Cain's Blood: A Novel

by Girard, Geoffrey

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  dedicated to

  Barbara O’Breza and Joe Truitt

  for the nurture

  What are little boys made of ?

  Snips and snails, and puppy-dogs’ tails,

  That’s what little boys are made of.

  A Brief History of Cloning

  It started with peas.

  An Austrian monk named Mendel tried some biology experiments in the small garden of the monastery where he lived and worked and prayed to God. It was the 1850s. Charles Darwin was still drafting On the Origin of Species and the first Neanderthal remains had just been found in a cave near Düsseldorf. Mendel’s religious order, the Augustinians, believed the pursuit of truth through scholarship was essential toward spiritual enlightenment, and Mendel’s particular scholarly interest had turned to the study of heredity: How life-forms pass traits on to their offspring.

  To explore this, he grew peas. Thirty thousand pea plant “children” carefully bred from specific pea “parents.” He meticulously pollinated and wrapped each pod, then examined and recorded their most minute detail: blossom color, pod hue and shape, and pod position. Thirty thousand times. It took seven years, and he became partially blind from squinting at all those peas.

  He authored a single treatise on his conclusions and presented it at two meetings of the Natural History Society of Brünn, who subsequently published “Experiments in Plant Hybridization” in the club’s official journal. In the document, Mendel proved how specific genetic alleles (which he called factors) in the parent peas controlled the traits of the children peas. Some factors were strong/dominant, and others were weaker/recessive, and the strong prevailed when the two met in an offspring. He started mapping these factors and eventually could predict exactly what the offspring plant would look like.

  He’d invented modern genetics.

  Very few people read his paper, however. He wasn’t a “real” scientist, the real scientists decided. He was just a monk with a small pea garden, and his work had more to do with ordinary hybridization than the emerging field of Inheritance. And so he was almost completely ignored, and his findings were to be cited only three times over the next fifty years.

  Mendel next tried bees. He kept five hundred hives with bees collected from all over the world: African, Spanish, Egyptian. He built special chambers for the various queens to mate with foreign suitors and promptly bred a new species of hybrid bee that produced more honey than any other bee on earth. Alas, Mendel’s bees also proved more aggressive than any other bee on earth. They stung the other bees, his fellow monks, and then struck Brno, a nearby village. He had to destroy every hive, and killed ten thousand bees.

  He returned to plants, which didn’t sting, but tried something other than peas—a kin of the sunflower family called “hawkweed”—and it didn’t work out. He was unable to corroborate his original conclusions. Mendel grew depressed and stopped doing experiments of any kind. When he died, the abbot who ran the monastery burned Mendel’s notes and unpublished essays on Inheritance. It was another fifty years before the scientific community rediscovered his original paper.

  The professionals now liked, and understood, what they saw. Using Mendel’s principles and evidence on the biological machineries of Inheritance, they summarily progressed from charting peas to charting frogs. From frogs to mammals. They figured out how to craft detailed maps of DNA and isolated where each factor resided. Once isolated, analyzed each factor to understand how it really worked. Once understood, explored how to modify.

  They eventually cloned a sheep from a single strand of DNA. A small animal-sciences research institute in Scotland took one cell from a parent donor, wedged it into an unfertilized egg cell that’d had its nucleus removed, zapped it once with good old-fashioned electricity, and made another animal. Identical. Two of—ignoring, technically, the mitochondrial DNA within the donor egg—the exact same sheep.

  They named the 98 percent copy Dolly, and Dolly became famous. It was 1996.

  Now, it was game on. The next several years yielded an explosion of “clones.”

  Japan constructed Noto the Cow. Thousands of Notos. The Italians cooked up Prometea the Horse. Iran made Hannah the Goat while South Korea made Snuppy the Dog and Snuwolf the Wolf. The Scots made pigs; the French, rabbits. Both China and India grew duplicate water buffalo. Spain and Turkey, bulls. Dubai crafted the exact same camel a hundred and four times.

  The United States, ultimately, did it better—and more quickly—than everyone else combined. More labs, more commercial interest, bundles more money. Cloning and biogenetic research were added to every pharmaceutical company in the nation. Even university students were making clones, and California alone has more colleges than all of Germany, France, and Great Britain combined. Within a decade, Americans had created Cumulina the Mouse. Ralph the Rat. Mira the Goat. Noah the Ox. Gem the Mule. Dewey the Deer. Libby the Ferret. CC the Cat. And, at last, Tetra the Monkey. Mice to livestock to primates. Ten years.

  Cloning humans, by the way, is still completely legal in the United States. Everyone just assumes it’s not. A few states have banned it. Most haven’t. And Washington keeps out of the way. Presidents may publically denounce it and advocate for moratoriums, but no such halts have ever actually been enforced. The Human Cloning Prohibition Acts of 2003 and 2007 were both voted down by Congress, and the 2009 version has been waylaid in various subcommittees for years. American scientists can pretty much do whatever they want as long as they don’t overtly use federal dollars. Human cloning remains legal in twenty other developed countries.

  When Sir Ian Wilmut, the scientist who led the team that cloned Dolly the Sheep, was asked about the possibility of cloning humans, he replied simply, “It would be naive to think it possible to prevent.”

  And he was right.

  Prologue: A Field Test

  One of thousands performed during the longest war in U.S. history. An irresistible opportunity for assessing the potential effectiveness of newborn policy and products in model test environments, thus fulfilling the primary tenet of all military research and development: What hasn’t been tested doesn’t work. Everything, from new camouflage and body armor to computer-driven bullets and laser cannons directly out of Star Wars. Recon systems, satellites, advanced combat rifles, pesticides, cold-storage warehouses, radio sets, and lamps all had their turn. This field test, from a purely scientific standpoint, was no different.

  The two helicopters were stealth-modified Black Hawks on loan from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), an airborne Army unit known as the Night Stalkers. They swept over the village, silent and veiled as buoyant shadows caught in the valley’s cold predawn winds. The target had been rated mostly empty. Mostly enemy. And, suitably remote.

  As the helicopters passed overhead, one of the passengers, a man the Night Stalker crew had never seen before and would never see again, dropped a canister no bigger than a Pepsi can into the village square. Hell, it was a Pepsi can, and it bounced and skittered in a dozen different directions before settling against a mud-lined furrow running along the village’s lone dirt road. The Black Hawks were halfway into the next valley before the handful of village watchmen even thought to shoot after them.

  The gunfire awoke Tahir al-Umari, who rose slowly and grumbled at his stirring children to remain quiet as he pulled on sandals. Outside, there was random shouting and dogs bark
ing. In the doorway, with arms crossed and tilted forward enough to see down the path some, he called across to a neighbor who’d struck a similar pose. “U.S.,” the man replied simply. Tahir nodded, rubbed at his nose in thought as the soft winds off the adjacent black mountain slipped down, cool across his face. He was one of a dozen families who still lived in the outlying village, the rest having vanished over the last ten years. He and his sons now owned and worked eleven acres, and nine were planted with poppy. Allah willing, when the others departed, he would plant wheat and saffron again. One day soon. Now, perhaps, it didn’t matter. The Americans would come back or send the Afghan narcotics police to burn the fields. He’d heard they possessed some sort of virus that could kill an entire crop in hours. He thought, I will lose everything. He thought, Maybe this is a good thing. And, Now maybe the Taliban will move on to some other place.

  Automatic fire from the center of the village. The distinct clacking of AK-47s. Then excited voices became screams.

  Tahir and his neighbor locked eyes across the distance between them, both with hands half lifted in confusion. A raid by the Americans? The neighbor quickly retreated into his house, while Tahir stepped fully outside.

  “Daddy?” His youngest daughter’s voice emerged from within, and he turned. His wife and other children had crowded in the doorway behind her. Whispering. His oldest son, thirteen, had pulled on his jacket and shoes.

  “Stay inside,” he told them, eyeing the boy especially. “I’ll be right back.”

  He stepped hurriedly down the uneven dirt pathway, skirted the other mud-brick homes alongside. Another man followed him, a small crowd moving together toward the sounds of boisterous cursing and gunfire. More shots were fired and Tahir crouched low in the shadows. It sounded like an entire clip emptying. A woman beside him moaned a half-prayer, and he shooed her still with his hand. The air tasted funny, he realized. The back of his tongue was acrid, like he’d been chewing on something plastic.

  He caught the eye of a friend, both men finding the courage to creep toward the end of the street together. There, the headlights of a stock-still van cast a muted glow onto the cramped main square. Bodies lay there, sprawled and twisted like a collection of his daughter’s cloth dolls dropped absently to the ground. Like, except for the widening pools of blood.

  “They’re . . . they’re shooting themselves,” someone whispered from the shadows beside him, the voice both retreating and truthful. Tahir watched as one of the Taliban fighters shot another and then immediately brought the rifle beneath his own chin in a sudden ruby spout. A day laborer named Rafeeq scrambled to seize the dropped rifle but was shot down as two more Taliban charged into the square shouting more curses and commands. One noticed other onlookers across the square from Tahir and turned to fire. Four shadowy figures of various sizes spun and collapsed. The soldier cast off his now-empty rifle and stumbled toward the dead as if drunk, pulling free a handgun. Fired unremittingly into the first corpse. Then he turned and faced Tahir.

  Tahir froze with nowhere to escape. The man pointed the gun and shot. Nothing. The clip already emptied. Still the man stood, wrist jerking half a dozen times, as if he’d actually been firing at Tahir. There was something in the man’s expression. His eyes. What is wrong with his eyes? Tahir shuddered.

  Another fighter pounced beside this one and clubbed him in the head with a rifle. The man with the strange look went down and the second straddled him, driving the rifle butt into his face. Again and again and again.

  Tahir stumbled backward, withdrawing in panic with the others. His eyes were stinging. Smoke from the rifles, he thought, a new chill suddenly nagging at the base of his very skull. Screams echoed behind him, and Tahir had to turn.

  A woman—Padja’s wife, he thought—had been pulled down by two other men he knew well. Her face pushed to the ground, her chadri ripped away as both men struggled with their own pants. Tahir stopped his retreat. “No,” he shouted at them. Found himself moving forward to stop them. Found himself watching the woman’s body writhing beneath them, struggling to be free. Her exposed loins lifted and vulnerable for their every pleasure. For his too if he so desired. Tahir shook that sudden awful thought away. He advanced closer. “No,” he said again, but the word came out too slow, like in a dream. The worst dream.

  Padja’s wife had rolled over, shamefully opening herself to them. But, the man on top of her was now screaming. Clutching his face, something dripping and red hanging between his fingers. His cheekbone glistened in the first rays of the rising sun. From beneath, Padja’s wife smiled at Tahir. Blood running down her chin. Her eyes. Something in her eyes.

  Tahir crumpled. Crawled, his head vibrating. Shadowed figures both scrambled and lumbered past him in every direction. The unnatural taste and smell of plastic utterly filled his throat, his nose. Screams swathed the village, echoed off the looming mountain, where dawn burned crimson. His mind crowded with incessant and infinite thoughts, awful thoughts, buzzing like a million insects. Over this unrelenting swarm, he reflected, This is what Hell sounds like. And also, I must get home.

  He staggered back down the street, propping himself against other homes to keep himself upright. Inside each, more screams. Mothers and brothers and babies howling together as one. Their cries joining the churning clamor in his head.

  Someone grabbed him from behind. He turned, struck out. The boy collapsed. A friend of his sons. The boy had a knife, and Tahir took it from him easily. Used it just as easily. Stabbing again and again. Again.

  He stepped more confidently down the path now. The swirling, immeasurable thoughts had finally become one. Only one.

  He inspected the dripping knife. Smiled.

  His family waited inside their house as he’d left them.

  His daughter came to the door first.

  “Daddy?”

  I

  clone n.

  From the Greek word klōn for “twig.”

  (1) a group of genetically identical cells descended from a single common ancestor;

  (2) an organism descended asexually from a single ancestor such as a plant produces by budding;

  (3) a replica of a DNA sequence produced by genetic engineering;

  (4) one that copies or closely resembles another, as in appearance or function

  O Muse, sing through me

  of that man full of skills,

  who wandered for many years

  after he destroyed the sacred city of Troy,

  and saw the cities of many men,

  and learned their manners.

  THE ODYSSEY

  THEODORE/7

  JUNE 03, FRIDAY—RADNOR, PA

  This boy was every boy.

  The standard model. The kind you’d purchase at Walmart if they had a “Boy Aisle.” T-shirt, long gym shorts. Straight bangs falling over a rounded face. Big blue eyes. The fixed, playful grin of a pirate. Twelve years old, legs too long, deep summer tan, fidgeting in his chair. Earbuds draped around his neck for later.

  He’d raped his first victim with a metal bar wrenched from the bed frame, then carefully positioned the body and bar as lewdly as possible for her family to find. Another woman, he’d bitten off both nipples before strangling her with a pair of stockings that’d been pulled so tightly around her neck, they’d cut down to the bone.

  He’d done these things. This boy.

  Theodore.

  Done more, actually, according to his summary file.

  Or his DNA had.

  Despite his best efforts, Castillo had not yet established any well-defined distinction between the two. He wasn’t so sure the two scientists standing behind him had, either.

  The two men looked nothing like Castillo’s idea of scientists. No lab coats, or pens, or beakers. These guys wore khakis and matching light purple dress shirts with the DSTI logo, matching holsters with Tasers at their hips.

  Castillo assumed he did not look exactly like what they’d expected either. He wore jeans and a faded gray T-shirt. Probably
needed a haircut. He’d left his guns in the car.

  They stood together in Observation Room #4 of The Massey Institute, a small residential treatment facility in Radnor, Pennsylvania. According to the institute’s website, Massey was an “Adolescent treatment center where teen boys can develop healthy behaviors, improve their self-esteem and learn to positively express their emotions.” Mental health, anger management, eating disorders, drug and alcohol rehab, etc. Treatments included a combination of group and individual therapy, experiential therapy, and cutting-edge medication. Fifty-student maximum with an 8 to 1 student/teacher ratio and a staff of one hundred additional health professionals caring for the students. All boys.

  Massey was owned and operated by the Dynamic Solutions Technology Institute, which had its own facility on the other side of the wooded property. According to its website, DSTI was a private biotechnology company with two hundred employees that “specializes in the development of therapeutic, pharmaceutical, and cell-based therapies.”

  One of the room’s walls was a one-way mirror allowing them to secretly watch the boys next door.

  “Phase One, where Applications maintains the bulk of its research, is restricted therapeutic cloning,” Dr. Erdman, the division head, the one with square silver glasses and short white hair, continued. “What most people might call ‘stem-cell’ research. Induced pluripotent stem cells, primarily. Nerve, skin, and bone cells. Just microscopic building blocks.” His voice remained distant and flat, and Castillo wondered if the geneticist might still be in shock. Based on what he’d been told about last night—the murders committed by kids like these—it would have been understandable. “These subjects were part of Phase Three.”

  Castillo looked back to the mirror. Breathed deeply, thinking. Sitting beside the first kid was another boy the lab had tagged as Jerry.