

  The woman looked at her for a moment longer, then gestured with her head toward the man. “Never better,” she said in an accented voice.

  “That your boyfriend?” asked Molly. As she looked, the man rose to his feet, holding the ring high. He glared across the distance at the two of them.

  “Was,” said the student. “But I caught him cheating.”

  “Are you an international student?”

  “From Lithuania. Here to study computers.”

  Molly nodded. That was the natural place for their conversation to end. She knew she should just say, “Well, as long as you’re okay…” and head on her way. But she couldn’t resist; she had to know. She tried to make her tone light, offhand. “He called you ‘blyat,’” said Molly. “Is that—” and she realized she was about to look like an ignoramus. Was there such a language as Lithuanian? Her Midwestern upbringing had left a few things to be desired. She finished her question, though: “Is that Lithuanian?”

  “Nyet. It’s Russian.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  The woman looked at her. “It’s not a nice thing to say.”

  “I’m sorry, but—” What the hell, why not just tell the truth? “Somebody called me that once. I’ve always wondered what it meant.”

  “I don’t know the English,” said the student. “It has to do with the female sex part, you know?” She looked bitterly at the receding figure of the man she’d been arguing with. “Not that he’s ever going to see mine again.”

  Molly looked back at the receding figure. “The jerk,” she said.

  “Da,” said the student. She nodded curtly at Molly and continued on into the building.

  Pierre accompanied Molly as she carried Amanda upstairs and put her in the crib at the foot of the king-size bed. They each leaned over in turn and kissed their daughter on the top of the head. Molly had been strangely subdued all evening—something was clearly on her mind.

  Amanda looked at her father expectantly. Pierre smiled; he knew he wasn’t going to get off that easily. He picked up a copy of Put Me in the Zoo from the top of the dresser. Amanda shook her head. Pierre raised his eyebrows, but put the book back down. It had been her favorite five nights in a row. He’d yet to figure out what prompted his daughter to want a change, but since he now knew every word of that book by heart, he was quite ready to comply. He picked up a small square book called Little Miss Contrary, but Amanda shook her head again. Pierre tried a third time, picking up a Sesame Street book called Grover’s Big Day. Amanda smiled broadly. Pierre came over, sat on the foot of the bed, and began to read. Molly, meanwhile, went back downstairs. Pierre got all the way through the book—about ten minutes’ worth of reading—before Amanda looked ready to fall asleep. He bent over again, kissed his daughter’s head once more, checked to make sure the baby monitor was still on, and slipped quietly out of the bedroom.

  When he got down to the living room, Molly was sitting on the couch, one leg tucked up underneath her. She was holding a copy of the New Yorker, but didn’t seem to really be looking at it. A Shania Twain CD was playing softly in the background. Molly put down the magazine and looked at him. “Is Amanda asleep?” she said.

  Pierre nodded. “I think so.”

  Her tone was serious. “Good. I’ve been waiting for her to go down. We have to talk.”

  Pierre came over to the couch and sat next to her. She looked at him briefly, then looked away. “Have I done something wrong?”

  She faced him again. “No—no, not you.”

  “Then what?”

  Molly exhaled noisily. “I was worried about Amanda, so I did some research today.”

  Pierre smiled encouragingly. “And?”

  She looked away again. “It’s probably crazy, but…” She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them. “Some anthropologists contend that Neanderthal man had exactly the same throat structure as Dr. Gainsley said Amanda has.”

  Pierre felt his eyebrows going up. “So?”

  “So your boss, the famous Burian Klimus, has succeeded in extracting DNA from that Israeli Neanderthal specimen.”

  “Hapless Hannah,” said Pierre. “But surely you don’t think—”

  Molly looked at Pierre. “I love Amanda just as she is, but…”

  “Tabernac,” said Pierre. “Tabernac.”

  He could see it all in his mind. After Molly, Pierre, Dr. Bacon, and Bacon’s assistants had left the operating theater, Klimus hadn’t proceeded to masturbate into a cup. Instead, he’d maneuvered the first of Molly’s eggs onto the end of a glass pipette, holding it there by suction. Working carefully under a microscope, he’d then slit the egg open and, using a smaller pipette, had drawn out Molly’s own haploid set of twenty-three chromosomes, and replaced them with a diploid set of Hannah’s forty-six chromosomes. The end result: a fertilized egg containing solely Hannah’s DNA.

  Of course, opening up the egg would have damaged the zona pellucida, a jellylike coating on its surface necessary for embryo implantation and development. But ever since Jerry Hall and Sandra Yee had shown in 1991 that a synthetic zona pellucida could be coated onto egg cells, human cloning had been theoret
ically possible. And just two years later, at an American Fertility Society meeting in Montreal, of all places, Hall and his colleagues announced they had actually done it, although the embryos they’d cloned weren’t taken beyond the earliest stage. Yes, the technology did exist. What Molly was suggesting was a real possibility. Klimus could have used the procedure to make several eggs containing copies of Hannah’s DNA, cultured them in vitro to the multicellular state, and then Dr. Bacon—presumably unaware of their pedigree—would have inserted the embryos into Molly, hoping that at least one of them would implant.

  “If it’s true,” said Molly, looking up at Pierre, gaze flicking back and forth between his left eye and his right, “if it’s true, it wouldn’t change the way you feel about Amanda, would it?”

  Pierre was quiet for a moment.

  Molly’s voice took on an urgent tone. “Would it?”

  “Well, no. No, I suppose not. It’s just that, well, I mean, I knew she wasn’t my child—biologically, that is. I knew she wasn’t part of me. But I’d always thought she was part of you. But if what you’re suggesting is true, then…” He let the words trail off.

  The Shania Twain CD had stopped playing. Pierre got up, made his way slowly over to the stereo, ejected the disc, fumbled to get it back in its jewel case, and turned the power off. He was trying desperately to think. It was a crazy idea—crazy. Sure, Amanda had a speech disorder. So what? Lots of kids dealt with things that were much more severe. He thought of little Erik Lagerkvist, who was infinitely worse off than Amanda. He put the CD back in the rack and made his way over to the couch. “I do love her,” he said as he sat down. He took his wife’s hand in his. “She’s our daughter.”

  Molly nodded, relieved. But after a long moment she said, “Still, we need to know. It affects so much—her schooling, maybe even her susceptibility to disease.”

  Pierre looked at the clock on the mantel. It was just after 9:00 P.M. “I’m going to the lab.”

  “What for?”

  “Most everyone will have gone home by now. I’m going to steal a sample of Hapless Hannah’s DNA.”