It was a classic in the scientific literature. Anne had read it in college.
There were two authors. One of them was an Englishman named Francis Crick. The other one was an American—a scientific maverick not unlike Goth. Goth had cited him frequently in his own writings. His name was James Watson.
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She felt a slight tingling.
Watson.
The same last name as Sherlock Holmes’s erstwhile companion, Dr. John Watson.
The same initials, too. One had been a medical doctor, the other a scientist. Goth had been both. It could just possibly be, she thought. Simple, obvious. Probably too obvious. And hadn’t she already tried the word “Watson”? She couldn’t remember.
Anne turned on the computer and waited for Jupiter to boot up. She balled her hands into nervous fists. She had been disappointed so many times before.
At the prompt Anne typed “WATSON” and hit Return. “Please let this be right,” she whispered. “Please.”
Nothing unusual happened. The program displayed the identical prompts as it had always displayed. She caught her breath.
Maybe nothing different was supposed to happen.
She worked her way through Jupiter’s long list of options, fed her genome into the database, and repeated the process with Dalton’s genome. When the program finally began printing out its new genome, she was afraid to look at it. She pressed her hands against her eyes and took several deep breaths. She uncovered her eyes, finally, and stared at the printout. This time Jupiter had answered with an exact duplicate of Genny’s genome.
She felt breathless. She had just reproduced the identical blueprint that Harold Goth had used to alter the genetic code of the fertilized egg he had implanted in her womb almost four years ago.
Anne went out to the kitchen refrigerator. It was one o’clock in the morning and she suddenly realized she was ravenously hungry. She opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio and consumed half of it, along with a leftover bean salad that Mrs. Callahan had made, a turkey drumstick, a small carton of yogurt, and a wedge of Camembert.
She went to bed that night in a kind of giddy, astonished euphoria, as if she had just won the Nobel Prize and couldn’t quite believe it.
The excitement of her accomplishment died the next morning.
Despite her discovery of the access code, she realized she still had no understanding at all of how Jupiter achieved its results.
And trying to improve that understanding quickly became as formidable a task as finding the code word itself had been. She spent more weeks analyzing the genetic script of Genny’s genome.
She tried to determine which genes Jupiter had copied whole from one parent, which ones were the result of recombination (a mixture of both parents’ genes), and which, if any, Jupiter had created on its own.
When Anne wasn’t bent over her computer, she was buried behind growing stacks of textbooks and scientific journals. She checked so many volumes out of the medical library at Columbia University that one of the librarians complained about it.
She begged and borrowed sample genomes—normally prohibitively expensive items—from wherever she could. Some came from some of her old biology professors in college and others from people she had worked with at the Vermont laboratory now owned by her husband’s parent company, Biotech.
With these extra male and female “parent” genomes she used Jupiter to create several dozen new “son” and “daughter” genomes. With these additional genetic blueprints she could make comparisons and begin to isolate patterns in Jupiter’s manipulation of gene structures.
Two problems threatened to derail her from the start. First was the tremendous complexity of the subject itself. She frequently felt on the verge of losing her intellectual grasp of it. Her feelings about Goth and genetics in general underwent constant shifts: one day she would be frustrated and confused beyond endurance; another day she would be overcome with awe and admiration at the magnificence of it all. She would marvel at how anything as complex and as elegantly designed as life could ever have come into existence. The more one knew about genetics, she thought, the more necessary it became to believe in God. Chance and evolution alone could not possibly account for such a dazzlingly intricate cascade of miracles.
The second problem was the absolutely staggering amount of data involved. Along the spiral ladders of DNA that made up each human genome there were those three billion individual base pairs of nucleotides. About two billion of them served no known function. The remaining one billion made up the individual genes that determined the sex, shape, size, color, personality, intelligence, and every other aspect of each individual of the animal species Homo sapiens.
b Some of the genes were quite simple and straightforward in the functions they performed. The roles of others were either still hotly debated or unknown. Some genes were quite small, containing only a few thousand base pairs. Others were enormous agglutinations several hundred thousand base pairs in length. And the alteration of a single base—the change of the sequence ATTC to AGTC in a certain location in the overall sequence, for example—could completely alter the functioning of the entire gene, even shut it down altogether. The knowledge of what precise alterations in which genes caused what changes in the function of the genes was the basis of the whole science of genetic engineering. Hundreds of thousands of experiments had been conducted, hundreds of thousands of papers had been written to this ‘,n end, and still so much remained unknown.
Without the high-speed computer and sophisticated software that could catalogue, analyze, sort, crossreference, and manipulate tremendous amounts of data in milliseconds, Anne would not even have been able to begin her quest to understand Jupiter. But even with the help of this advanced equipment, the mysteries of Goth’s program—how he had been able to extract from the human genome the kinds of extraordinary functions she saw in operation in her daughter every day—continued to elude her.
Anne felt reasonably certain that Jupiter must call for some unusual alterations of some genes somewhere, but so far she had been unable to find even one. A special genetics screening program, a copy of which she had borrowed from the lab she once worked for in Burlington, had combed repeatedly through the sequences of Genny’s genes and failed to find any marked alterations in the arrangements of the base pairs. It had also failed to find any in the other Jupiter-created genomes.
Every one of the gene sequences analyzed—and the screening program had analyzed over a hundred thousand—came out as either a duplicate of one of the parent genes or a combination of both, and all were well within the accepted parameters of the patterns of genetic inheritance. It was maddening. Anne couldn’t extract even a hint as to how Genny could possess such extraordinary faculties.
Genny’s eyesight, for example. Anne knew from the tests Paul Elder had administered that her daughter could see across a broader band of the light spectrum than normal. Yet none of the genes that controlled Genny’s eyesight showed any abnormalities.
In fact they were exactly the same as Anne’s, base pair for base pair.
Logically, then, Genny’s eyesight should be within the normal range, the same as Anne’s. But it wasn’t.
No unusual sequences of base pairs—or evidence of any additional sequences—appeared on the genes responsible for the functioning of Genny’s other senses, either.
Anne considered one last possible solution to the mystery. She had read that widely separated and apparently unrelated genes, sometimes even located on separate chromosomes, frequently worked in collaboration. So it was plausible that Genny’s extraordinary capacities were the result of new and unknown combinations of genes working together.
Checking this theory out quickly proved to be a practical nightmare.
Every
one of Genny’s 150,000-plus genes had to be compared against a series of genetic models that covered the known human genetic range.
After a month of exhausting labor, Anne managed to process only ten thousand of Genny’s genes. The results: zero. She had uncovered irregularities in coding, but that was normal; human DNA was enormously repetitive and redundant. But in the crucial areas of protein coding and control sequences, nothing unusual or suspicious had turned up.
At the rate she was progressing, she realized, it would take at least two years to analyze the entire genome. There must be a better way.
Lexy dropped in frequently, and occasionally they went out for lunch or dinner. But Anne was always impatient to get back to work.
“You’re turning this into an obsession,” Lexy told her.
“I have to know.”
“Why? What good will it do you?”
“Genny’s not even three years old yet. Her development’s only beginning. Something could go wrong. I’ve got to be prepared for it if it does.”
“Give yourself a break. You’ve getting dark purple circles under your eyes. You look like your mascara slipped.”
“I don’t use mascara.”
“And you’re losing weight.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Listen, Annie. You’ve lost at least fifteen pounds in the last three months. Your ribs are beginning to show. Make the damned thing public. Go to the press. Lay it out. Tell them about Genny.
Tell them what happened. They’ll eat it up. Or go to the NIH.
Get the government involved. Let the scientists who’re supposed to know what they’re doing slave away on it for a while.”
‘ “I’m doing fine by myself. And going public would be crazy. I have to protect Genny. And I want to stop Jupiter, not promote it. It’s immoral to manipulate the design of human beings like this. Not to mention dangerous.”
“You’ve told me that a thousand times. I’m beginning to believe it.
But how does what you’re doing prevent Dalton and that kraut Valkyrie Baroness Brunnhilde von Mauser from developing it?”
Anne smiled.
“Is that supposed to be a gloating expression?”
“Jupiter won’t work the way they’re using it.” She revealed to Lexy her discovery of the silent access code.
Lexy shrugged. “How do you know somebody at Biotech or Hauser hasn’t figured that out already?”
“I seriously doubt they could.”
“Well, let’s celebrate, then. You need some serious air and refreshment. There’s a new Italian restaurant on Bank Street.
Let’s go try it.”
Anne looked wistfully at her computer screen, its rows of glowing amber letters beckoning to her. “I’m really not that hungry, Lexy.”
“Damn it, do I have to force-feed you? Come on!”
8
Anne made the breakthrough by accident. Blurry-eyed and groggy one evening after staring at the computer monitor for hours, she suddenly realized that she could no longer understand the information on the screen in front of her.
. She typed out “HELP.” She did it as a desperate joke—as a protest at the ordeal Jupiter was putting her through. Even though her knowledge of the field of genetics had vastly increased from what it had been only months before, it was mostly still so new to her that she frequently found it necessary to stop what she was doing and consult some reference or other in order to refresh her memory about a process or a term. The job was made all the more timeconsuming and discouraging by the fact that Jupiter had no manual to explain how it worked. Considering the size and sophistication of the program, it was something of an accomplishment that she had learned how to operate it at all. But she constantly wondered if there might not be other things it could do for her, if only she knew how to ask.
Jupiter had a main menu, but all it did was list, in the vaguest language, the program’s primary functions. Within each of these functions there were no help menus at all. Goth—and Guttmann—had designed the program for Goth’s use; so explanations were apparently not considered necessary.
So she just typed “HELP” and punched the Enter key.
The screen abruptly changed. The rows of data were swept away and replaced by a single query:
331
AREA ?
Anne stared dumbly at the word, not sure what to do next. It had taken her request for help seriously. Why? What had she been doing before she had typed “HELP”?
She remembered that she had been copying data from a genome reference book that listed all the known genes, their functions, and their locations on the chromosomes.
She had decided that instead of plowing through the entire genome, she would concentrate on the genes related to the senses.
This was the area in which Genny was most obviously different.
Anne had started with eyesight. Using the reference book, she had painstakingly typed into Jupiter’s database the tags and locations of all genes known to be associated with eyesight, so that Jupiter could locate them in Genny’s genome and call them up on the screen for her.
She had entered them all, but now she couldn’t remember how many there were supposed to be. The reference book would tell her as soon as she located the right page, but instead she decided to ask Jupiter. She typed out “How many genes?” and hit the Enter key.
Jupiter responded immediately: FOR WHAT FUNCTION?
My God, she thought. She had stumbled upon a whole new interface.
Jupiter was now really talking to her.
“Eyesight,” she typed.
THERE ARE 4 GENES IN THE ALI SIGHT CLUSTER.
ENUMERATE ?
Anne shook her head. That was clearly wrong. She repeated the question and got the same reply. She picked up her reference manual again and found in a glossary that the actual number of genes involved with human eyesight was thirty-six. A difference of six—not very close at all.
She put down the book and stared for a long time at the message on the screen: THERE ARE 4 GENES IN THE ALI SIGHT CLUSTER. ENUMERATE?
Then it occurred to her. She felt that same electric tingling sensation she had felt the day she stumbled onto the code word
“Watson.”
She typed “YES.”
Jupiter immediately threw up on the screen specific chromosome locations for forty-two genes: 13q46, 13q49, 13q56, 13q57, 13q58, 20q34, 20q37, and so on. Anne printed them out and then checked their locations off against the list in the reference manual. When she was finished she was left with the six genes unaccounted for in the reference. They were located at Xql2, Xql4, Xq24, 4q350, 4q370, and 4q371.
Anne tried the same exercise with hearing, taste, touch, and smell. In each area Jupiter offered up a list that exceeded the reference guide’s list by anywhere from six to ten genes.
When she had identified all the sensory genes not accounted for in the reference book, she took a closer look at one of them. She asked Jupiter for a display of Xql2—one of the six unlisted sight genes—located on quadrant 46 of chromosome 13.
Jupiter promptly displayed Xql2. It was twelve kilobases long—a medium-size gene. Its function, according to Jupiter, was to code for the production of a protein that would enhance the light-gathering abilities of the cones of the eyes. Anne printed out the entire sequence of Xql2 and compared it with other genome printouts. What was immediately apparent was that the gene was located in an area where no genes were known to exist. The same was true of the five other extra sight genes. They were all to be found in sections of filler, or
“junk,” DNA—long stretches of nucleotide sequences of unknown purpose.
Goth seemingly had achieved his results not by altering existing genes but by creating new ones.
But how could he have created them? No one, not even a genetics genius like Goth, could have possessed the knowledge required to fashion an entirely new gene, let alone several whole new sets of them. The state of genetic engineering fell far shor
t of such a capability. Only God, or the processes of natural selection, acting over millennia, could accomplish such miracles—and then only by a prolonged process of trial and error involving vast numbers of a species.
But the genes were obviously there.
Anne glanced over at her desk clock. Did it really say two A.M.?
It seemed that she had just seen Genny to bed a few minutes ago.
She had been parked in front of the computer the entire day. Her back ached. Her head was spinning and her eyes burned. And she was famished.
She turned off the computer, got up, stretched, and went into the kitchen. The insides of the refrigerator looked like an alien landscape. Almost everything in it had been put there by either Mrs.
Callahan or Lexy.
She found a slice of quiche and a nearly empty bottle of seltzer water near the back of the top shelf. She heated the quiche in the microwave and ate it while standing over the sink. The seltzer was completely flat, but she gulped it down.
In bed, she couldn’t sleep. She dozed off briefly at around threethirty and had a dream in which she met Dr. Goth in a laboratory somewhere. He appeared as a well-decayed corpse, able to move and talk. She wanted to ask him questions about the Jupiter program, but he just grinned at her. His bare skull was visible through the rotting flesh of his face. His eyes seemed to float in sockets of bone, and there were no lips or gums around his teeth.
He was wearing what looked like an animal skin around his bony frame.
In one hand he brandished a large bone. He looked like a relic from the Stone Age. He lunged at her suddenly, swinging the bone at her head.
Anne sat up, trembling. She pressed her face into her hands and rocked gently back and forth, waiting for the remnants of the nightmare to evaporate. After a few minutes she slipped out from under the covers and went over to check on Genny. The child had kicked her blanket off and was lying sideways across her bed. Anne straightened her out and covered her again.
She sat on her bed, fully awake now.
Tom Hyman Page 32