The League of Grey-Eyed Women

by Julius Fast

  He shook his head, turning back to Steve in amazement. "It looks as if you managed to graft stuff no one else ever has, unless they're artificial. They look like those crazy plastic flowers."

  Steve snorted. "Go ahead, pick one."

  He picked a roselike blossom of pale lavender, as large across as his hand. It was real and its fragrance was disturbingly familiar. "Milkweed, but it doesn't look like milkweed, and there's no sap."

  "It isn't milkweed, or some of it isn't. That's interesting. I never thought of milkweed. I'll have to take another look at its chromosomes."

  "What did you graft it from?"

  "Graft, hell. I grew them all." She gestured at the entire garden. "Every damned one grew, and they were all normal to begin with."

  "How did you do it?"

  "Plant DNA." She grinned crookedly. "It looks mysterious, but it's all very simple. What determines what a seed will grow into? What keeps a tree a tree? Or better still, a birch tree a birch tree?"

  Jack inhaled the cloying odor of the blossom. "Chromosomes, I guess."

  "You guess right," she said mockingly. "Its chromosomes, or since chromosomes are only long threads of DNA molecules, its DNA, its own particular kind of DNA or RNA, whichever molecule its chromosomes are made of."

  "And you can control the DXA of the tree?"

  "Control?" She considered that a moment. "Let's say I can shake it up, bewilder it. In effect I can feed milkweed chromosomes to a birch tree and confuse it, make it grow milkweed blossoms whether it wants to or not."

  "I don't understand that."

  "Why should you understand it? It's never been done before. If I fed the DNA to a rose bush, I could change it into a cabbage plant.''

  "You've only tried it with plants?"

  She took the blossom from him and started tearing off the petals. "He changes. He changes not. He changes— No, I tried it on one of Stiener's rats, his wild rats. The damned thing changed into a snake when I tried to take it out of the cage. I'm still pretty much of a woman, I guess. I screamed and dropped it and it wriggled away."

  "It really changed into a snake?" He tried to see her eyes, to tell if she was teasing him.

  "Yes, a snake!" She shrugged and threw away the plucked flower head. "We are what we are only because every one of our cells carries the pattern of our body, carries it in its DNA. Change the DNA, change the pattern, inject new DNA, and our body has the potential to change. Lycanthropy. Man into wolf. Maybe they knew about DNA in the old days and called it a magical potion. Feed a man the right potion and he can change into a wolf."

  "You don't believe that?"

  She looked up at him, her eyes expressionless, her face tight for a long moment. "I believe in what I do," she said finally. I believe I've changed these flowers. I believe that rat became a snake. I believe I'm thirsty as hell. Come on back in. I'm cold."

  Inside the room she poured two more drinks and slumped down in a chair, her feet up on a table. Jack sat across from her. "I grew them all." she said slowly, 'and they change from day to day. Rhoda calls it my Martian garden. It's lousy with plant viruses, with every kind of DNA and RNA I've been able to synthesize."

  "What are you trying to do?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know. I've achieved plasticity, but I have no control. Maybe I'm trying for the flower of the future, controlled evolution through nucleic acids—maybe I'm just trying to get in with the faculty wives' local garden club. I exhibited one of my plants once and was treated very coldly."

  "You at a garden club? It doesn't seem right."

  "I have a lot of surprising qualities. I have mental abilities you couldn't even guess at." She looked at her drink moodily. "Maybe I'm just trying to duplicate the apple Eve picked. You think that was just a plain apple, Jack ... Hey, that's good! Applejack."

  "Steve." He leaned forward. "What can I do about Stiener?"

  "Not a cotton-pickin' thing. You're in a quandary, friend." She sipped her drink slowly. "Stiener won't budge—and you don't want to die."

  "Who does?" The liquor was easing some of the tension out of him. "Not just yet. Steve, I don't think I ever lived, and all of a sudden it's come home to me." He swirled the liquor in the glass. "I think this is the answer. Maybe I should just stay drunk."

  "Maybe, or maybe you should butter me up a bit. I have access to all of Stiener's files and material."

  He looked at her slowly, appraisingly, for a long time, and she stared back, her grey eyes half-closed, the irises almost continuous with the pupil, a strange luminous grey. Her face was immobile.

  "What do you want, Steve? If it's money—"

  Her mouth twisted with quick scorn. "Just like a man. Money!"

  "I'm sorry. You said—"

  "I said, 'Butter me up.' Don't insult me." She finished her drink and reached for the bottle. "One more. Maybe I want you, jack.'

  He tried to laugh. "It's a hell of a deal if you do."

  All at once she grinned. "But it's a deal, okay? And I collect when I want to. If you're around to collect."

  "You're kidding."

  "I'm serious. Is it a deal?"

  He wet his lips and nodded. "It's a deal."

  "You'd sell your soul for that life, wouldn't you?"

  Goaded, he said, "Wait till your turn comes."

  She winced. "I deserved that." There was the ring of the doorbell, and she jumped up. "That's Rhoda. We can go now. I was waiting for her to get home."

  She hurried into the hall and Jack heard whispered voices, low at first and then rising slowly, and finally Steve's, suddenly audible. "I said yes, that's all." There was a pause, then Steve came into the room and behind her, Rhoda.

  Jack stood up and caught his breath. He wasn't sure of what he had been expecting, but certainly not this. The girl behind Steve was tall, almost his own height, slim and yet rounded. Her dark blond hair was parted in the middle and held back carelessly with a silver clasp, but the very carelessness, almost too casual not be affected, lent a classic simplicity to her face. Her features too were classic, her cheekbones high, her chin squared and her nose narrow and straight with no indentation at the brow.

  But it was her eyes that caught Jack and held him. They were wide, so wide that even the dark, heavy lashes failed to narrow them. They were grey, like Steve's, yet paler than any eyes he had ever seen.

  He stood like that, staring almost rudely, until Steve laughed and put an arm around Rhoda. "I want you to meet Jack whose days are numbered."

  Rhoda frowned. "You have one hell of a sense of humor, black humor." Her voice was low and rich. "I'm Rhoda Watson." She held her hand out with a disarming directness. Her fingers were cool and firm in his grasp.

  "I'm Jack Freeman."

  "I know." She smiled, her face quickly alive and eager. Turning to Steve, she said, "Go ahead. I'll keep the home fires burning."

  Jack followed Steve from the house. "I don't understand. Where are we going?"

  "To the lab." Steve's stride was free and quick. "I'm going to shoot you full of DNA plus and see if that quack, Steiner, has a real cure for cancer."

  "Then you're going to do it? You'll give me the treatment?"

  "Was there ever any doubt?"

  "But why, Steve?"

  She stopped abruptly. "We made a deal. Let that be reason enough, or say that when a man is in need of treatment, a scientist who can offer it shouldn't refuse ... or just say I have my own dark reasons." She started to walk again. "I may not be as generous as I seem. Let me tell you this, and then forget it. You don't know quite what you are or what I want to make you."

  "I don't understand."

  "Of course you don't." At the lab she used a passkey. Stopping at Stiener's desk, she nodded to the back lab. "You go in there and take your jacket and shirt off. I'll be right along. I have some—paper work to do."

  He had stripped down to his pants when she came back. Quickly and efficiently she took a beaker out of the refrigerator and set it over a Bunsen flame. Unwrapping a s
terile thermometer, she placed it in the beaker and then took a packaged syringe and needle out. "You're lucky we have one this size. We were doing blood cultures last week."

  She checked the thermometer, turned the flame off and carefully filled the syringe. Holding it to the light, she worked the plunger up till the air was exhausted and a drop of fluid ran down the needle.

  She balanced the syringe on the beaker and soaked a wad of cotton in alcohol. "Hold out your arm."

  With a forced smile he said, "Practicing medicine without a license?"

  "I started as a registered nurse." She slipped a length of tubing around his upper arm, then looked at him speculatively. "You're nicely preserved for your age. Single?"

  "Divorced."

  She grinned wolfishly. "Same thing." She patted his chest with a proprietary air.

  "For Christ's sake, get on with it!"

  "Temper." Still smiling, she lifted the syringe and with a quick, deft movement slipped the needle into his vein. As a feather of blood backed into the liquid in the syringe, she pulled the tourniquet off. "All right. Now we let it in slowly. It should take a couple of minutes." She looked up at him. "You're sweating."

  "Wouldn't you be?"

  "I guess I would. You know what this is supposed to do?"

  "Vaguely. What I hope it will do is give me a chance to live."

  "Maybe. According to Stiener's theory it should replace your own DNA in susceptible cells. It should replace the virus and the DNA, shake up the cells and then let your own body take over."

  "Susceptible cells?"

  "Carcinogenic cells, tumor cells, cancer cells. Of course, in our rats we created the cancers and maybe those tumors were more susceptible. But there's still a good chance. The blood should carry this to every cell in your body, normal or malignant. If I didn't think there was a chance, Jack, I'd never have taken the risk of doing this. More than just a chance as far as I'm concerned."

  With maddening slowness the syringe emptied, and finally the plunger reached the end of the barrel. Steve put a pledget of cotton over the needle and pulled it out. "There. How did that feel?"

  He flexed the arm, holding the pledget. "It hurts like hell all through the arm."

  "It will hurt more in a few hours," she said softly. "I never told you what the rats go through. It may hurt more than the cancer ever would."

  "I can take it."

  "Tough boy! Put your shirt on."

  He was starting to button it up when he heard the front door slam, and then Stiener's sharp voice called out, "Who's there?"

  "Oh, Christ!" Steve began to gather up the syringe and beaker, but then with a shrug let them lie and turned to the door as Stiener came into the lab.

  Chapter Four

  What's going on here, Steve?" Stiener asked, looking around the room.

  "If you say, 'What's the meaning of this?' I'll scream." She fumbled for a cigarette and a match. "I just gave Freeman a massive dose of our special DNA." She was trying to keep her voice level, but there was a hard edge to it.

  "You just what?" Stiener's eyes went from the needle and the beaker to Jack's arm and unbuttoned shirt. "What the hell do you mean, you gave him a dose of DNA?"

  Steve wet her lip. "It's as simple as ABC. A man has cancer. We have a possible cure. I gave it to him."

  "You did? Since when are you running this lab?"

  "I'm sorry, I guess. But since you wouldn't do it."

  "Where in hell do you come off..."

  "All right!"

  "Taking this into your own hands? Did you have any records on him, any biopsy? Has he really got cancer? What do you know about him? Have you seen his medical report?"

  Steve's air of assurance crumbled before his onslaught. "All right. I let the clinical elements go. I was only concerned with the human. Goddam it, the man is dying."

  "Sure, and what if you've caused his death two months sooner with a miscalculated dose? What do you tell the police?"

  "My death is a fact," Jack put in. "I had no chance of living."

  Stiener brushed the protest aside, his voice savage. "I don't know that. Steve doesn't know that. We've seen no medical reports, done no examination. How do we know you're not some crackpot? What do we know about you except that you lied to get in here? That's a hell of an introduction!"

  Desperately Jack said, "You're making a big thing out of this. Steve took no chance, except a chance to help me. Sure 1 lied to get in, but if I hadn't, how far would I have gotten? You've only got to pick up that phone and call New York, speak to my doctor to confirm the truth. The fact of my cancer is a truth."

  "You're drunk," Stiener said coldly, "and you are too, Steve, but you've gone too damned far this time." His voice rose and his face grew white, then flushed. "By what right dared you do anything like that, drunk or sober? Of all the stupid and unethical ... What are you trying to do, crucify me? If you think for one minute I'm going to allow this..."

  "Stop, please." She drew in a deep breath of smoke and let it out slowly. "You've made your point."

  "Not by a long shot I haven't. You're through here, Steve."

  "I was through even if you didn't catch me," she said levelly.

  "I've got some sense of ethics left. I know just what I did and all the implications of it. I left a predated note of resignation on your desk, also another note that absolves you from any blame in case—Jack dies. I made it clear that I did this underhanded, illegally and without your knowledge. There'll be no trouble for you no matter what happens. Only—" She caught her lip. "I'm sorry. Christ, I'm sorry it had to be this way."

  Some of the tightness left Stiener, and his voice took on a querulous note. "Why, Steve? Why? That's what I can't understand. Why would you do anything like this? You're too careful, too much of a scientist. I don't understand."

  "Why?" She looked at Jack and then at Stiener and suddenly, irrelevantly, Jack noticed how wide her eyes were, how wide and colorless. "Because of reasons beyond either of you. What do you know about loneliness, of year after year without an answer, knowing there can't be an answer—"

  "You're not making sense," Stiener said impatiently. "You're drunk."

  "No, I'm not. You asked why." She shook her head. "Because I will not stand by and see a man die. Is that reason enough, sober reason? Because I'm sick to death of being alone, but you won't understand that, and I can't begin to explain. I did something you feel I shouldn't have done. Let's leave it at that. If you want to prosecute me, you know where to find me." She turned to Jack. "Button your shirt," she snapped, "and stop standing there like an idiot." She grabbed her cigarettes and brushed past the two men, out of the lab.

  Jack watched her go in bewilderment, then turned to Stiener, but neither of them said anything. The pain had spread from his arm to his shoulder, a dull, burning pain. He buttoned his shirt and took his jacket.

  "Where are you going?" Stiener said suddenly, mildly.

  "Home with Steve, I guess."

  "Here." He walked into his office and fumbled through the desk, then tossed a vial to Jack. "It's morphine. Steve knows how to administer it."

  Jack nodded and left the building, following slowly after Steve's silent figure. The cold night air touched his burning arm and shoulder like a caress. He hadn't realized how deep the pain was in the laboratory, but outside it grew worse with every step, a lancing, tearing burn that spread through his body slowly but inexorably and agonizingly.

  He stumbled and barely gained his feet again. "Steve," he shouted, "Steve!" And it seemed that his voice was only a harsh whisper. Now the pain had reached his chest, enfolding him from back to front in a fierce embrace.

  Steve must have heard him because the next thing he was aware of was her arm around him guiding him forward gently. "Can you make it? It's only another block." Her voice, warm and gentle, penetrated the haze of pain.

  All he could do was whimper, "Oh, God, oh, God! Steve, make it stop! Make it stop..." It had enfolded his chest now, and was burning inward,
tendrils of pain, roots of agony searching for untouched areas, spreading out to his stomach and his groin.

  Somehow Steve, with Rhoda to help her, got him up the steps and into the house. The pain became a red cloud that blanketed everything, all sense and thought. He was vaguely aware of a bed and hands removing his clothes, cool hands whose touch almost took away the pain for a second.

  Then there was the bite of a needle, and for a while the pain subsided and darkness edged forward. He rushed to meet it eagerly and he slept.

  He woke up screaming, his entire body consumed with the agony of flaming pain, a raw pain that drove all coherence before it. "Stop it, stop it ... oh, Christ, stop it..."He heard his own voice screaming.

  Again the hands, but no longer cool, holding him down, and the voices, confused and disoriented, "Pull the drapes. They'll hear him all over the city. Can't you muffle the windows? Here, give me a hand with the syringe..."

  He slept and woke and slept again, moving in and out of darkness, fearing and dreading the moments of consciousness. In a lucid moment, a voice cut through his terror. "We haven't any morphine left."

  He woke once to darkness. He had no real sense of time elapsed. Had it been a day, an hour, a week? The pain was bearable, not any less, but bearable, always with him, dulling his thoughts.

  Two glowing points of light moved in the darkness, like planets, like suns in the void. Had he left the earth itself? Was he disembodied, floating in space? The rhythm of the two suns caught at him, up, then a glow of brightness, down, pause, up, down. Were they signalling to him? Was there some code in their movement?

  Suddenly, suspended in space, he saw beyond the suns an incredibly vast face, translucent, filling the void, and he almost screamed before a shred of sanity took over and reduced things to their proper proportions. A face in the dark, a glowing cigarette, across the room another cigarette. Rhoda and Steve. He closed his eyes and their voices reached his ears.

  "I don't know." That was Steve. "Stiener was right about one thing, the impossibility of extrapolating dosage."

  "But if you can do it for other experimental drugs..."