The Proteus Cure

by Wilson, F. Paul

  •

  Shen had no strength left. Much of his blood had drained and washed away, and still the wound in his chest bled. He tried to keep his head above water, but could not. He did not want to die, did not want to surrender to the water, but his body could give no more.

  Then he heard a voice—the boy’s voice.

  “Dad, please! He protected me! Please, don’t let him die! I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him!”

  The boy, the wonderful brave boy was pleading for him. Oh, to have such a son. He sobbed and gulped water. He would not see Fai grow up. And Jing … poor Jing? What would she do for money when he was gone? He hadn’t told her about the money in the Jamaica account. No one would ever claim it now.

  He stole one last breath, then stopped struggling and let the water take him. He closed his eyes and called up images of his beautiful Jing and Fai. For all the lives he had taken, he begged forgiveness from any god who could grant it. The faces of all of his victims flashed before his eyes.

  It is time to die. I am sorry. I am so sorry to all I have hurt.

  Suddenly strong arms slipped under his shoulders and pulled his head above water. Mr. Rosko.

  Shen stared at him. “You are saving me?”

  “Not my idea,” he said as he hauled Shen through the torrent. “My son said we owe you.”

  “I could not hurt boy,” he gasped. “I have son too. I could not follow my orders.”

  “What did Gilchrist tell you to do?”

  Shen no longer cared about betraying Dr. Gilchrist. He was a liar and had used Shen to kill for his personal reasons. Used his trust and devotion to Jiù-zhù-zhe. When he’d heard Bill scream and saw Mr. Rosko beating him, he had run toward them to shoot Dr. Gilchrist. He deserved to die and Shen wanted the honor.

  “He tell me to throw Coogan in river.”

  Mr. Rosko got him to the steps where Dr. Sheila and the wonderful boy helped pull him out of the water. Shen looked up and saw Jiù-zhù-zhe staring at him.

  Her face told him she did not know. All this time, she did not know.

  •

  Sheila snapped her phone closed and turned to the wet, disheveled human farrago clustered in Bill’s office. Paul had carried Shen Li while she and Coog had carried Abra. Then Paul found the thermostat and cranked up the heat. He’d also ignited the gas logs in the fireplace. They didn’t offer much warmth, but anything helped. Sheila couldn’t stop shivering. She was surprised the police had been able to understand her through her chattering teeth.

  She raised her voice. “The police say they’ll get here as soon as they can, but they don’t know when that will be. They’ve got people stranded in cars and on roofs who get priority.”

  Shen slumped on the settee. Blood had soaked through the front of his windbreaker. She stepped closer.

  “Was it you who drove me off the road that night?”

  Shen nodded, and coughed quietly. “A misunderstanding. I thought it order from Jiù—from Doctor Bill Gilchrist.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  He shook his head. “No. Doctor Gilchrist very angry I almost killed you. He said you were not to be hurt.”

  Imagine that. So Bill hadn’t ordered the hits after all. “The other women, Kelly Slade and Tanesha, were those misunderstandings too?”

  She knelt next to him, examining him as best she could, trying to staunch the bleeding with some paper towels form the kitchenette down the hall.

  Shen winced as he tried to get comfortable. “No. Doctor Gilchrist killed Kelly Slade. I take care of Tanesha Green.” He paused and then, “Also he make me poison Doctor Silberman.”

  Sheila should have known Silberman’s death wasn’t from natural causes.

  “What about my husband?”

  Shen cast his eyes down and she had her answer. Another order from his boss.

  “He made me. I am sorry. I did not want to hurt anyone.”

  So much for absolution, Bill. She couldn’t hate Shen. He was just a pawn. Used by Bill just as she had been.

  “We need to get you over to the hospital.”

  He looked up at her. “I wish not to go.”

  She reached out to pull back the coat. “Shen, you have a chest wound and—”

  He pushed her hand away. “It is not so bad.” The weakness in his voice said otherwise. “I will be fine, Doctor Sheila. I will stay until the police come.”

  Sheila would have argued further but it was a moot point. The hospital didn’t have any spare orderlies to wheel a gurney over for him. Maybe the cops would be able to carry him.

  “My Billy,” Sheila heard a voice say. “My dear little Billy.”

  Abra sat at Bill’s desk, looking as cold and wet as everyone else, but far more miserable. She seemed lost to the world as she stared at the crystal pen set on the desktop, given to Bill by some civic organization, no doubt. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Paul stepped away from the fireplace. “I wish I could say I’m sorry, but it wouldn’t be true. Not after what he did—what you both did.”

  Abra looked up at him. “And just what is it you think I’ve done?”

  “How about murdering innocent people for starters.”

  She lowered her eyes. “I had nothing to do with that. I never would have countenanced …”

  Her voice drifted off. Though Abra seemed heartbroken, Sheila had questions only she could answer.

  “Are you also going to tell us you know nothing about the genetic side effects of VG-seven-twenty-three?”

  Abra’s small mouth curved into a brief smile. “They aren’t side effects.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in. Paul recovered first.

  “You mean …” His voice was hoarse. “You mean you wanted those changes? Intended them?”

  She nodded.

  Paul’s voice dropped to a sputtering whisper. “But-but-but you gave my son KB-twenty-six and now he’s got completely different DNA.”

  “The DNA he was born with was flawed. He would have died.”

  Sheila glanced over at Coog, alarmed at what he was about to hear, but the shivering boy lay in a fetal position next to Shen. He seemed oblivious, dazed.

  “He’s a different person!” Bill continued. “How many others came to you looking to be cured and were … replaced instead?”

  Fire flashed in Abra’s strange eyes. “Your child was cured, yes? He no longer has leukemia, true? No traces of his former disease?”

  “No traces of his former anything—and no trace of me left in him.”

  “Only in the genetic sense. Do not confuse parenthood with paternity or maternity. He’s still your child. His memories of growing up will not be changed—his memories of growing up or the values you’ve instilled will not be altered in the slightest. No one erased his past or his dreams of the future, only his pain. I gave him back his future.”

  Paul moved toward the woman but Sheila put a hand on his arm.

  “Easy, Paul.” Sheila looked at her. “Why, Abra?”

  Sheila had to know. Betrayal was a cold lump in her stomach. She’d been part of this, administering it, never knowing the changes she’d been causing.

  Abra sighed and leaned back. “It all started with me.” She spread her arms, displaying her undersized, twisted body. “Because of my osteogenesis imperfecta, I suffered more than a hundred fractures in my first ten years. That was my childhood. My bones snapped like matchsticks. My parents were research biologists, yet they could not do a thing to make me better. But they tried. I joined their quest after college. And then Bill joined us. The four of us worked night and day to find a way. There was no hope for me, but maybe hope for others. Papa died and still we searched. And then Kaplan discovered the key. When he abandoned his research and we discovered why, we were thrilled. We bought the patent, created a new corporation—”

  “VecGen,” Sheila said.

  Abra nodded. “And Tethys administered their VG-seven-twenty-three. We secretly called it the Proteus Cure.”

&nbs
p; “After the Greek god,” Sheila said.

  Another fleeting smile. “The stem-cell therapy not only allows us to cure disease, but it replaces defective genomes with superior DNA—DNA with no ticking bombs of defective genes. My dream could now be realized.”

  “Dream?” Paul said as if the word tasted bad. “Remaking people into members of some new genetic race is your dream?”

  She gave him a cold look. “What do you know about me? You stand there six-foot tall with strong arms and legs and you judge me? I’ve had a lifetime of pain and isolation. I wanted to see to it that no one else would have to suffer as I had. Tell me, Mister Rosko. If your son had been born with O-I, and”—she gestured to her shrunken, twisted body—“you knew that this lay ahead for him, what would you say to an offer to save him from that? Even if the offer meant changing his genome to someone else’s? What would you say?”

  Paul stood silent a moment, then nodded. “I’d have said go ahead. But I wasn’t given that choice with Coog.”

  “That was because no one knew of KB-twenty-six’s Proteus effect at that time.”

  “What about the current patients?”

  She shrugged. “I wanted to tell them, but Billy and Mama said no. The FDA would never have approved clinical trials if they had known. Mama’s wish was to give it to even more patients without their knowing. Hospitals all over the world. But I said no. We fought but eventually Mama and Bill agreed to keep the therapy at Tethys for now, keep records of all the patients, track their progress. She opened an unrelated company in Switzerland and Billy and me operate sub rosa from here.”

  “That’s why he always goes to Switzerland? Because of your mother?”

  So she was the mastermind. The one Bill had cowered before on the phone.

  Abra nodded. “This last trip was rained out. That’s why he’s home. Logan was closed because of the weather.”

  “But how long did you think you could get away with it? Especially when you had people like Coog Rosko undergoing radical changes in appearance?”

  “Those changes were limited to KB-twenty-six recipients, before we knew better. And so far Mister Rosko is the only one to complain. Our solution was never again to use the stem-cell therapy on children. Never.”

  “What about Kelly Slade and Tanesha Green?”

  Abra shook her head. “I felt terrible for them. We had so many safeguards against that sort of thing. It’s why we take detailed pictures of all our recipients and check their DNA—so we can match up their appearances with the donors’. Adults show far fewer and less noticeable changes. They receive clean genomes, so that after they’re cured and go on to have children, their offspring will be far, far less at risk of inherited diseases.” Her eyes lit up with excitement. “Eventually we can wipe out a plethora of inherited diseases, and treat spontaneous mutations like O-I whenever they occur. Think of it—perfect cures for heart disease, diabetes, muscular dystrophy, familial cancers, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, no osteogenesis imperfecta! The list goes on and on.”

  “I see a replay of what Hitler wanted,” Paul said. “Eugenics. A perfect race based on his view of perfect.”

  The woman’s eyes blazed. “How dare you compare us to Hitler! He wiped out lives. We wipe out only pain and suffering. He destroyed futures. We restore them!”

  Sheila said, “But where do you get the cells? Who do you get them from?” And then she knew. “The fertility clinics!”

  Abra nodded. “We do deep background screenings on the family history of each applicant—male and female. We map the DNA on those with the best histories and every so often find someone with a nearly flawless genome. We take some of their blood stem cells, modify them and, voila, we can provide a healthier genome.”

  “So, in the end, Abra,” Sheila began, “if this all played out and you were able to cure all genetic diseases—”

  “Not limited to genetic,” she said. “You know, I am sure, that some people, despite multiple exposures to HIV, don’t get AIDS. And you know that the rare gene that protects them has been identified. We have sequenced that gene into our stem cells. Think what this will mean to Africa.”

  Sheila shook her head. It sounded promising on the surface, but …

  “If it’s all so wonderful,” Paul said, “why haven’t you taken VG-seven-twenty-three?”

  She smiled up at him. “Oh, but I have.”

  Paul blinked, obviously as surprised as Sheila at that answer.

  “But it … you …”

  “Haven’t changed? Not externally. Not in any way you can see. My skeleton stopped growing when I was a child. Thanks to seven-twenty-three I no longer have O-I, but stem cells cannot change my twisted spine, nor my short and bowed limbs. The change has been inside. The defective gene that kept me from producing sufficient collagen has gradually been eliminated. My body is now able to replace the old fragile bone with new, hard, tough bone. I still look like I should be in a sideshow, but at least my bones no longer break like saltines.”

  That made sense to Sheila. She had wondered how Abra made it through the flood in one piece. Unlike a child, bone shape and size would not be affected by changing an adult’s genome, but defective bone architecture could be corrected without external signs.

  “I’m glad for you,” Sheila said. “But it’s playing God. I can’t see what you planned to do with this … this Proteus. You said yourself the FDA would never—”

  “Ah, but we have that covered. Given a few more years of research and clinical trials to perfect our technique and allow us to expand our genome library at VecGen, we would inform the FDA that we are shocked—shocked!—to learn that our seven-twenty-three, though one of the most successful cancer therapies in history, causes irreversible genetic changes. The FDA will call for an immediate withdrawal.”

  Sheila shook her head. “I still don’t—”

  “Don’t you see?” The light grew in her eyes. “We can cure cancer! We can cure AIDS! We can prevent a host of inheritable diseases! Do you think the public will allow the FDA to stand in the way of something like that? The government will have to let us make it available.”

  Paul said, “But what about the people you’ve been using as guinea pigs? I don’t think they’ll be so happy.”

  Abra’s eyebrow rose. “Really? You said yourself you would have approved of the treatment knowing it would save your son’s life.”

  Sheila felt as if she’d fallen down an ethical rabbit hole. On one hand she found Proteus and the way it had been handled morally, ethically, legally odious. But then she thought of all the hopeless cases brought into Tethys on stretchers who had walked out with a cure.

  Where was right and wrong here?

  “We will open clinics all over the globe. We will transform humanity, make the world a better place, one person at a time.”

  Sheila comprehended the magnitude of this phrase.

  A harsh, hoarse voice spoke from the doorway.

  “Except it wouldn’t have worked that way.”

  Sheila whirled to see Bill Gilchrist slouched against the doorframe, his face swollen, bruised, and bloody from the beating Paul had given him.

  He was holding a pistol.

  •

  “Billy!” he heard Abra cry. “You’re alive!”

  Bill winced at the bolts of pain shooting through his head and his broken clavicle. His left arm was useless. Maybe his shoulder was broken too. Hard to say. His nose throbbed and his right eye was swollen shut. Blood oozed from who knew how many lacerations on his skin. Rocky Balboa after the big fight.

  “Just barely.”

  Rosko started for him. “You son of a—”

  Bill lifted his pistol and pointed it at the big man’s midsection. “Not so fast, asshole.”

  It took a supreme effort not to gut-shoot the fuck. The only thing that made restraint possible was the knowledge that he’d soon have the pleasure of doing just that. Very soon. Along with Sheila and the brat, who looked zoned out—hadn’t even looked up when B
ill had come in. Shen looked like he was half gone already. Might simply let nature take its course in his case, even though the guy did get shot trying to save him.

  All the players in one room. Perfect. What he needed now was to figure out how to orchestrate the carnage so that all the blame came to rest on Rosko.

  “Billy! Put that down!”

  Bill glanced at his sister. “You’ve got to be kidding, Abra.” His tongue snagged on a sharp tooth when he spoke. Three of his front teeth were chipped and one was missing. Another reason to blow Rosko’s head off. “This jerk almost killed me. You want me to give him a second chance?”

  The icy water had revived him enough to break the surface and catch some air, but his clothes had weighed him down and his knees had been too weak to keep him upright. He’d thought he was going to die, but then found the strength to stand.

  His first instinct had been flight, but he realized he could go nowhere in the flood. Then his foot had stepped on something small and hard. His pistol. With that in hand he knew what he had to do.

  “Bill, please,” Sheila said. “It’s over. The police are on their way. Don’t make matters worse.”

  Worse? How could they get any worse? His luck had bottomed out. He had nowhere to go but up.

  He had a vague memory of Sheila pulling Rosko off him. She’d probably saved his life, and he owed her for that, but not enough to let her walk out of here. She knew about Slade, Green, and Kaplan and probably Silberman, and would never be able to keep her mouth shut.

  He waved the pistol at Rosko and Sheila.

  “Back up. Both of you. Over by the settee.”

  Right. Get all four of them in a tight little cluster where he could watch them.

  He stepped over to his desk and sat on a corner. Christ, he was dizzy. And cold. He couldn’t remember when he’d felt this cold.

  “Rosko, if you hadn’t been so conceited, none of us would be here now.” Bill wiped his bleeding lip with a wet cuff. “You were so disturbed that your son, the boy your wife gave birth to right before your eyes, wasn’t really yours.” He looked at the boy. “What do you think of that, kid? Your old man causing all this because his precious redneck DNA’s not in you anymore.”