The God Project

by John Saul

  Lucy held up a protesting hand. “I’m sorry, but you’re losing me,” she said.

  Randolph tried again. “All right. The chromosomes, or genes, act as a pattern for the cells. They dictate what chemicals the cells will produce, and, therefore, determine the cell’s shape, function, and purpose. Over the years, we’ve discovered that certain genetic deficiencies cause chemical imbalances that, in turn, cause certain mental or physical problems later on in life.”

  “And what, exactly, does CHILD do?”

  “It’s very simple, really. All we do is track certain children, from the time of birth through adulthood. We keep track of their genetic records and then simply observe them. For instance, let’s suppose that there are two children who, at the age of, say, ten or eleven, begin to develop symptoms of mental illness. Say, also, that there are no environmental similarities between the children. But say, even further, that when we go through our records, we discover that both children share a specific genetic abnormality. Bingo! It would appear that the particular disorder displayed by the two children may have its roots in genetics.”

  Lucy shook her head. “It sounds too simple.”

  “Yes,” Randolph agreed. “But even granted the oversimplification, that’s basically what we do. In the long run, of course, the idea is to determine which genetic deficiencies are benign and which ones are going to cause problems to the child later. It’s up to other researchers to try to figure out ways of correcting or compensating for the deficiencies and abnormalities.”

  “And that’s all you do?” Lucy asked.

  “That’s all we do,” Randolph assured her.

  “Then why wasn’t I told you were studying Randy?”

  “Perhaps you were and don’t remember it,” Randolph suggested.

  “Where my son is concerned, I wouldn’t have forgotten,” Lucy shot back. “I would have wanted to know exactly what the study was about, what would be required from Randy, and how he had been chosen.”

  “But that’s just the point, Mrs. Corliss.” Randolph’s voice was gentle and soothing. “The study was no more than a survey, it required nothing from Randy, and he was chosen at random. It was purely a matter of chance that Randy was selected for our study.”

  “Then you won’t mind showing me the results of the study, will you?”

  “Results? But, Mrs. Corliss, there aren’t any results yet. The survey will go on until the children are all grown up.”

  “But what about the ones who don’t grow up?” Lucy asked. “What about the ones who die in infancy, or get sick, or are victims of accidents? Surely you must have some results? If you don’t, I should think you’d have given the whole thing up by now.”

  For the first time, Randolph seemed at a loss for words. Lucy decided to press her advantage. “Mr. Randolph, the nurse at Randy’s school says that of all the children in the school, Randy and the three others you’re studying have the best health records. Randy’s never been sick a day in his life, never hurt himself badly, never shown any signs of being slow, or abnormal, or anything else. Now, doesn’t it seem reasonable that if I discover someone has been studying him, I might also wonder just why they were studying him? And if Randy is remarkable—and he is—doesn’t it seem reasonable that I might begin to think the people who are studying him might want a closer look?”

  The color had drained from Randolph’s face, and his smile had settled into a tight line of anger. “Mrs. Corliss, are you suggesting that CHILD kidnaped your son?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Randolph,” Lucy replied coldly. “But I know it would do a great deal toward setting my mind at rest if you would show me the study Randy was involved in, together with any results that have come from that study. I don’t pretend that I’ll understand it, but IH be able to find someone who will. And although I can’t be sure of it right now, I suspect that what you’ve been doing without my consent, and without Randy’s consent, amounts to invasion of privacy.”

  Randolph sank back into his chair. His right hand brushed distractedly at his hair. “Mrs. Corliss, I’m not sure what I can do for you,” he said at last. “But of course, I’ll do my best. It will take a little time to find out exactly which of our surveys Randy was involved in and put together a report for you. Believe me, well do it Nothing like this has ever happened before, and CHILD has been functioning for nearly twenty years. But I can tell you right now that we had nothing to do with the disappearance of your son.”

  “How long will it take?” Lucy asked.

  “A couple of days.”

  Lucy stood up. “Then I’ll expect to hear from you, Mr. Randolph. Day after tomorrow?”

  “I’ll call you, Mrs. Corliss. If you’ll just leave your address with my secretary …”

  Lucy smiled icily. “I’ll do that, Mr. Randolph, but I can’t imagine it’s necessary. I’ll sure that somewhere in your flies you already have my address.”

  She picked up her purse, and without offering Randolph her hand, left his office.

  When she was gone, Paul Randolph sat down heavily at his desk. Sweat had broken out on his brow.

  What he had always feared was starting to happen.

  Randy Corliss was spending the afternoon playing a game he still didn’t quite understand. It was sort of like hide-and-seek, and sort of like tag, but there was something else involved, and Randy wasn’t quite sure he liked it.

  The game had started simply enough.

  One of the boys was ‘it,’ and he had to count to a hundred while the other boys scattered and hid. Then the boy who was ‘if’ began hunting for his friends. When he spotted one of them, he yelled the boy’s name, and began chasing him, trying to tag him. If he succeeded, that boy became ‘it.’

  The catch was that once the boy who was ‘if’ had named his prey, the other boys could come out of hiding to help the prey.

  Suddenly, whoever was ‘it’ was transformed from hunter to victim.

  Randy had made his first mistake right at the start. When the counting had begun, he had run off by himself while the rest of the pack stuck together. He had found a hiding place deep in the woods, near the creek. He waited, sure that he wouldn’t be found, listening for a name to be called out, at which point it would be safe to emerge.

  The minutes had passed interminably, and Randy tried to figure out what was going on. Finally, he rose from his hiding place only to find that Adam Rogers, who was ‘it,’ was standing only a few yards away.

  “Randy!” Adam screamed and the chase was on.

  And that was when Randy realized his mistake. The other boys, all together, were too far away to help him. Within a few seconds Adam had slammed him to the ground, crowing at having won a victory in the first round.

  And now Randy was ‘it.’

  He counted through to a hundred as fast as he could, then looked up.

  No one was in sight.

  He moved away from the base point next to the main house and started across the lawn, his eyes searching the woods for a sign of his friends.

  Nothing.

  He moved into the woods, searching carefully, knowing that he would have to find one of the boys alone if he was going to have a chance at winning.

  He caught a glimpse of Adam and started to shout his name, but then saw one of the other boys, Jerry Preston, peeking out from behind a tree only a few feet away. Pretending not to see either of them, Randy moved deeper into the woods.

  He stopped every few seconds, listening, sure that all the other boys were following him, yet unable to hear them.

  Then, ahead of him, he saw Eric Carter, his red hair giving him away, crouched in a clump of laurel near the fence. He moved closer, trying to pretend he hadn’t seen Eric.

  He looked around, searching the woods behind him for the others. There was silence.

  When he judged he was close enough, he suddenly let out a scream.

  “ERIC CARTER!”

  He hurtled himself forward as Eric exploded out of the laurel and began
to run parallel to the fence. For a second Eric seemed to be outdistancing him, but then Randy began to gain. He had almost caught up with his prey, when three boys suddenly burst out of the forest, one of them slightly ahead of him, one next to him, and the other just behind him.

  Once again, Randy had fallen into a trap.

  He turned to face Adam, who was the closest to him, but Adam suddenly paused, and Randy felt a blow from behind. He stumbled, then fell to the ground as Billy Mayhew and Jerry piled onto him. In the distance, Eric Carter had stopped running and was now watching the fracas, his face wreathed in a smile.

  Randy fought as hard as he could, his arms and legs flailing, but it did no good.

  “Throw him into the fence,” Jerry suggested. “That’ll finish him off.”

  Suddenly the boys were off him, but Adam was holding him firmly by the shoulders as Billy and Jerry each grabbed one of his legs.

  “On three,” Adam yelled. The boys began swinging Randy, with Adam counting off the cadence.

  On three they let go and hurled Randy into the fence.

  There was a shower of sparks, and the air was suddenly filled with the odor of burning flesh.

  Randy fell to the ground.

  The game was over, and the boys gathered around Randy, staring at him curiously. Adam Rogers glanced at Billy Mayhew.

  “Do you suppose well get in trouble?”

  Billy shrugged. “We didn’t last time. Why should we this time?”

  Then, chattering among themselves, the boys started back through the woods toward the Academy, leaving Randy lying on the ground next to the electrified fence.

  Sally Montgomery had spent much of the weekend in her office at Eastbury College. What she was doing, she knew, was probably illegal. It was definitely unethical, but she had wasted no time at all worrying about that. Instead, she had devoted all her time to discovering the access codes that would allow her to tap into the Eastbury Community Hospital records that were stored in the county’s computer. It was, like most programing, a matter of trial and error. For anyone without Sally’s background, it would have been nearly impossible; for Sally, it was simply a matter of knowing how the codes were constructed, then having the computer begin trying all the possibilities within the framework. The code, when she finally found it, turned out to be ridiculously obvious:

  M-E-D-R-E-A-C-H. MEDical Records, EAstbury Community Hospital? Probably. Indeed, when she finally found the code, it had occurred to her that in an age of acronyms, she ought to have been able to figure it out without the aid of the computer.

  Now, on Monday morning, she was tapping into the records, attempting to find out whether or not the children that CHILD was surveying had truly been selected through random sampling.

  She began by instructing the computer to search the records and put together certain populations.

  Children who were being surveyed by the Children’s Health Institute for Latent Diseases.

  Children who had been victims of SIDS.

  Children whose records reflected no health problems.

  She went back twenty years. Without the computer it would have taken months simply to compile the data.

  Now, after only two horn’s of work, Sally had begun to see a pattern emerge.

  The computer had constructed the populations Sally had asked for and begun comparing them.

  Until ten years ago there had been no discernible differences between the children who were being studied by CHILD and the entire population of juvenile patients for the entire county.

  The same percentage of each population had come down, at one time or another, with such diseases as mumps, measles, and chicken pox.

  The same proportion of each group had displayed similar incidence of emotional problems.

  The same proportion of each group had fallen victim to SIDS.

  On and on, it had been the same. As far as Sally could see, the CHILD surveys had involved a genuinely random sampling of all the children born at Eastbury Community Hospital.

  And then, ten years ago, things began to change.

  The incidence of sudden infant death syndrome seemed to have increased among children in Eastbury, particularly among those born at Eastbury Community Hospital.

  In itself, Sally knew that such a fact could be statistically meaningless.

  What was meaningful was that among the entire population of children in Eastbury, SIDS had increased by four percent.

  Among the population being surveyed by CHILD, SIDS had increased by nearly ten percent.

  Furthermore, the composition of the group of children struck down by SIDS had changed. For the first ten years, the syndrome had appeared with equal frequency in boys and girls. But ten years ago, the statistics began to skew, and baby girls became more frequent victims of the syndrome than baby boys. And among the population of children being surveyed by CHILD, an even higher ratio of girls to boys had died from SIDS.

  Sally printed out the lists of populations, and the strange correlations between the two. Then she turned her attention to the other group she was looking at, the population of children whose medical records were remarkable for the excellent health they reflected. Here, Sally ran into a problem. Over the years, too many children had simply moved away from Eastbury, and their records had come to an abrupt end, to be continued in other areas of the country. Areas to which Sally had no easy access.

  Still, she thought there was a pattern. It appeared, even from the sketchy records, that over the last ten years, the proportion of remarkably healthy little boys on the CHILD lists had risen.

  Again, Sally Montgomery printed out the statistics.

  Toward noon Sally asked the computer to complete one more task.

  Given all the data in the records, she requested the computer to come to a determination as to whether or not the subjects of the CHILD surveys had, over the last ten years, been chosen on a truly random basis.

  The minutes crept by as the computer began digesting all the material stored away in its data banks. At last the screen on Sally’s console came to life.

  The computer’s answer brought tears to Sally’s eyes. Through the blur, she read the computer’s final summation one more time.

  “Insufficient data to make determination.”

  Sally switched off her terminal, gathered up all the printouts her morning’s work had produced, and left her office.

  All her work, according to the computer, meant nothing. And yet she was sure that the computer was wrong. Then, as she thought about it, she came to the slow realization that the computer had not said the CHILD surveys weren’t random. It had simply refused to take a stand on the question.

  That was the problem with computers. They were too objective. Indeed, they were totally objective.

  But CHILD, Sally was convinced, was not totally objective. The survey, she was sure, was a cover for something else.

  A conspiracy.

  But would she be able to prove it?

  She didn’t know.

  All she knew was that the more she learned, the more frightened she became.

  Chapter 16

  STEVE MONTGOMERY PAUSED on the front porch of his mother-in-law’s house, wondering if he’d been right in his decision to share his problems with Phyllis Paine. When the idea of talking to her about Sally had first occurred to him, he’d immediately rejected it. But then, this morning, he’d changed his mind. After all, who knew Sally as well as her own mother?

  He pressed the button next to the front door and listened to the soft melody of the chimes. When there was no answer, he pressed the bell again. Then, just as he was about to turn away, the door opened, and Phyllis, her eyes rimmed in red, and her face suddenly showing her years, gazed out at him.

  “Steve.” Her eyes darted around as she looked for Sally, then her brows furrowed in puzzlement “Isn’t Sally with you?”

  “No.” Offering no further explanation, Steve asked if he could come in, and Phyllis suddenly stepped back.

>   “Of course. I’m sorry, Steve. I—well, I’m afraid I haven’t been having a very good day.”

  Steve paused. “Maybe I should come back another time.”

  “No, no.” She closed the door, and led Steve into the parlor. “I was just getting rid of some things.” Sighing tiredly, she seated herself on the edge of the sofa. “Some dresses I was making for Julie,” she went on. “They were in the sewing room, all cut, and I’ve been waking up every night, feeling guilty about not having finished them.” Her lips twisted into a desolate smile. “You know me—once I start something, I have to finish it. Anyway, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night and going to the sewing room to finish the dresses, and it isn’t until I start working on them that I remember … what happened. So just now I threw them away. I took them out to the garbage can and threw them away.”

  Her eyes, reflecting an uncertainty that Steve had never seen before, searched his face. “It seemed like a terrible thing to do,” she whispered. “And yet, I couldn’t think of anything else. It was a symbol, I suppose. A way of forcing myself to face up to what’s happened.” Suddenly she straightened up and folded her hands in her lap. “But that’s not why you’re here, is it?” The uncertainty in her eyes disappeared, to be replaced by the penetrating sharpness Steve was used to. “It’s Sally, isn’t it?”

  Steve shifted uncomfortably, then nodded his head.

  “Things aren’t going well, are they? I mean, even considering the circumstances?”

  “No,” Steve said quietly. “And I’m beginning to wonder what to do.”

  Phyllis’s brows rose. “About Sally?”

  “Dr. Wiseman called me on Friday. He’s worried about her—he seems to think she’s avoiding facing up to the fact that Julie’s death can’t be explained by trying to prove that something else happened. Something more reasonable.”

  “I see,” Phyllis said. “And what do you think?”