The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Transforming mammals is a very different mater: mammals produce relatively few egg-cells, which are fairly delicate. If you extract them from an ovary, fertilize them in vitro, and then pump new DNA into them you spoil nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand, and even the odd one that begins to develop usually aborts very quickly. Producing a transformed organism is extremely difficult.

  “Several people in the Department, including Miller, were trying to solve this problem. They were trying to find a way of getting new DNA into a mammalian egg-cell without having to remove it from its ovary. They were trying to create artificial viruses which would seek out and invade egg-cells, while leaving ordinary cells alone, integrating their DNA with the chromosomes of the eggs. They called these artificial viruses MB viruses—MB stands for “magic bullet.” They hoped that once the basic techniques were proven, they could rapidly move on from experimental animals to real practical applications.

  “The MB viruses weren’t too difficult to develop, though it wasn’t easy equipping them to infect egg-cells alone. But egg-cells are differentiated within the body by biochemical markers, which can be used to trigger the viruses. I don’t know the very intimate details, because it wasn’t specifically my field. Professor Miller wasn’t my teacher, once I got beyond the elementary stages—he was a friend.

  “I know that Morgan’s research ran into problems, though, after the development of the MB viruses. It’s all very well to transform the egg-cells inside a female mouse; you still have to turn those egg-cells into new mice, and you still have a dreadful wastage rate. The vast majority of the female mice that Morgan shot with his magic bullets simply turned up sterile, because the transformed ova weren’t compatible with ordinary sperm. On the very rare occasions when a transformed mouse was born, it was no use—you can’t take cuttings from a live mouse the way you can from a plant. In order to breed you need two mice of opposite sexes with identical transformations—a real billion-to-one shot.

  “So the research became blocked. Gradually, over the years, a lot of workers abandoned the whole line as a blind alley, but Morgan wouldn’t give up. By degrees, he lost his place in the forefront, and I suppose he eventually got left in a backwater. He wasn’t bitter about it, though—he really wasn’t interested in fame or fortune. His pride wasn’t invested in his reputation, it was all tied up in his work. He persisted with his magic bullets: experiment after experiment, generation after generation. Everyone respected him for it, I think, even though they did make sarcastic jokes about it.

  “I remember that Miller was always impressed by one strange fact about mammal egg-cells, and that was the way that nature wasted them. Male mammals produce sperm throughout their lives, as long as testes are capable of it. By the time a female mammal is born, though, she has all the egg-cells she’s ever going to have, and she loses most of them long before she reaches puberty and becomes fertile.

  “The peak number of egg-cells is actually reached—oddly enough—in the early embryo, and millions of them die before the female is even born. I can’t remember the exact figures for mice, but I do recall that the human female starts off with about seven million egg-cells, in the fifth month of gestation. By the time she’s born, she has only two million, and by the time she reaches puberty, she’s lost the vast majority of those. She runs out altogether long before the end of her life-span—that’s when she reaches the menopause.

  “What kind of evolutionary sense that makes, I don’t know, but I do know that it was something that fascinated Morgan Miller. He told me once that if only he could transform those millions of cells in such a way as to protect them from degeneration, then he could take the ovaries from a new-born mouse and have a vast population to aim his magic bullets at—and then, if he only had some way of making those embryos develop outside the body, in artificial wombs, he would have the odds on his side instead of against him. That was the idea which seemed to dominate his research during the last twenty or twenty-five years. That was the key, he believed, to developing efficient techniques for the genetic engineering of mammals.

  * * *

  “I can’t tell you how far Miller got with his work, but I know he didn’t reach the end. He never did produce a pair of true-breeding engineered mice. He didn’t even manage to develop the artificial wombs necessary to his grand plan. As far as I know, all he ever managed to do was produce generation after generation of sterile mice, shot so effectively by his magic bullets that they might just as well have been dead.

  “He managed, I suppose, half a dozen live births of transformed mice every year, but never a pair. He induced giantism, contrived some interesting alterations of fundamental biochemistry—produced, in fact, some fascinating freaks. But without a way of establishing a breeding population, it all came to seem rather futile.”

  “But somehow,” said Smith, “he discovered something that made him worth killing.”

  “It looks that way now,” said Lisa, “but your guess is as good as mine as to what it might have been. The mice are all dead, Miller may not pull through. And his lab assistant…?”

  “Think she’s the one?”

  Lisa shrugged. “Never really knew her. Didn’t look to me like a dab hand with a high-powered rifle. Have your people come up with anything in her background?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing obvious. Thirty-two years old. Unmarried. Good degree in Applied Genetics, doctorate from Oxford. Came here eight years ago. Politically active, but only with radical feminist groups. Votes Green. No relatives outside the country, in spite of her name. Clean credit record. No significant ties with industry.”

  “In that case,” said Lisa, “it looks as if we’ll just have to wait for Miller. If the surgeon can save him, he can give us the whole story. “If not…”

  Smith didn’t look particularly optimistic about that. He obviously didn’t expect a man in his seventies to survive two bullets in the torso. His thoughts were already dwelling on other lines of inquiry.

  “He never married, did he?” asked the tall man, trying to sound as if he were merely making conversation.

  “No,” said Lisa. “He was wedded to his work. An essentially solitary man. He liked his relationships casual and occasional. It suited him.”

  “And you never married either?”

  “No,” she said, levelly. “Two of a kind. Three, if you count Stella.”

  “You could say that he used you both,” he suggested, calmly.

  “Or that we used him. Nobody shot him out of jealously, Mr. Smith. And I doubt if Stella shot him because she was a radfem—even though he was a trifle Victorian in his attitude to women. Did you find the weapon?”

  He shook his head.

  “If he does die,” said Lisa, grimly, “I don’t think you’ll find out why until you’ve searched those discs with a fine-toothed comb. Time seems to be against you.”

  “Against us, Dr. Friemann. This is a police matter too. And for you, a personal matter. We’ve checked your record too, as you knew we must. I’m satisfied that you’re in the clear, and I know that we can rely on your cooperation. I hope you won’t take it amiss when I say that I’d rather it was a personal matter.”

  Lisa stared at him, feeling that she was on the brink of exhaustion. She had become unused to missing her sleep. “It wasn’t personal,” she said, confidently. “No one had anything personal against the mice.”

  For once, Smith couldn’t contrive a smile. Behind him, the door opened and the surgeon came in. Bluntly, he told them both that Miller would be lucky to last two days—and might only last a matter of hours if he were hyped up with sufficient drugs to make him available for questioning, instead of being allowed to rest.

  The Man from the Ministry didn’t even glance at Lisa.

  “Do what you need to do to wake him up,” he said. “We have to have the answers, and we can’t wait.”

  * * *

  Miller was still inside the sterile tent which the medical team had erected by his bed. A se
nior paramedic remained when the mobile hospital took off; she was the official death watch. Smith told her to leave the room, and she obeyed without question. He let Lisa stay, though—probably not because he trusted her, but because he thought her presence might help to rally the patient’s ailing spirits.

  As far as Lisa could judge, the professor’s ailing spirits would need all the help they could get. He was very weak. If there’d been any real chance of his making a recovery, the surgeon would never have allowed him to be pumped full of drugs to bring him back to consciousness.

  Smith didn’t waste any time. “Professor Miller,” he said, “we need to know who shot you, and why. They bombed your laboratory too. It’s all destroyed.”

  Morgan Miller stared at his interlocutor, but didn’t seem to understand. Smith frowned, and looked across at Lisa, appealing for help. She took a gentler line.

  “Morgan,” she said, softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “It’s Lisa. Lisa Friemann.”

  He shifted his gaze to meet hers, and blinked in recognition. “Lisa,” he said, faintly. He seemed surprised by the fact that he was able to talk. He paused for a moment, obviously preparing to say something more. Smith tensed, waiting eagerly, but all Miller said was: “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “No,” said Lisa, “it won’t hurt.”

  “Bad, though,” croaked Miller, “isn’t it?”

  “Pretty bad,” admitted Lisa. “I don’t suppose you remember being hit—you must have been asleep.”

  “Bad dream,” he murmured. “Very bad dream.”

  “You were shot, Morgan. Someone fired from across the street. You were hit twice.”

  The man on the bed managed a very weak smile. “Magic bullets,” he said.

  “That’s what we want to know,” Smith intervened. “Tell us why.”

  Lisa looked up at the Ministry Man. “Unfortunately,” she said, dryly, “I think he was only making a joke.”

  “Then you’d better tell him,” said the tight-lipped Smith, “that we don’t have time for jokes.”

  Lisa returned her attention to Morgan Miller. “Morgan,” she said, “who would want to burn the mice? They’re all dead, Morgan. All the mice. Who would want to do that?”

  A few seconds went by while Miller struggled to digest this information. Then tears came into his eyes, and Lisa knew that she was getting through.

  “All dead?” he queried, his voice trembling.

  “Burned to death,” she said. “All burned. Who would do a thing like that?”

  Miller opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He had been looking at Lisa, but now he looked beyond her, at Peter Smith.

  “Who’s he?” he asked. There was a slight catch in his voice because of the tears.

  “My name is Peter Smith. I’m from the Ministry of Defence. We need to know why someone might want to steal the results of your work—or to put a stop to it. We need to know what you found out.”

  “Defence?” repeated Miller, dazedly. At first, Lisa thought that he was simply unable to understand. But then he added: “There isn’t any defence.”

  Lisa imagined the effect that words such as those must have on a man like Smith. All kinds of memories must be coming back to him, of the so-called Plague Wars, which might not have been wars at all, but which wiped out a third of the human race in the early part of the century.

  “What…?” Smith began, but Lisa silenced him with an irritated gesture.

  “Tell us where to look, Morgan,” she said. “Give us the reference. It must be in your files somewhere. You needn’t try to tell us. Just tell us where to look.”

  But Miller turned his head away, and refused to look at either of them. His brow was furrowed, as if he was as deep in thought as the drugs would let him be. Smith opened his mouth again, but caught Lisa’s eye and shut it. They waited. Finally, Miller said: “It’s hidden. Nobody knows.”

  “Somebody burned the mice,” said Lisa, patiently. “Whatever you had hidden, somebody knows now. You have to tell us what it is.”

  * * *

  Miller moved his head from side to side, still not looking at them. The drugs were inhibiting his motor responses, but they couldn’t entirely cut out his agitation.

  “Don’t try to move,” said Lisa. “You have to conserve all your strength. The more time it takes, the more strength you waste. For God’s sake, Morgan, tell us now, and then you can rest.”

  But all Morgan said in reply, his words heavy with drug-sodden anguish, was: “Nobody knows. Nobody knows.”

  “Then you must tell us now,” said Lisa, soothingly. “You must tell us. You have to tell someone, Morgan. You can’t carry secrets to the grave.”

  Smith frowned at her, obviously uncertain how sensible it was to let Miller know he was dying, but he said nothing. He was apparently content to defer to her judgment.

  But Morgan Miller didn’t respond to her plea. When Lisa had come into the room she had not been sure that Miller had anything to tell them, but what was happening now was bewildering. She felt herself growing angry—angry because Morgan Miller was nursing some secret which he had never shared with her, and which he still would not share, even though he was on his deathbed. The security angle, if there was one, did not distress her overmuch; what she felt was a sense of personal betrayal.

  “Professor Miller,” said Smith, sternly, when he saw that Lisa wasn’t going to get any reply. “You have to tell us everything. It’s absolutely necessary.”

  Miller looked at him, and curled his wrinkled lip. His eyes seemed very bright. “What will you do?” he asked, hoarsely. “Torture me?”

  “What the hell is going on here?” demanded Smith of Lisa. “What is he playing at?”

  It was Lisa’s turn to frown. “We don’t understand, Morgan. We don’t understand why you won’t talk to us. We’re trying to catch the people who shot you—the people who bombed the mice. Was it Stella Filisetti, Morgan? Has she any reason to do this?”

  Miller tried again to shake his head, and managed to move his right hand from beneath the blanket on the bed. He tried to wipe the tears from his eyes, but he had great difficulty controlling his hand.

  “Stella?” he said, more as if he were talking to himself than answering the question. “Must be Stella. How … nobody knows! Nobody knows.”

  There was a sharp rap on the door, and Smith turned to open it. Lisa couldn’t see who it was, nor could she hear what was rapidly whispered. When Smith turned round, though, he was clearly in an agony of indecision. He beckoned her over to the door.

  “They’ve located Filisetti,” he said. “She’s under observation. We’ve got to pick her up. We need to find out how many others are involved, nip the whole thing in the bud even if we don’t know what it’s all about.”

  “Let me stay here,” she whispered. “I think I can get him to explain, if there’s time. I stand a better chance alone—if there’s anyone in the world he trusts…”

  Smith hesitated, but then nodded. He crossed swiftly to the bed, leaning over the plastic tent to look at Morgan Miller, who had closed his eyes. There was no way to be sure that he would open them again. Smith turned back, nodded curtly at Lisa, and then left.

  Lisa went back to the bedside, and pulled up a tattered old armchair, over whose worn back she had deposited her clothing on so many occasions. She sat down, and now that she was unobserved, she began to weep. She had not wept for many years, and hoped that she never would again.

  Lisa would not have said, had she been asked—or even if she had posed the question secretly to herself—that she loved Morgan Miller. She had loved him, long ago, but had long since outgrown it, as she had outgrown all passion and almost all affection. There remained, however, a sense in which Morgan Miller was closer to her than any other human being, and he was dying on their bed, where an assassin had shot him while he slept—as he almost always did—alone. If this was not an occasion for tears, there could surely be no other.

  For several
minutes, she was content to let the silence last, to secrete herself within her grief. Then she stood up again, went to the bedhead and removed the bug that Smith had planted on its rear side. She wrapped it carefully in a handkerchief, and put it in her pocket.

  “You bastard, Morgan,” she said, in a low tone. “You have to tell me. You hear me? You have to tell me. I’m surely entitled.”

  Morgan Miller opened his eyes again.

  “Jesus, Lisa,” he said, faintly. “They really did it. They really killed me.”

  “Yes they did,” she said, levelly. “It’s a miracle you’ve got the time you have. Whatever it is, someone knows about it. I want to know. I’ve never asked you for anything else. Never. But I want to know, Morgan. I want to know.”

  Morgan Miller smiled a kind of smile that she had seen on his faded lips a hundred times before—a smile of superiority. She had never liked it. She sat down in the armchair again, and waited.

  “Lisa,” he said, quietly, “you’re not going to like it.”

  “Tell me anyway,” she said, in a cold, sardonic tone that he must have heard a hundred times before, and probably liked no better. “You wouldn’t want to go to your grave keeping secrets from the only woman you ever really loved, now would you?”

  “Hell no,” he said. “Now how could I do a thing like that to you?” His voice, as he said this, was little more than an icy whisper.

  He paused for some time, while Lisa waited, calmly.

  Theirs had always been a relationship which had made many demands on her patience and insensitivity.

  * * *

  “It was a pure fluke,” said Miller, keeping quite still and relaxed. His voice was faint, but no longer hoarse—his state seemed almost trance-like. “A shot in a million. I’ve tried to work out the biochemistry, but I never could. The key protein is some kind of controller, like the ones which determine the switching on and off of selected genes in different kinds of specialized cell.

  “It was a bullet virus—one of those I adapted specifically to infect oocytes. It was intended to preserve the egg-cells, cut the wastage rate. It preserved them, after a fashion. It stopped them dying off so fast, so that the infected mice were born with something like ninety per cent of the egg-cell store intact. There was no somatic transformation—at first I didn’t think I’d achieved anything at all, except that the oocytes could be preserved in any infected female. I kept a number of the mice alive, to track the oocytes through the lifespan. When they reached the right age, puberty didn’t happen. No ovulation. The mice were sterile. Seemed even more useless, then, but I kept monitoring, just in case.