Double Helix

by Nancy Werlin

  “Kayla,” I said. I looked around the apartment and gestured, unable to find words. Confused thoughts about X-Men and Spider-Man and various fictional, genetically mutated or otherwise altered superheroes—and monsters—chased each other through my head. Swampy. Question upon frantic question crowded into my head and then was interrupted by the next one. A lifetime might not be long enough to find all the questions, and to answer them . . . along with the final, the essential question: Who was I?

  Was I a chimera, too? Or was I merely what my mother had asked for: an ordinary HD-negative human being? I knew the answer. If I had been born before Kayla, there might have still been room for doubt. But I had not been.

  I looked up then and realized that Kayla had been watching me.

  “I’ve been tested again and again since before I can remember,” she said gently. Carefully.

  I still had no words, but I managed to nod.

  And Kayla nodded, as well—and I saw, deep in her eyes, the twin of the suppressed fear that I felt. And the same question:

  Who am I? What am I?

  Then Kayla swallowed and continued. “I wasn’t tested here, though. This place is pretty new—just four years—and I’d never seen it before Quincy showed it to me the other day. My parents and I used to visit Quincy at his country place in Vermont. Uncle Quincy.” Was that bitterness in her voice? I - couldn’t quite tell, and she had lowered her face as she cuddled Foo-foo. “All the tests—I thought we were just playing games. I used to look forward to going.”

  “Kayla,” I said. “Kayla, do you know—” I stopped.

  She looked up. “Know what?”

  “Know exactly what he did to us?” I said. “What he did to our genetic structure? What was altered or added or changed? And what has he done to—to—” I could hear my father’s voice. My children. My responsibility.

  “—to our sisters or brothers?” I finished.

  Kayla shook her head.

  I stood up. “Doors two and three. Lab and office. I bet it’s all in there. And that’s really where you were headed, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. And privately, I thought: I’ll find out about the others, Dad. I promise.

  CHAPTER 37

  WE PASSED QUICKLY through the exam rooms and lab, though if I hadn’t felt the pressure of time, I would have wanted to linger and pay more attention. There were two replicas of a standard doctor’s examination room. There was a spacious, pristine laboratory, with stainless steel refrigerators, a locking walk-in freezer, and a hooded working area with state-of-the-art equipment.

  I felt my steps slow as I looked at the freezer. I wondered if my mother’s eggs were in there . . . and if any other woman’s were now, too. Fertilized. Unfertilized. Normal or altered DNA. Any eggs would be carefully labeled, I knew. Eggs, sperm, embryos . . . human genetic material. So fragile. So easily destroyed. Nobody could stop me, not if I were determined. Kayla couldn’t, even if she wanted to.

  Would it be the right thing to do, though? Confusion filled me. Thou shalt not kill. But the Ten Commandments didn’t specify Thou shalt not create. I had been assuming that all this was bad—because, I realized, everything about my father’s attitude had told me that it was.

  But—was it? Was it really? Was it so wrong that Kayla was alive? That I was?

  Maybe I’d seen too many evil scientist movies. Maybe I was jumping to irrational, emotional conclusions. This was Dr. Quincy Wyatt, after all. One of the greatest minds of our time. Who was my father—an ordinary, beaten-down, nearly penniless psychotherapist—to second-guess him? Who was I?

  And the destruction of a few eggs—what would that really mean? It wouldn’t destroy the underlying knowledge. Or the fact that what Dr. Wyatt was doing was—it had to be—inevitable. It was the next step in human development: taking control of our own destiny ourselves. If it wasn’t Dr. Wyatt who led the way now, then it would be someone else, soon.

  We humans are going to tinker with our genetic makeup. The human genome is a locked box that we are going to pry open. Any mistakes, missteps, problems, unanticipated difficulties—they will be the inevitable price of progress, the price of the good that will surely result as well. Cures for disease; an end to suffering like my mother’s. Who knows what? But good stuff. Good stuff.

  Surely, good stuff?

  “Come on, Eli,” Kayla said impatiently. “The computers are through here, and that’s where all the information has got to be.”

  Brought back from my thoughts, I turned to her. I could see her increased tension in the tautness of her arms as they held Foo-foo.

  “Okay,” I said. I increased the length of my stride to keep pace with her, and so only caught a glimpse, as we passed, of a carpeted exercise room that held top-of-the-line rowing machines and treadmills and stair climbers and stationary bicycles. It was only after we’d moved on that I realized what had been so strange about it.

  All of the exercise machines were in miniature.

  With that, I refocused. The children. What I really wanted was some information about the children, for my father. For me. Maybe just names and addresses so we could check on them; make sure they were safe. Loved. And—and I wanted my own genetic profile; I wanted the report of what Dr. Wyatt had done to me when I was an embryo. The rest—I could, I would, sort it all out later.

  Kayla had turned the corner into a room that, I knew instantly upon entering, was Dr. Wyatt’s office. It was set up exactly like his office upstairs—a narrow shoe box of a room with two folding tables parallel to each other. Books and journals were heaped in piles on the floor. Steel cabinet doors hung ajar, revealing insides that were crammed untidily full of more papers and books, wires, boxes. The office chairs were old and rickety—though not armless. And yes, there were computers. Two of them; and these, at least, were expensive and new. In fact, they practically gleamed.

  “Each of us checks one,” Kayla ordered. “Just tell me what the scientific data would look like.”

  “We’ll just be looking for notes,” I said. “Maybe in ordinary word processing files, maybe in a database file. I’d guess we should scan all files looking for dates beginning twenty years ago, and for our own names, and for other familiar information. Maybe we’ll be lucky and he won’t have encrypted the data, though that’s probably wishful thinking—”

  Kayla interrupted me. “Wait a second, Eli, could you empty out that cardboard box for me, please?” With her foot, she indicated a packing box that held an old monitor. “I want to put the rabbit in it.”

  “Good idea.” I pulled the monitor from the box, and Kayla placed Foo-foo inside. The rabbit backed herself up into a corner and deposited a couple of pellets and, in the middle of everything, I was amused. “Sorry, Foo,” I found myself saying. “You’ll go home soon, I promise.”

  Kayla asked curiously, “Why’d you bring her, anyway?”

  I hesitated, then told the truth. “For comfort.” I didn’t wait to see Kayla’s reaction. I sat down at one of the computers and got busy. After a moment, I heard her do the same.

  It wasn’t difficult to find what I sought because, apart from programs, the only data on the computer was located in a folder called “AvaSamuels.” Beneath it were lots of files and folders, including a great many that began with the letters KM. For Kayla Matheson, I assumed.

  And yes—a click on the first few files told me that they were indeed password-protected and encrypted. It was a wonder, in fact, that there hadn’t been a password put on the system as a whole.

  “I’ve found stuff,” I said tersely to Kayla. Her chair collided with the back of mine as she got up, moving to stand behind me, leaning over my shoulder. I could hear her breathing—it had sped up. I started to use a few simple tricks to guess the password and encryption key that would open the first KM file, the one dated twenty years ago. Tension knotted the air around us as each trick failed. “This is not going to work,” I said finally. “And there’s too much her
e for us to read it all now, anyway, even if we did get in.”

  “Could you email the data to yourself and then we could try to get into it on your computer?” Kayla asked.

  “There’s no Internet connection on this machine,” I said. “No way to transfer data out—or in. Standard security provision—foolproof.” I tapped my fingers on the tabletop. “But you’re right—if we can make a copy, we can take it with us. He’s got to have the means for copying down here somewhere.” I stood up and began prowling through the cabinets. Even a set of diskettes would do.

  While I searched, Kayla sat down at my machine and began typing on the keyboard.

  “We don’t want to monkey around too much with those files,” I cautioned. “If we enter too many wrong passwords, it might activate a booby-trap that would shut the machine down completely so we can’t even make a backup.”

  “I’m in,” said Kayla calmly.

  Now it was my turn to rush up behind the computer. She had the first KM file open.

  “My birth date was the password,” she said. “And the encryption key was my name.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Good work. But we’ll still want to back everything up and take it away. It’ll take days to read everything.”

  I stopped talking as what I was seeing on the screen in front of Kayla penetrated. It was a shorthand code listing precisely what the DNA structure was for each chromosome. I could only just barely recognize it, only just begin to decode what it meant, but it was clear what it was: I could see, for example, where chromosome one began and ended.

  “Good God,” Kayla said. She scrolled the file down, and there was the notation for the second chromosome . . . and the third. Very occasionally, some of the notation was in red, indicating—what? A change? While the black letters were the regular DNA code? And then there were some stretches of black letters with strikethrough. Was that a cut?

  Kayla scrolled down further in the file. “Unbelievable. Is this as meaningless to you as it is to me?”

  I didn’t answer. We had reached chromosome four. The notation for the map of Kayla’s chromosome four. For the tip of chromosome four.

  C-A-G, it said. Repeats: 59.

  “Well?” said Kayla impatiently. “Should we try another file and hope for plain English?”

  C-A-G. Repeats: 59.

  I found that I had grabbed the back of Kayla’s chair with both hands. I was gripping it with all my strength. My knuckles were white.

  I knew now. I understood why Kayla was older than me. Simply, Kayla’s egg had not fit my mother’s specifications. It had not been negative for HD. And—whatever else Dr. Wyatt may or may not have been able to do twenty years ago—he had not been capable of trimming the C-A-G repeat down to a safe length.

  I had been running from the C-A-G repeat all my life. I had just been freed from it, finally and definitely. And yet—I swear—if at that moment I could have switched my chromosome four with Kayla’s, I would have. I would have.

  “Eli?” Kayla said sharply. “What are you seeing? You can read this, can’t you? What does it mean? What do you see?”

  I found my voice, and—thank God—it came out strong and definite, a bit regretful. “No, sorry,” I said to my beautiful sister. “I can’t read it. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all. It’s gibberish.”

  I thought I would get away with it. Kayla’s face was averted. But then she turned so that I couldn’t avoid her eyes, and they had that desperate expression again, the one she’d worn in the elevator.

  “Don’t lie to me, Eli,” she said. “Tell me what you see.”

  CHAPTER 38

  MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE INSISTED that I wasn’t lying. Hundreds of times, I have rethought the decision, the choice, of that instant—an instant that stretched out between Kayla and me until it seemed to fill the childhood we had not had together. An instant that marked the borderline between that nonexistent childhood, and the adulthood that we would indeed share.

  If I had continued to lie, it might have made a difference to what happened. Or it might not have. I am still only human. I don’t know.

  What I did was this. I nodded once, and kept my eyes on hers. Then I said, “Ava Samuels died of Huntington’s disease. You know that, right?”

  “Yes.” Kayla’s face was still expressionless.

  I reached out with my finger over Kayla’s shoulder. I pointed at the screen.

  C-A-G. Repeats: 59.

  “That’s the marker for HD,” I said. “On chromosome four.”

  “This is Ava’s genetic profile?” Kayla said. “I know it’s my initials on the file, but it’s the first file, so he put her DNA code in here first?”

  Another chance to lie, but I didn’t take it. I said nothing, trying to find the right words, and then, three seconds—an eternity—later, I heard her indrawn breath, and realized that I didn’t have to search for those words any longer.

  I hadn’t thought there could be a worse moment than the one in which I had recognized the code.

  “Oh,” Kayla said. “I see.”

  I discovered that I had moved my hands onto her shoulders. I felt them rise and fall, rise and fall. I looked at the screen and I felt that line of code imprint itself on my brain.

  When I close my eyes to sleep at night—even when I am holding Viv—I see the code. I will see it all my life.

  Kayla spoke again. The only sign of what she’d just learned was in the higher-than-normal timbre of her voice. “Eli, would you please hand me the rabbit?”

  I did. I stood there for several minutes, watching the quarter of my sister’s face that I could see. Her lashes flickered and fell over her eyes. Her shoulders hunched as she cradled the rabbit.

  C-A-G. Repeats: 59.

  “You aren’t alone, Kayla,” I said. “You’re not going to be alone with this. I’m your brother, okay? I’m your brother. You have to know that. I need you to know that.”

  My responsibility. Because I am my father’s son. Because I choose, like he did, not to walk away. Because you are more than your genes. Because you are human. Because you are worth it.

  She didn’t answer. And after a while, without having made a conscious decision to do so, I got to work. I didn’t care anymore about leaving the room undisturbed. I dismantled both computers, removing their hard drives, wrapping them in towels from the apartment, and packing them in the cardboard box, using more towels for protective padding. I found a pile of diskettes and CDs in one of the cabinets, noticed that several of the CDs were backups, labeled with the names of the files we’d just been viewing, and placed those in the box as well.

  As I finished packing the boxes, I finally felt Kayla watching me again. She said, “We’ll find someone to give it all to.” She was holding Foo-foo with both arms, huddling over her. “They’re evidence, the hard drives. Better than copies. Because someone, somewhere, can stop him. This whole place will be of interest to the police, right? It can’t be legal, what he’s done. There’s got to be a law. He’s been so secretive . . . it must be illegal.”

  Probably—though I wondered if the police would be capable of understanding this, of sorting it all out. FBI, maybe? But I also felt as if it didn’t really matter right now. What mattered was getting Kayla out of there. What mattered was getting to my father.

  “Come on,” I said. I started to lead Kayla back out. But there, again without planning, I took us into the lab instead. I looked at the walk-in freezer. I reached out and gave the door a tug, just to test it. Yes, it was locked; locked the old-fashioned way, requiring a key.

  Then I knew what I was about to do. I was going to destroy everything I could before we left. Too bad if it was evidence. Too bad if it would help to convict Dr. Wyatt of whatever laws he might have broken. And—too bad if here was the key to unimaginable scientific advances.

  I was going to destroy it anyway.

  “Stand back,” I said tensely to Kayla. “No, farther away. Over by the wall.”

  She did as I ordered. I
put my left hand flat on the door for balance, put my right hand on the door handle, and jerked the door toward me sharply, twisting it against its hinges.

  It sheered neatly off. I turned, carrying the door, and leaned it against the wall.

  “How did you know you could do that?” Kayla asked.

  I shrugged. I believe the truth was that I could have done it even if I were someone else. Someone ordinary—Larry, say. Or even Viv.

  Viv could have done it, too, if she had felt what I felt.

  Was this how the superheroes—Batman, Spidey, Swampy—felt ? Was their complete competence fueled by rage? And, beneath the rage, despair?

  At that moment, I understood about adulthood. It is not about being in charge of your own life. It is not about being in control. It is about being helpless.

  And hating it.

  No number of scientists and dreamers like Quincy Wyatt—no amount of DNA tinkering—would ever change that final human helplessness. But they thought they would. And, because of that, they could not be stopped.

  Should they be? I didn’t know. I only felt. I could only do what was before me to do, right now. I did not know if I was doing right or wrong. Killing or preserving. Loving or hating.

  I did not care.

  “Come watch,” I said to Kayla. We entered the freezer, and I checked through its contents, which were as carefully labeled as I’d imagined they would be. A meticulous man where it mattered, was Quincy Wyatt. I gathered up all the packages, the ones that belonged to my mother, and the ones that - didn’t.

  Kayla knew without asking what I was doing. “With the freezer open, won’t they all be destroyed anyway as they defrost ?”

  “This will be faster,” I said.

  I took the samples to the sink and ran hot water over them. Then I unplugged and emptied the refrigerators. Then—simply because I wanted to—I went through the room, smashing everything in my path.

  I felt very calm.

  Kayla stood in the doorway, held Foo-foo, and watched.