Authors: Gary Braver

GRAY MATTER (25 page)

BOOK: GRAY MATTER

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Picking up the cue, Sigmund moved to the levers and began to tap through a very elaborate sequence. When it apparently finished, a cage light went on to signal the reward. The animal sniffed the air a few times then reared up with pleasure.

Suddenly the animal stiffened and let out a high piercing scream then shot straight up into the air as if launched. There was a terrible sizzling sound, as Sigmund fell onto the cage floor, his body violently twitching and smoke rising from his head.

Amy cried out in horror.

Other kids ran over to her. And a moment later, the teacher reappeared. “What happened?”

The girl was crying. “He’s dead! He’s dead.”

The teacher looked at the rat lying on its side, a pungent odor of cooked flesh filling the air. He went to her computer and tapped some keys. “Jesus, Amy, you had the voltage set for twenty instead of two.”

“No, I set it for
two
,” Amy gasped in protest through her tears. “I know I did. I know it.”

“Well, it says twenty.” He stepped aside to show her. He looked very upset. “Why didn’t you double-check as you were supposed to?”

“I did.” Then too distraught to continue, the girl broke down.

Nicole put her hand on Amy’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “We all make mistakes.” And she shot Rachel a look that sent a shard of ice through her heart.

“I think she sabotaged her experiment.”

“Based on what?”

“I’m telling you, I saw her do something at the Asian girl’s keyboard.”

“They were sharing computers,” he declared. “She probably turned on her own software. What’s the big deal?”

There it was: his absolutist certitude, and that damning tone that said Rachel didn’t know what she was talking about—that her woman’s intuition was off again. “Martin, it’s how she looked—like she was doing something sneaky,” she said, feeling her own certainty slip. “Two minutes later, the rat dies.”

“Coincidence,” he said. “Besides, why would she do that?”

“I don’t know—maybe she had it in for her. Maybe she’s a bitch.”

“And maybe the Chinese kid just screwed up.”

“The teacher said she’s first in the class—which means she’s not the type to make simple errors. And she’s Vietnamese.”

Martin shrugged. “Whatever. Even whiz kids make mistakes. What can I say?” Then he added, “If you were so sure, then why didn’t you say something?”

“Because … Christ, forget it.”

He smiled. “Like I said in the first place, you were mistaken.”

It was that evening, and Rachel was putting her pajamas on. Martin had put Dylan to bed and was on their bed with the current issue of the MIT alumni magazine. He yawned. “Whatever, that teacher’s ass is grass with the animal-rights people. So is little Suzy Wong’s.”

Rachel went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and scrub away her irritation at Martin. She could still feel the freezing look in that Nicole’s eyes.

When she stepped out, Martin said, “You must admit the little bastards are impressive. I mean, the rat-fry aside, they’re fucking smart. And that Julian is something else with the pointillism stuff. Jesus, the kid’s like a human Xerox machine.”

“I wish we could have talked to him,” she said. “He seemed so obsessed. How do we know that’s not the result of the enhancement?”

“Malenko said there’s no effect on the personality, just cognitive powers. Ms. Elia said he’s nearly a straight-A student.”

“Well, I’ve got a few dozen more questions I want answered.”

“Yeah, like
how much
. I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“We’ll know soon enough.” They had their next appointment with Malenko tomorrow morning at his Cobbsville office.

Martin turned off the light and pulled Rachel to him. “It’s been so long, I’m not sure if I remember how it’s done.”

She was not in the mood, but said, “I’m sure it will come back to you.”

But halfway into their lovemaking, the telephone rang. “Leave it,” Martin said.

She would have, but she was expecting a call from her mother. She had left a message earlier to see how she was feeling.

Rachel flicked on the light and grabbed the phone. It was her brother Jack. Their mother, Bethany, was going into the hospital in two days for open-heart surgery. She had felt weak for the last few weeks. But when she
went in for a checkup the other day because of shortness of breath, the doctor discovered a slight heart murmur. They did an echocardiogram only to discover that she had been born with two aortic valve flaps not the usual three. Because it was a hitherto undetected congenital aberration, Bethany would need a replacement—a routine operation, with expectations of a full recovery since her heart was strong. But it meant that Rachel would fly to Phoenix. The operation was scheduled for four P.M. Monday.

Martin could tell from listening what the call was about. “I want to be with her,” Rachel said when she hung up.

Martin nodded. “Of course.”

She would book herself on a Saturday flight. She climbed back into bed, feeling as if this were some kind of omen.

Martin sidled up to her and began stroking her thigh again. “You haven’t lost it, have you?”

“You and Dylan will be all right without me, won’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t we be?”

“I don’t know,” she said and turned out the lights.

“
O
ne million dollars?”

“Half to be paid in cash before the procedure, the other half in two months.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Martin said.

“Did you think genius comes cheap?”

It was Thursday, and they were back at Malenko’s Cobbsville office.

“It’s just that, well, frankly, that’s much more than we had expected, or can afford.”

Malenko’s eyebrows shot up. “Those are two different issues, the first more complicated and interesting than the second. I have taken the liberty of doing some research into your financial status, and I must say that you are doing fairly well. You own a house worth one point six million dollars in the current market, and your total business assets amount to six million dollars, which, by the way, is three million less than what you told the bank it was worth when you filed for a business loan last year.”

“Where did you get that from?” Martin said. “You have no right … That’s very private information.”

“So is what you are asking me to do for your child, Mr. Whitman.”

A silence fell on the room.

Malenko rolled back in his chair and peered over his glasses at them. “And because it is so private, there is another aspect to the fee—a guarantee that privacy is maintained at a premium—a security insurance, if you will. Should you decide to go through with enhancement, you will be asked to
place another five hundred thousand dollars in an escrow account, half of which will be returned to you in three years, the balance in another three years, interest paid in full.”

“What?”

“If in that time I discover that either of you has breached the nondisclosure terms, you will lose that five hundred thousand dollars and the fee. If, however, in three years I am certain that you have not talked and that you can be trusted, I will return to you half with interest and in six years the balance should you continue to maintain confidentiality.”

“That’s … that’s …”

“Ridiculous
may be the word you’re trying to avoid. Even so, these conditions keep lips sealed, yes?” Then Malenko clasped his hands together and leaned toward them over his desk as if sharing a good joke. “Listen to me. You came to me with the single desire to do something about your child’s intelligence. You were offered extensive programs to address his needs with the best LD staff in North America. But you were clearly more interested in a medical procedure with immediate results. You wanted Dylan to have the kinds of advantages brighter kids enjoyed. You didn’t want him to run the race with a clubfoot to use your phrase. You wanted a smarter son.

“That left one option:
enhancement—
a procedure that is not sanctioned by the FDA or the medical establishment, and one that will raise the backs of ethicists, social workers, the clergy, politicians, and a lot of others. It is also a procedure that could cause a backlash against orthodox science. If we do this, you will be asking me to put my medical license on the line. That I do not do lightly. Nor at a cut rate.”

“I hear you,” said Martin.

Malenko’s manner softened. “Look, you come from a privileged life where people don’t hurt each other, where people are trustworthy. But I come from a place where people hurt each other all the time, where the system was more important than the individual. Where betrayal was rewarded. So I’ve been imprinted with a cynicism about human nature that just won’t go away. Sad, but I cannot be certain that people won’t blab. Thus, the high price tag.”

Martin nodded.

Rachel felt numb. They didn’t have that kind of money.

“Once again, I remind you what this is all about: Your son’s future is in the balance. If you go through with this, Dylan will grow up with a brilliant
mind that will profoundly enhance his life, his success as a thinker, his health, his happiness, and his function as a human being. It may also affect his children and his children’s children because, for no other reason, he will value the life of the mind. He will not be the boy you are now raising. If you are not comfortable with that, forget it. If you don’t like the financial conditions, forget it. If you’re not at ease with the sociological, philosophical, bioethical matters or whatever, don’t do it. If you are not comfortable with me, if you fear that I might take your money and run, then don’t do it!

“However, you will have to trust that I won’t take your money and run. As a matter of fact, I like where I am. But if you are nagged by doubts, just say no.” Malenko stood up. They were being dismissed. “Go home and think it over.”

Suddenly everything took on a whole different perspective to Rachel. What started out as some variation of the Hippocratic code had turned into a simple business deal, and little else. The red Porsche, the elegant walnut-burl desk, the sailboat, the summer home on the Maine coast. The man was living the good life but not from tutoring children.

Malenko checked his watch. “Any questions?”

“No,” Martin said.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “If we were to agree to this, what about follow-up treatments for him? Monitoring his progress. What if something goes wrong?”

“You come to me,” he declared. “This is my procedure, and I am the only one who can help him and the only one who is able to monitor his progress.”

Malenko came around his desk. “Let me assure you that I am not going to abandon you like some old-time back-alley abortionist who plies his trade then drops off the planet. We are in this together for your son’s betterment. Enhancement does not end with the operation. Dylan will come in for regularly scheduled examinations like any other patient. Because of the special nature of the procedure, there are very special postoperative treatments to be certain all is going well.”

“And if it’s not?”

“I have done enough of these to be ready for any contingencies.” He extended his hand. “Believe me.”

Rachel took it, thinking that she wanted to believe him with all her heart.

“I understand your concerns, and you probably will think of many more questions. So call me early next week, and we can talk more about this.”

“I’ll be out of town next week,” Rachel said. “My mother is going to the hospital.”

“Well, when you get back. The sooner, the better. There are considerable preparations to be made. I’m also leaving the country in three weeks.”

“Where exactly do you perform the procedure?”

“At an offsite facility.”

He wasn’t going to specify.

“A regular medical facility, fully equipped and staffed?”

“Yes, of course. In fact,” he said, opening one of his desk drawers, “here’s what it looks like.”

He handed her three color blowups of an operating room. It looked like the standard ORs she had seen—operating tables, lights, electronic equipment, and what appeared to be brain-scan monitors. “These are for stereotaxic viewing of the procedure.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning we can view the interior structure of his brain in three-dimension on monitors while we are performing the operation. The real-time coordinate imaging guides us with the probes. It’s standard operating procedure in neurosurgery in the best of institutions including Mass General.”

Rachel nodded. She didn’t know anything about the equipment, but the photographs were impressive. In one, Malenko wore scrubs. No other people were in any of them, of course. She handed them back. “What about the rest of the staff?”

“For obvious reasons, I cannot tell you who they are,” he said. “But working with me will be the best there is, I assure you.”

“Practicing neurosurgeons?”

“Practicing neurosurgeons, anesthesiologists, scrub nurses, circulation nurses—the full complement.”

Rachel nodded, questions jamming her mind. “The other day you mentioned the cocktail of ingredients that you’d be using,” Rachel began, unable to actually say the words
injecting into my son’s brain.

“Yes. I won’t bore you with details, but the whole field of implantation is very intricate and complicated. But we use a mixture of certain chemical stimulants, protein growth factors, and dissociated tissue cells which will on their own genetic program create new axonal structures where deficient.”

Rachel nodded with guarded satisfaction. “We will be able to visit him, of course?”

“After the procedure is completed.” He opened the door. “Call me when you get back. Should you decide this is for you, then we’ll answer the rest of your questions.”

“Say we did this,” Martin said. “Just how long would it be before we see results?”

“In about three to six months you will begin to see improvement in his cognitive behavior. Because the process is progressive, it should continue for another six to nine months until it plateaus.”

“Which means in about a year and a half he will …” Martin trailed off.

“He will have an IQ of one hundred forty or more,” Malenko said.

“Oh, wow,” Martin said. His eyes filled up.

It was nearly noon, and Malenko led them out.

As they stepped into the hall, Rachel happened to notice another folder on the reception desk, apparently that of another patient. Rachel couldn’t help but glance at the name printed in black Magic Marker on the outside. BERNARDI.

Even as they walked back to their car behind the Porsche, Rachel did not connect the name. Her mind was too scattered with thoughts about Dylan, enhancement, and her mother to notice. And now there was a damn time constraint to consider. If they were going to put him through this, it had to be done soon.

That was absurd. How does one make a snap decision about subjecting one’s child to a secret brain operation to raise his intelligence and alter him and his life forever?

When the Whitmans left, Malenko went downstairs into the basement where he had set up a gym with weights, treadmill, StairMaster, and a speed bag.

He had never done competition boxing for obvious reasons, though he would have loved to. He knew as a young man he had had it in him to be a fine boxer—the strength, the timing, the aggression, and the deep-seated need to pound another’s face. But that wouldn’t be, so he worked out on the inflated black leather bladder, taking pleasure in the satisfyingly hypnotic rhythm and imagined enemies.

He changed into his sweats and pulled on the gloves while standing in front of a wall mirror. Maybe it was something the Whitman woman had said. Maybe it was what stared back at him in the mirror—that dead outsized pupil of his left eye. The heat of rage had grown cold over the years, but he could still hear those little bully bastards cawing in their stupid peasant dialect. In a flick, the bag was their faces, and he pounded it to a rhythmic blur while his mind slipped back.

Kiev, the Ukraine.
It was the day after his eleventh birthday, and he was in Martyr’s Park playground near the Cathedral of St. Sophia trying out his new kite. The bullyboys from the church school were kicking a soccer ball on the nearby field. Young Lucius was like catnip to them.

It began, as usual, with taunts—this time, the bright pink and yellow stripes of his kite—
girl
colors,
homosexual
colors. Then they moved to his short stature. Then to his nose—“eagle beak” they had called him. Then inevitably to his mother’s Jewishness. In a matter of moments, word exchanges became blows, and young Lucius Malenko found himself on the ground being punched and kicked. Like the rest of the peasant rabble of the village, these boys harbored a contempt for Jews not because Jews had different rituals or an arcane tongue or because their Sabbath was on Saturday, or even because they were “Christ-killers.” It was because the Malenkos were smart and successful—the source of the unstated resentment that the boys’ parents had passed on to them. And because the locals were poor and stupid.

In one stunning moment, while Oleg Samoilovych and Ivan Vorsk held him down to make a target of his head, Nestor Kravchuk, a fat oaf whose father worked at a foundry, kicked the soccer ball full blast into his face. The blow was so powerful that for several days Lucius could not see out of his left eye. When the vision returned, the blood sac had sunk to the anterior chamber; and given the poor medical care in Kiev, nobody noticed the minor deformation of the pupil. But over the years, the condition gave way to traumatic glaucoma that eventually impaired his vision. Eye surgery years later restored it enough for him to finish medical school and conduct his research. He had even managed to establish his stateside practice that prospered magnificently. But then the darkness began to close in, and he was forced to abandon a lucrative practice for part-time consulting.

The ring of Malenko’s pager stopped him.

He mopped the perspiration from his head and called in for the voice
message. Sheila MacPhearson had received the video: All was set for Saturday night.

That was good news. It would be a real surprise party. Too bad he would miss it.

“Where are we going to get that kind of money?” Rachel asked on the way home.

BOOK: GRAY MATTER

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