Frameshift

“I mean,” continued Molly, “getting my Ph.D. took a lot of time and, well, I never met the right person.”

“That happens sometimes,” said Pierre, smiling.

Molly nibbled at her pizza. “Oh, yes. ‘Course, it’s hardly an insurmountable problem — not having a husband, I mean. I have lots of friends who are single moms. Sure, for most of them that wasn’t the way they planned it, but they’re doing fine. In fact, I…”

“What?”

She looked away. “No, nothing.”

Pierre’s curiosity was aroused. “Tell me.”

Molly considered for a time, then: “I did something pretty stupid — oh, six years ago now, I guess it was.”

Pierre raised his eyebrows.

“I was twenty-five, and, well, frankly, I’d given up any hope of finding a man I could have a long-term relationship with.” She raised a hand. “I know twenty-five sounds young, but I was already six years older than my mom was when she’d had me, and — well, I don’t want to go into the reasons right now, but I’d been having a terrible time with guys, and I didn’t see that that was likely to ever change. But I did want to have a child, and so I… well, I picked up some men — four or five different one-night stands.” She held up a hand again, as if feeling a need to make it all seem somewhat less sordid. “They were all medical students; I was trying to choose carefully. Each time I did it was at the right point in my cycle; I was hoping to get pregnant off one of them. I wasn’t looking for a husband, you understand — just for, well, just for some sperm.”

Pierre had his head tilted to one side. He clearly didn’t know how to respond.

Molly shrugged. “Anyway, it didn’t work; I didn’t get pregnant.” She looked at the ceiling for a few moments, and drew in breath. “What I got instead was gonorrhea.” She exhaled noisily. “I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t get AIDS. God, it was a stupid thing to do.”

Pierre’s face must have shown his shock; they’d slept together several times now.

“Don’t worry,” said Molly, seeing his expression. “I’m completely over it, thank God. I had all the follow-up tests after the penicillin treatment. I’m totally clean. Like I said, it was a stupid thing to do, but — well, I did want a baby.”

“Why’d you stop?”

Molly looked at the floor. Her voice was small. “The gonorrhea scarred my fallopian tubes. I can’t get pregnant the normal way anymore; if I’m ever going to do it, it’ll have to be via in vitro fertilization, and, well, that costs money. Around ten grand per attempt, last time I looked. My health insurance doesn’t cover it, since the blocked tubes weren’t a congenital condition. But I’ve been saving up.”

“Oh,” said Pierre.

“I — ah, I thought you should know…” She trailed off, and then shrugged again. “I am sorry.”

Pierre looked at his slice of pizza, now growing cold. He absently picked a green pepper off it; they were only supposed to be on half, but a stray one had ended up on one of his slices. “I would never say it’s for the best,” said Pierre, “but I guess I’m old-fashioned enough to think a child should have both a mother and a father.”

Molly did meet his eyes, and held them. “My thought exactly,” she said.

At two o’clock in the afternoon, Pierre entered the Human Genome Center office — and found to his surprise that a party was going on. Joan Dawson’s usual supply of home-baked goodies hadn’t been enough; someone had gone out and bought bags of nachos and cheesies, and several bottles of champagne.

As soon as Pierre entered, one of the other geneticists — Donna Yamashita, it was — handed him a glass. “What’s all the excitement about?” asked Pierre over the noise.

“They finally got what they wanted from Hapless Hannah,” said Yamashita, grinning.

“Who’s Hapless Hannah?” asked Pierre, but Yamashita had already moved away to greet someone else. Pierre walked over to Joan’s desk. She had a dark liquid in her champagne glass. Probably diet cola; as a diabetic, she wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol. “What’s happening?” said Pierre. “Who is Hapless Hannah?”

Joan smiled her kindly smile. “That’s the Neanderthal skeleton on loan from the Hebrew University at Givat Ram. Dr. Klimus has been trying to extract DNA from the bone for months, and today he finally finished getting a complete set.”

The old man himself had moved nearer — and for once there was a smile on his broad, liver-spotted face. “That’s right,” he said, his voice cold and dry. He glanced sideways at a chubby man Pierre recognized as a UCB paleontologist. “Now that we have Neanderthal DNA, we can do some real science about human origins, instead of just making wild guesses.”

“That’s wonderful,” replied Pierre above the din of people milling about the small office. “How old was the bone?”

“Sixty-two thousand years,” said Klimus triumphantly.

“But surely the DNA would have degraded over all that time,” said Pierre.