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by Michael Crichton

  “I hope so,” Burnet said. “She’s probably angry. But it’ll work out. It always does.”

  “That’s right,” Watson said. Still seated, he extended his hand, wincing a little.

  “Everything all right?” Frank said.

  “It’s nothing. Too much golf yesterday, I pulled something.”

  “But it’s good to take time off from work.”

  “So true,” Watson said, flashing his famous smile. “So very true.”

  CH092

  Brad Gordonfollowed the crowds that swarmed toward Mighty Kong, the huge roller coaster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. He’d been visiting amusement parks for weeks now; this one was the biggest and best in America. He was feeling better; his jaw was almost completely pain-free now.

  The only thing that bothered him was he had had one conversation with his lawyer, Johnson. Johnson seemed smart, but Brad was uneasy. Why hadn’t his uncle paid for a first-rate attorney? He always had before. Brad had the vague feeling that his life was on some sort of knife-edge.

  But he pushed all those thoughts aside as he looked at the track far above him, and the people shrieking as their cars went by. This roller coaster! Mighty Kong! With more than four hundred feet of drop, it gave plenty of cause for people to scream. The line of eager ticket-holders buzzed with anticipation. Brad waited, as was his custom, until two very cute young girls got on line. They were local kids, raised in a milk bottle, healthy and pink-skinned, with little budding breasts and sweet faces. One girl had braces, which was just adorable. He stayed behind them, happily listening to their high-pitched, inane chatter. Then he screamed with the rest of them, as he took the fantastic drop.

  The ride left him shivering with adrenaline and pent-up excitement. He felt a bit weak as he climbed out of the car and watched the girls’ round little buns as they walked away from the coaster, toward the exit. Wait! They were going again! Perfect! He followed them, getting on line a second time.

  He was feeling dreamy, catching his breath, letting his eyes drift over the soft curls of their hair, the freckles on their shoulders, revealed by their halter tops. He was starting to fantasize about what it would be like with one of them—hell, with both of them—when a man stepped forward and said, “Come with me, please.”

  Brad blinked, guilty from his reverie. “I’m sorry?”

  “Would you come with me, sir?” It was a handsome, confident face, one encouraging him, smiling. Brad was instantly suspicious. Often cops acted friendly and polite. He hadn’t done anything with these girls, he was sure of it. He hadn’t touched them, hadn’t said anything—

  “Sir? Please? It’s important if you would step over here…Just over here…”

  Brad looked and saw, to one side, some people wearing what appeared to be uniforms, maybe security uniforms, and a couple of men in white coats, like people from a sanitarium. And there was a television crew, or a camera crew of some kind, filming. And he suddenly felt paranoid.

  “Sir,” the handsome man said, “please, we very much need you—”

  “Why do you need me?”

  “Sir, please…” The man was plucking at Brad’s elbow, then grabbed it more forcefully. “Sir, we get so few adult repeaters—”

  Adult repeaters.Brad shivered.They knew. And now this guy, this handsome, charming smooth-talker was leading him toward the people in the white coats. They were obviously onto him, and he tugged free, but the handsome man held on.

  Brad’s heart was pounding and he felt panic flood through him. He bent over and pulled his gun from its holster. “No! Let go of me!”

  The handsome man looked shocked. Some people screamed. The man held up his hands. “Now take it easy,” he said, “it’s going to be—”

  The gun in Brad’s hand fired. He didn’t realize it had happened until he saw the man stumble and start to fall. He clutched at Brad, hanging on him, and Brad shot again. The man fell back. Everybody was screaming all over the place. Somebody shouted, “He shot Dr. Bellarmino! He shot Bellarmino!”

  But by then he was very confused; the crowd was running away, those cute little buns were running; everything was ruined; and when more men in uniform yelled to him to drop his gun, he fired at them, too. And the world went black.

  CH093

  At the fall meetingof the Organization of University Technology Transfer officers (OUTT), a group dedicated to licensing the work of university scientists, philanthropist Jack B. Watson gave the stirring keynote address. He struck his familiar themes: the spectacular growth of biotechnology, the importance of gene patents, keeping Bayh-Dole in place, and the necessity of preserving the status quo for business prosperity and university wealth. “The health and wealth of our universities depends on strong biotech partners. This is the key to knowledge, and the key to the future!”

  He told them what they wanted to hear, and left the stage to the usual thunderous applause. Only a few noticed that he walked with a slight limp and that his right arm did not swing as freely as the left.

  Backstage, he took the arm of a beautiful woman. “Where the hell is Dr. Robbins?”

  “He’s waiting for you in his clinic,” she said.

  Watson swore, then leaned on the woman as he walked outside to the waiting limousine. The night was cold, with a faint mist. “Fucking doctors,” he said. “I’m not doing any more damn tests.”

  “Dr. Robbins didn’t mention anything about tests.”

  The driver opened the door. Watson climbed in awkwardly, his leg dragging. The woman helped him in. He slumped in the back, wincing. The woman got in on the other side. “Is the pain bad?”

  “It’s worse at night.”

  “Do you want a pill?”

  “I already took one.” He inhaled deeply. “Does Robbins know what the hell this is?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did he tell you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “He didn’t tell me, Jack.”

  “Christ.”

  The limousine sped through the night. Watson stared out the window, breathing hard.

  The hospital clinicwas deserted at this hour. Fred Robbins, thirty-five and handsome as a movie star, was waiting for Watson with two younger physicians, in a large examining room. Robbins had set up light boxes with X-ray, electrophoresis and MRI results.

  Watson dropped heavily into a chair. He waved to the younger men. “You can go.”

  “But Jack—”

  “Tell me alone,” Watson said to Robbins. “Nineteen fucking doctors have examined me in the last two months. I’ve done so many MRIs and CAT scans I glow in the dark. You tell me.” He waved to the woman. “You wait outside, too.”

  They all left. Watson was alone with Robbins.

  “They say you’re the smartest diagnostician in America, Fred. So tell me.”

  “Well,” Robbins said, “it’s as much a biochemical process as anything. That’s why I wanted—”

  “Three months ago,” Watson said, “I had a pain in my leg. A week later the leg was dragging. My shoe was worn on the edge. Pretty soon I had trouble walking up stairs. Now I have weakness in my right arm. Can’t squeeze toothpaste with my hand. It’s getting hard to breathe. In three months! So tell me.”

  “It’s called Vogelman’s paresis,” Robbins said. “It’s not common, but not rare. A few thousand cases every year, maybe fifty thousand worldwide. First described in the 1890s, by a French—”

  “Can you treat it?”

  “At this point,” Robbins said, “there are no satisfactory treatments.”

  “Are thereany treatments?”

  “Palliative and supportive measures, massage and B vitamins—”

  “But no treatments.”

  “Not really, Jack, no.”

  “What causes it?”

  “That we know. Five years ago, Enders’s team at Scripps isolated a gene,BRD7A , that codes for a protein that repairs myelin around nerve cells. They’ve demonstrated that a point
mutation in the gene produces Vogelman’s paresis in animals.”

  “Well, hell,” Watson said, “you’re telling me I’ve got a genetic deficiency disease like any other.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “How long ago did they find the gene? Five years? Then it’s a natural for gene replacement, start the coded protein being made inside the body…”

  “Replacement therapy is risky, of course.”

  “Do I give a damn? Look at me, Fred. How much time do I have?”

  “The time course is variable, but…”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Maybe four months.”

  “Jesus.” Watson sucked in his breath. He ran his hand over his forehead, took another breath. “Okay, so that’s my situation. Let’s do the therapy. Five years later, they must have a protocol.”

  “They don’t,” Robbins said.

  “Somebody must.”

  “They don’t. Scripps patented the gene and licensed it to Beinart Baghoff, the Swiss pharma giant. It was part of a package deal with Scripps, about twenty different collaborations.BRD7A wasn’t regarded as particularly important.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “Beinart put a high license fee on the gene.”

  “Why? It’s an orphan disease, it makes no sense to—”

  Robbins shrugged. “They’re a big company. Who knows why they do things. Their licensing division sets fees for eight hundred genes that they control. There’s forty people in that division. It’s a bur eaucracy. Anyway, they set the license high—”

  “Christ.”

  “And no laboratory, anywhere in the world, has worked on the disease in the last five years.”

  “Christ.”

  “Too expensive, Jack.”

  “Then I’ll buy the damn gene.”

  “Can’t. I already checked. It’s not for sale.”

  “Everything’s for sale.”

  “Any sale by Beinart has to be approved by Scripps, and the Scripps office of tech transfer won’t consider—”

  “Never mind, I’ll license it myself.”

  “You can do that. Yes.”

  “And I’ll set up the gene transfer myself. We’ll get a team in this hospital to do it.”

  “I really wish we could, Jack. But gene transfer’s extremely risky, and no lab will take the chance these days. Nobody’s gone to jail yet over a failed gene transfer, but there have been a lot of patient deaths, and—”

  “Fred. Look at me.”

  “You can get it done in Shanghai.”

  “No, no. Here.”

  Fred Robbins bit his lip. “Jack, you have to face reality. There’s less than a one percent success rate. I mean, if we had done five years of work, we would have the results of animal tests, vector tests, immunosuppressive protocols, all kinds of steps to increase your chance of success. But just shooting from the hip—”

  “That’s all I have time for. Shooting from the hip.”

  Fred Robbins was shaking his head.

  “A hundred million dollars,” Watson said. “For whatever lab does it. Take over a private clinic out in Arcadia. Just me, nobody knows. Do the procedure there. It works or it doesn’t.”

  Fred Robbins shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Jack. I really am.”

  CH094

  The overheadlights came on in the autopsy room, bank after bank. It made a dramatic opening shot, Gorevitch thought. The figure in the lab coat was distinguished-looking in a severe way: silver hair, wire-rim glasses. He was the internationally renowned primate anatomist Jorg Erickson.

  Using a handheld camera, Gorevitch said, “Dr. Erickson, what are we doing today?”

  “We are examining a world-famous specimen, the putative talking orangutan of Indonesia. This animal is said to have spoken in at least two languages. Well, we shall see.”

  Dr. Erickson turned to the steel table, where the carcass was draped in a white cloth. He pulled the cloth away with a flourish. “This is a sub-adult or juvenilePongo abelii, a Sumatran orangutan, distinguished by its smaller size from the Borneo orangutan. This specimen is male, approximately three years of age, in apparent good health, with no external scars or injuries…All right, now we begin.” He picked up a scalpel.

  “With a midsagittal incision, I expose the anterior musculature of the throat and pharynx. Note the superior and inferior belly of the omohyoid, and here, the sternohyoid…Hmmm.” Erickson was bent over the animal’s neck. Gorevitch found it difficult to maneuver for a shot.

  “What do you see, Professor?”

  “I am looking now at the stylohyoid and the cricothyroid muscles, here, and here…And this is quite interesting. Ordinarily inPongo we find the anterior musculature poorly developed, and lacking the fine motor control of the human speech apparatus. But this creature appears to be a transitional case, bearing some features of the classic pongid pharynx, and some features more characteristic of the human neck. Notice the sternocleidomastoid…”

  Gorevitch thought,Sternocleidomastoid. Jesus. They would have to dub in a voice-over. “Professor, perhaps you could say it in English?”

  “No, the terms are Latin, I don’t know the translation—”

  “I mean, can you explain in layman’s terms? For our viewers?”

  “Ah, of course. All these superficial muscles, most of which attach to the hyoid—that is to say, the Adam’s apple—these muscles are more human than ape-like.”

  “What could account for that?”

  “Some mutation, obviously.”

  “And the rest of the animal? Is it more human, as well?”

  “I have not seen the rest of the animal,” Erickson said severely. “But we will get there, in due time. I shall be especially interested to inspect any rotation of the axis of the foramen magnum, and of course the depth and arrangement of sulci of the motor cortex, to the extent that gray matter has been preserved.”

  “Do you expect to find human-like changes in the brain?”

  “Frankly, no. I do not,” Erickson said. He turned his attention to the top of the skull, running his gloved hands over the sparse hair of the orang’s scalp, feeling the bones beneath. “You see, in this animal, parietal bones slope inward, toward the top of the cranium. That is a classic pongid or chimp finding. Whereas humans have bulging parietal bones. The top of their heads are wider than the bottom.”

  Erickson stepped back from the table. Gorevitch said, “So you are saying this animal is a mixture of human and ape?”

  “No,” Erickson said. “This is an ape. It is an aberrant ape, to be sure. But it is merely an ape.”

  JOHN B. WATSON INVESTMENT GROUP

  For Immediate Release

  John B. “Jack” Watson,world-famous philanthropist and founder of the Watson Investment Group, died today in Shanghai, China. Mr. Watson was internationally lauded for his charitable work and his efforts on behalf of the poor and downtrodden of the world. Mr. Watson had been ill for only a short time, but he suffered from an extremely aggressive form of cancer. He checked into a private Shanghai clinic and died three days later. He is mourned by friends and colleagues around the world.

  STORY, DETAILS TK

  CH095

  Henry Kendallwas surprised that Gerard could help Dave with his math homework. But that wouldn’t last long. Eventually, Dave would probably need special schooling. Dave had inherited the chimp’s short attention span. He found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the other kids in class, particularly in reading, which was agony for him. And his physical prowess put him in another league on the playground. The other children wouldn’t let him play. So he had become an excellent surfer.

  And by now, the truth was out. There had been a particularly distressing article inPeople magazine, “The Modern Family,” which said, “The most up-to-date family is no longer a same-sex family, or a blended family, or an interracial family. That’s all so last century, says Tracy Kendall. And she should know, because the Kendall family of La Jolla, California,
is transgenic and interspecies—creating more excitement in the household than a barrel of monkeys!”

  Henry had been called to testify before Congress, which he found a peculiar experience. The congressmen spoke to the cameras for two hours. Then they got up and left, pleading urgent business elsewhere. Then the witnesses spoke for six minutes each, but there were no congressmen there to hear their remarks. Later, the congressmen all announced they would soon deliver major speeches on the subject of transgenic creation.