The Experiment

by John Darnton

  Now that they were doing poorly, she wished that she could do something for them, offer them what they needed—the little girl to care for. But she was too big for that, so all she could do was let them know how much she cared, and follow the dictates of Uncle Henry, who, as always, knew exactly what was required.

  And this time she had some tough questions for them.

  The taxi drew to a slow stop in front of her house, a white New England clapboard with green shutters that still somehow looked majestic to her eyes, despite the glaring imperfections, the missing gutter and blister spots on the paint and weeds poking through the flower beds.

  They did not answer the door, which was not a good sign. And after she let herself in and put down her suitcase and found them resting in the bedroom at the top of the stairs, she was shocked at how much more fragile they looked, just in the few days since she had been there, and at how white her father's hair was.

  ¨

  Jude and Skyler could have picked out Julian Hartman's house from the beat-up rust red pickup truck out front and the face of benign neglect it offered Johnson Street. From the wide-open front windows, the strains of The Band could be heard, halfway through "Up on Cripple Creek." The house was of a piece with his persona—a man whose mind was on higher things than a haircut.

  He welcomed them graciously and introduced them to his wife, Jennifer, a biochemist, who shook hands while a child dangled from her bent left hip. Three other children in various stages of undress ran wildly through the front entrance hall. The pungent smell of a roast filled the air. Hartman thrust drinks into their hands—margaritas in stem goblets with salt on the rim, no alternative offered—and ushered them into the backyard, where six men and women sat on folding chairs on a bald spot in the lawn. The two were introduced around.

  "We were just talking about your favorite subject—what else?" said Hartman. 'Bailey here"—he gestured with his head toward a thin young man in glasses—"was just getting raked over the coals for asking a silly question. He wanted to know if human clones would have souls. I explained that they would be exactly like identical twins, though not of the same age.

  "Actually, they would be less identical than twins," put in a microbiologist called Ellen. Jude recognized her from the lab earlier in the afternoon.

  "Identical twins have something in common that clones would not—they share the same womb. Those nine months are the first time the environment gets to weigh in, and it does it with a vengeance. Maternal diet, stimulants, hormones, the age of the mother, you name it—we're only beginning to discover how much fetal development depends on all these things. Even if the clones were born from the same mother, or surrogate mother, they would be there at different times, and so essentially occupy different wombs.

  "And after birth, of course, all those other variables of time and place and culture come into play. Even if they stayed in the same family, their upbringing would be different. Birth order doesn't matter among identical twins—it's a joke to say that one is eight minutes older than the other—but if you extend that to eight years, you're talking about a whole new dynamic in sibling relationships. Imagine having a younger brother who has the same genetic makeup as you. How would you feel if he excelled, or for that matter if he failed? Imagine being the younger one—how could you possibly grow up without a huge inferiority complex?"

  Skyler and Jude exchanged looks.

  "I'm assuming that you two are brothers—that's why Hartman said you were interested in all this."

  Jude nodded.

  Hartman moved the conversation ahead. "The environmental influences are incalculable. That's why I hit the ceiling whenever people ask me if someday we'll be cloning a future Adolf Hitler or a future Albert Einstein. Believe me, it took a lot more than errant genes to create the monster of Hitler. I'm sure that someone with the same genes and a different upbringing would turn into a perfectly pleasant Viennese painter. As for Einstein, we could clone him from here to doomsday, and I doubt we'd get someone who even understands the theory of relativity."

  "I suppose that's what I meant by soul," said Bailey, who, it turned out, was a psychologist. "Imagine Einstein without the genius or Hitler without the evil. Imagine a younger brother so desperate to become like his older brother than he imitates him in every way, or an older brother desperately trying to live again through his younger brother. Aren't we losing something here? Aren't we cutting down the mountains and filling in the valleys and ending up with something innocuous and homogeneous and faceless?"

  "Nonsense," said Hartman. "Your use of the word 'desperate' in the examples you cite proves just how human they will be. They won't be automatons. They'll be capable of all the extremes of emotion, good and bad, just like the rest of us. And as for Einsteins and Hitlers, we'll have those in the future, too, but not because we breed them. Simply because the multiple variants inherent in both heredity and the environment are so vast that exceptional beings will continue to be thrown up on both ends of the spectrum."

  "Don't forget mitochondrial DNA," said Ellen.

  "What's that?" asked an older man whose name Jude had missed.

  "It's DNA that is passed on through the mother alone. It's in the cytoplasm of the cell, not inside the nucleus. That means it is not affected by nuclear transfer. We're not talking about a lot of genes here, maybe sixty out of a hundred thousand, but they play a role in making enzyme proteins, which are important in development. So identical twins would have the same mitochondrial DNA, but clones would not. The more you think about it, the really strange aberration of nature is identical twins. If they had not existed and scientists had produced them, we'd be run out of town by mobs carrying torches as in the Frankenstein movies."

  At that point, dinner was called. The group moved inside and sat around a long oak table piled with servings of potatoes and squash and green beans while Hartman carved a large chunk of meat.

  The man to Skyler's right, Harry Schwartzbaum, hadn't yet said a word, and Jennifer Hartman turned to him.

  "You've been quiet, Professor," she said. They were all professors, but she appeared to call him that in deference to his field, philosophy, which elevated him to the ranks of a deep thinker.

  "I was thinking of a book I read two weeks ago," replied Schwartzbaum, "the diary of a sixteenth-century Spanish count, Don Jose Antonio Martinez de Solar. He wrote about absolutely everything of interest to him and his world, which was centered upon Seville in the year 1501. He wrote trenchant comments about mores and dress and high society and the Spanish church.

  "But what he did not write about—and this is my point—is the event that had occurred less than ten years earlier, Columbus setting out from that very same city and discovering the New World. That one voyage ended up doubling the known world, but Martinez didn't include it, because he didn't see its importance. I think we can live through major events and major discoveries and not even recognize them for what they are.

  "By the same token, I think that cloning—and by cloning, I include everything from the Human Genome project to genetic engineering—is the most significant scientific advance of the modern age. It surpasses by far the discovery of the atom. The atom allowed us to manipulate the external world. By zeroing in on isotopes, we were able to achieve nuclear fission and alter certain unstable compounds. But genes permit us to manipulate the internal world, our very selves, and there is no limit to what that can lead to."

  Several nodded in agreement.

  "Imagine, for example, the qualitative leap that would occur if we increase human intelligence by a factor of four. We know we only use a paltry part of our brain. You mentioned Einstein. What if he were able to tap into the full dimensions of his intellect? Or what would happen if we increased human longevity, so that the working lifespan of a creative mind becomes three times what it is today? Imagine if that same Einstein were able to work productively for one hundred years instead of forty. It would become possible for a single human being to become proficient in five
or six major disciplines. You'd have someone conversant with, say, astrophysics and molecular biology and neurology, someone able to bring together all the divergent strands of human knowledge. Not since Samuel Johnson of eighteenth-century London has there been a person who could lay a claim to knowing everything worth knowing."

  "You all keep talking about the advantages and benefits," said Bailey, "and you refuse to recognize the dangers."

  "Such as?" asked Hartman.

  "Such as the decline of diversity. Nature thrives on diversity and heterogeneity, and cloning moves in the opposite direction. In that sense, it is against nature. How about all those stories of genetically engineered strains of wheat and cotton? They're perfect. Each grain is extra-nutritious, each boll is packed with extra fiber. And yet when a new fungus or a new breed of insect comes along, the entire crop disappears overnight. The plants are identical, and so none of them have developed mutant variants to survive the onslaught and carry on to the next generation."

  "But surely you don't think that will happen with people?" asked Hartman. "No one is talking about making every human on the planet like every other one."

  "No, of course not. But if human selectivity is brought into the process, you can bet your bottom dollar all the interesting people are never going to be born. No more Franz Kafkas or Vincent van Goghs or Stephen Hawkings. If anything other than pure chance is involved, then the overall result will be a diminishing of the world's gene pool—for plants, for animals and for us."

  Schwartzbaum finished his food and pushed his plate away from him.

  "At the risk of sounding pompous, let me state my view," he intoned. "All of nature is a struggle between the species and the individual. The species strives only for procreation of itself, while the individual yearns for immortality for itself. One involves change and mutation, the other immutability and stasis. The conflict is irreconcilable."

  "You sound like one of those wild-eyed evolutionary biologists," said Jennifer. "Those guys who say our only purpose in life is to pass on our sperms and eggs and then kick the bucket."

  "Yes, Jennifer. There is a connection between sex and death. It's a common survival strategy—among lesser creatures with shorter life spans—to spread their seed as widely as possible and then pass into the night. Once you've procreated, nature has no further use for you. So we strut and fret our hour upon the stage and then are heard no more. Up to now, the game has favored the species. What could we do to achieve immortality, assuming we're not Shakespeare, except to have offspring whom we hope will in some way resemble us? But now suddenly the equation shifts. Now we can have offspring that are us. We can, as individuals, achieve a certain immortality. We do it by suppressing mutation and substituting replication. It's significant that cloning is the only form of reproduction that does not involve sex. We will have finally broken that age-old connection between sex and death. Women will be able to conceive children without men."

  "Great," said Bailey. "Doesn't sound like much fun to me."

  "Oh, I don't know," said Jennifer.

  She and Ellen laughed.

  "Are you familiar with the work of Adam Eyre-Walker and Peter Keightley of Britain?" asked Hartman. "They've shown that humans retain more adverse mutations in our genome than other animals. Something like 4.2 mutations every generation and 1.6 of them are harmful."

  "It's a wonder we're still around," said Bailey.

  "That's exactly right. And that points us, at least speculatively, to a theory on the purpose of sex. You see, sex is not an efficient way to reproduce. Face it, it's complicated—you have to bring two people together, the sparks have to fly, it's hit or miss. Why bother? We're here. Why not just divide all by ourselves like an amoeba? It would make life a lot simpler."

  "Why not indeed?"

  "To shed all those bad mutations. Sex is the only way to confront one set of chromosomes with an entirely different set of chromosomes to cancel out the bad ones. It's a way of shuffling the deck every generation."

  "I knew there had to be a practical reason," said Jennifer.

  The women laughed again.

  "I think," said Schwartzbaum, "that asexual reproduction is narcissism carried to the final extreme, the ultimate ego trip. Nothing more counts than the continuation of Self. The direction is clear. Tomorrow, we'll have people giving birth to themselves."

  "Good-bye, Eros," said Hartman.

  "Hello, Thanatos," said Bailey.

  "Speaking of tomorrow..." said Ellen, looking at her watch. "I have to get up early."

  On that note, the dinner party broke up. The guests filed out into the bug-filled night, chatting as they went. Schwartzbaum moved down the front walk with a stately gait. Hartman had whispered to Jude and Skyler to stay behind, and he motioned them into a drawing room while Jennifer put the children to sleep. The house fell noticeably quiet.

  Hartman poured himself another drink and offered them one. Both declined.

  Jude looked at Skyler and decided to plunge ahead. He told Hartman part of the real story—how they had met only recently and believed that they were possibly brothers, but with an age difference. And so they were looking into the possibility—as incredible as it may seem—that they were clones.

  Hartman simply laughed. "I thought you showed more than a journalistic attention to detail. That's all right"—he waved them silent—"you don't have to say a word. Why not let me talk?" He laughed again. "As if I haven't been doing enough of that.

  "It hasn't escaped my attention that you two look alike, dyed blond hair or no. But let me put your mind at ease. What you're wondering about, what you're probably afraid of, if you have any sense—at least I would be if I were in your shoes—cannot possibly be true. Let me repeat that: it cannot be true. So eliminate it as a possibility, wipe it from your mind."

  Skyler, stunned by the man's certainty, spoke. "How do you know? How can you be so sure?"

  "For one simple reason: you're how old? Twenty-five? Twenty-eight?"

  Skyler shrugged.

  "Thirty," said Jude.

  "Thirty, even more. Well, the technology for what you have in mind, for cloning, it exists today, no doubt about that. But it wasn't around thirty years ago. Not unless it was done on another planet, because no one on this one could have done it."

  "No one at all?"

  "Nope."

  Hartman was quiet as he ran the names through a mental file.

  "We all keep up with each other, you know. We keep an eye on what we're doing. Half out of comradeship, half out of anxiety. I mean, you saw those postcards and photographs in my office. I could tick off all the names for you and probably tell you where they all are at this very moment."

  He seemed to stumble for a second; he had stubbed his toe, mentally speaking.

  "There was one guy, years and years ago, but no one's heard anything about him for a long time. Dropped out of Harvard or maybe Chicago, or was sent away, I believe, for overstepping the bounds. Said to be brilliant and eccentric, all that. Went underground, did who knows what. This was a long time ago, in the sixties. He was rumored to have surfaced briefly in the early seventies, when he won a big award in the Netherlands. No one really knew if the fellow who picked it up was him or not. More than a little mysterious, as you can gather."

  "His name?"

  "Don't know the original name. The new one's odd. Ricard, or something like that."

  "Rincon?"

  "That's it. Very good. How did you know?"

  "I've heard it around."

  "Well, don't worry about him. No one's heard anything about him in ages. If he's done anything big lately, he's kept it a state secret. We scientists don't like secrets. We like prizes. So put your minds at ease."

  He leaned back, gave them the once-over.

  "I'd say if you've just met, you're twins separated at birth. Nothing wrong with that, it happens from time to time—it should be exotic enough for you. You don't have to look any further."

  They thanked him and moved
to the front door. Jennifer came down the stairs to say good night. She kissed them each on a cheek, the opposite cheek, a mirror image good night.

  "By the way," she said, "how did you like the meat?"

  "Very tasty," replied Skyler.

  "I'm glad. It's a sort of home recipe we like to spring on people. It's half goat and half cow. A chimera. My husband made it."

  Chapter 19

  When they drove to Milwaukee to meet Tizzie, she seemed distracted, even troubled. She told Jude she didn't want to be picked up at home, insisting that it would be easier all around if they met her downtown at the old bus station. He took that as a bad sign, but shrugged it off. The way things were going, it didn't pay to overthink anything these days.

  They drove his car, the windshield now streaked with crushed bugs and the backseat floor littered with maps and coffee containers, along the innercity boulevards until they spotted the terminal. She was sitting on the curb waiting, with the small duffel bag by her side. She gave a half wave and stood. Skyler was eager to see her and leapt from the car as soon as it stopped. He gave her a hug, casually, and she hugged him back, and he reached down to put her bag in the trunk, and she let him do that, too.

  Jude could tell at once, as soon as she settled into the front seat next to him, that she had been through a rough time.

  "Things bad at home?" he asked.

  She said yes.

  "And your father—how's he doing?"

  "He's aged," she said. "Every time I see him, he's aged more than I expect. My mother, too."

  Jude nodded slowly. "It happens."

  "I know," she said peevishly. "But that's not why I'm upset."

  "Why then?"

  She looked over, sorry that she had snapped at him.

  "Sorry. I just don't want to talk about it—not now. Tell me about you. Did you find out anything?"

  "Bits and pieces. Enough to know we're on the right track. Of course, I have no idea where the hell that track is leading."

  He filled her in on their conversations with Hartman and related in detail all that they had learned about cloning.