Untitled fr12, p.13
Untitled.FR12, page 13
After Paul finished his proposal, Dr. Mukerjee pushed the chessboard aside and got down to business. He told Paul exactly what would be needed.
“Sperm?” said Paul thoughtfully. “We could get that through the sperm bank at the Genetics Bureau.” Mukerjee frowned. “Very doubtful. We’d have to fill out all kinds of forms, get the prospective mother’s written consent, and so on. Furthermore, Homo sapiens may be too high up the evolutionary tree for Hylobates agilis. The match might not take.”
“I see. We need something subhuman.”
“I would think so.”
Paul had a sudden inspiration. “Leave it to me.”
That very afternoon Paul called Sheila in the Patent Office. It took him several minutes to explain what he had in mind.
“With Freddie?” she said curiously? “But why, Paul?”
“It’s all part of a very important scientific experiment. If it works, it may save millions of lives.”
“But I haven’t seen him in months—not since Uriah … What would he think?”
“He’d think you wanted to see him, that’s what he’s think. Tell him you’ll be in New York for the weekend. I’ll pay all your expenses.”
“It isn’t that … You know, I’d really like to see him again. Even though he’s such a jerk. But how would I explain the … ah … what you want?”
“The contraceptive sheath? Just say you forgot to take the pill.”
“Well…”
“And afterwards, don’t forget the recipe. You have to add the glycerine and the saline so that the sperm cells don’t rupture when you drop the vial into the flask of liquid nitrogen. I’ll leave everything you need at the desk the night before and pick it up the next day. It’s really very simple.”
“It doesn’t sound very romantic.”
“Please.”
“Well, for you, Paul.”
Like all truly great ventures, the trialine novarella experiment would begin as an act of love.
A couple of nights later, Paul rejoined the waiting Mukerjee in the office next to the Animal lab.
The Hindu smiled. “Everything okay?”
“I think so.”
“Basically,” said Dr. Mukerjee, “it’s just a question of thawing it out slowly and evenly. Not too hot. Not
too cold. And then keeping it just below blood heat until ready for use.”
Paul was holding his left arm immobile across his chest. “The vial is under my armpit.”
“Good show.” Dr. Mukerjee dunked the little bottle casually into a beaker of warm alcohol, then pulled out the stopper, and released a few drops into the tiny glass chamber containing Lilith’s ovum. This he put on the thermal stage of the low-powered microscope. “We have to reduce the sperm concentration down to one or two million per milliliter so we can see what’s going on.”
A long silence followed as Mukerjee peered into the instrument.
“Well?” demanded Paul. “What do you see?”
Dr. Mukerjee waved him aside. “Patience. Can’t short-circuit the courtship. Have you no romance? And besides, I think the pH could stand a slight boost.” He dug out a fleck of sodium bicarbonate with a toothpick, added it gingerly to the meniscus of the liquid, and returned to the binocular eyepiece. “The basic technique is well known and is not difficult,” he said. “The gibbon ovum is about one-hundredth of an inch in diameter. It is relatively short-lived; but while it lives, it excretes copious quantities of fertilin, which attracts the swimming spermatazoa as honey attracts flies. The secretion continues until union with the sperm takes place, or until the ovum dies. But let’s see what we are getting. Ah, yes.”
“What’s going on?”
“They’re playing merry-go-round. The sperm are slowly spinning the ovum by lashing their tails. Over and over. Quite normal behavior. Once every seven seconds.”
“Have any broken in yet?”
“Apparently not. When one does, it of course burrows tail and all into the gelatinous shell of the ovum. The sperm head releases a lysosome which helps to dissolve the outer coating of the egg. In this way several sperm might get under her skin, as it were, but only one can actually enter into the specific act of fertilization.” He held up a hand. “Ah ha! The spinning is slowing. I believe one has stormed the ramparts. Here, take a look.”
Paul squinted into the eyepiece for a very long time, then grinned up at Mukerjee. “Well, I’ll be darned. I owe the Kisser a cigar.”
“So it was Kussman? A little below Lilith on the evolutionary tree, but of course we can’t match up everything perfectly. How—?”
“Don’t ask,” said Paul hurriedly.
“Of course, whatever you say. Well, let’s see how they’re doing. Perhaps get the magnification up a bit.” Mukerjee rotated the nosepiece. “You can see a lot of activity now. The midsection of the sperm is beginning to form a ray cluster. This is the male aster. It will soon radiate through the entire egg and enable the sperm nucleus to fuse with the ovum nucleus to form the zygote. An impressive moment.” He looked up at Paul. “Now, I think we’re about ready for phase two. Normally, our zygote would be snugly bedded down in the mucous lining of the maternal uterus, and its future would be assured. We can’t do that. All we can do is transfer it into its maternal medium.” He removed the capsule from the microscope and lowered it carefully into the glass tank. “Actually, our fish tank is a pretty fair substitute. No blood flows directly between embryo and mother anyhow. All the necessities of life—lactate, pyruvate, glucose, oxygen, amino acids—diffuse from the mother’s blood vessels into those of the embryo. We can add these easily enough to our initial synthetic amniotic fluid. Within a few weeks, carbon dioxide, urea, and wastes would begin to diffuse across into the mother’s bloodstream. If our embryo lives that long, we can connect a dialysis unit to remove such impurities with fair efficiency. But we won’t need to bother about nutrition or waste removal for a long time yet. The cell will still be living on the yolk from the ovum for about two weeks.” He looked up and shrugged. “I think that’s about it for now.”
Paul stood up. “I’ll leave it with you.”
Word got around. The fish tank attracted attention. On the third day Kussman walked by casually. He was curious, but he refused to ask questions of an ex-Serane grouper.
The little tank had only a simple typewritten card clipped to its front side:
♀ Hylobates agilis; ♂ H. sapiens?
The question mark was spaced a little apart, and was done in ink, apparently in skepticism.
Kussman could hear a rhythmic lub-dup, and he could see a continuous stream of bubbles rising in one of the glass tubes. Some kind of air pump, he imagined. And a straw-colored fluid dripping down into the central flask, and out again at the bottom.
There was some kind of clocklike dial on the central flask, with little printed legends where the clock numbers would normally be. The needle on the dial pointed to one of the legends: 3rd Day.
He jerked his shoulders indifferently. Something stupid, no doubt.
Within the next week he received eight boxes of cigars. All of them were too cheap to smoke. One by one he threw them in his wastebasket; whence they were recovered by Ed Pulaski, the custodian.
On the seventh day Mukerjee phoned Paul. Paul joined him in the Animal Bay laboratory. Phase three, the novarella experiment, was beginning. “It may be a little early,” Mukerjee explained. “On the other hand, we face the statistical fact that these test-tube embryos cannot be expected to live very long.” He worked with patient care. “First, of course, the trialine-saline solution. A good, healthy slug, enough to bring up the overall tank concentration to several parts per million.” He poured in ten milliliters of solution from a graduate. “And if the trialine works, how does it work? Who knows? Perhaps not even Serane. He analogizes. Novarella may behave like phage, which has a base plate. It is known that when the phage virus contacts a specific receptor site on its prospective host cell, it contracts its sheath and inserts its inner core through the host cell wall like a tiny hypodermic syringe and releases its destructive coil of DNA through its inner core into the cell. These traitorous receptor sites can be extracted from the cell wall by microchemical techniques. And their composition is known. Chemically, it’s like a high polymer of trialine—call it polytrialine. Let’s hope it will spread in a protective spiral around the growing embryo. Now, Serane hopes that when the virus contacts the polytrialine, it will think it has reached a cell wall, and will release its DNA harmlessly into the synthetic amniotic fluid.”
He peered into the microscope. “Can’t really get a good focus while young Master Kussman is bouncing around in the tank. We just have to hope the trialine linked up into the proper spiral. So now for the virus.”
Mukerjee carefully scratched the neck of a glass ampule with a three-cornered file, broke off the neck, and poured the contents into the tank. Again he looked into the microscope, but shook his head. “I can see nothing. We’ll have to put it on a slide tomorrow. Right now, we have to guess what is happening. We can speculate that the virus is approaching the embryo … and is attracted to the polytrialine. It seizes it and thinks it has contacted a receptor site of a cell of the embryo. And hopefully it is now releasing its DNA out into the fluid and not into the embryo. And I imagine that’s all for now. The next few days will tell us. Has growth continued normally, or has some of the virus sneaked through our polytrialine barbwire? I’ll call you in the morning.”
He did. There was no change. The creature continued to grow normally for the next week.
Paul was elated. Mukerjee was noncommittal. “Perhaps it had some natural immunity. Hybrids are pretty rugged, you know. Actually, we should have had a control: one with novarella, one without.”
“No indeed, old friend. We were lucky to get away with just one.”
The embryo was now in its thirteenth day, and still growing normally as far as Mukerjee could determine. It had long ago burst its protective screen of poly-trialine and was now plainly visible to the naked eye. It was well into its third week when Mukerjee called Paul one morning that it had died during the night. “It wasn’t the novarella, nor the trialine. I don’t know what it was. Or, to put it in better perspective, I don’t know how we were able to keep it alive for seventeen days outside a uterus.”
“—and develop a cure for novarella.”
“Who knows? We’ll need several man-years and several million dollars to research it out. And we’ll never get it here. But it’s a start, and certainly worth a communication to the Journal of the American Medical Association. Perhaps somebody, somewhere, will pick it up and finish it. Work ought to be done on adults.”
“Meanwhile, we at least have the basis for a patent application on trialine for treatment of novarella,” said Paul.
It was some sort of victory. He had made a real contribution to medicine, and possibly to the human race.
How did he feel? He felt nothing. It was all too grotesque. “Let’s get a note off to Johnnie.”
He thought of novarella’s annual toll. Over a million in 2005. On the east coast of India they are dying like flies. How ironic. Billy’s death may now give them life. And yet, he, Paul, cared nothing for them. Not one million. Not ten million. He’d let them all die, if it would bring Billy back. For which of them could replace Billy? He thought, Oh, how horrible I am!
He never fully crystallized his thoughts about the creation of the hybrid and the novarella run. There was something about it that made him uneasy. Was it the fact that he had tampered with sacred vital processes? That he had dreadfully satirized and caricatured the creation of a life very like his own? No. Not really. If he owed any apologies, they were not due to God or Kussman, but to Lilith.
The thing that kept coming back to him was this: Even in the laboratory, life could be made. And by natural processes, it must be even simpler.
And what could defeat death? Only life renewing could conquer the hooded scyther. Somewhere here there was an answer, a refutation, to Billy’s death. And someday he would find it.
He thought again of Mary Derringer. Somehow, every revery brought him back to her. And this in itself was puzzling. What had Mary to do with these questions of life and death?
Mukerjee’s experiment had an interesting aftermath. Serane made some phone calls to Washington and Mukerjee got an offer from the National Institutes of Health. They wanted him to run their new novarella program, with trialine and its derivatives as prime candidates, backed by an annual budget of one million five. Mukerjee thought about Lilith, and hesitated. Serane called a puzzled Hedgewick (who learned for the first time of the now famous, experiment), and the matter was quickly arranged. The gibbon accompanied the biologist south to his new quarters, along with one hundred grams of active trialine.
21
A Sudden Inheritance
Early one morning in July Paul walked into Marg-gold’s office. “Is he in today?” he asked Evelyn Haslam.
“Ye-es.” She sounded odd.
Only then did he notice that she was dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. Obviously, she had been crying.
“Evelyn—?” He took a step toward her, then noticed that she seemed to be staring at a bit of jewelry on the desk in front of her. Or was it a watch? Yes, a watch: the new, very expensive cranial alarm type, tuned to the possessor’s cerebral waves so as to tie into the auditory centers. (“Wake up, Evelyn, it’s seven o’clock. Wake up … wake up …”) In any selected voice.
She had regained control. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “He’s out in the lab right now. He will be back here about eleven.” She picked up the watch and twisted it onto her left wrist.
Paul did not know what to say. Women in tears completely unsettled him. He turned to leave.
She called after him. “No. Wait. He left a message. Are you available to drive him to the airport at eleven?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank you, Paul.”
On the way to Kennedy, Marggold seemed subdued, yet serene.
“What’s going on?” said Paul bluntly.
“This morning? Oh, I was handing out gifts to certain friends that I want to remember me. To the ladies, watches; to the men, cufflinks.”
“I see. That would explain Evelyn…”
“I guess so.”
“You’re retiring.”
“That’s right. No banquet. No speeches. I don’t think I could stand it. So I did it this way.”
Paul shrugged.
Marggold continued. “The missus is already waiting for me in our little cottage in Fort Lauderdale, which we bought some months ago. Most of our furniture has already been shipped down. Our home here is now on the market.” He settled back comfortably. “When I first joined Ashkettles I was full of energy, and I knew everything. Now I am an old man. I am tired, and I don’t know very much. It’s time to go.” He fell silent.
Paul did not press him. It was only after Marggold had checked in at the flight counter and they were on their way to the gate that he seemed ready to talk again.
“Now, Paul, my boy. You have been wondering why you didn’t get a pair of cufflinks.”
“Well, yes.”
“I hope you will be satisfied with something else. I am leaving you my books, microfiches, perles, everything. Legal and technical.”
“For goodness’ sake! Your whole library?”
“The works. On crystals, twenty-five million patents, U.S. and foreign. In pages, a complete run of Chem Abstracts and Corpus Juris 111”
“I don’t know what to say. I am grateful, of course. But where will I put them, the books, I mean?” “Actually, you can keep them in the bookcases.”
“I don’t have room for your bookcases.”
“You will, my boy. You will. You get my old desk, and the plush back chair. And the rug. In fact, you get my old office. Plus Evelyn Haslam. They are moving you up in the world. Just a tiny notch, of course. I recommended it. Hedgewick bought it. He points out that Kussman is not going to like it. But you can live with that.” He was cheerful. “It will give you a little bit of insurance, at least for the time being. You will continue to run the trialine interference, all on your own. Of course, when that ends, Kussman will attempt to assassinate you.”
“I thought I’d have your help on the interference. What’ll I do without you?”
“Well, my boy, if the Interference Board believes you, you won’t need me. If they don’t believe you, it doesn’t make the slightest difference how much I might have helped you.”
Paul laughed. “You’re a great help.”
The loudspeaker blared metallically. “Last call for Flight 209 to Miami.”
“I gotta go. Write me how it comes out.”
They shook hands. Paul waved, but Marggold never looked back.
The day after Marggold left, Kussman called Paul to his office. “What’s the delay on the trialine interference?”
“It’s moving. The next step is taking depositions. We are waiting for the Patent Office to assign dates. We’re junior party, so we have to take our depositions first. The notice for our date should come in any day now.”
“I see.” And now, studying the attorney, Kussman grimaced. Not once had Blandford leaned forward respectfully. Not once had he smiled, as though he recognized the favor of the interview. There was this thing—this knowledge—that protected him. Like Achilles, he had been dipped in the Styx. Like Siegfried, he had drunk the blood of the dragon.
Damn! There had to be a way out. He had been over this so many times, in his mind. He thought it over nearly every night, as he drifted away into sleep. He could get this smart bastard fired … so easy. Or even better, make life hell for him so he would leave.
But if he left too soon, the interference might be lost. Deutsche would get the patent and shut down Ashkettles’s trialine plant. And then Hedgewick’s wrath would break on him—the loyal, faithful Kussman. Oh, damn, damn. Damn this impudent idiot, sitting there, knowing I can do nothing. If only he hadn’t returned to the lab that fatal night. This very afternoon I’m going to dictate a directive to Pinkster—no more lab work after six P.M. Guards, strictly enforce. And meanwhile the interference would be grinding slowly toward its conclusion. Someday, some sweet day, it would end. He hoped Blandford lost it.
