Tom Hyman

by Jupiter's Daughter

  Carlton Fisher and Carol Ajemian were talking about primitive art.

  Anne sat down next to Hank Ajemian.

  “Is Genny all right?” he asked.

  “She’s fine,” she replied in a low voice. “But I’m so embarrassed.

  She never behaves like that.”

  “What set her off? Do you know?”

  Anne hesitated, then spoke in a whisper only Ajemian could hear. “She doesn’t like the baroness.”

  Ajemian stole a glance across the table and curled up his lip in a sly smile. “She has good judgment,” he whispered back. “Neither do I.”

  The quenelles of pheasant were perfectly prepared and elegantly served.

  Anne and Hank Ajemian talked about Goth and Coronado.

  “My own gut instinct,” Ajemian said, “is that Jupiter’s a fraud.

  I could be wrong. But that’s my feeling. They’re going to set up a test program. So we’ll find out who’s right.”

  “Why would Goth have tried to perpetrate a fraud?”

  Ajemian cut into his pheasant with his fork. “I don’t know. But Dalton and I spent hours hunting through the hospital, through Goth’s apartment, and through that old medical school up on the hill, looking for records. We couldn’t find anything.”

  “Couldn’t everything have been destroyed in the fire?”

  “Maybe. But there ought to have been at least some traces of his work around somewhere. All we found were a couple of boxes of old bones, some fetuses pickled in jars, and some old scientific journals. But no research. No computer printouts, nothing.”

  After dessert the party moved into the library for coffee. Anne immediately went over to the baroness. The woman smiled and complimented Anne on the dinner. As she spoke, her eyes appraised Anne with a keen, feral hardness. “You look quite lovely, Frau Stewart.”

  Anne blushed. “Thank you. Please call me Anne.”

  Her eyes explored the exposed swell of Anne’s bosom. “Your husband never told me how beautiful you were.”

  Anne didn’t know how to reply. The tone in the woman’s voice had an insinuating, almost flirtatious quality to it. If she had been a man, Anne would have assumed she was making a pass.

  “I’m very sorry about our daughter,” Anne said. “I don’t know what got into her. She’s usually so well-behaved.”

  “It’s quite all right,” the baroness purred. “Perhaps I shall have another opportunity. Your husband has told me so much about her, you know. Naturally I wanted to see this extraordinary child for myself.”

  “Fathers like to brag,” Anne replied, forcing a smile. “But it’s true that Genny is quite precocious….”

  “I am so relieved to hear that.”

  The remark confused Anne. “You are?”

  “Of course. And you should be congratulated. Such a very brave woman.”

  “Brave?”

  The baroness laughed. “Don’t be so modest, Frau Stewart. To be willing to volunteer for such a procedure demanded great courage. You must have had to overcome many fears. Many things could have gone wrong, ja?”

  “The procedure is actually pretty commonplace these days,” Anne replied, still puzzled.

  The baroness ignored her reply. “When I think of you and your daughter I think of Mary and the Virgin Birth,” she said, arching an eyebrow.

  “And born exactly at the beginning of the third millennium.

  Extraordinary. Almost like the Second Coming. Really quite extraordinary.

  Anne wrinkled her brow in complete bafflement. “I’m sorry-I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.”

  The baroness took a sip from her demitasse and placed it on a side table. “My dear,” she said. Her tone was patronizing. “I’m talking about Goth’s procedure, of course. The Jupiter program.

  I know you’ve kept it a big secret but of course your husband had to tell me about it to get my financial backing. It was a very clever idea. Inspired.”

  Anne felt her pulse racing, but she still didn’t quite get it.

  “What was?”

  The baroness waved a hand impatiently. “Using you as the program’s guinea pig, of course.”

  Anne blinked. She tried to say something but couldn’t. She suddenly felt faint. She managed a barely audible “Excuse me,” then turned and started out of the library. Everything became a blur —the faces of the guests, the sounds, the rooms, the furniture.

  She found herself running upstairs.

  Genny’s door was open, and a night light burning. Anne pressed herself against the side of the crib and looked down at her sleeping daughter.

  She felt a wave of terror, then rage. After a few minutes the narcotic of psychological shock took hold and submerged her thoughts and emotions in a kind of twilight numbness.

  She pulled Genny from the crib and cradled her in her arms.

  “My God, my God, what have they done to you?”

  The little girl woke and stirred uncomfortably for a few moments, then drifted back to sleep in her mother’s arms.

  Lexy appeared in the bedroom doorway. “I saw you dash out,” she said.

  “Are you all right?”

  Anne squeezed Genny against her. “No. We’re leaving.”

  “Say that again?”

  “Genny and I are leaving.”

  Lexy threw up her arms in confusion. “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Why? What’s the matter? Where are you going?”

  “I can’t explain. Can we stay with you?”

  “With me? In the city? Sure, I guess so, but—” “I want to leave right now. Get your car.”

  “Jesus, Annie, hold on a minute—” “Now. Get your car. We’re leaving right now. Right now!”

  6

  It was two days before Anne could bring herself to speak to her husband, even over the telephone.

  Dalton Stewart begged, pleaded, cajoled, threatened. He pointed out again and again that she was being unfair. His gamble with her pregnancy had paid off, after all—paid off magnificently.

  Genny was a beautiful, superior child. “Goth was a genius,” he argued.

  “He was going to do some genetic repairs anyway, to fix the fragile X

  syndrome. It was perfectly logical of him to ask if I might not want to try the whole package. There was hardly any risk. He swore the program would work. You might have miscarried, that’s all.”

  “He asked you?”

  Dalton hesitated a moment. “Look, Anne. It seemed like a hell of a good idea to me. It was a good idea. And there was never any real threat to the baby.”

  “Are you trying to convince me of that, or yourself?”

  “It’s the truth!”

  Anne once would have been eager to believe Dalton. She had dreaded arguments and confrontations ever since she was a little girl. She associated them with loss and abandonment. A strong disagreement with anybody always seemed to put the world in abrupt danger of falling apart. To protect herself, Anne had always believed the best in people. She would rather have something be her fault than have to confront someone else.

  But Dalton Stewart had deceived her about the one thing in her life that he must have known mattered more to her than anything else—their child. He had manipulated her because he assumed he could get away with it. She despised him suddenly. In his arrogant insensitivity he had shown her just how unimportant she was in his scheme of things.

  “Don’t blow it all out of proportion,” Dalton continued. “Sure, I admit I should have asked you. I’m very sorry now that I didn’t.

  But I was afraid you might say no, because you wouldn’t have understood the facts of the situation. Genetics is a complicated science. I told myself how happy you’d be when you gave birth to that perfect child.

  And I thought that it was far better if you believed the reason for the child’s superiority was completely natural—that it all came from you and me…. That way, you would always be so proud….”

  The receiver,
wet from the perspiration of her hand, kept slipping.

  She clutched it tightly in her fist. “Save your breath, Dalton.

  I’ve already called a lawyer and asked him to arrange a legal separation.”

  “Anne. For godsakes listen to me. Please. Look at how it’s all turned out. We’ve got the greatest little girl in the world. Why should you be upset by that? Why do this to me? And why do this to Genny? It’s all working out. Why do you want to ruin everything?”

  Anne was unmoved. Her husband didn’t know that it had worked out at all. He didn’t know what time bombs might lie dormant in Genny’s genes. No one did.

  “Please, Anne. I love you. I love Genny.” Dalton’s voice cracked.

  “I need you, Anne. That’s something I’d never have admitted to anyone two years ago. But it’s true. You’ve changed me. Genny’s changed me.

  For the first time in my life I felt happy.”

  “You only care about yourself, Dalton.”

  “Promise me you’ll think about—” Anne hung up, cutting Dalton off in mid-sentence.

  She sat by the phone for several minutes, trying to regain her composure. She felt tremendous sadness. But she didn’t feel any uncertainty-He had betrayed her in the most profound way. It was over with Dalton forever.

  Later, Hank Ajemian called. “God, I’m so sorry about what happened.

  Carol and I are both upset as hell….”

  Anne thanked him.

  “I didn’t know about it, Anne. I swear I didn’t. Dalton didn’t tell anyone.”

  “He told the baroness.”

  “He needed to sell the program to her. Stewart Biotech was facing bankruptcy. Bankruptcy would have been better, to tell you the truth.”

  “Why?”

  “The baroness will end up owning everything. I know how she operates.

  She’ll strip Dalton clean.”

  Anne asked Ajemian about the Jupiter program. He described the original meetings, and all he could remember about what Goth had said the program would do.

  “Goth’s dead,” Anne said. “How can they even pretend to have any idea of what they’re doing? It’s dangerous to pursue it. And immoral.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Can you do anything to stop it?”

  “No chance of that, Anne. Dalton’s betting the ranch on this one.”

  The following afternoon Anne got up her courage and took Genny to see pediatrician Paul Elder. They walked through Central Park from Lexy’s apartment to his office and sat in the waiting room for two and a half hours. At seven-thirty his last patient finally left and the doctor appeared, apologizing for the long wait.

  “I’m Anne Stewart. This is my daughter, Genevieve.”

  Elder looked perplexed. “You look familiar, but this little lady doesn’t. The doctor bent down and held out his hand toward Anne’s daughter. “Hello, Genevieve. How are you?”

  Genny held out her tiny hand for the doctor to shake. “Very well, thank you,” she piped cheerfully. “You can call me Genny.”

  “Okay, Genny. You’re very grown up, aren’t you? How old are you?”

  “I was two on New Year’s Day.”

  Elder straightened up, genuinely surprised. “Is that all?”

  “I was born with the century,” Genny declared, with a proud grin.

  “That’s what Mommy says.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t look like you need a doctor. Are you sick?”

  Genny shook her head. “I feel very well, thank you.”

  The doctor looked up at Genny’s mother questioningly.

  “I came to see you a little over two and a half years ago,” Anne said, suddenly acutely embarrassed. “When I was pregnant. I suppose you don’t remember. I wanted you to be Genny’s doctor….”

  “Oh?”

  “You didn’t . . .” Anne swallowed her words. She clenched her fists and took a deep breath. This time, she wasn’t going to back down.

  “You wouldn’t take us on,” she declared in a tight voice.

  “You told me you didn’t have time for me then, or words to that effect.

  I wouldn’t have come back, but something’s happened. I’m very sorry to burst in on you like this, but I wanted to make sure that you would see us. Right now, if possible. It’s important. I really won’t take no for an answer this time. Not at least until you’ve heard what I have to say. I—” Dr. Elder rested a hand gently on Anne’s shoulder.

  “Relax,” he said.

  “Of course I’ll look at her.”

  “There’s a lot I have to explain first,” Anne added, feeling dangerously near tears.

  The doctor nodded. He reached for Genny’s hand. “We have lots of toys over here in the corner, you know. Would you like to play with them while I talk to your mommy?”

  Genny shook her head. “I really don’t like your toys very much,” she admitted.

  “You don’t?”

  “But I like your doctor things. Can I play with some of your doctor things ? ” Elder grinned. “You mean stethoscopes—things like that?”

  Genny laughed. “I love stethoscopes! They’re my favorite!”

  Dr. Elder found Genny a stethoscope, a tongue depressor, a knee mallet, and a few other medical odds and ends and set her up with them at his nurse’s desk. The nurse had gone home two hours ago.

  Anne sat in a chair next to the doctor’s cluttered desk and spilled out her story in a torrent of words, describing the ZIFT fertilization procedure, the traumatic circumstances of Genny’s birth on New Year’s Eve, the explosions, the fire, Goth’s death, and finally her discovery, just three nights ago, that Goth had done more to Genny than simply correct the gene carrying the fragile X syndrome.

  “He used me as a guinea pig to test some kind of new genetic formula,”

  Anne said, twisting her handbag strap nervously between her fingers.

  “It was something that he had been working on that my husband was going to help him develop.”

  “But why come to me?”

  “Because I remember you said you knew about Goth’s work.”

  “I knew something about him,” he admitted. “After medical school I studied genetics. I originally intended to specialize in it.”

  “Why’d you change your mind?”

  “The genetics field was getting too commercial for my taste, for one thing. Private companies were buying up talent and slapping patents on everything. The researchers were losing control to the marketing directors. Genetics today is driven more by the desire for a quick buck, I’m sorry to say, than by science. I guess that accounts for my earlier hostility to you. I apologize. But I don’t entirely approve of companies like Stewart Biotech, which I understand your husband owns.”

  “And you no doubt think I’ve gotten just what I deserved.

  But the truth is I had no idea at the time what Goth was going to do.

  I wasn’t told anything. I know it was stupid of me, not to have been more suspicious, but . . .” She paused, struggling to keep her emotions in check. “My God, I’m just so worried about what might happen to Genny—what she might turn out to be….”

  “Any cause for worry so far?”

  “No. She seems healthy and normal, thank God. Exceptionally precocious, however, if you’ll excuse a mother’s bragging.”

  “Has she been sick much?”

  “Not even once. She’s yet to have a cold, a sore throat, an ear infection. Anything. And she’s been tested for everything imaginable.

  That was my husband’s idea. Now I know why. I brought along her medical records.”

  Anne pulled a thick folder from her bag and handed it to Elder.

  He thumbed through it carefully. He looked exactly as unkempt as Anne had remembered him—frayed collar, wrinkled trousers, unruly hair. She found his total lack of physical vanity enormously appealing. It presumed an unselfish spirit—and a mind focused on more important matters.

  “It’s impressive,” he admitted
, closing the folder and returning it to her. “No cause for alarm here. And maybe there’s no cause for alarm, period.”

  “I want to believe that, but I don’t dare,” Anne said.

  “Well, it’s possible that Goth’s genetic tinkering—assuming he did do some—simply didn’t accomplish anything. She appears to be unusually bright, but I’d guess she’s within the normal range, as such things go.

  I’ve met some extraordinarily precocious children. So her high intelligence may be no more than one of nature’s random lucky combination of genes, without any credit to Goth at all.”

  “But she’s barely past two. I’m terrified what might show up next week or next month. Or next year.”

  Elder nodded sympathetically. “I understand. But a tremendous amount of development has already taken place. If there were any gross physical or mental abnormalities, it’s likely they’d have manifested themselves by now.”

  They both turned to the doorway. Genny was standing there, holding her stuffed rabbit in her arms and listening to their conversation. Elder held out a hand. “Come on in, Genny, and let me take a look at you, if that’s okay with you.”

  Genny climbed up on the examination table and Elder gave her a cursory physical examination.

  “Will you check Rabbit, too?” she asked, holding up the stuffed animal h “Sure. Has he been sick, do you think?”

  - “No, but he fell on his head.”

  “He did? How did that happen?”

  5 Genny pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well, I guess I dropped him. I didn’t mean to, though.”

  ,’ “Let’s take a look at the young fellow.”

  Genny handed the doctor her stuffed rabbit. Elder made an energetic pretense of examining it, much to Genny’s delight.

  Anne watched his performance with interest. The doctor won Genny’s trust almost immediately.

  They were having a very deep conversation about Rabbit. “No concussion from that fall,” Elder declared, in a perfectly serious tone. “But that doesn’t surprise me. Unlike you and me, he’s got a lot of fur, and that helps protect him. You can drop him all you like and it won’t bother him at all.”