Mutation

by Robin Cook

  “Marsha, he was only five years old. I think you’re the one who’s disturbed. Five years is a long time to grieve. Maybe you should see a psychiatrist.”

  Marsha bit her lip. Victor was usually such a kind man, but any time she wanted to discuss VJ, he just cut her off.

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you what was on my mind,” she said, getting up. It was time to go back into the kitchen and finish dinner. Hearing the familiar sounds of Pac-Man from the upstairs den, she felt slightly reassured.

  Victor got up, stretched, and followed her into the kitchen.

  2

  March 19, 1989

  Sunday, Early Evening

  DR. William Hobbs was looking across the chessboard at his son, marveling over him as he did most every day, when the boy’s intensely blue eyes rolled back into his head, and the child fell backward off his seat. William didn’t see his son hit the floor, but he heard the sickening thud.

  “Sheila!” he screamed, jumping up and rushing around the table. To his horror, he saw that Maurice’s arms and legs were flailing wildly. He was in the throes of a grand mal seizure.

  As a Ph.D., not an M.D., William was not certain what to do. He vaguely remembered something about protecting the victim’s tongue by putting something between his teeth, but he had nothing appropriate.

  Kneeling over the boy, who was just days short of his third birthday, William yelled again for his wife. Maurice’s body contorted with surprising force; it was hard for William to keep the child from injuring himself.

  Sheila froze at the sight of her husband juggling the wildly thrashing child. By this time Maurice had bitten his tongue badly, and as his head snapped up and down, a spray of frothy blood arched onto the rug.

  “Call an ambulance!” shouted William.

  Sheila broke free of the paralyzing spell and rushed back to the kitchen phone. Maurice hadn’t felt well from the moment she’d picked him up from Chimera Day Care. He’d complained of a headache—one of a pounding variety, like a migraine. Of course most three-year-olds wouldn’t describe a headache that way, but Maurice wasn’t most three-year-olds. He was a true child prodigy, a genius. He’d learned to talk at eight months, read at thirteen months, and now could beat his father at their nightly chess game.

  “We need an ambulance!” shouted Sheila into the phone when a voice finally answered. She gave their address, pleading with the operator to hurry. Then she rushed back into the living room.

  Maurice had stopped convulsing. He was lying quite still on the couch where William had placed him. He’d vomited his dinner along with a fair amount of bright red blood. The awful mess had become matted in his blond hair and drooled from the corners of his mouth. He’d also lost control of his bladder and bowels.

  “What should I do?” William pleaded in frustration. At least the child was breathing and his color, which had turned a dusky blue, was returning to normal.

  “What happened?” Sheila asked.

  “Nothing,” William answered. “He was winning as usual. Then his eyes rolled up and back and he fell over. I’m afraid he hit his head pretty hard on the floor.”

  “Oh, God!” Sheila said, wiping Maurice’s mouth with the corner of her apron. “Maybe you shouldn’t have insisted he play chess tonight with his headache and everything.”

  “He wanted to,” William said defensively. But that wasn’t quite true. Maurice had been lukewarm to the idea. But William couldn’t resist an opportunity to watch the child use his phenomenal brain. Maurice was William’s pride and joy.

  He and Sheila had been married for eight years before they finally were willing to admit they were unable to conceive. Since Chimera had its own fertility center, Fertility, Inc., and since William was an employee of Chimera, he and Sheila had gone there free of charge. It hadn’t been easy. They had to face the fact that both of them were infertile, but eventually, via a surrogate and gamete-donation plans, they got their long-awaited child: Maurice, their miracle baby with an IQ right off the charts.

  “I’ll get a towel and clean him up,” Sheila said, starting for the kitchen. But William grabbed her arm.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t move him around.”

  The couple sat watching the child helplessly, until they heard the ambulance scream down their street. Sheila rushed to let the medics in.

  A few moments later, William found himself balancing on a seat in the back of the lurching vehicle with Sheila following behind in the family car.

  When they reached Lowell General Hospital, the couple waited anxiously while Maurice was examined and evaluated, then declared stable enough for transfer. William wanted the child to go to Children’s Hospital in Boston, about a half hour’s drive. Something told him that his child was deathly ill. Maybe they had been too proud of his phenomenal brilliance. Maybe God was making them pay.

  “Hey, VJ!” Victor shouted up the back stairs. “How about a swim!” He could hear his voice carom off the walls of their spacious house. It had been built in the eighteenth century by the local landowner. Victor had bought and renovated it shortly after David’s death. Business at Chimera had begun to boom after the company had gone public, and Victor felt Marsha would be better off if she didn’t have to face the same rooms where David had grown up. She’d taken David’s passing even harder than he had.

  “Want to go in the pool?” Victor shouted again. It was at times like this that he wished they’d put in an intercom system.

  “No, thanks,” came VJ’s answer echoing down the stairwell.

  Victor remained where he was for a moment, one hand on the handrail, one foot on the first step. His earlier conversation with Marsha had reawakened all his initial fears about his son. The early unusual development, the incredible intelligence which had made him a chess master at three years of age, the precipitous drop in intelligence before he was four; VJ’s was by no means a standard maturation. Victor had been so guilt-ridden since the moment of the child’s birth that he had been almost relieved at the disappearance of the little boy’s extraordinary powers. But now he wondered if a normal kid wouldn’t jump at the chance to swim in the family’s new pool. Victor had decided to add a pool for exercise. They’d built it off the back of the house in a type of greenhouse affair. Construction had just been completed the previous month.

  Making up his mind not to take no for an answer, Victor bounded up the stairs two at a time in his stocking feet. Silently, he whisked down the long hall to VJ’s bedroom, which was located in the front of the house overlooking the driveway. As always, the room was neat and orderly, with a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica lining one wall and a chemical chart of the elements on the wall opposite. VJ was lying on his stomach on his bed, totally absorbed in a thick book.

  Advancing toward the bed, Victor tried to see what VJ was reading. Peering over the top of the book, all he could make out was a mass of equations, hardly what he expected.

  “Gotcha!” he said, playfully grabbing the boy’s leg.

  At his touch, VJ leaped up, his hands ready to defend himself.

  “Whoa! Were you concentrating or what?” Victor said with a laugh.

  VJ’s turquoise eyes bore into his father. “Don’t ever do that again!” he said.

  For a second, Victor felt a familiar surge of fear at what he had created. Then VJ let out a sigh and dropped back onto the bed.

  “What on earth are you reading?” Victor asked.

  VJ closed the book as if it had been pornography. “Just something I picked up on black holes.”

  “Heavy!” Victor said, trying to sound hip.

  “Actually, it’s not very good,” VJ said. “Lots of errors.”

  Again Victor felt a cold chill. Lately he had wondered if his son’s precocious intelligence wasn’t returning. Attempting to shrug off his worries, Victor said firmly, “Listen, VJ, we’re going for a swim.”

  He went over to VJ’s bureau and extracted a pair of bathing trunks and tossed them at his son. “Come on, I’ll race y
ou.”

  Victor walked down to his own bedroom, where he pulled on a bathing suit, then called for VJ. VJ appeared and came down the hall toward his father. Victor noted with pride that his son was well built for a ten-year-old. For the first time Victor thought that VJ could be an athlete if he were so inclined.

  The pool had that typical humid chlorine smell. The glass that comprised the ceiling and walls of its enclosure reflected back the image of the pool; the wintry scene outside was not in view. Victor tossed his towel over the back of an aluminum deck chair as Marsha appeared at the door to the family room.

  “How about swimming with us?” Victor asked.

  Marsha shook her head. “You boys enjoy yourself. It’s too cold for me.”

  “We’re going to race,” Victor said. “How about officiating?”

  “Dad,” VJ said plaintively. “I don’t want to race.”

  “Sure you do,” Victor said. “Two laps. The loser has to take out the garbage.”

  Marsha came out onto the deck and took VJ’s towel, rolling her eyes at the boy in commiseration.

  “You want the inside lane or the outside one?” Victor asked him, hoping to draw him in.

  “It doesn’t matter,” VJ said as he lined up next to his father, facing down the length of the pool. The surface swirled gently from the circulator.

  “You start us,” Victor said to Marsha.

  “On your mark, get set,” Marsha said, pausing, watching her husband and her son teeter on the side of the pool. “Go!”

  After backing up to avoid the initial splash, Marsha sat down in one of the deck chairs and watched. Victor was not a good swimmer, but even so she was surprised to see that VJ was leading through the first lap and the turn. Then, on the second lap, VJ seemed to hold back and Victor won by half a length.

  “Good try,” Victor said, sputtering and triumphant. “Welcome to the garbage detail!”

  Perplexed at what she thought she had witnessed, Marsha eyed VJ curiously as he hoisted himself from the water. As their eyes met, VJ winked, confusing her even more.

  VJ took his towel and dried himself briskly. He really would have liked to be the sort of son his mother longed for, the kind David had been. But it just wasn’t in him. Even times he tried to fake it, he knew he didn’t get it quite right. Still, if moments like this one at the pool gave his parents a sense of family happiness, who was he to deny them?

  “Mother, it hurts even more,” Mark Murray said to Colette. He was in his bedroom on the third floor of the Murray townhouse on Beacon Hill. “Whenever I move I feel pressure behind my eyes and in my sinuses.” The precise terms were a startling contrast to the tiny toddler’s palms with which the child clutched his head.

  “It’s worse than before dinner?” Colette asked, smoothing back his tightly curled blond hair. She was no longer startled by her toddler’s exceptional vocabulary. The boy was lying in a standard-size bed, even though he was only two and a half years old. At thirteen months he’d demanded that the crib be put in the basement.

  “It’s much worse,” Mark said.

  “Let’s take your temperature once more,” Colette said, slipping a thermometer into his mouth. Colette was becoming progressively alarmed even though she tried to reassure herself it was just the beginning of a cold or flu. It had started about an hour after her husband, Horace, had brought Mark home from the day-care center at Chimera. Mark told her he wasn’t hungry, and for Mark that was distinctly abnormal.

  The next symptom was sweating. It started just as they were about to sit down to eat. Although he told his parents that he didn’t feel hot, the sweat poured out of him. A few minutes later he vomited. That was when Colette put him to bed.

  As an accountant who’d been too queasy even to take biology in college, Horace was happy to leave the sickroom chores to Colette, not that she had any real experience. She was a lawyer and her busy practice had forced her to start Mark at day care when he was only a year old. She adored their brilliant only child, but getting him had been an ordeal the likes of which she had never anticipated.

  After three years of marriage, she and Horace had decided to start a family. But after nearly a year of trying with no luck, they’d both gone in for fertility consultation. It was then they learned the hard truth: Colette was infertile. Mark resulted from their last resort: in-vitro fertilization and the use of a surrogate mother. It had been a nightmare, especially with all the controversy generated by the Baby M case.

  Colette slipped the thermometer from Mark’s lips, then rotated the cylinder, looking for the column of mercury. Normal. Colette sighed. She was at a loss. “Are you hungry or thirsty?” she asked.

  Mark shook his head. “I’m starting not to see very well,” he said.

  “What do you mean, not see very well?” she asked, alarmed. She covered Mark’s eyes alternately. “Can you see out of both eyes?”

  “Yes,” Mark responded. “But things are getting blurry. Out of focus.”

  “Okay, you stay here and rest,” Colette said. “I’m going to talk with your father.”

  Leaving the child, Colette went downstairs and found Horace hiding in the study, watching a basketball game on the miniature TV.

  When Horace saw his wife in the doorway, he guiltily switched it off. “The Celtics,” he said as an explanation.

  Colette dismissed a fleeting sense of irritation. “He’s much worse,” she said hoarsely. “I’m worried. He says he can’t see well. I think we should call the doctor.”

  “Are you sure?” Horace asked. “It is Sunday night.”

  “I can’t help that!” Colette said sharply.

  Just then an earsplitting shriek made them rush for the stairs.

  To their horror, Mark was writhing around in the bed, clutching his head as if in terrible agony, and screaming at the top of his lungs. Horace grabbed the child by the shoulders and tried to restrain him as Colette went for the phone.

  Horace was surprised at the boy’s strength. It was all he could do to keep the child from hurling himself off the bed.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the screaming stopped. For a moment, Mark lay still, his small hands still pressed against his temples, his eyes squeezed shut.

  “Mark?” Horace whispered.

  Mark’s arms relaxed. He opened his blue eyes and looked up at his father. But recognition failed to register in them and when he opened his mouth he spouted pure gibberish.

  Sitting at her vanity, brushing her long hair, Marsha studied Victor in the mirror. He was at the sink, brushing his teeth with rapid, forceful strokes. VJ had long since gone to bed. Marsha had checked him when she’d come upstairs fifteen minutes earlier. Looking at his angelic face, she again considered his apparent ploy in the pool.

  “Victor!” she called suddenly.

  Victor spun around, toothpaste foaming out of his mouth like a mad dog. She’d startled him.

  “Do you realize VJ let you win that race?”

  Victor spat noisily into the sink. “Now just a second. It might have been close, but I won the contest fair and square.”

  “VJ had the lead through most of the race,” Marsha said. “He deliberately slowed down to let you win.”

  “That’s absurd,” Victor said indignantly.

  “No it’s not. He does things that just don’t make sense for a ten-year-old. It’s like when he was two and a half and started playing chess. You loved it, but it bothered me. In fact, it scared me. I was relieved when his intelligence dropped, at least after it stabilized at its high normal. I just want a happy, normal kid.” Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes. “Like David,” she added, turning away.

  Victor dried his face quickly, tossed the towel aside, and came over to Marsha. He put his arms around her. “You’re worrying about nothing. VJ’s a fine boy.”

  “Maybe he acts strange because I left him with Janice so much when he was a baby,” Marsha said, fighting her tears. “I was never home enough. I should have taken a leave from the off
ice.”

  “You certainly are intent on blaming yourself,” Victor said, “even if there’s nothing wrong.”

  “Well,” Marsha said, “there is something odd about his behavior. If it were one episode, it would be okay. But it’s not. The boy just isn’t a normal ten-year-old. He’s too secretive, too adult.” She began to weep. “Sometimes he just frightens me.”

  Leaning over to comfort his wife, Victor remembered the terror he’d felt when VJ had been born. He’d wanted his son to be exceptional, not abnormal in any kind of deviant way.

  3

  March 20, 1989

  Monday Morning

  BREAKFAST was always casual at the Franks’. Fruit, cereal, coffee, and juice on the run. The major difference on this particular morning was that it wasn’t a school day for VJ so he wasn’t in his usual rush to catch the bus. Marsha was the first to leave, around eight, in order to give her time to see her hospital patients before starting office hours. As she went out the door she passed Ramona Juarez, the cleaning lady who came on Mondays and Thursdays.

  Victor watched his wife get into her Volvo station wagon. Each exhale produced a transient cloud of vapor in the crisp morning air. Even though spring was supposed to arrive the next day, the thermometer registered a chilly 28 degrees.

  Upending his coffee mug in the sink, Victor turned his attention to VJ, who was alternately watching TV and leafing through one of Victor’s scientific journals. Victor frowned. Maybe Marsha was right. Maybe the boy’s initial brilliance was returning. The articles in that journal were fairly sophisticated. Victor wondered just how much his son might be gleaning.

  He debated saying something, then decided to leave it alone. The kid was fine, normal. “You sure you want to come to the lab today?” he asked. “Maybe you could find something more exciting to do with your friends.”