Killer Chromosomes td-32

by Warren Murphy

  Was that changing in her head also? Was she losing the human sense of propriety? She would need that to survive among humans.

  Just as she would need her experiments.

  She ducked into a small antique shop. The owner offered to call an ambulance. She said she didn't need it. She cuffed the owner into unconsciousness and locked the door. She heard a baby cry and she did not think of swaddling it. Instead, she thought that she was not hungry at the moment.

  And, realizing that, and not feeling for the human baby, but with concern only for the new species that she had become, Sheila Feinberg realized in the dusty antique shop with the owner unconscious behind the counter that the last link with people had been severed.

  She made a list of how to survive. Individually, people without weapons were generally defenseless. As a group, the human had no match on earth.

  Until now.

  Her features could very easily be identified.

  She needed new features.

  In the human, the male was usually the killer. She would give herself features that would disarm him.

  Her hand was still steady and she was pleased with her thinking which she had feared she would lose. But as the list grew and darkness descended on Boston in the spring, she realized she was even more cunning than she had been.

  Breasts. She underlined the word. Hair: blonde. Waist: slim. Hips: ample. Legs: long. The big breasts would be used to lure the male of the human species.

  She had either by acute rationality or by instinct returned to the laboratory the first night to get and to hide away equipment. The first night had been very confusing. She remembered darkness coming on her as she drank all the combinations. She remembered being carted in something, then realizing it was an ambulance and when the attendant reached down to her, she saw his throat and was at it before she knew what she had done.

  Biologically, it was quite clear what had happened. The human body replaced its cells every seven years. The billions of cells were changed. But why didn't a person change with the cells? Why did a nose come back as the same nose and the ears come back as the same ears and the minute fingerprints come back as the same fingerprints?

  There was a coding system. The genes did more than send lifetime messages through sperm and egg. They were a continuous living program. Like a record. So that as long as it played, Beethoven's Fifth could never become Elton John. But melt down the material, recast the record and you could have anything.

  She had discovered the way to break down the record grooves of the cells and recast them during lifetime play. Through the combination of genes and the insulation material to keep them surviving, she had discovered the recasting method.

  Whether or not it would take seven years to completely remake herself, she did not know. But in the meantime she had to live, and to live, she had to become someone other than Dr. Sheila Feinberg, homely, old maid scientist. She had to become someone that no one had ever seen before.

  The materials from the lab were stuffed into a corner between the ceiling and beam in the warehouse in which she had hidden herself that first terrifying night. The scientist in her had lived through that transformation. And the transformation had been rapid. She was pretty sure why.

  She had been highly excited. The body had been heated up, adrenalin was pumping at maximum flow, and the process took place in a faster-moving bloodstream.

  The baby cried again, and now she needed it. It was untended for long periods, she deduced. Into an alley behind the antique store, she padded. She liked the night. The cry came from the second floor. Her hand fastened on a fire escape grate and slowly with one hand she pulled herself up.

  Her logic told her this feat was far beyond anything she had ever been able to do before when she was fully human. If she could only get grasshopper genes. They would be far superior per ounce to those of a large cat. A grasshopper jumped more than twenty times its own height, a tiger rarely more than three times its length. Humans? They were almost worthless. Pound for pound, the human was one of the worst creatures physically. Mentally however it excelled.

  And the Species Sheila Feinberg? It would be something totally different. And it would have the whole world for its own.

  The baby had gone back to sleep. It was very pink and it had been a half day since Sheila had eaten. But her rationality was still in control. She would have to hold onto that. She could not eat this morsel.

  She flicked a piece of flesh from the side of the baby's eyes. The sting made it cry. Sheila backed into the shadows lest the human mother enter. There might be the father in the house. There might even be a gun.

  No one came.

  Sheila placed the baby flesh in the key solution that, when later combined with the laboratory insulation, would become the substance that could change the human recording. The baby flesh went into her mouth.

  The substance was saliva. That was the secret key, the thing that had enabled the tiger genes Sheila Feinberg had drunk to break through the barrier and merge with her humanity, to create a new type of creature.

  No one came and Sheila slid out the window, noticing that the crying human child was bleeding from its eyes.

  Back at the warehouse, she set up her small laboratory. It was only as wide as a rafter but it had that essential ingredient without which all scientific research is hopeless. It had the trained mind of a scientist.

  She worked quickly. She isolated the solution from the baby flesh. The rafter was just cool enough to keep it alive and surviving. Then she set up her human trap.

  There was a pay phone in the office of the warehouse. She phoned an old acquaintance.

  The acquaintance didn't recognize her voice but she was, oh, so susceptible to the bait.

  "Look," said Sheila, "you don't know me. But I know you're pushing fifty... no, no... don't get mad. I've got something for you. I can take away your eye wrinkles. Yes. I know a lot of women in their thirties have eye wrinkles. I can take yours away. Of course it will cost money. Lots of money. But you don't pay me until I show you it works.. You'll have skin like a baby's. Is it illegal? Illegal as hell."

  Sheila surprised herself at her knowledge of human nature. She had never been able to be effectively deceitful before, possibly from having a mother more effective in information-gathering than the CIA. But now she had handled this woman perfectly. If she had offered the treatment free, the woman wouldn't believe it was worth anything. But when she said expensive and that was illegal, it was too great an attraction to resist. The woman was sure she could get baby skin.

  Which was more than Dr. Feinberg was sure of. It had, however, a chance of working. That would lead to the second crucial step of her plan, formulated in the antique shop.

  And if it didn't work?

  Well, she was going to see the woman and at least she would get a meal.

  The woman greeted her at the door of her fashionable Brookline house.

  "I know you. You're that crazy Doctor Feinberg the police are looking for. You're a criminal. You're a deadly killer. You're a butcher."

  "I can make you look ten years younger," said Sheila.

  "Come in," said the woman.

  She furtively guided Sheila into a study. The woman was nudging fifty with full hip and breast, well fatted and marbled throughout. Dr. Feinberg suppressed her hunger. The woman had dyed red hair. Very dry.

  "How much money?" asked the woman.

  "Lots," said Sheila. "But first let me prove what I can do."

  "How do I know you won't poison me?"

  "Do you think I would travel halfway across a city that is hunting me just to poison you? What's the matter with you? Who do you think you are? You think people stay up nights figuring out ways to harm you? Don't you think I've got better things to do?"

  "I'm sorry."

  "You should be."

  Sheila took a capped test tube inside a water shield from her pocketbook.

  "Drink this," she said.

  "You first," said the woman.


  "I don't have eye wrinkles."

  "I don't trust you," said the woman.

  "Do you trust your eyes?"

  "Have they ever seen one wrinkle disappear from anybody yet? One? I mean really disappear. Not cosmetic surgery so that your face looks like drapery when the whole thing sags. New skin. I'm talking new, unwrinkled skin."

  "I've got a lot of friends. I'll be missed immediately."

  "I know that," said Sheila. "That's why I chose you. You're not going to be missed. We're going to use your friends."

  "What if something should go wrong?" The woman bit a perfectly formed fingernail. It was made of soft artificial lacquer, and it didn't bite well but rather stretched under her teeth.

  "Then you still have your wrinkles. Hey, I'm giving you young looks, human."

  The woman shrugged. "All of it?"

  "Sure," said Sheila.

  She uncapped the top.

  "Quickly," said Sheila. "It's not that stable. All of it. Now." The woman hesitated. Sheila sprang to her and dumped the tube downward over the red tongue. She clamped the jaw shut with her powerful hands and closed the nose. Then she let the jaw open and the woman swallowed reflexively as she gulped air.

  The woman made a face.

  "Ooooh, that was awful. Let me wash it down with a drink or something."

  "Don't," said Sheila. "It won't survive alcohol."

  The woman blinked. She smiled. She collapsed on the white sag carpet and breathed slowly.

  Sheila peered at the corner of the right eye. The eye was open and the pupil stared unseeing at the ceiling.

  Two things would have to happen for this to work. One, Sheila's theory that each cell contained its own program and would, like a tumbler falling properly in a combination lock, go through the bloodstream to its right place. And two, speed.

  Sheila herself was evidence that something happened quickly. Exactly what, she was not sure. But would specific changes happen quickly?

  And was human saliva the key to keeping the foreign genetic material alive in a new body? She could only wait and see.

  The woman's eyes were covered with some light oil. Sheila rubbed it with her thumb. If Sheila were correct, not only would there be the specific change-that is, the baby's cells in their proper relationship to the rest of the body, eye crease to eye crease, but-as with Sheila-a vast amount of changeover would occur almost instantly.

  It may have been her imagination or great disappointment but the eyes suddenly seemed more wrinkled than before. Instead of a few lines, there was now a flutter of bumps like very thin paper veneer bubbled up with water. She heard the traffic outside honk for a light that lingered too long. She smelled the woman's light perfume. She touched the heavy crow's feet around the eye. The skin was dry.

  Sheila sighed. She had failed. She wondered for a moment if her experiments in the lab had produced not a different species as she thought she was, but just another insane person. One who was so insane she liked human meat.

  But if that were so, why was she so strong? How could she move so effortlessly? Perhaps it was the strength of a madwoman. She had heard of these things.

  She rubbed the skin around the eyes between her fingers. It crumbled. Little cells giving up in dryness. And then she saw it. Skin removed left new skin underneath.

  The eyelines were gone. At corners of the woman's eyes was smooth baby skin. The new cells had pushed out the old, making them even more wrinkly.

  Sheila turned the woman's head. The other eye had a translucent white patch just where the eyelids met. With her fingertips, Sheila lifted it off and chewed it like a snack.

  When the woman regained consciousness and saw her eyes, felt her skin, and turned this way and that to see how beautiful she looked from different angles-full face forward was best-she had one response as to what she would do for Dr. Sheila Feinberg.

  "Anything."

  "Good," said Sheila. "Now I know you have friends. And I want to help them too in a special way. I'm starting a special clinic."

  "You'll be rich."

  Sheila smiled. Rich was for humans. She wondered if her species would have a form of currency someday?

  There were no thoughts about her species being a better species than man. Or worse. It didn't matter. Sheila Feinberg understood then, logically, what she had understood instinctively since the transformation, and what almost every soldier knows who has seen combat.

  One kills not because one is right or brave or even angry. One kills to live. One kills others because they are others.

  Despite all the reasons humans gave for wars, Sheila understood all those reasons were wrong. Humans fought not for justice or even conquest, but because they perceived another person as simply another person. A border. A language difficulty. Different clothes called uniforms. All made it easy to tell who were the others.

  She had never studied political science or history as a student. But she knew she understood more about humans now than anyone who had ever majored in those supposed sciences.

  Perhaps her species would be luckier and not fight among itself as humans did, but reserve its efforts for other species.

  "Yes, rich," agreed Sheila. Let the human woman think she wanted money.

  Sheila needed a young girl with big breasts, a young girl with a shapely nose, a young girl with flaxen yellow hair, a young girl with smooth and tender hips.

  "Tender?"

  "I mean smooth and full," said Sheila.

  "That's quite an order for one girl."

  "Oh, no. Different girls. But Caucasians."

  "Your method only works with similar races?" the woman asked.

  "On the contrary. There really isn't any difference between the races. It's a cosmetic thing. Who'd want to put a black breast on a white chest? Or vice versa?"

  "How interesting," said the woman, not all that interested. She pulled up at the top of her left breast. She imagined what it would look like young again. She imagined what it would look like very big. She had always said she was glad she didn't have those big floppy breasts. She had always said big breasts were an American distortion, a cultural prejudice not shared by really civilized people.

  "I know a 42-Double-D cup," said the woman, grinning. She imagined those battlements parading before her and felt quite excited.

  Sheila had other problems. She hadn't eaten for a day. She fell on an old woman carrying a loaf of bread. Sheila left the bread.

  The next day the young girls arrived.

  Within twenty-four hours, Sheila Feinberg had the sort of features her mother had once called "gaudy."

  The nose had lost its prolonging bump. The chest curved massively. The hips came out with soft invitation.

  Her hair was long and golden blonde.

  She could not be recognized by the police anymore, but even more important, with her new beauty, she now had an awesome power over the male human. Let the government send its best after her. First they would have to find and recognize her; then they would have to resist her physical charms.

  Being searched for now wasn't the worst of her problems. She had to find a mate.

  The day had become quite itchy for her. She restrained an urge to rub her back against door jambs and put her scent around greater Boston. She was, quite simply, in heat.

  She was ready to breed.

  She had two more dinners and when the carcasses were found, bellies eaten out, agents from the federal government came pouring into the city. Secret Service men came, although the crime had nothing to do with the U.S. Treasury. FBI men, although the crime had nothing to do with federal laws. CIA scientists examined the corpses, although it was against the law for that agency to operate internally.

  The mayor of the city, faced with a problem he neither understood nor had a remote chance of coping with, went on television to tell greater Boston:

  "We have stepped up surveillance. We have increased our deployed forces and we are working toward what we expect to be a significant step in ste
mming this terror."

  What he really meant was that the city, along with everyone else, was spending more money. Those who survived would be taxed more in the future.

  It was summer and the humans of the city were preparing for their annual fall rioting based on color. But something in their midst knew more about them than they did. She knew all humans were alike.

  She also knew that, counting the gestation period, the reproductive process might be too slow.

  "Perhaps," thought Sheila," I can make others like me in a faster way."

  And by others like her, she did not mean just big-bosomed blondes.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Security around the Boston Graduate School of Biological Sciences, where the now notorious Dr. Sheila Feinberg had done her chromosome experiments, was typically tight.

  Many men with many guns and serious faces annoyed passers by who wished to use the street in front of the lab. Men with long hair and beards were questioned. That there was no more reason to question men with long hair and beards than there was to question crew cut, well-dressed men didn't seem to faze any of the guards.

  They did not know what they were looking for.

  None of them knew what a chromosome was. One of the officers suspected it was vaguely left wing but was not sure. They had all seen pictures of Dr. Sheila Feinberg. Instead of a sexy, bosomy blonde, they were looking for a flat-chested woman with the whoop of a honker.

  Remo and Chiun showed identification. It was a standard little thing they used when they didn't want to invade a place. The identification showed they belonged to an intelligence branch of the agriculture department. Official enough to enter places, but not important enough to attract attention.

  "That one's a foreigner," said a guard, pointing to Chiun.

  "You're the foreigner," said Chiun. "You're all foreigners. But I am tolerant."

  Chiun, once a strong lover of daytime television dramas, had once seen an episode on intolerance. He thought intolerance was wrong. He thought it was wicked. He vowed from that day forth he would try to make believe that whites and blacks were equal to yellows.

  He had told this to Remo.

  "From this day forth, I shall pretend your blood is as good as mine," Chiun had declared. "This is an act of tolerance and charity. I will tolerate all lesser peoples. This I have learned from your society."