“Will you please—”
“Seventeen minutes, Tom. Here’s a major point—if these genetic alterations are dominant, Kenly’s changes will be passed on to her kids. If the alterations include something called a gene drive, which I only learned about on this investigation, the altered genes get passed on to even more of her descendants than they would be ordinarily. This group, this pack of internationally distinguished scientists, is trying to slowly change the human race.”
“To take more risks? Why? We already take too many risks with the future!”
George stared blankly. Too many risks was a foreign language; George assumed risk like a fish assumed water. I wasn’t about to lecture them on the dangerous standoff in the Northwest Passage, the divorces I saw caused by stupid and chancy drug use, the carbon emissions that risked coming generations’ future. I was too angry.
“If you don’t tell me what this ‘surprise’ is—”
“I think it’s me,” a voice said.
She strode through my office door, Mary sputtering ineffectively behind her like a dory in a warship’s wake. With effort, I kept my jaw in place. Kathleen McGuire was instantly recognizable from the news, any news. The heir to oil and shipping money, she’d then founded an investment firm that specialized in financial instruments as complicated as astrophysics. In her sixties, she’d never had work done and her face, although lined, was still beautiful. The huge blue eyes and red hair—surely, by now, dyed—were only part of it, as was her perfectly tailored suit. Couture, I guessed, but this wasn’t clothing I ever saw in my office. She made Amanda Bryant look like a middle-school teacher.
“You’re Tom Linton,” she said. “You’re the one whose nanny fired a gun, which attracted press attention. Fortunately, it went no farther. Don’t let anything like that happen again.”
“You can’t just—”
She ignored me. “This rogue organization made a mistake. One of those genemod kids went to my niece Valerie. Your excellent investigator here found Valerie, and so me. Your daughter Kenly is another victim? There are four of us then, parents and relatives George found that received altered babies. We will band together to bring this group down. But first we need more information.”
“Yes, do you—”
“George was unable to find out just what genes have been altered, and of course you already know that there’s no reliable ‘standard’ reference genome, but there’s another way. With enough computing power, which I will hire, we can have the genomes of all affected children compared to each other, to see where alleles match to a confidence level sufficiently beyond chance. Then we can have scientists examine the literature to find studies showing these genes have identified proteins that influence identified behavior. From there we can build a legal case. The key is finding more of these kids and persuading their parents to cooperate.”
I said, “The FBI—”
“Can squawk and threaten all they want. Nothing we’re doing is illegal, and my lawyers are not impressed with threats. You’re a lawyer, Mr. Linton?”
“Yes, a divorce lawyer, and—”
“That’s not much use to us, but your cooperation is. George will remain behind the scenes to coordinate the investigators I hire to find more parents. Whoever is trying to play God with our kids will be brought down after we have enough evidence.”
“Why would anyone, especially a group of ‘distinguished scientists,’ want to increase risk—”
“I don’t know. That’s what we’ll find out. But we need information, starting with your daughter. I’ve given George the questions I want answered, but let me start. Is Kenly physically healthy?”
“Yes, but she—”
“No major diseases since birth?”
“No, and—”
“How old is she?”
Kathleen McGuire was a force majeure. Even George had not corrected her use of their pronouns, or their current name. I was determined to at least have some active part in this discussion. I said loudly, “Kenly is seven, almost eight. How old is your niece’s child?”
“James. He would have been six. He’s dead.”
Jen began homeschooling Kenly. Kenly hated it. She knew we were making sure that one of us was with her every minute but she didn’t know why, and we couldn’t tell her.
“I want to see my friends!”
“They can come over to play after school.”
“I want to go to school! I’m missing stuff!”
“Your mother is a certified teacher, Kenly. You’re not missing any schoolwork.”
“She can’t teach me gym! Or art! Not like Ms. Lentini did!”
Our sunny, cooperative little girl turned sullen and dour. The weather turned rainy for weeks; low-lying areas of the city flooded. People were rescued from rooftops by helicopters, from second-story windows by boats. A Good Samaritan drowned trying to save a woman swept away in a flash flood. In the Northwest Passage, a shoulder-launched missile was fired from the Canadian shore at a Russian warship and the world held its breath, but it was inconclusive who had fired the missile, which missed the ship. The Russian vessel didn’t return fire.
I had a new divorce client, a tall thin man, wispy as a reed, and, I first thought, just as pliable. His wife of eighteen years, who’d left him, wanted the house. “Let her have it,” he said. “I don’t want it.”
“Are you sure? It’s the major marital asset and I advise that—”
“Let her have it.”
I looked at him more closely, and revised my first judgment. This wasn’t passivity or generosity. The reed was a toxic plant. I said, “Why?”
“She don’t know this, but a big company bought twenty acres next door. They’re gonna put in a wind farm. Those whirling things and the noise they make will drive her crazy, and the value of that farmhouse will drop like cement. There’s a NIMBY group fighting it, but they’re gonna lose. Cora don’t never pay no attention to anything but herself, so she don’t know about any of it. Let her struggle with the windmills the way I struggled to support her all these years while she sat on her ass and barely even cooked for me.”
I said, “Her lawyer will find out about the proposed land use for windmills.”
“She don’t got a lawyer. Too cheap. Just make up the papers and get her to sign them fast.”
My job is to represent my clients, not to like them.
Neither George nor Kathleen McGuire sent me reports about their investigation. Instead, a young woman who looked fifteen, but was actually twenty-seven (I asked), showed up every few weeks to talk confidentially to Jen and me. We three sat around the kitchen table after the kids were in bed, glasses of wine on Jen’s lemon-patterned placemats, the whole scene so normal that I sometimes got vertigo from the contrast with what the young woman told us.
Two more parents of the gene-altered kids from “the operation” had been located. Then another one, then three more. Kathleen’s scientist wanted ten complete genomes to run matches on. Two of the parents refused to cooperate. One didn’t believe any of this had happened (“My kid’s normal! Go away!”) The other believed it but was too afraid of “the authorities” to want to participate.
Two more were found. Then three more. George had always been really good, and apparently so were their investigators.
Early on, I googled Kathleen McGuire’s family. I found her niece’s child’s funeral notice. James Niarchos Carter, aged six: “Suddenly.” Private funeral, donations in his name to St. Jude’s Hospital, no flowers. Also no details, nowhere on the Internet. If there was a police report of an accident involving little James, it had been scrubbed from public records. Could Kathleen have that done? I had no idea how much her power and money could do.
When George had found their ten kids, creating the children’s complete genomes and comparing them to each other could begin. But if it yielded matches in some alleles, the scientists would then have to figure out what those genes did. And then what? From where Jen and I stood, invisible on the s
idelines, it seemed a hopeless task. We didn’t see how it would help Kenly.
But it was all we had. That, plus the FBI investigation, plus trying to keep Kenly from doing anything risky. We could do that now; she was seven. What about when she was sixteen? Or twenty-six?
I didn’t want to think about that.
One reason leopards are a little bit xtinct is pochers. They are terrible peeple who kill leopards to make rugs. If I saw a leopard rug I would tair it into little peeces. Pochers kill other animals too like elephants. Who wood do that? It is terrible terrible terrible. If I saw a pocher I would shoot him dead.
This is the end of my report. It is the longest report I ever rote.
5.
“Daddy, can we please go to the park? It’s Saturday and Sophie or Olivia can’t come over to play and it’s so sunny out!”
Kenly stood by my desk, which was piled with work I’d brought home to do over the weekend. Jen and Brady, who both had colds, were napping. I didn’t want to go, but Kenly looked so pathetic, a small prisoner in her own home. “Sure, Kennybug. Let’s go.”
Spring filled the park: tulips and daffodils and the smell of cut grass. People strolled, smiling; dogs strained at their leashes; children ran and shouted. I held Kenly’s hand and she skipped along in her red sneakers. Jen had sewn the ubiquitous tiny mirrors on the back pockets of Kenly’s jeans. She smiled at me, the first smile I’d had from her in weeks, and I thought my heart would burst.
“Can we get ice cream?”
“We can indeed. I want chocberrycocolimehazelnutmarshmallow.”
“That’s not a real ice cream!”
“Yes it is, and I’m going to have fourteen scoops of it. I’m going to—Kenly!”
It happened so fast. I’d always heard that time slows down in danger, that every moment is separate and crystal clear. This wasn’t like that. One second Kenly was holding my hand and laughing, and the next she’d torn free, a running blur, the mirrors on her jeans twinkling in the sunlight. The dog that had broken its leash was a brown blur, and the toddler screaming in its jaws was noise and thrashing motion. Then Kenly was, too, pounding on the dog’s head and yelling, “Let go! Let go of him!”
It did, and turned on Kenly, fastening its teeth on her leg and taking her down. Everyone was screaming, the air itself shrieked, and I was on the ground, pulling at the dog and beating it. The dog would not let go. The toddler was snatched up by somebody, but the dog still had my little girl and there was another sound, inhuman and inarticulate, and I was making it.
Then water. It hit the dog in the face and showered over me and Kenly, somehow becoming part of the noise. More water in a narrowing stream, and when the hose shot hard into the dog’s face, it let go. I grabbed Kenly and ran. When I stumbled, someone grabbed both of us and set us upright.
“I’ve called the cops and an ambulance. I’m a park ranger. Stay right here, please.”
I couldn’t talk, couldn’t think. In my arms Kenly, drenched and bloody, cried out. I couldn’t decode the words, and then I could.
“Is the baby all right?” Kenly sobbed. “Is the baby dead?”
The same voice said, “He’ll be fine. The baby is fine.” Then to me: “No, sir, stay right here. The ambulance is on the way.”
It was then, in the middle of the noise and blood and a stranger’s calm voice that I suddenly knew what had been done to Kenly’s genes.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” the ER doctor said. “You’re lucky the dog wasn’t a pit bull.”
Lucky. I was lucky. We were lucky. The dog’s owner furnished proof of rabies shots and agreed to pay for all medical treatments. The mother of the toddler, not mollified, yelled at him loud enough for the whole ER to learn that she was going to sue the pants off him and make sure the dog was destroyed.
I took Kenly, drowsy from painkiller, home in a drivie cab. I couldn’t let her sleep yet. I had questions.
“Kenly, that dog could have killed you. Why did you risk your life for that baby?”
She frowned. “You risked your life for me.”
“You’re my daughter!”
“He’s my . . . my . . .”
I held my breath.
“He’s a person,” she finally said.
We stared at each other in mutual incomprehension. No, not mutual. I understood Kenly, but she did not understand my placing her life over all others because she is my child. She didn’t understand, at a basic hardwired and preverbal level, the kin-based allegiance that had, through all of human history, been an evolutionary force to aid survival. All my research said that genes were selfish. Sacrificing self for kin was one way that genes survived, with the greatest sacrifices for those who shared the most genes. Hadn’t some famous scientist joked that he’d gladly die for two brothers or eight cousins?
But not everyone. A man loses his life trying to save a stranger from floodwaters. A soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his platoon. A philanthropist donates large portions of his fortune to cancer research, or humanitarian aid to some drought-ravaged nation he will never visit, or a secret organization in the Caymans. And Kenly risks her life to pull a toddler from a dog’s jaws. She breaks her arm tripping over a root in her hurry to help a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. She tries to give her toys to homeless children.
Survival of the fittest was not the only evolutionary force that had aided human survival. The other one had been controversial for a very long time, all the way back to Darwin.
After Kenly was safely asleep in her bed and I’d told Jen everything, I called Kathleen McGuire, giving her phalanx of assistants the code she’d designated for immediate and unquestioned access. The code worked.
“Ms. McGuire, the gene comparison might not show any alteration in genes associated with risk taking.”
“They don’t show alterations,” she said. “I just got the genomic comparison data. How did you know?”
“Because the risk taking is collateral. But there are genes in the data that seem to be altered in the same way for all the kids, right?”
“Yes. Five of them. But my scientists say it’s not known what proteins they code for, or how they interact, or how they affect behavior.”
“Kathleen—how did your niece’s son James die?”
Her voice could have re-frozen glaciers. “I’m not going to discuss that.”
“Okay, but it’s relevant. He died trying to help someone else, didn’t he—some other kid or animal. No, don’t interrupt me. I know what those altered genes do.
“They code for behavior to aid survival of the human race, even at the expense of the individual. They code for altruism.”
The spring and summer passed. Kenly’s leg healed. We didn’t let her leave the house alone. She wheedled and begged and cried and guilt-consumed Jen and me, but we held fast.
George’s investigative group found twenty-five more gene-altered children, tracing them through surrogate mothers and horrified adoption agencies. As more people realized something unusual was going on, the press began sniffing around, but so far no reporter had enough information to break the story.
The Arctic Council, backed by the United Nations, finally decreed that Canada had jurisdiction over the Northwest Passage. Canada ordered the Russian and American warships out, but pledged that all nations could use the passage for commercial shipping but not for military activities. For a day it looked as if the warships might not leave, and the world braced for nuclear war. Then both countries pulled out. Amanda Bryant’s commander husband finished his submarine tour, came home to his mistress, and was served with the divorce papers I’d prepared. He promptly hired a lawyer. The case was thus guaranteed to drag on for a long time, furiously for the litigants and lucratively for me.
Lucas Wibberly’s divorce was settled quickly. His selfishness paid off; she got nothing but the farmhouse. The NIMBY group failed to block construction of the wind farm, and the ex-Mrs. Wibberly was stuck with a house she didn’t want to live
in and couldn’t find a buyer for.
The newly elected U.S. president removed all the previous admin-istration’s caps on carbon emissions, and global warming continued. Low countries flooded, average temperatures edged up another notch, severe storms increased, tropical insect–born diseases moved farther north. Corporate profits rose.
It was a hard summer for Jen and me. Kenly turned more and more defiant under her protective house arrest. I found it harder to litigate for clients I could not respect. Jen’s cold turned into pneumonia, which meant hiring a live-in nanny to care for the kids until Jen was no longer infectious. The only bright spot was that while her mother was ill, Kenly lost her sullenness and helped with Brady and with simple housework.
Then, in August, there was another bright spot. One night, just as we were going to bed, George came to the house, smiling.
Science doesn’t proceed in straight lines. Gregor Mendel discovers the laws of inheritance and ninety years pass until Watson and Crick put a shape to genetic structure. It’s sixty more years until the first mostly reliable gene editing tool, and then ever shortening time jumps as techniques leap forward in precision and scope. Now, with major advances every few years, we can alter genes so much more than we ever thought we could, and so much more than laws allow.
Entanglements Page 3