Mutation (17 page)

     "Dr. Shryack, please?" Victor asked. The secretary glanced up at him and, without removing her dictation headset, pointed down the corridor.

     Victor looked at the nameplates as he walked.

     "Excuse me. Dr. Shryack?" Victor called as he stepped through the open door. The extraordinarily young-looking man raised his head from a microscope.

     "I'm Dr. Frank," Victor said. "Remember when I stopped in while you were autopsying the Hobbs baby?"

     "Of course," said Dr. Shryack. He stood up and extended his hand. "Nice to meet you under more pleasant circumstances. The name is Stephen."

     Victor shook his hand.

     "I'm afraid we haven't any definitive diagnosis yet," Stephen said, "if that is what you've come for. The slides are still being processed."

     "I'm interested, of course," Victor said. "But the reason I stopped by was to ask another favor. I was curious if you routinely take fluid samples."

     "Absolutely," Stephen answered. "We always do toxicology, at least a screen."

     "I was hoping to get some of the fluid myself," Victor said.

     "I'm impressed with your interest," Stephen said. "Most internists give us a rather wide berth. Come on, let's see what we have."

     Stephen led Victor out of his office, down the hall, and into the extensive laboratory where he stopped to speak to a severely dressed middle-aged woman. The conversation lasted for a minute before she pointed toward the opposite end of the room. Stephen then led Victor down the length of the lab and into a side room.

     "I think we're in luck." Stephen opened the doors to a large cooler on the far wall and began searching through the hundreds of stoppered Erlenmeyer flasks. He found one and handed it back to Victor. Soon he found three others.

     Victor noticed he had two flasks of blood and two of urine.

     "How much do you need?" Stephen asked.

     "Just a tiny bit," Victor said.

     Stephen carefully poured a little from each flask into test tubes that he got from a nearby counter top. He capped them, labeled each with a red grease pencil, and handed them to Victor.

     "Anything else?" Stephen asked.

     "Well, I hate to take advantage of your generosity," Victor said.

     "It's quite all right," Stephen said.

     "About five years ago, my son died of a very rare liver cancer," Victor began.

     "I'm so sorry."

     "He was treated here. At the time the doctors said there had only been a couple of similar cases in the literature. The thought was that the cancer had arisen from the Kupffer cells so that it really was a cancer of the reticuloendothelial system."

     Stephen nodded. "I think I read about that case. In fact, I'm sure I did."

     "Since the tumor was so rare," Victor said, "do you think that any gross material was saved?"

     "There's a chance," Stephen said. "Let's go back to my office."

     When Stephen was settled in front of his computer terminal, he asked Victor for David's full name and birth date. Entering that, he obtained David's hospital number and located the pathology record. With his finger on the screen, he scanned the information. His finger stopped. "This looks encouraging. Here's a specimen number. Let's check it out."

     This time he took Victor down to the subbasement. "We have a crypt where we put things for long-term storage," he explained.

     They stepped off the elevator into a dimly lit hall that snaked off in myriad directions. There were pipes and ducts along the ceiling, the floor a bare, stained concrete.

     "We don't get to come down here that often," Stephen said as he led the way through the maze. He finally stopped at a heavy metal door. When Victor helped pull it open, Stephen reached in and flipped on a light.

     It was a large, poorly lit room with widely spaced bulbs in simple ceiling fixtures. The air was cold and humid. Numerous rows of metal shelves reached almost to the ceiling.

     Checking a number that he had written on a scrap of paper, Stephen set off down one of the rows. Victor followed, glancing into the shelves. At one point he stopped, transfixed by the image of an entire head of a child contained in a large glass canister and soaking in some kind of preservative brine. The eyes stared out and the mouth was open as if in some perpetual scream. Victor looked at the other glass containers. Each contained some horrifying preserved testament to past suffering. He shuddered, then realized that Stephen had passed from sight.

     Looking nervously around, he heard the resident call. "Over here."

     Victor strode forward, no longer looking at the specimens. When he reached the corner, he saw the pathologist reaching into one of the shelves, noisily pushing around the glass containers. "Eureka!" he said, straightening up. He had a modest-sized glass jar in his hands that contained a bulbous liver suspended in clear fluid. "You're in luck," he said.

     Later, on the way up in the elevator, he asked Victor why he wanted the tissue.

     "Curiosity," Victor said. "When David died my grief was so overwhelming I didn't ask any questions. Now after all these years, I want to know more about why he died."

     Marsha drove VJ and Philip through the Chimera gates. During the drive VJ had chatted about a new Pac-Man video just like any other ten-year-old.

     "Thanks for the lift, Mom," he said, jumping out.

     "Let Colleen know where you're playing," she said. "And I want you to stay away from the river. You saw what it looked like from the bridge."

     Philip got out from the back seat. "Nothing's going to happen to VJ," he said.

     "Are you sure you wouldn't rather go over to your friend Richie's?" Marsha questioned.

     "I'm happy here," VJ said. "Don't worry about me, okay?"

     Marsha watched VJ stride off with Philip rushing to catch up. "What a pair," she thought, trying to keep last night's revelation from panicking her.

     She parked the car and headed for the day-care center. As she entered the building she could hear the thwack of a racquetball. The courts were on the floor above, in the fitness center.

     Marsha found Pauline Spaulding kneeling on the floor, supervising a group of children who were finger-painting. She leaped up when she saw Marsha, her figure giving proof to all those years as an aerobics instructor.

     When Marsha asked for a few minutes of her time, Pauline left the kids and went off to find another teacher. After she returned with a younger woman in tow, she led Marsha to another room filled with cribs and folding cots.

     "We'll have some privacy here," Pauline said. Her large oval eyes looked nervously at Marsha, who she assumed had come on official business for her husband.

     "I'm not here as the wife of one of the partners," Marsha said, trying to put Pauline at ease.

     "I see." Pauline took a deep breath and smiled. "I thought you had some major complaint."

     "Quite the contrary," Marsha said. "I wanted to talk to you about my son."

     "Wonderful boy," Pauline said. "I suppose you know that he comes in here from time to time and helps out. In fact, he visited us just last weekend."

     "I didn't know the center was open on weekends," Marsha said.

     "Seven days a week," Pauline said with pride. "A lot of people here at Chimera work every day. I suppose that's called dedication."

     Marsha wasn't sure she'd call it dedication, and she wondered what kind of stress such devotion would have on family life that was already suffering. But she didn't say any of this. Instead, she asked Pauline if she remembered the day VJ's IQ dropped.

     "Of course I remember. The fact that it happened here has always made me feel responsible somehow."

     "Well, that's plainly absurd," Marsha said with a warm smile. "What I wanted to ask about was VJ's behavior afterwards."

     Pauline looked down at her feet, thinking. After a minute or so, she raised her head. "I suppose the thing I noticed the most was that he'd changed from a leader of activities to an observer. Before, he was always eager to try anything. Later, he acted bored and had to be forced to participate. And he avoided all competition. It was as if he were a different person. We didn't push him; we were afraid to. Anyway, we saw much less of him after that episode."

     "What do you mean?" Marsha asked. "Once he finished his medical work-up, he still came here every afternoon after preschool."

     "No, he didn't," Pauline said. "He began to spend most of the time in his father's lab."

     "Really? I didn't think that started until he began school. But what do I know, I'm just the mother!"

     Pauline smiled.

     "What about friends?" Marsha questioned.

     "That was never one of VJ's strong points," Pauline said diplomatically. "He always got along better with the staff than the children. After his problem, he tended to stay by himself. Well, I take that back. He did seem to enjoy the company of the retarded employee."

     "You mean Philip?" Marsha questioned.

     "That's the fellow," Pauline said.

     Marsha stood up, thanked Pauline, and together they walked to the entrance.

     "VJ may not be quite as smart as he was," Pauline said at the door, "but he is a fine boy. We appreciate him here at the center."

     Marsha hurried back to the car. She hadn't learned much, but it seemed VJ had always been even more of a loner than she had suspected.

     Victor knew he should go to his office the moment he reached Chimera. Colleen was undoubtedly inundated by emergencies. But instead, carrying his latest samples from Children's Hospital, he headed for his lab. En route he stopped at the computer center.

     Victor looked for Louis Kaspwicz around the malfunctioning hardware, but the problem had apparently been solved. The machine was back on line with lights blinking and tape reels running. One of the many white-coated technicians said Louis was in his office trying to figure out a glitch that had occurred in one of the accounting programs.

     When Louis saw Victor, he pushed aside the thick program he was working on and took out the log sheets that he was saving to show Victor.

     "I've checked over the last six months," Louis said, organizing the papers for Victor to see, "and underlined the times the hacker has logged on. It seems the kid checks in every Friday night around eight. At least fifty percent of the time he stays on long enough to be traced."

     "How come you say 'kid'?" Victor asked, straightening up from glancing at the logs.

     "It's just an expression," Louis answered. "Somebody who breaks into a private computer system could be any age."

     "Like one of our competitors?" Victor said.

     "Exactly, but historically there's been a lot of teenagers that do it just for the challenge. It's like some kind of computer game for them."

     "When can we try to trace him?" Victor asked.

     "As soon as possible," Louis said. "It terrifies me that this has been going on for so long. I have no idea what kind of mischief this guy has been up to. Anyway, I talked the phone company into sending over some technicians to watch tomorrow night, if it's all right with you."

     "Fine," Victor said.

     That settled, Victor continued on to his lab. He found Robert still absorbed in sequencing the DNA of the inserted genes.

     "I've got some more rush work," Victor said hurriedly. "If you need to, pull one of the other techs off a project to help, but I want you to be personally responsible for this work."

     "I'll get Harry if it's necessary," Robert said. "What do you have?"

     Victor opened the brown paper bag and removed a small jar. He extended it toward Robert. His hand trembled.

     "It's a piece of my son's liver."

     "VJ's?" Robert's gaunt face looked shocked. His eyes seemed even more prominent.

     "No, no, David's. Remember we did DNA fingerprinting on everyone in my family?"

     Robert nodded.

     "I want that tumor fingerprinted, too," Victor said. "And I want some standard H and E stains and a chromosome study."

     "Can I ask why you want all this?"

     "Just do it," Victor said sharply.

     "All right," Robert said, nervously looking down at his feet. "I wasn't questioning your motives. I just thought that if you were looking for something in particular, I could keep an eye out for it."

     Victor ran his hand through his hair. "I'm sorry for snapping at you like that," he said. "I'm under a lot of pressure."

     "No need to apologize," Robert said. "I'll start work on it right now."

     "Wait, there's more," Victor said. He removed the four stoppered test tubes. "I've got some blood and urine samples I need assayed for a cephalosporin antibiotic called cephaloclor."

     Robert took the samples, tilted them to see their consistency, then checked the grease-pencil labels. "I'll put Harry on this. It will be pretty straightforward."

     "How is the sequencing coming?" Victor asked.

     "Tedious, as usual," Robert said.

     "Any mutations pop up?"

     "Not a one," Robert said. "And the way the probes pick up the fragments, I'd guess at this point that the genes have been perfectly stable."

     "That's unfortunate," Victor said.

     "I thought you'd be pleased with that information," Robert said.

     "Normally I would," Victor said. He didn't elaborate. It would have been too hard for him to explain that he was hoping to find concrete evidence that the dead children's NGF gene differed from VJ's.

     "So here you are!" a voice called, startling both Victor and Robert. They turned to see Colleen standing at the door, legs apart and arms akimbo. "One of the secretaries told me she saw you creeping around," she said with a wink.

     "I was just about to come over to the office," Victor said defensively.

     "Sure, and I'm about to win the lottery," Colleen laughed.