Mutation

by Robin Cook

  Both VJ and Philip waved at Victor with their ice cream spoons.

  Marsha was just taking the groceries out of the bag when she heard Victor’s car come up the drive. As Victor waited for the automatic garage door to rise, Marsha noticed a third head in the back seat and groaned. She’d only bought six small lamb chops.

  Two minutes later they came into the kitchen. “I’ve invited Philip to stay with us for a few days,” Victor said. “I thought with all the excitement around here it would be good to have some muscle in the house.”

  “Sounds good,” Marsha said, but then she added, “I hope that’s not in lieu of professional security.”

  Victor laughed. “Not quite.” Turning to VJ and Philip, he said, “Why don’t you two hit the pool?”

  VJ and Philip disappeared upstairs to change.

  Victor moved as if to kiss Marsha, but she was back to digging in the grocery bag. Then she stepped around him to put something in the pantry. He could tell she was still angry and, given the previous evening’s events, he knew she had good reason to be.

  “Sorry about Philip; it was a last-minute idea,” he said. “But I don’t think we’ll have any more bricks or calls, anyway. I phoned the people who might have threatened us and laid it on the line.”

  “Then how come Philip?” asked Marsha, coming back from the pantry.

  “Just an added precaution,” Victor said. Then, to change the subject, he added: “What’s for dinner?”

  “Lamp chops—and we’ll have to stretch them,” Marsha said, looking at Victor out of the corner of her eye. “Why do I have the feeling that you’re still keeping things from me?”

  “Must be your suspicious nature,” Victor said, even though he knew she was in no mood for teasing. “What else besides lamp chops?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Artichokes, rice, and salad.” It was obvious that he was covering something, but she let it go.

  “What can I do?” Victor asked, washing his hands at the kitchen sink. It was generally their habit to share the preparation of the evening meal since they both worked long hours. Marsha told him to rinse the salad greens.

  “I talked with VJ this morning about his friend Richie,” Victor said. “He’s going to ask him to go to Boston to a day’s outing this week so I don’t think it’s fair to say that VJ doesn’t have any friends.”

  “I hope it happens,” Marsha said noncommittally.

  As she put the rice and artichokes on to cook, she continued to watch Victor out of the corner of her eye. She was hoping that he’d volunteer some information about the two unfortunate babies, but he fussed over the salad in silence. Exasperated, Marsha asked: “Any news about the cause of death of the children?”

  Victor turned to face her. “I looked at the inserted gene in VJ as well as in the Hobbs and Murray kids. In the toddlers it appeared overtly abnormal, like it was actively transcribing, but in VJ it looked absolutely quiet. What’s more,” he added, “I got out some photos of the same gene back when VJ’s intelligence dropped. Even then it didn’t look anything like these kids’. So whatever VJ had, it wasn’t the same problem.”

  Marsha gave a sigh of relief. “That’s good news. Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

  “I just got home,” Victor said. “And I’m telling you.”

  “You could have called,” Marsha said, convinced he was still hiding something. “Or brought it up without my asking.”

  “I’m having the dead kids’ genes sequenced,” Victor said, getting out the oil and vinegar. “Then maybe I’ll be able to tell you what turned the gene back on.”

  Marsha went to the cupboard and got out the dishes to set the table. She tried to control the rage that was beginning to reassert itself. How could he remain so casual about all this? When Victor asked if there were anything else he could do for dinner, she told him he’d done enough. He took her literally and sat on one of the kitchen counter stools, watching her set the table.

  “VJ’s letting you win that swimming race wasn’t a fluke,” Marsha said, hoping to goad her husband. “He started doing that when he was three.” Marsha went on to tell him what Martha Gillespie had said about his behavior in nursery school.

  “How can you be so sure he threw the race?” Victor asked.

  “My goodness, that still bothers you,” said Marsha, turning down the burner under the rice. “I was pretty sure he did when I was watching Sunday night. Now that I talked with Martha, I’m positive. It’s as if VJ doesn’t want to draw attention to himself.”

  “Sometimes by throwing a race you attract more attention,” Victor said.

  “Maybe,” Marsha added, but she wasn’t convinced. “The point is I wish to God I knew more about what went on in his mind when his intelligence changed so dramatically. It might give some explanation for his current behavior. Back then we were too concerned with his health to worry about his feelings.”

  “I think he weathered the episode extremely well,” Victor said. He went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of white wine. “I know you don’t agree with me, but I think he’s doing great. He’s a happy kid. I’m proud of him. I think he’s going to make one hell of a researcher one day. He really loves the lab.”

  “Provided his intelligence doesn’t fall again,” Marsha snapped. “But I’m not worried about his ability to work. I’m worried your unspeakable experiment has interfered with his human qualities.” She turned away to hide new tears as emotion welled up within her. When all this was over she didn’t see how she could stay married to Victor. But would VJ ever be willing to leave his precious lab and live with her?

  “You psychiatrists . . .” Victor muttered as he got out the corkscrew.

  Marsha gave the rice a stir and checked the artichokes. She struggled to control herself. She didn’t want more tears. She didn’t speak for a few minutes. When she did, she said, “I wish I’d kept a diary of VJ’s development. It would really be helpful.”

  “I kept one,” Victor said, pulling out the cork with a resounding pop.

  “You did?” Marsha asked. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “Because it was for the NGF project.”

  “Can I see it?” Marsha asked, again swallowing her anger at Victor’s arrogance, using her baby as a guinea pig.

  Victor tasted the wine. “It’s in my study. I’ll show it to you later after VJ is in bed.”

  Marsha was sitting in Victor’s study. She’d insisted on reading the diary alone because she knew Victor’s presence would only upset her more. Her eyes filled with tears as she relived VJ’s birth. Even though much of the record was no more than a standard laboratory account, she was painfully moved by it. She’d forgotten how VJ’s eyes had followed her from birth, long before an average baby’s had even begun to track.

  All the usual milestones had been reached at incredibly early ages, particularly the ability to speak. At seven months, when VJ was supposed to be pronouncing no more than “Mama” and “Dada,” he was already composing sentences. By one year he had a whole vocabulary. By eighteen months, when he was supposed to be able to walk reasonably well, he could ride a small bicycle that Victor had had specially made.

  Reading the history made Marsha remember how exciting it had been. Every day had been marked by a mastery of some different task and the uncovering of a new and unexpected ability. She realized she had been guilty too of reveling in VJ’s unique accomplishments. At the time she had given very little thought to the impact of the child’s precociousness on his personal development. As a psychologist, she should have known better.

  Victor came in with some flimsy excuse about needing a book as she reached a section labeled “mathematics.” Discomforted by her own shortcomings as a caring parent, she let him stay as she continued reading. Math had always been her bête noire. In college she’d had to be tutored to get through the required calculus course. When VJ began to demonstrate an exceptional facility with numbers, she had been astounded. At three VJ
actually explained in terms she could understand the basis for calculus. For the first time in her life, Marsha properly comprehended the principles.

  “What amazed me,” Victor was saying, “was his ability to translate mathematical equations into music.”

  Marsha remembered, thinking they had another Beethoven on their hands. “And I never thought to worry if the burden of genius was more than a toddler could handle,” she thought with regret. Sadly, she flipped the next few pages and was surprised to see the diary come to an end.

  “I hope this isn’t all,” she said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Marsha read the final pages. The last entry was for May 6, 1982. It described the experience in the day-care center at Chimera that Marsha remembered so vividly. It then dispassionately summarized VJ’s sudden diminution in intelligence. The last sentence read: “VJ appears to have suffered an acute alteration in cerebral function that now appears stable.”

  “You never made any further entries?” asked Marsha.

  “No,” Victor admitted. “I thought the experiment was a failure despite its initial success. There didn’t seem to be any reason to continue the narrative.” Marsha closed the book. She had hoped to find more clues to what she considered the deficiencies in VJ’s personality. “I wish his history pointed to some psychosomatic illness or even a conversion reaction. Then he might be responsive to therapy. I just wish I’d been more sensitive back when all this happened.”

  “I think VJ’s problem was the result of some sort of intracellular phenomenon,” Victor offered. “I don’t think the history would make much difference anyway.”

  “That’s what terrifies me,” said Marsha. “It makes me afraid that VJ is going to die like the Hobbs and Murray children, or of cancer like his brother, or Janice for that matter. I’ve read enough about your work to know that cancer is a big worry for the future of gene therapy. People are worried that inserted genes might cause proto-onco genes to become oncogenes, turning the involved cell into a cancer.”

  She broke off. She could feel her emotions taking over. “How can I go on talking about this as if it were simply a scientific problem? It’s our son—and for all I know you triggered something inside him that will make him die.”

  Marsha covered her face with her hands. Despite her attempts to control herself, tears returned. She let herself cry.

  Victor tried to put his arm around her, but she leaned away. Frustrated, he stood up. He watched her for a moment, with her shoulders silently shaking. There was nothing he could say in defense. Instead, he left the room and started upstairs. The pain of his own grief was overwhelming. And after what he’d discovered today, he had more reason than his wife to fear for VJ’s safety.

  8

  Thursday Morning

  WONDERING how the other people put up with it on a daily basis, Victor suffered the congested traffic of a normal Boston rush hour.

  Once he got on Storrow Drive heading west, traffic improved, only to slow down again near the Fenway. It was after nine when he finally entered the busy Children’s Hospital. He went directly to Pathology.

  “Dr. Shryack, please?” Victor asked. The secretary glanced up at him and, without removing her dictation headset, pointed down the corridor.

  Victor looked at the nameplates as he walked.

  “Excuse me. Dr. Shryack?” Victor called as he stepped through the open door. The extraordinarily young-looking man raised his head from a microscope.

  “I’m Dr. Frank,” Victor said. “Remember when I stopped in while you were autopsying the Hobbs baby?”

  “Of course,” said Dr. Shryack. He stood up and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you under more pleasant circumstances. The name is Stephen.”

  Victor shook his hand.

  “I’m afraid we haven’t any definitive diagnosis yet,” Stephen said, “if that is what you’ve come for. The slides are still being processed.”

  “I’m interested, of course,” Victor said. “But the reason I stopped by was to ask another favor. I was curious if you routinely take fluid samples.”

  “Absolutely,” Stephen answered. “We always do toxicology, at least a screen.”

  “I was hoping to get some of the fluid myself,” Victor said.

  “I’m impressed with your interest,” Stephen said. “Most internists give us a rather wide berth. Come on, let’s see what we have.”

  Stephen led Victor out of his office, down the hall, and into the extensive laboratory where he stopped to speak to a severely dressed middle-aged woman. The conversation lasted for a minute before she pointed toward the opposite end of the room. Stephen then led Victor down the length of the lab and into a side room.

  “I think we’re in luck.” Stephen opened the doors to a large cooler on the far wall and began searching through the hundreds of stoppered Erlenmeyer flasks. He found one and handed it back to Victor. Soon he found three others.

  Victor noticed he had two flasks of blood and two of urine.

  “How much do you need?” Stephen asked.

  “Just a tiny bit,” Victor said.

  Stephen carefully poured a little from each flask into test tubes that he got from a nearby counter top. He capped them, labeled each with a red grease pencil, and handed them to Victor.

  “Anything else?” Stephen asked.

  “Well, I hate to take advantage of your generosity,” Victor said.

  “It’s quite all right,” Stephen said.

  “About five years ago, my son died of a very rare liver cancer,” Victor began.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “He was treated here. At the time the doctors said there had only been a couple of similar cases in the literature. The thought was that the cancer had arisen from the Kupffer cells so that it really was a cancer of the reticuloendothelial system.”

  Stephen nodded. “I think I read about that case. In fact, I’m sure I did.”

  “Since the tumor was so rare,” Victor said, “do you think that any gross material was saved?”

  “There’s a chance,” Stephen said. “Let’s go back to my office.”

  When Stephen was settled in front of his computer terminal, he asked Victor for David’s full name and birth date. Entering that, he obtained David’s hospital number and located the pathology record. With his finger on the screen, he scanned the information. His finger stopped. “This looks encouraging. Here’s a specimen number. Let’s check it out.”

  This time he took Victor down to the subbasement. “We have a crypt where we put things for long-term storage,” he explained.

  They stepped off the elevator into a dimly lit hall that snaked off in myriad directions. There were pipes and ducts along the ceiling, the floor a bare, stained concrete.

  “We don’t get to come down here that often,” Stephen said as he led the way through the maze. He finally stopped at a heavy metal door. When Victor helped pull it open, Stephen reached in and flipped on a light.

  It was a large, poorly lit room with widely spaced bulbs in simple ceiling fixtures. The air was cold and humid. Numerous rows of metal shelves reached almost to the ceiling.

  Checking a number that he had written on a scrap of paper, Stephen set off down one of the rows. Victor followed, glancing into the shelves. At one point he stopped, transfixed by the image of an entire head of a child contained in a large glass canister and soaking in some kind of preservative brine. The eyes stared out and the mouth was open as if in some perpetual scream. Victor looked at the other glass containers. Each contained some horrifying preserved testament to past suffering. He shuddered, then realized that Stephen had passed from sight.

  Looking nervously around, he heard the resident call. “Over here.”

  Victor strode forward, no longer looking at the specimens. When he reached the corner, he saw the pathologist reaching into one of the shelves, noisily pushing around the glass containers. “Eureka!” he said, straightening up. He had a modest-sized glass jar in his hands that c
ontained a bulbous liver suspended in clear fluid. “You’re in luck,” he said.

  Later, on the way up in the elevator, he asked Victor why he wanted the tissue.

  “Curiosity,” Victor said. “When David died my grief was so overwhelming I didn’t ask any questions. Now after all these years, I want to know more about why he died.”

  Marsha drove VJ and Philip through the Chimera gates. During the drive VJ had chatted about a new Pac-Man video just like any other ten-year-old.

  “Thanks for the lift, Mom,” he said, jumping out.

  “Let Colleen know where you’re playing,” she said. “And I want you to stay away from the river. You saw what it looked like from the bridge.”

  Philip got out from the back seat. “Nothing’s going to happen to VJ,” he said.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go over to your friend Richie’s?” Marsha questioned.

  “I’m happy here,” VJ said. “Don’t worry about me, okay?”

  Marsha watched VJ stride off with Philip rushing to catch up. “What a pair,” she thought, trying to keep last night’s revelation from panicking her.

  She parked the car and headed for the day-care center. As she entered the building she could hear the thwack of a racquetball. The courts were on the floor above, in the fitness center.

  Marsha found Pauline Spaulding kneeling on the floor, supervising a group of children who were finger-painting. She leaped up when she saw Marsha, her figure giving proof to all those years as an aerobics instructor.

  When Marsha asked for a few minutes of her time, Pauline left the kids and went off to find another teacher. After she returned with a younger woman in tow, she led Marsha to another room filled with cribs and folding cots.

  “We’ll have some privacy here,” Pauline said. Her large oval eyes looked nervously at Marsha, who she assumed had come on official business for her husband.

  “I’m not here as the wife of one of the partners,” Marsha said, trying to put Pauline at ease.

  “I see.” Pauline took a deep breath and smiled. “I thought you had some major complaint.”