Frameshift

The woman looked at Pierre, surprise on her face. “Well, I’d hardly say that. He was on a waiting list for a kidney transplant.”

Pierre felt his heart skip a beat. “What?”

“He had bum kidneys.”

Pierre was angry. “But I asked you if he had any inherited disorders—”

“He didn’t inherit this problem. It was a result of an injury. His kidneys were damaged in a car accident about ten years ago and had gotten steadily worse.”

“God,” said Pierre. “Jesus God.”

“Justice.”

“Avi Meyer, OSI, please.”

“Just a sec.”

“Meyer.”

“Avi, it’s Pierre Tardivel.”

“Hi, Pierre. Sorry not to get back to you yet. I was out of town. Say, any luck with your complaint against Condor Health?” Pierre had previously called Avi to find out whether the coercing of abortions was legal under federal law; it was.

“No,” said Pierre, “but that’s not why I’m calling. I’m phoning about Burian Klimus.”

“We don’t have anything new,” said Avi with a sigh.

“Maybe you don’t, but I do. You’re right about him. He’s Ivan Grozny.”

Avi’s voice was excited, but cautious. “What makes you say that?”

“You know the attempt on my life? The guy who tried to kill me was a neo-Nazi, right? Chuck Hanratty?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, Hanratty previously killed a guy named Bryan Proctor — and Proctor had bum kidneys.”

“So?”

“And Joan Dawson, a diabetic here at LBNL, was murdered, too, by a very similar knife to the one used in the attack on me; it wasn’t Hanratty who killed her, of course — he was dead by that point. But it could very well have been someone connected to Hanratty — meaning someone connected to the Millennial Reich.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And three Huntington’s disease sufferers were murdered recently in San Francisco — and Burian Klimus had met all three of them.”

“Really?”

“And I’ve checked tissue samples from a hundred and seventeen victims of unsolved murders here in the Bay Area — a vastly disproportionate number of them had bad genes.”

“So you think — shit, you think Klimus is doing what? Purging society of defectives?”

“Mein Kampf, chapter one, verse one,” said Pierre.

“You’re sure about all this?” said Avi.

“Positive.”

“You better be right,” said Avi.

“I am.”

“ ‘Cause if this is just some disgruntled-employee shit — if you’re just making trouble for your boss — then you’re making a huge mistake. OSI’s part of the Department of Justice, and you don’t fuck with Justice.”

Pierre’s tone was determined. “Klimus is Ivan the Terrible. I’m convinced of that.”

Chapter 35

Pierre loved his daughter — of that he had no doubts. But, well, he was a scientist, and he couldn’t help being intrigued by her special heritage. He knew that her DNA would differ from that of a modern human by far less than 1 percent. Hell, chimpanzee DNA deviated from modern human DNA by only 1.6 percent (chimps and humans having diverged some six million years ago). The differences between Amanda and other children who hadn’t bypassed the last sixty thousand years of human evolution were surely very subtle. Still, something — some tiny genetic change — had given the less-physically-robust modern humans some sort of advantage over the Neanderthals, leading to the disappearance of the latter. The attachment areas for Neanderthal pectoral muscles were twice the size of those in modern humans; they would have had Arnold Schwarzenegger’s physique without working at it. Yet something tipped the balance in favor of Homo sapiens sapiens. Even while reviling Klimus’s outrageous experiment, Pierre could understand the fascination with studying Neanderthal DNA.

Using restriction enzymes to break up Amanda’s DNA into manageable fragments, he started looking for differences, and was surprised to find some unexpected ones. They weren’t in her protein-synthesizing DNA but rather in several long strands of junk DNA.

Intrigued, Pierre decided to visit the San Francisco Zoo. Surely he could cajole an array of primate tissue samples from the curator…

Pierre and Molly attended another meeting of the Bay Area Huntington’s Support Group in San Francisco; by this stage, he really did need the support.

The guest speaker was a loud PR woman from a company that made wheelchairs, walkers, and other aids for the mobility-impaired. Pierre hadn’t realized so many high-tech options were available.

After the meeting, he spoke again to white-haired Carl Berringer. “Good meeting,” said Pierre. “Interesting speaker.”

Carl’s whole upper body was shaking. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

“Umm, yes. Pierre Tardivel, from Montreal, originally. I came to a meeting about fifteen months ago.”

“Forgive me. My memory’s not what it used to be.”

Pierre nodded. He himself had not yet encountered many mental difficulties, but he knew they were a common part of Huntington’s.