Mutation

“No it’s not. He does things that just don’t make sense for a ten-year-old. It’s like when he was two and a half and started playing chess. You loved it, but it bothered me. In fact, it scared me. I was relieved when his intelligence dropped, at least after it stabilized at its high normal. I just want a happy, normal kid.” Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes. “Like David,” she added, turning away.

Victor dried his face quickly, tossed the towel aside, and came over to Marsha. He put his arms around her. “You’re worrying about nothing. VJ’s a fine boy.”

“Maybe he acts strange because I left him with Janice so much when he was a baby,” Marsha said, fighting her tears. “I was never home enough. I should have taken a leave from the office.”

“You certainly are intent on blaming yourself,” Victor said, “even if there’s nothing wrong.”

“Well,” Marsha said, “there is something odd about his behavior. If it were one episode, it would be okay. But it’s not. The boy just isn’t a normal ten-year-old. He’s too secretive, too adult.” She began to weep. “Sometimes he just frightens me.”

Leaning over to comfort his wife, Victor remembered the terror he’d felt when VJ had been born. He’d wanted his son to be exceptional, not abnormal in any kind of deviant way.

3

March 20, 1989

Monday Morning

BREAKFAST was always casual at the Franks’. Fruit, cereal, coffee, and juice on the run. The major difference on this particular morning was that it wasn’t a school day for VJ so he wasn’t in his usual rush to catch the bus. Marsha was the first to leave, around eight, in order to give her time to see her hospital patients before starting office hours. As she went out the door she passed Ramona Juarez, the cleaning lady who came on Mondays and Thursdays.

Victor watched his wife get into her Volvo station wagon.

Each exhale produced a transient cloud of vapor in the crisp morning air. Even though spring was supposed to arrive the next day, the thermometer registered a chilly 28 degrees.

Upending his coffee mug in the sink, Victor turned his attention to VJ, who was alternately watching TV and leafing through one of Victor’s scientific journals. Victor frowned.

Maybe Marsha was right. Maybe the boy’s initial brilliance was returning. The articles in that journal were fairly sophisticated. Victor wondered just how much his son might be gleaning.

He debated saying something, then decided to leave it alone. The kid was fine, normal. “You sure you want to come to the lab today?” he asked. “Maybe you could find something more exciting to do with your friends.”

“It’s exciting to come to the lab,” said VJ.

“Your mother thinks you ought to spend more time with kids your own age,” Victor said. “That’s the way you learn to cooperate and share and all that kind of stuff.”

“Oh, please!” VJ said. “I’m with kids my own age every day at school.”

“At least we think alike,” Victor said. “I told your mother the same thing. Well, now that we have that cleared up, how do you want to get to the lab—ride with me or bike?”

“Bike,” VJ answered.

Despite the chill in the air, Victor had the sunroof open on his car and the wind tousled his hair. With the radio turned to the only classical station he could get, he thundered over an ancient bridge spanning the swollen Merrimack River. The river was a torrent of eddies and white water, and it was rising daily thanks to winter snow melting in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a hundred miles to the north.

On the street before Chimera, Inc., Victor turned left and drove the length of a long brick building that crowded the side of the road. At the end of the building, he took another left, then slowed as he drove past a manned security checkpoint. Recognizing the car, the uniformed man waved as Victor passed under the raised black and white gate onto the grounds of a vast private biotechnology firm.

Entering the nineteenth-century red-brick mill complex, Victor always felt a rush of pride that came with ownership.

It was an impressive place, especially since many of the buildings had had their exteriors restored rather than renovated.

The tallest buildings of the compound were five stories high, but most were three, and they stretched off in both directions like studies in perspective. Rectangular in shape, they enclosed a huge inner court which was spotted with newer buildings in a variety of shapes and sizes.

At the western corner of the property and dominating the site was an eight-story clock tower designed as a replica of Big Ben in London. It soared above the other buildings from the top of a three-story structure built partially over a concrete dam across the Merrimack. With the river as swollen as it was, the millpond behind the dam was filled to overflowing. A thunderous waterfall at the spillway in the center of the dam filled the air with a fine mist.