Frameshift

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “That’s all right, Alex. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

  The student got to his feet and left the cramped office. Pierre, who had been standing just outside the door waiting for Molly to be alone, stepped into the doorway, holding a dozen red roses in front of him.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  Molly looked up, eyes wide.

  “I feel like a complete heel.” He actually said “eel,” but Molly assumed he meant the former, although she thought the latter was just as applicable. Still, she said nothing.

  “May I come in?” he said.

  She nodded, but did not speak.

  Pierre stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “You are the very best thing that ever happened to me,” he said, “and I am an idiot.”

  There was silence for a time. “Nice flowers,” said Molly at last.

  Pierre looked at her, as if trying to read her thoughts in her eyes. “If you will still have me as your husband, I would be honored.”

  Molly was quiet for a time. “I want to have a child.”

  Pierre had given this much thought. “I understand that. If you wanted to adopt a child, I’d be glad to help raise it for as long as I’m able.”

  “Adopt? I—no, I want to have a child of my own. I want to undergo in vitro fertilization.”

  “Oh,” said Pierre.

  “Don’t worry about passing on bad genes,” said Molly. “I was reading an article about this in Cosmo. They could culture the embryos outside my body, then test them for whether they’d inherited Huntington’s. Then they could implant only healthy ones.”

  Pierre was a lapsed Catholic; the whole idea of such a procedure still left him uncomfortable—tossing out viable embryos because they didn’t pass genetic muster. But that wasn’t his main objection. “I was serious about what I said before. I think a child should have both a mother and a father—and I probably won’t live long enough to see a child grow up.” He paused. “I can’t in good conscience begin a new life that I know I’m not going to be around to see through its childhood,” he said. “Adoption is a special case—we’d still be improving the child’s life, even if it wouldn’t always have a father.”

  “I’m going to do it anyway,” said Molly firmly. “I’m going to have a baby. I’m going to have in vitro fertilization.”

  Pierre felt it all slipping away. “I can’t be the sperm donor. I—I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  Molly sat without saying anything. Pierre felt angry with himself. This was supposed to be a reunion, dammit. How did it get so off track?

  Finally, Molly spoke. “Could you come to love a child that wasn’t biologically yours?”

  Pierre had already considered this when contemplating adoption. “Oui.”

  “I was going to have a child without a husband anyway,” said Molly. “Millions of children have grown up without fathers; for most of my childhood, I didn’t have one myself.”

  Pierre nodded. “I know.”

  Molly frowned. “And you still want to marry me, even if I go ahead and have a child using donated sperm?”

  Pierre nodded again, not trusting his voice just then.

  “And you could come to love such a child?”

  He’d been all prepared to love an adopted child. Why did this seem so different? And yet—and yet—

  “Yes,” said Pierre at last. “After all, the child would still be partly you.” He locked onto her blue eyes. “And I love you completely.” He waited while his heart beat a few more times. “So,” he said, at last, “will you consent to be Mrs. Tardivel?”

  She looked at her lap and shook her head. “No, I can’t do that.” But when she lifted her face, she was smiling. “But I do want to be Ms. Bond, who happens to be married to Mr. Tardivel.”

  “Then you will marry me?”

  Molly got up and walked toward him. She put her arms around his neck. “Oui,” she said.

  They kissed for several seconds, but when they pulled apart, Pierre said, “There is one condition. At any time—any time—if you feel my disease is too much for you, or you see an opportunity for happiness that will last the rest of your life, rather than the rest of mine, then I want you to leave me.”

  Molly was silent, her mouth hanging slightly open.

  “Promise,” said Pierre.

  “I promise,” she said at last.

  That night, Pierre and Molly did what they had often done before they’d broken up: they went for a long walk. They’d stopped at a café on Telegraph Avenue for a light snack, and now were just ambling along, occasionally looking in shop windows. Like many young couples, they were still trying to get to know every facet of each other’s personalities and pasts. On one long walk, they had talked about earlier sexual experiences; on another, relations with their parents; on others still, debates about gun control and environmental issues. Nights of probing, of stimulating conversations, of each refining his or her mental image of the other.

  And tonight, the biggest question of all came up as they strolled, enjoying the early evening warmth. “Do you believe in God?” asked Molly.

  Pierre looked down at the sidewalk. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh?” said Molly, clearly intrigued.

  Pierre sounded a bit uncomfortable. “Well, I mean it’s hard continuing to believe in God when something like this happens. You know: my Huntington’s. I don’t mean I started questioning my faith last month, when we finally did the test. I started doing that back when I first met my real father.” Pierre had explained all about his discovered paternity on another long walk.

  Molly nodded. “But you did believe in God before you found out you might have Huntington’s?”

  Pierre nodded as they continued along. “I guess. Like most French Canadians, I was raised Roman Catholic. These days I only go to Mass on Easter and Christmas, but when I was living in Montréal, I went every Sunday. I even sang in the church choir.”

  Molly winced; she had heard Pierre sing. “But it’s hard for you to believe now,” she said, “because a beneficent God couldn’t do that sort of thing to you.”

  They’d come to a park bench. Molly gestured for them to sit down, and they did so, Pierre draping his arm over her shoulders. “Something like that,” he said.

  Molly touched Pierre’s arm and seemed to hesitate for a moment before replying. “Forgive me for saying this—I don’t want to sound argumentative—but, well, I always find that sort of reasoning a trifle shallow.” She held up a hand. “I’m sorry; I don’t mean it to sound like a criticism. It’s just that the—the harshness of our world is apparent to anyone who looks. People starving in Africa, poverty in South America, drive-by shootings here in the States. Earthquakes, tornadoes, wars, diseases.” She shook her head. “I just—to me, I’m just saying to me—it always seems strange that one could go along without questioning one’s faith until something personally happens. You know what I’m saying? A million people starve to death in Ethiopia, and we say that’s too bad. But we—or someone we know—gets cancer or a heart attack or Huntington’s or whatever, and we say, Hey, there must be no God.” She smiled. “I’m sorry—pet peeve. Forgive me.”

  Pierre nodded slowly. “No, you’re right. You’re right. It is silly when you put it that way.” He paused. “What about you? Do you believe in God?”

  Molly shrugged. “Well, I was raised a Unitarian—I still sometimes go to a fellowship over in San Francisco. I don’t believe in a personal God, but perhaps in a creator. I’m what they call a theistic evolutionist.”

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “That’s someone who believes God planned out all the broad strokes in advance—the general direction life would take, the general path for the universe—but, after setting everything in motion, he’s content to simply watch it all unfold, to let it grow and develop on its own, following the course he laid down.”

  Pierre smiled at her. “Well, the course we’ve been laying down leads back to my apartment—and i
t is getting late.”

  She smiled at him. “Not too late to know me in the biblical sense, I trust.”

  Pierre stood up, offered his hand to Molly, and helped her stand up as well. “Yea, verily.”

  C h a p t e r

  16

  It was a small, quiet wedding. Pierre had originally thought they’d get married at UCB’s chapel, but it turned out not to have any such thing—California political correctness. Instead, they ended up being married in the living room of Molly’s coworker, Professor Ingrid Lagerkvist, with the chaplain from Molly’s Unitarian fellowship conducting the service.

  Ingrid, a thirty-four-year-old redhead with the palest blue eyes Pierre had ever seen, served as Molly’s matron of honor; Ingrid was normally quite slim, but was now five months pregnant. Pierre, who had been in California for less than a year now, enlisted Ingrid’s husband, Sven—a great bear of a man with long brown hair, a huge reddish brown beard, and Ben Franklin glasses—to be his best man. Also in attendance: Pierre’s mother, Élisabeth, who had flown down from Montreal; bubbly Joan Dawson and a dour Burian Klimus from the HGC office; and Pierre’s research assistant, Shari Cohen (whom Pierre could not help notice looked sad throughout the whole affair; it had perhaps been an error asking her to attend a wedding just three months after her own engagement had broken up). Absent were any members of Molly’s family; she hadn’t even told her mother she was getting married.

  Molly and Pierre had argued a bit about what vows they should exchange. Pierre refused to have Molly pledge to keep the marriage “in sickness and in health,” reiterating that she should feel free to leave anytime if he should fall ill. And so:

  “Do you, Pierre Jacques,” asked the white-haired Unitarian, wearing a secular three-piece suit with a red carnation in the lapel, “take Molly Louise to be your wife, to cherish and honor her, to love and protect her, to respect her and help her fulfill all her potential for so long as you carry each other in your hearts?”

  “I do,” said Pierre, and then, smiling at his mother, he added, “Oui.”

  “And do you, Molly Louise, take Pierre Jacques to be your husband, to cherish and honor him, to love and protect him, to respect him and help him fulfill all his potential for so long as you carry each other in your hearts?”

  “I do,” she said, staring into Pierre’s eyes.

  “By the authority vested in me by the state of California, I take great pride and pleasure in pronouncing you a married couple. Pierre and Molly, you may—”

  But they already were. And a long, lingering kiss it was, too.

  Their honeymoon—five days in British Columbia—had been wonderful. But soon they were back at work, Pierre keeping his standard long hours at the lab. They’d let their separate apartments go, and had bought a six-room house on Spruce Street with white stucco walls, next to a bungalow done in pink stucco. The final vestiges of Pierre’s inheritance from Alain Tardivel’s life insurance covered the down payment. Pierre had taken a beating converting the money to U.S. dollars, but was delighted to discover mortgage interest was deductible here, something it hadn’t been back in Canada. Pierre enjoyed having a backyard, and plants grew spectacularly in this climate, although the giant snails gave him the willies.

  Tonight, a warm evening in June, Pierre sat at the dining-room table, its top littered with little Chinese food containers. Tiffany Feng had long ago sent him a fully executed copy of his Gold Plan policy, but what with the marriage, moving into the house, and his work at the lab, he was only just getting around to looking it over. Molly, meanwhile, had had her fill of Chinese and was now sitting on a couch in the adjacent living room, browsing through Newsweek.

  “Hey, listen to this!” said Pierre, speaking loudly enough to be heard in the next room. “Under ‘Standard Benefits,’ it says: ‘In cases in which amniocentesis, genetic counseling, or other prenatal testing provides indications that a child will require extensive neonatal or later-life medical treatment, Condor Insurance, Inc., will pay all costs required to terminate the pregnancy at a hospital or government-licensed abortion clinic.’”

  Molly looked up. “It’s a fairly standard benefit; the university’s staff policy has that, too.”

  “That doesn’t seem right, somehow.”

  “Why not?”

  Pierre frowned. “It’s just that…I don’t know—it just seems a form of economically forced eugenics. If the baby isn’t perfect, you can have it aborted for free. But listen to this other clause—this is the one that really gets me: ‘Although our prenatal health benefits normally roll over into covering neonatal care, if amniocentesis, genetic counseling, or other prenatal testing provide indications that a child will be born manifesting symptoms of a genetic disorder, and the mother has not taken advantage of the benefit described under section twenty-two, paragraph six’—that’s the free-abortion-of-defective-babies benefit—‘neonatal health coverage will be withdrawn.’ You see what that means? If you don’t take the offer of a free abortion once it becomes clear that you’re going to have a less-than-perfect baby, and instead go ahead and give birth to the child, your insurance to cover the child’s needs is canceled. The insurance company is providing an enormous economic incentive to terminate all but perfect pregnancies.”

  “I suppose,” said Molly slowly. She had gotten up and was now standing in the entrance to the dining room, leaning against the wall. “Still, didn’t I read about a case of the exact opposite? A couple, both of whom were genetically deaf, chose to abort their child because prenatal testing showed that it was not going to be deaf, and so they felt they wouldn’t be able to relate to it. This sort of thing goes both ways.”

  “That case was different,” said Pierre. “I’m not sure I agree with the morality of it—aborting a normal child simply because he was normal—but at least it was the parents making the choice on their own, not being coerced by an outside agency. But this—” He shook his head. “Decisions that should be private, family affairs—whether it’s to continue a pregnancy, or, as in my case, whether it’s to take a genetic test as an adult—are essentially being made for you by insurance companies. You have to terminate the pregnancy, or lose insurance; you have to take the test, or lose insurance.” He shook his head. “It stinks.”

  He picked up the chop suey container, looked inside, but put it back down without taking any more. His appetite was gone.

  C h a p t e r

  17

  It was Molly’s turn to make dinner. Pierre used to try to help her, but had soon learned it was actually easier for her if he just stayed out of the way. She was making spaghetti tonight—about ten minutes’ work when Pierre did it, since he relied on Ragú for the sauce and a Kraft shaker for the cheese. But for Molly it was a big production, making the sauce from scratch and grating up fresh Parmesan. Pierre sat in the living room, channel surfing. When Molly called out that dinner was ready, he headed into the dining nook. They had a butcher-block style table with green wicker chairs. Pierre pulled out his chair without looking and tried to sit down, but almost immediately he hopped back onto his feet.

  There was a plush toy bee sitting on his chair, with giant Mickey Mouse eyes and a fuzzy yellow-and-black coat. Pierre picked it up. “What’s this?” he said.

  Molly entered from the kitchen, bearing two plates of steaming spaghetti. She set them down before she spoke. “Well,” she said, nodding at the bee, “I think it’s time we had my flowers fertilized.”

  Pierre raised his eyebrows. “You want to go ahead with the IVF?”

  Molly nodded. “If it’s still okay with you.” She held up a hand. “I know it’s a lot of money, but, well—frankly, I’m scared by what happened to Ingrid.” Molly’s friend Ingrid Lagerkvist had given birth to a boy with Down’s syndrome; the odds of having a Down’s child go up with age.

  “We’ll find the money,” said Pierre. “Don’t worry.” His face broke into a broad grin. “We’re going to have a baby!” He sprinkled cheese on his spaghetti, then did somethin
g Molly always found amusing: he cut his spaghetti into little bits. “A baby!” he said again.

  Molly laughed. “Oui, monsieur.”

  Pierre’s boss, Dr. Burian Klimus, looked up and nodded curtly at each of them in turn. “Tardivel. Molly.”

  “Thank you for agreeing to see us, sir,” said Pierre, sitting down on the far side of the broad desk. “I know how busy you are.” Klimus was not one to waste energy acknowledging the obvious. He sat silently behind his cluttered desk, a slightly irritated expression on his broad, ancient face, waiting for Pierre to get to the point. “We need your advice. Molly and I, we’d like to have a child.”

  “Flowers and a Chianti are an excellent starting point,” said Klimus in his dry voice, brown eyes unblinking.

  Pierre laughed, more out of nervousness than because of the joke. He looked around the office. There was a second door, leading to some other room. Behind Klimus’s desk was a credenza with two globes on it. One was a globe of the Earth, with no political boundaries marked; the other was—Pierre guessed, based on its reddish color—a globe of Mars. There were framed astronomical photos on the walls. Pierre returned his gaze to Klimus. “We’ve decided we want to undergo in vitro fertilization, and, well, you wrote that big article about new reproductive technologies for Science with Professor Sousa, so…”

  “Why IVF?” asked Klimus.

  “I have blocked fallopian tubes,” said Molly.

  Klimus nodded. “I see.” He leaned back in his chair, which creaked as he did so, and interlaced his fingers behind his bald head. “Surely you understand the rudiments of the procedure: eggs would be removed from Molly and mixed with Pierre’s sperm in a petri dish. Once embryos are created, they’re implanted, and you hope for the best.”

  “Actually,” said Pierre, “we weren’t planning to use my sperm.” He shifted slightly in his seat. “I, ah, I’m not in a position to be the biological father.”

  “Are you impotent?”

  Pierre was surprised by the question. “No.”