Mutation

by Robin Cook

  Bringing the brick and the note with him, Victor returned to the study. He showed both to Marsha, who took them in her hands. She was about to say something when the downstairs doorbell sounded.

  “Now what?” Victor questioned.

  “Must be the police,” Marsha said, getting to her feet. “I called them while you were outside running around.” She left the room, heading down the stairs.

  Victor looked at VJ. “Scared you, huh, Tiger?”

  “I think that’s obvious,” VJ said. “It would have scared anyone.”

  “I know,” Victor said. “I’m sorry you’re getting the brunt of all this, what with the phone call last night and the brick tonight. I’m sure you don’t understand, but I’ve some personnel problems at the lab. I’ll try to do something to keep this kind of thing from happening.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” VJ said.

  “I appreciate you being a good sport about it,” Victor said. “Come on, let’s talk to the police.”

  “The police won’t do anything,” VJ said. But he got up and started downstairs.

  Victor followed. He agreed, but he was surprised that at age ten, VJ knew it too.

  The North Andover police were polite and solicitous. A Sergeant Widdicomb and Patrolman O’Connor had responded to the call. Widdicomb was at least sixty-five, with florid skin and a huge beer belly. O’Connor was just the opposite: he was in his twenties and looked like an athlete. Widdicomb did all the talking.

  When Victor and VJ arrived in the foyer, Widdicomb was reading the note while O’Connor fingered the brick. Widdicomb handed the note back to Marsha. “What a dad-blasted awful thing,” he said. “Used to be that this kinda stuff only happened in Boston, not out here.” Widdicomb took out a pad, licked the end of a pencil and started taking notes. He asked the expected questions, like the time it happened, if they saw anyone, whether the lights had been on in the boy’s room. VJ quickly lost interest and disappeared into the kitchen.

  After he ran out of questions, Widdicomb asked if they could take a gander around the yard.

  “Please,” Marsha said, motioning toward the door.

  After the police left, Marsha turned to Victor. “Last night you told me not to worry about the threatening call, that you would look into it.”

  “I know . . .” Victor said guiltily. She waited for Victor to continue. But he didn’t.

  “A threatening phone call is one thing,” Marsha said. “A brick through our child’s window is quite another. I told you I couldn’t handle any more surprises. I think you better give me some idea of these office problems you mentioned.”

  “Fair enough,” Victor said. “But let me get a drink. I think I could use one.”

  VJ had the Johnny Carson show on in the family room and was watching, his head propped up against his arm. His eyes had a glazed look.

  “Are you okay?” Marsha called from the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Fine,” VJ said without turning his head.

  “I think we should let him unwind,” Marsha said, directing her attention to Victor, who was busy making them a hot rum drink.

  Mugs in hand, they sat down at the kitchen table. In capsule form, Victor highlighted the controversy with Ronald, the negotiations with Gephardt’s attorney, Sharon Carver’s threats, and the unfortunate situation with Hurst. “So there you have it,” he concluded. “A normal week at the office.”

  Marsha mulled over the four troublemakers. Aside from Ronald, she guessed any of the other three could be guilty of acting out.

  “What about this note?” she asked. “What deal is it referring to?”

  Victor took a drink, put the mug on the table, then reached across and took the note. He studied it for a moment, then said, “I haven’t the slightest idea. I haven’t made any deals with anyone.” He tossed the paper onto the table.

  “Somebody must have thought you had,” Marsha said.

  “Look, anyone capable of throwing a rock through our window is capable of fantasizing some mythical deal. But I’ll get in touch with each of them and make sure they know that we are not going to sit idly by and allow them to throw bricks through our windows.”

  “What about hiring some security?” Marsha asked.

  “It’s an idea,” Victor said. “But let me make these calls tomorrow. I have a feeling that it will solve this problem.”

  The doorbell sounded again.

  “I’ll get it,” said Victor. He put his mug on the table and left the kitchen.

  Marsha got up and went into the family room. The TV was still on but Johnny Carson had changed to David Letterman. It was that late. VJ was fast asleep. Turning off the TV, Marsha looked at her son. He looked so peaceful. There was no hint of the intense hostility that he’d displayed earlier. Oh God, she thought, what had Victor’s experiment done to her darling baby?

  The front door banged shut, and Victor came in saying, “The police didn’t find anything. They just said they’d try to watch the house best they could over the next week or so.” Then he looked down at VJ. “I see he has recovered.”

  “I wish,” Marsha said wistfully.

  “Oh, come on now,” Victor said. “I don’t want a lecture about his hostility and all that bull.”

  “Maybe he was really upset when his IQ fell,” she said, following her own train of thought. “Can you imagine what kind of self-esteem loss the boy probably suffered when his special abilities evaporated?”

  “The kid was only three and a half,” Victor pleaded.

  “I know you don’t agree with me,” Marsha said, looking back at the sleeping boy. “But I’m terrified. I can’t believe your genetic experiment didn’t affect his future.”

  The following morning the temperature had climbed to nearly sixty degrees by nine o’clock. The sun was out and Victor had both front windows open in the car as well as the sunroof. The air was fragrant with the earthy aroma that presaged spring. Victor pressed the accelerator and let the car loose on the short straightaways.

  He glanced over at VJ, who seemed fully recovered from the previous night. He had his arm out the window and was playing with the wind with his open hand. It was a simple gesture, but so normal. Victor could remember doing it many times when he was VJ’s age.

  Looking at his son, Victor couldn’t rid himself of Marsha’s fears. He seemed fine, but could the implant have affected his development? VJ was a loner. In that regard he certainly didn’t take after anyone else in the family.

  “What’s your friend Richie like?” Victor asked suddenly.

  VJ shot him a look that was midway between vexation and disbelief. “You sound like Mother,” he said.

  Victor laughed. “I suppose I do. But really, what kinda kid is this Richie? How come we haven’t met him?”

  “He’s okay,” VJ said. “I see him every day at school. I don’t know, we have different interests when we’re at home. He watches a lot of TV.”

  “If you two want to go into Boston this week, I’ll have someone from the office drive you.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” VJ said. “I’ll see what Richie says.”

  Victor settled back into his seat. Obviously the kid had friends. He made a mental note to remind Marsha about Richie that evening.

  The moment Victor pulled into his parking space, Philip’s hulking form appeared in front of the car as if by magic. Seeing VJ, a smile broke across his face. He grabbed the front of the car and gave it a shake.

  “Good gravy,” Victor said.

  VJ jumped out of the car and gave the man a punch on the arm. Philip pretended to fall, backing up a few steps, clutching his arm. VJ laughed and the two started off.

  “Wait a second, VJ,” Victor called. “Where are you going?”

  VJ turned and shrugged. “I don’t know. The cafeteria or the library. Why? You want me to do something?”

  “No,” Victor said. “I just want to be sure you stay away from the river. This warm weather is only going to make it rise higher.”

&nb
sp; In the background Victor could hear the roar of the water going over the spillway.

  “Don’t worry,” VJ said. “See you later.”

  Victor watched as they rounded the building, heading in the direction of the cafeteria. They certainly made an improbable pair.

  In the office, Victor got right to work. Colleen gave him an update on all the issues that had to be addressed that day. Victor delegated what he could, the things he had to do himself he put in an orderly stack in the center of his desk. That done, he took out the note that had been wrapped around the brick.

  “Remember our deal,” Victor repeated. “What the hell does that mean?” Suddenly furious, he picked up the phone and called Gephardt’s attorney, William Hurst, and Sharon Carver. He didn’t give any of them a chance to talk. As soon as they were on the phone he shouted that there were no deals and that he’d put the police onto anyone who’d harassed his family.

  Afterward he felt a little silly, but he hoped the guilty party would think twice before trying again. He did not call Ronald because he couldn’t imagine his old friend stooping to violence.

  With that taken care of, Victor picked up the first of Colleen’s notes and started on the day’s administrative duties.

  Marsha’s day was a seemingly endless stream of difficult patients until a cancellation just before lunch gave her an hour to review VJ’s tests. Taking them out, she remembered the intensity of his anger over the thrown brick. She looked at clinical scale four that was supposed to reflect such suppressed hostility. VJ had scored well below what she would have expected with such behavior.

  Marsha got up, stretched and stared out her office window. Unfortunately she looked over a parking lot, but beyond that there were some fields and rolling hills. All the trees in view still had that midwinter look of death, their branches like skeletons against the pale blue sky.

  So much for psychological testing, she thought. She wished that she could have talked with Janice Fay. The woman had lived with them until her death in 1985. If anyone would have had insight into VJ’s change in intelligence, it would have been Janice. The only other adult who had been close to VJ during that period was Martha Gillespie at the preschool. VJ had started before his second birthday.

  On impulse, Marsha called to Jean: “I think I’ll be skipping lunch; you go whenever you want. Just don’t forget to put the phone on service.”

  Busy with the typewriter, Jean waved understanding.

  Five minutes later, Marsha was going sixty-five miles an hour on the interstate. She only had to go one exit and was soon back to small country roads.

  The Crocker Preschool was a charming ensemble of yellow cottages with white trim and white shutters on the grounds of a much larger estate house. Marsha wondered how the school made ends meet, but rumor had it that it was more of a hobby for Martha Gillespie. Martha had been widowed at a young age and left a fortune.

  “Of course I remember VJ,” Martha said with feigned indignation. Marsha had found her in the administrative cottage. She was about sixty, with snow white hair and cheery, rosy cheeks. “I remember him vividly right from his first day with us. He was a most extraordinary boy.”

  Marsha recalled the first day also. She’d brought VJ in early, worried about his response since he had not been away from home except when accompanied by Janice or herself. This was to be his first brush with such independence. But the adaptation had proved to be harder for Marsha than for her son, who ran into the middle of a group of children without even one backward glance.

  “In fact,” Martha said, “I remember that by the end of his first day he had all the other children doing exactly what he wanted. And he wasn’t even two!”

  “Then you remember when VJ’s intelligence fell?” Marsha asked.

  Martha paused while she studied Marsha. “Yes, I remember,” she said.

  “What do you remember about him after this occurred?” Marsha asked.

  “How is the boy today?”

  “He’s fine, I hope,” Marsha said.

  “Is there some reason you want to upset yourself by going through this?” Martha asked. “I remember how devastated you were back then.”

  “To be honest,” Marsha said, “I’m terrified the same problem might happen again. I thought that if I learned more about the first episode, I might be able to prevent another.”

  “I don’t know if I can help that much,” Martha said. “There certainly was a big change, and it occurred so quickly. VJ went from being a confident child whose mind seemed infinite in its capability, to a withdrawn child who had few friends. But it wasn’t as if he was autistic. Even though he stayed by himself, he was always uncannily aware of everything going on around him.”

  “Did he continue to relate to children his own age?” Marsha asked.

  “Not very much,” Martha said. “When we made him participate, he was always willing to go along, but left to his own devices, he’d just watch. You know, there was one thing that was curious. Every time we insisted that VJ participate in some kind of game, like musical chairs, he would always let the other children win. That was strange because prior to this, VJ won most of the games no matter what the age of the children involved.”

  “That is curious,” Marsha said.

  Later, when Marsha was driving back to her office, she kept seeing a three-and-a-half-year-old VJ letting other children win. It brought back the episode in the pool Sunday evening. In all her experience with young children, Marsha had never come across such a trait.

  “Perfect!” Victor said as he held one of the microscope slides up to the overhead light. He could see the paper-thin section of brain sealed with a cover slip.

  “That’s the Golgi stain,” Robert said. “You also have Cajal’s and Bielschowsky’s. If you want any others you’ll have to let me know.”

  “Fine,” Victor said. As usual, Robert had accomplished in less than twenty-four hours what would have taken a lesser technician several days.

  “And here are the chromosome preparations,” Robert said, handing Victor a tray. “Everything is labeled.”

  “Fine,” Victor repeated.

  Taking the preparations in his hands, Victor headed across the main room of the lab to the light microscopes. Seating himself before one, he placed the first slide under the instrument. It was labeled Hobbs, right frontal lobe.

  Victor ran the scope down so that the objective was just touching the cover slip. Then, looking through the eyepieces, he corrected the focus.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed as the image became clear. There was no sign of malignancy, but the effect was the same as if a tumor had been present. The children didn’t die of cerebral edema, or an accumulation of fluid. Instead, what Victor saw was evidence of diffuse mitotic activity. The nerve cells of the brain were multiplying just as they did in the first two months of fetal development.

  Victor quickly scanned slides of other areas of the Hobbs brain and then studied the Murray child’s tissue. All of them were the same. The nerve cells were actively reproducing themselves at a furious rate. Since the children’s skulls were fused, the new cells had nowhere to go other than to push the brain down into the spinal canal, with fatal results.

  Horrified yet astounded at the same time, Victor snatched up the tray of slides and left the light microscope. He hurried across the lab and entered the room which housed the scanning electron microscope. The place had the appearance of a command center of a modern electronic weapons system.

  The instrument itself looked very different from a normal microscope. It was about the size of a standard refrigerator. Its business portion was a cylinder approximately a foot in diameter and about three feet tall. A large electrical trunk entered the top of this cylinder and served as the source of electrons. The electrons were then focused by magnets which acted like glass lenses in a light microscope. Next to the scope was a good-sized computer. It was the computer that analyzed multiple-plano images of the electron microscope and constructed the three-di
mensional pictures.

  Robert had made extremely thin preparations of the chromatin material from some of the brain cells that were in the initial process of dividing. Victor placed one of these preparations within the scope and searched for chromosome six. What he was looking for was the area of mutation where he’d inserted the foreign genes. It took him over an hour, but at last he found it.

  “Jesus,” Victor gulped. The histones that normally enveloped the DNA were either missing or attenuated in the area of the inserted gene. In addition, the DNA, which was usually tightly coiled, had unraveled, suggesting that active transcription was taking place. In other words, the inserted genes were turned on!

  Victor tried a preparation from the other child with the same results. The inserted genes were turned on, producing NGF. There was no doubt about it.

  Switching to preparations made from VJ’s blood, which must have taken much more patience on Robert’s part since appropriate cells would have been harder to find, Victor introduced one within the electron microscope. Within thirty minutes he located chromosome six. Then, with painstaking effort, he scanned up and down the chromosome several times. The genes were quiescent. The area of the inserted gene was covered with the histone protein in the usual fashion.

  Victor rocked back in the chair. VJ was all right, but the other two children had died as the result of his experiment. How could he ever tell Marsha? She would leave him. In fact, he wasn’t sure he could live with himself.

  Abruptly he stood up and paced the small room. What could have turned the gene back on? The only thing Victor could imagine was the ingestion of cephaloclor, the same antibiotic that he had used during the early embryological development. But how could these children have gotten the drug? It was not a common prescription, and the parents had been specifically warned that both children were deathly allergic to it. Victor was sure neither the Hobbses nor the Murrays would have permitted anyone to administer cephaloclor to their sons.