by E. E. Giorgi
The next cart delivered pot stickers, shrimp shaomai, and rice noodles. “You mean a person would age at a slower rate?” Diane nodded. “So the genes you found in those viruses would make a person stay young?”
“Possibly.”
I stabbed a pot sticker with the chopsticks. No wonder Medford and company loved cavorting with Hollywood people. If I were after the Holy Grail of eternal youth, who else would be my best paying clients?
“There’s a problem, though. The chromosome ends are supposed to shorten. It’s the cell’s biological clock. When you mess up with it, you risk making the cell replicate an abnormal number of times.”
“Abnormal in what way?”
“A cell that never dies is a cancer cell. It becomes a tumor.”
I stopped chewing. For a moment, I think I even stopped breathing. The hall fell silent. Or maybe the silence was inside me. My heart thumped and yet my lungs kept quiet and still. A cell that never dies is a cancer cell. The Greeks already knew. The myth of Prometheus was their lesson, and yet here we were, thousands of years later, making the same mistakes all over again.
“Why risk it if the process can lead to cancer?”
“They claim they solved the glitch.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
Diane wiped her mouth, reached for her purse and produced a paper, which she slid across the table. “Them,” she said, pressing her index finger on the cover page. “I found it in the Chromo web archives. It never got published in a scientific journal. It’s listed under ‘drafts.’”
I pushed aside a steaming tray, turned the paper towards me and read the title printed at the top: “Germ line gene therapy, a new approach through viral vectors.” Below, were the abstract and authors’ names, both familiar: M.J. Conrad and A.S. Troy. “The son of a— He lied to us!”
“Who did?”
“Troy! He said he never worked on genetics with Conrad.”
“You know him?”
“Of course. He was one of Conrad’s most brilliant students. The two worked together for a number of years, but, from what he told us, never on genetics.”
Satish and I had interviewed him right after Conrad’s murder. He’d told us how only later in his career the professor had switched to genetics.
Diane stared at her watch. “We have an appointment with him at four o’clock. There are quite a few things I mean to ask him.”
Our drinks materialized at our table and a pensive Diane swirled the straw into her glass, making the ice clink. “Do you think White and Kelson knew what they were doing when they entrusted Chromo with the conception of their child?”
I shook my head, my eyes skimming the paper in front of me. “They overdid it.”
“Yeah, but can you blame them? This was going to be their only child, and Chromo deceived them with the delusion of a genetically perfect daughter. I was an only child too, and not particularly healthy growing up. My parents never talked about my birth mother, but I bet I was a crack baby: always small, sickly and fragile. Every time I landed at the hospital—the usual breathing complications over the flu, or a febrile seizure, or an ear infection—my parents went through hell. They had gone through so much to have a daughter, and fate kept threatening them to take me away. In the end they got lucky. I made it. Kelson and White didn’t get lucky.”
Only child and adopted, I pondered. Hard to imagine her small and fragile. Her shirt curved around her chest sinking and rising like the cantabile of a Vivaldi concerto. A row of tiny buttons descended from her bosom down to her stomach, and I found myself wondering what it would be like to undo them one by one.
Say something Ulysses, damn it!
“Where did you grow up?”
“In Ohio. By the railroad.”
Unusual answer, it made me smile. “Bytherailroad, Ohio? Never heard of that town!”
She laughed. “I grew up in the country. Our house was surrounded by corn and sunflower fields. The railroad bordered our property.”
Sunflowers—that’s what she smelled of. I could see it in her scent. The hours spent in the fields outside, basking in the sun, chasing a dog maybe, or pedaling over a rusty bike. Her mother would come out, hang the sheets to dry, and she’d run back and forth below the line with her arms spread open, inhaling the sun and the wind the fabric had captured in its billows.
The ice in Diane’s drink clinked, the straw swirled. “I know it seems funny, but the sound of the railroad is still soothing to me, even after all these years. The train would pass every two hours, day and night. I loved the rhythm—you know, the boo-boom, boo-boom of the wheels when they hit the expansion joints.” She made the sound with a deep voice and then laughed, tipping her head. Her scent drifted to my nose and carried the image of a blonde child running along the railroad, chasing the train with her dreams and waving at the strangers peeking through the car windows.
“You know, I couldn’t sleep my first night away from home, back in college. My roommate was so quiet she didn’t even snore. Everything was dead silent, and I missed the boo-boom, boo-boom of the train. Can you believe it? I had to get used to falling asleep surrounded by complete silence, when for most people it’s the other way around.”
“Dorms are hardly ever quiet places, though.”
“I know. It was the first week: classes hadn’t started yet. Believe me, it was a completely different story when the campus filled up. Besides, after that I’ve always had a boyfriend to sleep with.”
I almost choked on my drink. The way she said it, bluntly. Always. A boyfriend. To sleep with. Come on, Ulysses, what’s wrong with you? Isn’t that what we all go to college for? Seriously, like you had your B.S. in mind that first year as a freshman! Still. Diane. With a boyfriend. Always. Even now, the ghost of a man lingering on her clothes. And suddenly the image of her with him popped into my mind. I shoved it away, but it came back. Jim Kowalski, inhaling her scent. Kowalski again, relishing her skin. Had she really kicked him out of her life or was it one of those relationships destined to swing back and forth?
Two more steaming trays of shrimp dumplings landed on our table, providing a diversion, or so I hoped. For a few minutes I focused on the scents and flavors of the meal. Until Kowalski came back to tickle my imagination. His hands cupping her breasts. His fingers brushing her inner thigh. And all this when she was right there, across the table from me.
Start a conversation, Ulysses. Any conversation.
How frequently do you have sex? Weekly? Monthly?
“What about you?” she asked, fishing me out of the trap my own thoughts were closing on me.
“What about me?”
She sucked up a noodle. “Any significant lady in your life?”
I smiled. “I don’t discuss my personal life while on duty.”
“We’re on our lunch break. You’re buying me lunch. It’s almost a date.”
I cleaned up the very last shrimp, placed the chopsticks on top of the bowl, wiped my mouth, and folded back the napkin. “I’m a lone hunter. Solitary, territorial, and reclusive.” I was quoting from the Wikipedia page on cougars, my favorite kind of predators. She didn’t seem to mind. She tilted her head, looked at me with a hint of interest, and swirled her straw.
“You seem fairly well adapted.” There was a devious smile on her lips.
I laughed. “Yeah. Friends seem to cope well with me.”
“I thought you said you were solitary.”
“I guess I just contradicted myself, then.”
The smile on her lips hung on. She exhaled, leaned back, and flattened her palms on the table. “What an ingenious way to skate over a question, Track. Oh, look. Fortune cookies.” The child-faced waiter set a little plate in front of us. “I’ll pick yours.” She handed me the one of her choice. “Go ahead. Open it.”
Her eyes sparkled as she watched me crack the cookie open and pull out the little strip of paper. “What does it say?”
I read it aloud: “Your quest will soon find an answer.”
Diane grinned. “How exciting! Let’s see what mine says.”
I forgot what hers said, perhaps because I stopped listening. I fiddled with the fake oracle, my mind drifting over all the unanswered quests stacked over the years of my life. It’s just a stupid strip of paper, I thought, with no more insight than a grandmother’s weather forecast.
Nonetheless, fortune cookies ought to be outlawed. It should be illegal to toy with one’s hopes like that.
CHAPTER 29
____________
Wednesday, October 22
The first impression was to be stepping into a four-fifty-nine scene—burglary. It took me a few seconds to realize that the tumultuous state of Professor Anthony Troy’s office was not the result of a violent break-in but rather the accumulation of years of sloppiness: unread mail, overdue assignments, buried papers, unwashed maté gourds, spills of yerba maté leaves, and notebook after notebook of thoughts hastily scribbled between lectures. The once white walls had taken a gray-yellowish hue, checkered by the ghosts of past posters, memos, and conference announcements regularly peeled off and replaced. Overcrowded bookshelves sagged under the weight of knowledge, disorderly populated by volumes whose titles had faded and whose corners had been chewed off by the wear of time. A round table and two chairs lay buried under jagged piles of papers and scientific journals. A dry erase board displayed scribbles and symbols written in all possible directions.
“We’re just about done, Detectives!” Troy called, as he glimpsed us at the door. Sitting across the desk, a disgruntled student tapped his pencil against the red B- marked on the paper in front of him—the object of contention.
“Forensic scientist,” Diane corrected, her remark too low to be caught by Troy.
I smiled. “Technically, you’re substituting for Satish.”
“Where is he?”
“In court, testifying. Why are you smirking?”
“Because you’re still talking to me.”
“Ah. Well, it depends. If you keep saying I’m wrong I might reconsider.” During the car ride we had once again gone over the traces of saliva retrieved from the beer can and her DNA analyses.
A smile escaped her lips. Touché. You can tell me whatever you want now.
The student finally gave up, loudly pushed back his chair, and shuffled out of the office without bothering to proffer any form of salutation.
“These new generations,” Troy said, walking around his desk to come shake our hands. “They’re slackers. They do everything superficially and still expect top-notch grades.” He sighed, gestured to the sofa in front of him, and then slumped into a chair, crossing his arms over his protruding stomach. “What can I do for you?”
I stared at the seating accommodation he’d just offered: sagging cushions, worn fabric covered in dog hair, and a shapeless pillow that stank of sweat and bad night breath. The sofa was the silent witness of endless nights of brainstorming at the board, and the ultimate refuge when exhaustion finally prevailed at the break of dawn.
“Diane Kyle, we spoke earlier on the phone, Professor,” Diane said, shaking hands with Troy and then sitting on the sofa.
Merry the human nose and its shortsightedness.
“Right. You wanted to know about the germline paper.”
“And why you conveniently forgot to mention it when we met the first time,” I added, joining Diane on the couch. I scooched closer so her scent would cover all other smells. She didn’t seem to mind, and neither did I.
Troy gave me a long, condescending stare. “The scientific community ignored us, Detective.” He heaved a big breath and scratched his bald forehead until it was red. “Do you think the Manhattan Project would’ve been part of our history if it weren’t for the Nazi’s threat? See, this is how peevish humanity is: you need to scare people in order to make room for progress. ‘The world isn’t ready for this,’ they kept telling us. Nobody wanted to publish our study. Cowards. It takes bravery to embrace new, bold ideas.”
“Bold indeed, Professor,” Diane snapped. “What you’re suggesting in that paper has long-term consequences. We’re still struggling to understand when somatic gene therapy can deliver an effective cure. And yet here you are, suggesting a completely new way of changing not only an individual’s DNA, but that of his or her descendants. You’re basically genetically engineering human beings. Of course people are uneasy. They should be.”
On our way to Tate University, Diane had explained to me the implications of the paper she had dug out of the Chromo archives. The “immortality” experiments were only the tip of an iceberg whose roots went back to the early ’nineties, when Conrad joined Chromo. In the paper, Troy and he claimed to have perfected gene therapy. They could cure individuals from genetic diseases and ensure that their progeny would no longer carry the defective genes.
Troy’s round face flushed. “In the paper, Ms. Kyle, we propose more experiments. We had a vision, a fifty-year long plan to bring us closer to the goal. We looked beyond curing individuals: we were healing humanity as a whole. A new generation free of genetic diseases. Our ideas were revolutionary. Think about it: when we wrote the paper, the Human Genome Project was still in its infancy.” He glared, his narrow eyes belittling us. “Evidently we were ahead of our times.”
A shade of disdain clouded Diane’s eyes and spiced her scent. “And you were surprised by that kind of reaction? I can’t believe you didn’t even think of the consequences if something went wrong.”
Troy raised his chin and looked down on Diane. “Where did you get your degree, Ms. Kyle? Some community college where they fed you canned answers and multiple choice tests?”
Spite narrowed Diane’s eyes. “I went to UCLA, Professor—”
“It’s like vaccines, isn’t it?” Troy cut her short. “Things do go wrong from time to time, but would you rule them out based on a few incidents? The benefits outnumber the casualties. Stick your nose out of that can they shoved your brains in and think about it: Fermi, Oppenheimer, Feynman—all those brilliant scientists would’ve never obtained the means and money to produce nuclear fission if people didn’t fear the Nazis would get to it first.” He leaned forward and growled, “Mark my words: one day some Asian or Arab zealot will start designing super-intelligent humans, so superior they’ll wipe the rest of us off the surface of the Earth. People will remember then about Conrad and Troy’s ideas. ‘Ah, if only we had listened then,’ they’ll say.”
I could smell Diane’s rage. She sent me a sideways glance as if wondering whether I heard the same words as she did. I glared at the man, so puffy in his oversized ego. A visionary and a nutcase. His eloquence had fooled me the first time I met him. I’d pictured him captivating an audience of geeky students, all the valedictorians who at age eighteen have outsmarted the rest of their graduation class and enter the Ivy League crowds dreaming of fame and success. I could see how the same eloquence had fooled people like Kelson, White, and who knows how many others.
I know a little bit of everything, which often translates into knowing nothing at all, he’d told me the first time we’d met. Bullshit. “You know, Professor, for somebody who knows nothing at all, you seem pretty opinionated to me. In case you haven’t noticed, some zealot of the kind you mention has already attempted something of the sort. And it’s happened right here, in our free and civilized America.”
Troy winced, as if dazed by my words. “That was Medford. That man, he doesn’t understand a thing about science, but he sure has a knack for business. He saw the potential. ‘Rich people spend a fortune in plastic surgery and all sorts of delusional remedies,’ he said. ‘Imagine how much they’ll pay to have the perfect genes. And not only for themselves—”
“For their children too.” And this time it was Diane, with her jaw dropped, who finished the sentence. “Too bad you forgot that experimenting with human embryos is against the law, Professor Troy.”
He winced, his eyes betraying some kind of bewilderment. “What? We never experi
mented with human embryos. Our paper is purely theoretical.”
The candor on his face made me want to slap him. “Yeah, right, Professor. Chromo has been making money selling your ideas to rich people who could afford them. And now you’re telling us you know nothing about experiments done on humans?”
He shook his head, jowls wobbling over his fat neck. “I swear,” he said, in a shrill voice. “The germinal paper was never experimented on humans. This conversation is over. Get out.”
I got to my feet and spat to his face. “We’ll be back. This conversation is far from over.”
* * *
“Did you hear him? ‘Canned answers and multiple choice tests?’ Who the hell does he think he is?”
I shrugged. “A scientist.”
Diane glared. “I take offense over that, Track.”
I grinned. “I’m jokin’, D. He’s a nutcase and a windbag. Too much brainpower made his fuses blow.”
“Do you believe him? About the experiments?”
I shrugged. “If Chromo pushed it as far as to modify embryos based on Conrad and Troy’s paper they are in for a lot of trouble.”
The evening air was apathetic and the sky pale, tinged with the eerie pink of a setting sun. A nearby cafeteria bathed us with the dull smells of campus catering. The bike racks around the building were jammed.
“You’d think scientists would be humble and open to question things,” Diane said, in a bitter voice. “Instead, some get so blinded by the fact that ‘they proved it’ they refuse to see anything else. It ends up no different than religion.”