Dark Tidings: Volumes I & II

by Gregory Marshall Smith

  Nix furrowed an eyebrow at the wording of the question.

  “A chance to fail in school?’’ he asked in reply. “A chance to experience a great deal of pain?”

  “Well, no, just a chance to make themselves stronger by overcoming their weaknesses,’’ the commentator clarified.

  “We all know that most don’t overcome,” Nix said. “And that doesn’t make the mothers of those children with illnesses like Down’s syndrome or cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia love them any less. But, can you imagine what that child might become if he or she were free of those crippling shackles? It’s something that each person should ponder and decide upon for him or herself.”

  “Well, that about wraps up our time for today’s show,’’ the commentator said, looking more than a bit defeated. “I want to thank today’s guest, renowned geneticist Eugene Nix. We’ll be back after a commercial break for some notes on next week’s show.’’

  It took more than ninety minutes to get through mid-afternoon traffic in Dallas before he reached the slightly less hectic vehicular crush of Tarrant County. He made it back to his office at Fort Worth Hospital only twenty minutes before his afternoon appointment. He had just enough time to say hello to Ellen Hellerby, his secretary, before perusing his computer for the necessary patient files.

  The Oldmans were an unusual case. Cystic fibrosis ran in the genes of Lawrence Oldman, usually every third generation, which, in and of itself, was odd. His wife, Marguerita Elizabeta, was Mexican and had no known maladies in her lineage. It was hoped her genes might somehow offset the Oldman family curse. Personally, Nix knew it was pure fantasy. Genetics could not be fooled so easily, being shaped by some otherworldly power that Nix firmly believed came from on high. That was how a man and woman could have three children, with each one taking on different characteristics of the mother or father or both.

  His intercom buzzed and he told Ellen to let the Oldmans in. He rose and came from behind his desk to meet them at the door. He greeted the couple warmly, as he did all his clients, and bade them sit down in the leather chairs before his desk. Only when they were comfortable did he take his own seat. He made small talk about the weather as he could see that they were – or at least Marguerita was–nervous. Lawrence Oldman complimented Nix on his appearance on the morning talk show.

  “Thank you, sir,’’ Nix replied. “But, I’m sure you didn’t come all this way today to tell me I looked much thinner on television than in person. You’re interested in the results of the tests I performed two weeks ago and I have them with me today.”

  Lawrence started to speak, but Marguerita interrupted him, whispering to him in Spanish. Nix knew Spanish but leaned back in his chair so that he wouldn’t hear her. He knew she was trying to be private with her husband. Lawrence listened to her, then said something in reply and patted her hands reassuringly.

  “Pardon my wife, Doctor Nix,” Lawrence apologized, in a voice that had the air of royalty. “She comes from an old family and she’s still not sure about all of this. I’ve been trying to reason with her for the last two weeks.”

  “Well, maybe I can reassure her fears,’’ Nix answered, moving his left hand to his computer keyboard and typing a few keys. “My tests show that there is an 85.6% chance that your child will have cystic fibrosis.”

  Marguerita Oldman gasped upon hearing the high percentage. Then, she buried her head into her husband’s right shoulder and began to sob. Lawrence tried to comfort her as best he could, while keeping one eye coldly fixed upon Nix for delivering such bad news.

  “Please don’t cry, Mrs. Oldman,’’ Nix added. “I can guarantee you at least a ninety-nine-point-three percent chance that my methods will remove the cystic fibrosis gene from the child.”

  This surprised the Oldmans and Marguerita stopped crying. In fact, she sat up straight and looked at Nix, with a look on her face that showed both shock and relief. He had seen this look often in the five years since he’d introduced his method during a clinical study in the small town of Mineral Wells.

  “I will need some samples from each of you,” Nix continued. “Some unfertilized eggs and a sperm sample. As you know, I use nanotechnology to cleanse the samples of impurities and of harmful genes, while leaving good genes. I can guarantee that the fetus will have the best chance possible of a normal birth and childhood as far as genetic diseases go, though his upbringing is between yourselves and God.”

  Lawrence Oldman suddenly stood and pulled his wife to her feet. Nix rose to meet them, and then reached his hand over the desk to shake Lawrence’s extended hand. Instantly, Nix could tell from Oldman’s grip that the man’s family had the kind of confidence that one might expect from descendants of royalty. It was firm and virtually transmitted strength and confidence.

  Mr. Oldman thanked the doctor profusely and wanted to start the procedures that very moment. Nix had his secretary show them to the prenatal ward of the hospital. Although, he had alleviated their fears, he knew they might still change their minds and not go through with it; thus, he was never unhappy to see clients immediately start the treatments.

  “So proud of yourself, aren’t you, Gene?’’

  Nix looked up from his paperwork to see a very beautiful blonde standing before his desk. She wore a white lab smock and her badge showed her to be Doctor Emmalene Mayhew. Nix had once thought her to be one of the most professional doctors on the hospital’s staff, but then she’d turned on him, trying to get him dismissed from the hospital.

  “What can I do for you, Doctor?” Nix replied, mechanically. “I do have some clients to tend to.”

  “Oh, come now,” Emmalene stated, taking the opportunity to plop herself down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. “You know it takes an hour or so to properly prep. We have time for a chat.”

  “Ah, yes, a chat,” Nix answered, his demeanor cold and distant. “Is it going to be one of those chats where I listen and you do all the speaking? Or will we speak as colleagues for once?’’

  “Look, Eugene,” Emmalene began, “I never wanted to make this personal. I wanted to keep it professional. We’ve all taken the Hippocratic Oath and we all do the best we can for our patients.”

  “Which is all I am doing with my research,” Nix interjected

  He ignored Mayhew’s frown. He already knew what she was going to say, and it certainly would not be Hippocratic in the least.

  “But, there is a line we are not supposed to cross,” Mayhew finished.

  “Dr. Mayhew, how many cancer patients are we currently treating?”

  The question caught her off guard and she stammered for a moment. Nix didn’t repeat the question, just gazed at her, inquisitively. Pressed for an answer, she told him she didn’t have an exact figure, but she personally had five patients undergoing chemotherapy.

  “Wouldn’t our jobs be a whole lot easier if we could remove the carcinogens and other cancer-causing agents from the body before the cancers formed?” Nix posited.

  “You’re trying to use emotions to justify the means, Doctor,” Mayhew objected. “I’m sure there would be many cancer patients willing to jump through fire or pay anything to get rid of the so-called toxins infecting their blood cells, but, what you’re doing is science fiction. Hasn’t history seen these types of things before?”

  “You can say it, Doctor Mayhew,” Nix stated, leaning back in his chair, somewhat disappointed. “You were going to call me a ‘charlatan.’ A trickster or some fairground peddler with a cure-all panacea, like some quack

  barnstorming his way across the Old West with a magic elixir.”

  “I assure you, I meant no offense,” Emmalene retorted, backpedaling. “It’s just that, well, there are others, who may not be so obliging. People with a deeper sense of values, who…”

  “Doctor Mayhew,” Nix stated sharply and forcefully, cutting her off so abruptly that she tried to sink deeper into her chair. “We are both doctors. We have both gone through the same pre-med and the same medical schoo
l. The diplomas behind me on the wall are just as real as the ones on your wall. I am not some quack who puts black dye in water and tells a gullible customer that it represents the toxins in her body and will she please fork over all her money for monthly treatments to clear up the water.”

  “Look, Eugene,” Emmalene Mayhew snapped, trying to recover some of her dignity. “There are others in this hospital who believe as I do. You’re not just affecting this hospital’s reputation, but the livelihoods of your colleagues.”

  “Oh, yes, I was wondering when you’d get around to that,” Nix retorted. “How is the funding proposal for your cancer center faring? Please don’t tell me I’m upsetting the apple cart with my controversial methods. If it were so, the hospital board would have said goodbye to me already. So, tell your colleagues to pay for their own fishing trips and dinners for a little while longer.”

  “You’re making a big mistake, Eugene,” Emmalene warned. “Your status with the board is precarious, at best. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “And I think this discussion, such as it was, is now over,” Nix replied, coolly. “I have patients to attend to and I’m sure you do as well. Good day, Doctor Mayhew.”

  Nix stared out the window of the laboratory. Mayhew had rattled him more than he’d thought and he needed a little more time to collect his wits. The samples had been taken from the Oldmans and he had received them a half-hour earlier. The nurse had placed them inside his machine.

  Below, in the streets, a few protesters still picketed across from the main entrance to the hospital. They had been there so long, Nix almost felt he knew each one intimately. They had been coming, in small groups, every day for the past six months.

  They had never been violent or unruly, unlike the protesters in Los Angeles when he had been part of a medical team trying to clone human organs for transplant purposes. Then again, California tended to produce more varieties of agitators than the other forty-nine states combined. Back home in his native Fort Worth, Nix hadn’t felt the need for a bodyguard.

  Finally, he turned away from the window, walked over to his machine and sat down. He flipped a switch to light up a large screen, through which he spied the samples from the Oldmans. He tapped a few keys on the board before him, then manipulated a track ball with his right hand. Inside the machine, mechanical arms extended down, each grabbing a sample container and moving it to a separate area. Shortly thereafter, inside these darkened areas, colored lights began to flash and play over the containers.

  Nix looked to his left at a small screen, then to a similar one to his right. Each showed results of scans being done on the sample containers. So far, nothing looked out of the ordinary, but it was still early and he knew it. He didn’t have to stay with the machine for the entire range of tests, which could last up to ten hours, but he didn’t mind. His lab was off-limits and he often hid here to keep away from his more narrow-minded colleagues, like Doctor Emmalene Mayhew.

  As the results droned across the screens, Nix closed his eyes and took a little time to reflect, a habit he had picked up from an old girlfriend in California who had been into the New Age movement. Almost habitually, he began rubbing his hands together as if he were simulating washing them. It often helped him relieve the arthritis he’d begun suffering more and more, especially after handling samples and manipulating the controls of his machines.

  Every time he used his machine, he found himself recounting the same memory. He was just seven years old, much too young to see the incredible agony his older brother, Christopher, endured because of his rare genetic disease. Eugene could remember the look of anguish on his mother’s face as she sought to feed, bathe and help Chris use the toilet. Eugene rarely saw his father, who worked two full-time jobs to pay the extensive medical bills.

  His memory shot forward ten years. Now, he was at his father’s funeral. The doctors called what had killed him hypertension. They’d said that, most likely, the stress of working two jobs for so long had weakened his heart and dangerously (fatally) elevated his blood pressure.

  When Chris finally succumbed to his disease two years later, Eugene was all out of tears. He’d simply sat, stone-faced, at the funeral. His mother had cried enough tears for both of them, but he had none left to give. He couldn’t think of grief, only of how unfair life had been to his parents and to his older brother. That’s when he decided his mission in life.

  He switched his major in college from electrical engineering to biology. Graduating near the top of his class, he’d been a shoo-in for medical school where he specialized in biogenetics, a major he was allowed to personally design. Sometimes his mother would visit, trying to get him to slow down and not work so hard, afraid he might fall prey to the same stress that had killed his father. He would listen to her, but just for the duration of her visit, whereupon he would return to his old habits after she’d gone back home.

  She was gone now, had died peacefully in her sleep. She’d worked so hard and sacrificed so much, but in the end, she’d lived a full life. She’d become even prouder of Eugene when his research had helped her overcome lymphoma. The night before she passed, she’d encouraged him to continue on, despite his critics. The possibility of parents not having to deal with ugly genetic diseases or loved ones facing a possible death sentence from cancer was much too important, she’d said, for him to let others deter him.

  This brought him back to reality. He now felt the ache in his fingers, a reminder from his arthritis that he’d had his fingers interlaced too long. Ironic, he thought to himself, as he separated his hands, that a man who could cure genetic diseases before birth and who could cleanse toxins from the bodies of cancer patients, had not tried to cure himself of arthritis. Strange as it sounded to his colleagues, his arthritis reminded him that he couldn’t sit back on his laurels because there were multitudes of ailments and diseases afflicting mankind.

  He looked at his machine and saw the readouts continuing. So far, the diagnoses had been correct for cystic fibrosis. He looked at the timer and saw that he still had another nine hours to wait before the final results were in. Unfortunately, though his earlier tests gave him a high certainty of success, medicine always demanded repetition, such as repeated tests, control groups or placebos. Trying to skip to the end was a bad habit that might let in unwanted variables. It would be a tragic waste to save people from cystic fibrosis only to lose them to a totally preventable infection.

  He got up from his chair and crossed the room to the futon he’d brought in a month earlier. He’d taken to sleeping on it to avoid his colleagues or protesters. Their criticisms, protests and, indeed, even verbal threats, seemed to grow exponentially when he ran his actual tests. In the lab, he had privacy and security and he took advantage of it now to get some badly needed sleep.

  Thanks to a sleeping pill, he did not have any bad dreams this time around. Lately, he’d imagined some protester slipping past the security cordons and getting into his lab. Strangely, though, he felt rather copasetic about the chances of his machinery being destroyed. Rather, he feared confronting the protester and trying to explain the rational nature of his work to an irrational mind. He’d dreamt that the protester would have nothing but malignity in his heart and perniciousness in his brain.

  Trying to focus on more pleasant things, he dreamt of having a nice dinner with Dr. Mayhew. He knew she opposed his work, but they were, after all, colleagues. He knew – rather, he hoped – she’d eventually feel the same level of comity as he did. Maybe someday, she might even give up her baleful outlook as to his work and see the benefits.

  “Good evening, Doc,” a mysterious voice said. “You’ve been sleeping much too long.”

  A groggy Nix pushed himself up into a sitting position and rubbed his eyes. He then glanced at the chronometer on his machine and frowned. He’d only been sleeping two hours.

  He still had seven more to go before his tests for the Oldmans were completed. Irate, he looked forward again, towards the sound of the voice,
ready to lash out at the nurse who’d interrupted his sleep. And who’d had the audacity to enter his lab without permission, he thought to himself.

  He didn’t see a nurse, however, but rather a young man, dressed in black, with a look upon his face that exuded nothing but anger. Nix started to jump up, but the man pulled something from somewhere on his person and Nix stopped. He could tell it was a gun and it was very large. Slowly, he returned to his sitting position, his mind telling his body not to overreact. Nix was an intellectual, a man who thought much faster than his body could ever hope to move.

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, ever mindful of the gun pointing at him. “How did you get past the guards?”

  “It doesn’t really matter who I am, does it, Dr. Nix?” the man said in a tone devoid of emotion.

  “Well, what do you want then?” a nervous Nix queried. “You’re not going to get me to change my mind at the end of a gun, if that’s what you’re thinking, son.”

  “Nice to see you have some loyalty to your ideas,” the young man replied, his voice sounding distant.

  Nix tried hard to think where he’d seen the young man before. Mostly likely, in the crowd of protesters, but he could have sworn he’d seen the man someplace other than outside the hospital. Maybe being at the business end of a pistol was jumbling his memory.

  “Just as I have with mine, Doctor.”

  “Bah, I know you’re kind,” Nix spat, disgustedly. “You’re like the Eric Rudolphs and Unabombers of the world. You destroy life, thinking you’re saving it. I am trying to give people a better life.”

  “I wish I could debate the issue,” the young man countered. “But, I doubt anything I say will change your wrong-headed ways. You’ll just continue to denigrate God’s work.”

  “And what you’re doing now isn’t denigrating God’s work?” Nix exclaimed, jumping to his feet, not caring now about the gun. “Breaking one of His commandments so you can do His work? My work, unfortunately, can only help life at its inception. The way that life grows still reflects totally on both nurture and nature. It’s obvious that you and too many millions like you never got the proper nurturing. You’re so mad because of it, you’ve hooked onto the wrong cause to make up for your shortcomings. You profess faith, but you radiate zealotry. You think you’re an Apostle, but you’re really nothing but an Apostate.”