The Labyrinth Key

by Howard V. Hendrix

  SEVEN

  PENETRANCE

  KOWLOON

  Detective Lu had a great deal to tell Ben Cho, but she didn’t see how she could, given that he was constantly escorted by FBI Special Agent and Deputy Legat DeSondra Adjoumani. Then again, if Mei-lin couldn’t tell him, at least maybe she could show him.

  Dressed in her white lab coat, black slacks, and sensible black shoes, Mei-lin hoped her appearance was neutral enough to avoid raising any warning flags. As she talked of the episode she and Ma had survived at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial—mentioning Paul Kao’s death, but neglecting to bring up Ma’s final speculation—Mei-lin thought Cho also seemed aware of the difficulties presented by his escort. His responses struck her as guarded.

  Then, as she and Cho watched an electron videograph display of the scurrying cell-like mechanisms, the spawn of Kwok’s “ashes,” Mei-lin felt certain he was being more reticent than when they’d last met.

  “After I accidentally cut myself and dripped blood on the ash samples,” she said, gesturing at the screen, “this was the result. I think the blood itself activated them, somehow. They show similar activity when grown on agar nutrient media saturated with blood components.”

  Mei-lin, seeing that Adjoumani was lingering by the lab door, risked typing in, for Cho, the word she had remembered from the Kwok holo-cast—a neologism built out of the two not-much-older neologisms of “biotech” and “nanotech.” Maybe all words are really just old neologisms, in the end, she thought.

  BINOTECH?

  She watched for Cho’s reaction.

  “I can’t say for sure—,” Cho began, then broke off as he caught her glance. He looked at her hesitantly, then seemed to arrive at a decision.

  “Yes, I believe you’re right,” he said, trying to sound as if he were responding to what she had said out loud. His reply sounded a bit forced, though. “But to what purpose? What do they do?”

  “I don’t know,” Mei-lin Lu admitted. “You suggested that I look for information, and at first I thought I had found information in the course of processing. I’m not so sure it’s that purposeful, now. I mean, to what purpose do bacterial colonies grow, other than to propagate themselves?”

  “Maybe,” Cho agreed, “but these don’t look natural. They look like some sort of human product, so logically they should serve some purpose that benefits human beings. Maybe they’re not yet fully operational. Just a guess. Do you still have the first samples? The ones you accidentally contaminated?”

  “At the other end of the bench—there,” she replied, pointing. They stepped over toward the samples. “I kept them refrigerated, and it seemed to slow them down. I took them out an hour ago, in anticipation of your visit.”

  Cho stared at the shapes formed by the samples, an odd expression on his face.

  “They look like those raked-sand whirlpools you see in Zen gardens,” he said, bemused. “Tiny versions of those, anyway.”

  “Yes, or like fingerprints,” Mei-lin suggested anxiously. This was it—an opening. If she could just exploit this opportunity, she might be able to get a lot of information to Cho, right under Adjoumani’s nose. “The ‘whirlpools’ vary slightly from colony to colony, but not much. More like the differences in fingerprints between identical twins, than between unrelated individuals.”

  “Identical twins don’t have identical fingerprints?”

  Mei-lin nodded.

  “The geneticists say almost no genetic trait has one hundred percent penetrance,” she said. “The genotype is almost never perfectly manifested in the phenotype.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “The genotype is like the blueprints,” Mei-lin said, opening out her hands, “and the phenotype is like the house built from the blueprints.”

  “And everyone knows the blueprints are never exactly the same as the house!” Ben Cho said, laughing.

  “According to complexity theorists, the difference stems from sensitive dependence upon initial conditions.”

  Becoming more thoughtful, Cho shook his head.

  “But identical twins are genetic duplicates from the same single fertilized egg, right?”

  “As close to one hundred percent duplication as you get in a biological system,” Mei-lin agreed. “And they drift side by side in the same womb. Even in the womb, though, there are local differences, such as different chemical concentrations. Those environmental differences only increase after the twins are born. Here, I’ll show you.”

  Time to take the chance—to show what Cho’s fingerprints, on the message tube when it was returned, had suggested to her, improbable as it might have seemed.

  She brought up on the computer screen two sets of similar thumbprints, labeled only “A” and “B.”

  “See any difference?” she asked.

  “No. Why? Should I?”

  “Only if you’re expert in dermatoglyphics,” she said, bringing up new versions of “A” and “B” with specific identification points highlighted. “There’s a great deal of similarity in these prints—their overall patterns of whorls, loops, lines, and ridge-counts. There are, however, clear differences in detail. Especially where the ridges bifurcate or end. See?”

  Ben Cho grunted in apparent understanding.

  “Hmm. And these are from identical twins?”

  “I believe so,” Mei-lin said, nodding again. “Twin sons of different mothers, actually.”

  “How might that happen?” Cho asked, scratching his head absently. “Fertility tinkering?”

  “Good guess. Advanced reproductive technology generates a surplus of fertilized eggs and embryos—all of which can be frozen and stored. From there it’s just permutations and combinations.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me illustrate a couple of scenarios,” she said, bringing modified and captioned family trees up on the screen. “The genetic mother’s egg could be fertilized by genetic father’s sperm in vitro, resulting in an embryo that can then be implanted in the genemother’s prepared uterus. The genemother would then become the gestation mother, as well.”

  “But that doesn’t have to be the case.”

  “No. The embryo might well be implanted in the uterus of a biologically unrelated woman. The genemother also might or might not be the cultural mother, as well. Likewise, the genefather might or might not be the cultural father, in the home where the child is raised.”

  “Then what these diagrams show,” Cho said, “is that an embryo could be implanted in the uterus of a woman who is not the genetic mother and, once born, that child could be reared in a household in which neither mother nor father is genetically related to that child.”

  “And in that case, the only ‘biological’ connection,” Meilin said, consciously steering the conversation, “between the mother and the child is that she is the woman who carried the pregnancy to term. Otherwise, she’s genetically unrelated to her ‘offspring.’”

  “So again, how would that affect identical twins?”

  “If we were dealing with twin-split embryos,” Mei-lin explained, bringing new family trees and lineage diagrams up on screen, “genetically identical, one might be raised in a family in which its genetic parents were also the cultural parents. The other twin, though—the ‘embryonically adopted’ twin—might be raised in a family of individuals with no biological relationship. A father with whom that child has no biological connection whatsoever. A mother whose only bio-relationship is having carried the child to term.”

  “But if the embryos were frozen, they could be stored,” Cho said, thinking it through. “The ‘embryonically adopted’ twin wouldn’t necessarily have to be born on the same day….”

  “Exactly. An embryonic adoptee might even be born months or years apart from its genetically identical twin. And it would be much more likely that the embryonically adopted child wouldn’t know he or she was adopted—because its parents might have no idea that, genetically speaking, ‘their’ child wasn’t really theirs.”


  “So the twins could be raised in different families,” Cho said, “with neither twin knowing it was a twin, and neither family aware of what had taken place.”

  “Not just different families,” Mei-lin said emphatically. “Different races.”

  “What?” Cho asked. He sounded doubtful.

  “Because the human race is a species, not a race,” Mei-lin said, “and in terms of strict, biologically based taxonomy, the human species does not have ‘races’—it has geographic variants. Race and ethnicity are undeniably important social and historical concepts, but their biological significance is generally negligible. We’re all too genetically similar to be different ‘races’ in the true Linnaean sense. And, since the same gene can produce a range of proteins, it’s not all that difficult to take the same genotype and tinker with it, proteomically and epigenetically, until it produces a quite different-looking phenotype.”

  “But how could gene and protein work on the microscale you’re talking about alter something as macro as race?” Cho asked, looking perplexed.

  “Traditional ethnic signifiers like skin melanin levels, curliness of the hair, epicanthic folding, and the like,” Meilin said, tapping at the keyboard again to bring up further illustrations, “are relatively easy to alter above the genetic level. Through proteomic and epigenomic technology, twinship and even kinship can be thoroughly masked. The only way to detect identical twin genotypes would be through DNA testing.”

  “I’ve never heard of, um, ‘twin sons of different races,’” Cho said somewhat incredulously. “Are there any recorded cases of such a thing actually happening?”

  “I had never heard of it before, either,” Mei-lin said, “but I think I’ve found such a case.”

  Mei-lin glanced surreptitiously at the doorway, where Adjoumani was still standing, an unobtrusive sentinel. Nothing about her posture revealed whether she was truly oblivious, or merely feigning civil inattention. The agent’s angle of view, however, made it unlikely that she could see the computer screen. Lu tapped at the keyboard and brought up what she wanted Cho to see, then stepped aside, indicating that he should take a look.

  She watched Ben’s expression as he took in what she already knew the screen showed. The “A” prints were matched to Jaron Kwok, whose records listed his date of birth and other identifying characteristics. The very similar “B” prints were matched to Benjamin Cho, whose records listed a completely different date of birth and rather different identifying characteristics. Something very much like a tremor passed over his face.

  “This can’t be right,” he said quietly, at last, clearing his throat.

  “I didn’t really expect it to be true either,” Lu responded, not knowing what else to say. “And it hasn’t been genetically proven, not yet. But the circumstantial evidence is very strong. Look how closely the prints match. Subject B’s prints are taken from a biometrically secured message cylinder—they’ve been positively identified. Subject A’s are taken from a crime scene, and match all other extant records of A.”

  “Are you suggesting that—” Cho said, then stopped, because Mei-lin suddenly gripped his arm tightly enough to pinch the flesh between her fingers. He began again. “Are you suggesting that Subject A and Subject B are identical twins, then?”

  “Yes. Despite the obvious ‘racial’ and familial differences.”

  Lu watched as his gaze shifted from the screen. He turned to stare penetratingly at her.

  “Then, Marilyn, what I asked earlier applies here, too: For what purpose would such a thing be done?”

  “And I’d have to say again—I don’t know. But what you said before, about the mechanisms, I think it’s also true in this situation: It must serve some larger purpose. I think what’s on that screen is a product of carefully planned manipulation. Something outside the normal course of reproduction and biological evolution. The result of technological innovation.”

  Cho nodded grimly. He looked downcast, and Mei-lin felt a stab of pity for him. How was the man supposed to feel, after all? If what she’d told him was right, then much of what he knew about his very existence was wrong. As Meilin pondered the ramifications, they quickly rippled away into the imponderable.

  She hadn’t wanted to cause him pain, but what else could she do? Her discovery might very well have profound implications for the investigation into the Kwok incident.

  Having come this far, she had to see it through, and obtain incontrovertible proof. For that she would need a DNA sample.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said casually, trying to get Cho’s attention again. “I’m collecting samples of different blood groups to use as test media for the cellular mechanisms. Would you mind giving me a blood sample—for further tests?”

  She emphasized the last phrase enough to hope that Cho might tumble to her purpose—but not so much that Adjoumani’s suspicions would be aroused. He seemed to get the idea.

  “Sure,” he said flatly. “Why not?”

  Pulling out the necessary equipment, Detective Lu applied a tourniquet to Cho’s left bicep and thumped up a vein on the inside of his elbow, then uncapped a syringe in preparation for the “stick.” Doing so, she fell back into a role older than her position as police-department forensics expert—older even than her graduate work in forensic anthropology. As an undergraduate she had scraped up extra money working as a phlebotomy technician in a local medical clinic, drawing blood samples and enduring far too many vampire jokes.

  “Are you sure that’s absolutely necessary, ma’am?” Special Agent Adjoumani asked, stepping into the room and stopping Lu with her words. Lu glanced at Cho.

  “Yes, I think it is necessary, DeSondra,” Cho said, before turning his gaze back to Mei-lin. “Don’t worry. She’s just taking something out, not putting anything in.”

  As she took the blood sample, Lu tried to show—with her eyes—how grateful she was to him. She was surprised to find at least as much gratitude flashing from the eyes that looked back at her—although it seemed to her that those eyes were more than a little touched by shadows of uncertainty. And regret.

  Cho handed her a scrap of paper with his local number on it.

  “If you find anything interesting,” he said, “please give me a call.”

  CHANGELING HISTORY

  SHA TIN

  Looking back over his shoulder, Ben Cho spotted the Royal Park Hotel, self-identified in large letters at its towering top. The place where Jaron Kwok—his unsuspected twin brother, if Detective Lu was right—had met an uncertain end. Shaking his head, Ben walked through the late afternoon light into the town park after which the hotel had been named.

  Though he couldn’t say exactly why, after his meeting with Detective Lu, he’d asked Adjoumani to drive him out here to Sha Tin. “Returning to the scene of the crime,” he told the legat. That wasn’t exactly true. He hadn’t gone back to Kwok’s hotel room—which had been cleaned up by now, and rented to other guests. Instead, he had wandered about the grounds of the hotel, and then into the nearby park. It probably irritated the FBI agent to be wandering aimlessly, rather than pursuing some more tangible line of investigation, but that couldn’t be helped.

  He wanted to tell her what Lu had revealed to him, but he didn’t know if he should. Lu had seemed very protective of the information, for all its strangeness. He still didn’t really know how much he should trust her—or Adjoumani, for that matter, who was shadowing him even now.

  Wong Jun and his Guoanbu buddies were probably keeping him under observation, too. Given the media-sniping that had been going back and forth between China and the US, about matters in Nepal and California, Ben wondered how much longer he was going to be allowed to keep moving about China even as “freely” as he had been doing.

  In the park around him, formal fences fronted lawns punctuated by stone-islanded ponds and carefully trimmed hedges. A backdrop of palm trees screened the stark towers of dozens of high-rise apartment blocks, across the Shing Mun River. What Ben had mistaken for abstra
ct impressionist statues when he first walked past them proved to be oddly twisted and eroded rocks planted as specimen stones atop low-hedged mounds. Everything seemed surreal now, an impression that was magnified when he found himself staring at a scene he knew, although he’d never been in this park before.

  In front of him, a waterfall plunged from a low hilltop, past sharp-edged stone tiers, into a pond, or small lake of gray-green water. On an island in the midst of the small lake stood an open structure, like a cross between a gazebo and a pagoda, roofed in red tiles.

  Rainbow-hued fish moved through the murky water, while gray-black turtles sunned themselves on rocks near the banks. Connecting the island to the shore was a high-arched moon bridge.

  He sat down on a bench beside the pond and stared at a palace garden that had seemingly lost its palace. This was the same landscape he’d already seen in a photograph, in Cherise’s house—of a happily married Cherise and Jaron, standing on this very moon bridge, reflected in the park’s fish- and turtle-filled pond. Elements of this scene had appeared in Kwok’s last holo-cast, too.

  Ben thought about what happened with Cherise, in the parking lot in New Burlton. Not wanting to think about whether he had betrayed either Reyna or Jaron, he instead tried hard to lose himself in the scene that lay before his eyes.

  What struck Ben most about it was the way the moon bridge was reflected in the water of the pool so that the half circle of its arch, when coupled with its reflection, made a perfectly circular hole, half real and half illusion. The implications of the image echoed through his head, resonating with his own newly discovered situation.

  If Jaron Kwok was indeed his twin brother, then was Jaron the mirror image, or was Ben? Had Ben been proteomically altered to appear as if he was the offspring of a Chinese-American father and African-American mother? Or had Kwok been the changeling child, conceived of the Chos’ egg and sperm—his “blackness” epigenomically masked so that he looked all and only Chinese?