Lasher (10 page)

“So you’re telling me Rowan isn’t a human being?”

“No, she is human. Absolutely. As I was trying to explain, every other test taken on her throughout her life has been normal; her pediatric records, all normal, growth rate normal. Which means that this entire set of extra chromosomes was
never switched on during her development…until this child started to grow in her womb.”

“And what happened then?”

“I suspect its conception triggered several complex chemical responses in Rowan. That’s why the amniotic fluid is full of all kinds of nutrients. The fluid was dense with proteins and amino acids. There is some evidence that a substantial yolk remained with this developing creature long after the embryonic stage. And the breast milk. Did you know there was breast milk? It’s not normal density or composition. It contains infinitely more protein than human breast milk. But again, it’s going to take me months, maybe years, to break all this down. It’s a whole new type of placental we are dealing with here. And I barely have what I need to begin.”

“Rowan was normal,” said Lark. “Rowan carried a package of apparently useless genes. When conception occurred these genes were switched on to start certain processes.”

“Yes. The normal human genome functioned consistently and well in her, but she had these extra genes intertwined within the double helix, waiting for some sort of trigger to cause their DNA to begin its instructions.”

“Are you cloning this DNA successfully?”

“Absolutely. But even at the rate that these cells multiply it takes time. And by the way, there is another curious aspect to these cells. They’re resistant to every virus I’ve hit them with; they’re resistant to every strain of bacteria. But they are also extremely elastic. It’s all in the membrane, as I said before. It’s not human membrane. And when these cells die—in intense heat or intense cold—they tend to leave almost no residue at all.”

“They shrink? They disappear?”

“Let’s say they contract, and there you have one of the most provocative aspects of this thing. If there are others like it on this earth, they have left no evidence in the fossil record for the simple reason that the remains tend to contract and disintegrate much more quickly than human remains.”

“Fossil record? Why are we suddenly talking about a fossil record? One minute we have a monster…”

“No, we never had a monster. We have a different sort of placental primate, one with enormous advantages. Its own enzymes dissolve it at the moment of death, apparently. And the bones, that is another whole question. The bones don’t appear
to have hardened. I don’t know for sure. I wish I had a team of men working on this. I wish I had the entire Institute—”

“Is this stuff compatible with our own DNA? I mean can you split the strand and combine it with our—”

“No. God, you surgeons are geniuses. Forty percent similarity isn’t enough. You can’t breed rats to monkeys, Lark. And there’s some other violent reaction going on. Maybe just too much conflicting genetic instruction being given by its DNA. Damned if I know. But they sure as hell don’t combine. I haven’t been able to culture it with any human cells. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. The thing might have come about because of very rapid repetitive mutations inside of nucleotides in a given gene.”

“Back up, I can’t follow that. Like you just said, I’m a surgeon.”

“I always knew you guys didn’t really know what you were doing.”

“Mitch, if we did know what we were doing, how could we do it? When you need us, and pray you never do, you’ll bless us for our ignorance and our sense of humor and our sheer nerve. Now…this thing…it can’t breed with humans?”

“Not unless they’re like Rowan. They have to have the dormant forty-six chromosomes. Which is why we must reach Rowan, and test her in every way that we can.”

“But this thing could breed with Rowan, couldn’t it?”

“With its mother? Yes. It probably could! But surely she’s not crazy enough to try that.”

“She said it had already impregnated her and she’d lost the offspring. She suspected she had been impregnated again.”

“She told you this?”

“Yes. And I have to decide whether or not I can tell this to the family, the Mayfair family, the family that is about to build the largest single neurosurgery and research center in the entire United States.”

“Yes…Rowan’s big dream. But to get back to this family. How many of them are there? Are we talking brothers and sisters who can be tested? What about Rowan’s mother? Is she alive? Is her father alive?”

“There are no brothers and sisters. The father and the mother are dead. But there are many many cousins in this family, and inbreeding has been rampant. No, inbreeding has been almost calculated, and these people are not exactly proud of it.
They don’t want genetic testing. They’ve been approached in the past.”

“But there could be others carrying this extra chromosomal package. What about the father of the creature…the man who impregnated Rowan! He has to have the ninety-two chromosomes.”

“He does? The man was her husband. You’re certain of that?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“We’ll get to him in a minute. There’s lots of data on him. Talk to me about the creature’s brain. What did you see in the CAT scans?”

“It’s one and one-half the size of a human brain. Phenomenal growth took place in the frontal lobes between the scans done in Paris and those in Berlin. I would bet it has immense linguistic and verbal abilities. But that’s just a guess. And there is something also extremely complex about its hearing. Superficially there is every indication it can hear sounds humans can’t hear. Rather like bats, or sea creatures. In fact, that’s a very important point. Its sense of smell is also highly developed, or at least there is room for it to be. One never knows. You know what’s so marvelous about this thing? That its phenotype is so similar to others. It evolved in a wholly different way, requiring three times the protein of a normal human being, creating its own type of lactase which is far more acidic, and yet it ended up looking pretty much the way we do.”

“How do you sum it up?”

“I don’t. Let’s get back to the man who impregnated Rowan. What do we know about him?”

“Everything we could want to know. He lived in San Francisco. He was famous before he married Rowan. San Francisco General tested him in every conceivable way. He just suffered a severe heart attack in New Orleans. His latest records can be accessed immediately. We can do it without asking him, but we’re going to ask him. If he has the ninety-two chromosomes…well, if he—”

“He has to have them.”

“But Rowan said something about an outside factor. She said the father was normal, she even said she loved the father. He was her husband. She started to get upset on the phone. That’s about the time she ended the conversation. Told me to contact the family for money, and then rang off. I’m not sure to this day whether she and I were not cut off.”

“Oh, I know who this man is! Of course. Everyone was talking about this. This is the man Rowan rescued from the sea.”

“Exactly, Michael Curry.”

“Yeah, Curry. The guy who came back from death with the psychic power in his hands. Oh, how we wanted to run some tests with him. I even tried to call Rowan about it. I saw the articles on the guy in the papers.”

“Yes. That’s the man all right.”

“He went back to New Orleans with Rowan.”

“More or less.”

“They got married.”

“Definitely.”

“Psychic ability. Don’t you realize what that means?”

“Well, I know Rowan was supposed to have it. I always thought she was a great surgeon, but other people insisted she had a healing gift and a diagnostic gift and God knows what. No, what does psychic ability mean?”

“Forget the voodoo crap. I’m thinking genetic markers. This psychic ability could be such a marker. It could occur when the ninety-two chromosomes occur. Oh, this is a real chicken and egg question. God, if there were only records available on these people’s parents! Look, you have to persuade this family to allow some testing.”

“Difficult. They’re familiar with the genetic studies which have been done on the Amish. They’ve heard about studies of the Mormons in Salt Lake. They know what the Founders Effect is, and they aren’t proud of all their inbreeding. On the contrary, it’s sort of a big family joke and a huge family embarrassment. And they continue to inbreed. Cousins marry cousins constantly, just like the Wilkes family in
Gone with the Wind.”

“They have to cooperate. This is too important. I’m wondering if this damned thing could skip a generation. I mean…the possibilities make me dizzy. As for the husband, we can get his records right now?”

“Let me ask him. It’s always best to try to be polite. But they are at San Francisco General and there’s nothing stopping your picking up the phone as soon as I walk out of here. Curry let them study him. He wanted to know what this gift in his hands was all about. He might have let you study him if you’d reached him in time. The press kind of drove him underground. He kept seeing images, knowing things about people.
I think he ended up wearing gloves to stop the images from popping into his head.”

“Yes, yes, I filed the whole story,” said Mitch. He stopped, stymied for an instant, it seemed, then opened his desk drawer and drew out a huge yellow legal pad covered with scribbled messages and, taking a pen out of his pocket, began to scrawl some near-indecipherable message to himself. He started murmuring and then cleared his throat.

Lark waited, and when it was clear that he had lost Mitch totally, he drew him back.

“Rowan said something about interference at the birth of this thing. Possible chemical or thermal interference. She wouldn’t explain what she was talking about.”

“Well,” said Mitch, scrawling still, and running his left fingers through his pile of straight dry hair. “There was thermal activity, obviously, and the chemical activity was enormous. There’s some other fluid on these rags. Lots of it. It’s like colostrum, you know, what comes before women start nursing, only it’s different, too. Much denser, more acidic, full of nutrients like the milk, but with a composition all its own. Much more lactase. But to get back to your question, yes, there was interference, but it’s hard to say whence it came.”

“Could it have been psychic?”

“You’re asking me? And this is a private conference? We aren’t calling the
National Enquirer
when we get out of here? Of course it could have been psychic. You know as well as I do that we can measure heat coming from the hands of people who have a so-called healing gift. It could be psychic, yes. God, Lark, I have to find Rowan and this thing. I have to. I can’t just sit here and…”

“That’s exactly what you have to do. Sit here, with those specimens, see that nothing happens to them. Keep cloning the DNA and analyzing it from every standpoint. And I will call you tomorrow from New Orleans with permission from Michael Curry to test his blood.”

Lark rose, clasping the briefcase handle tightly.

“Wait a minute, you said something about New York. That there was some other material in New York.”

“Oh yes, New York. When Rowan gave birth to this tiling, there was a great deal of blood involved. Then there was the question of her disappearance. It happened on Christmas Day. The coroner in New Orleans took all kinds of forensic evidence.
This has found its way to International Genome in New York.”

“Good heavens. They must be going crazy.”

“I don’t know that any one person has put it all together yet. So far, the family has had scattered reports that corroborate what you’ve found out—genetic abnormality in mother and child. Rampant amounts of human growth hormone; different enzymes. But you’re one up on all of them. You have the X rays and bone scans.”

“The family is sharing all this with you.”

“Oh yes, once they realized I’d spoken directly to Rowan; she gave me some code word to tell them so they would finance your work here. Once they realized I was the last person to talk to Rowan, they became very cooperative. I don’t think they grasp what’s involved here, however, and they may cease to be cooperative after I begin to explain all this. But right now, they will do anything and everything to find Rowan. They are deeply concerned about her. They’re going to meet my plane, and since it was on time when last I checked, I have to get out of here. I’m on my way.”

Mitch came round the desk hurriedly and followed Lark out of the office and into the dim corridor, with its long decorative horizontal strips of lights.

“But what do they have in New York? Do they have what I have?”

“They have less than you have, by far,” said Lark, “except for one thing. They have some of the placenta.”

“I have to get it.”

“You will. The family will release it to you. And nobody in New York is putting all this together yet, as I told you. But there is another group involved.”

“What do you mean? Where?”

Lark stopped before the door to the outer corridor. He placed his hand on the knob. “Rowan had some friends in an organization called the Talamasca. Historical research group. They too took samples at the site of the birth and the disappearance.”

“They did?”

“Yes. I don’t know what’s happened on that. I just know the organization is extremely interested in the history of the Mayfair family. They seem to feel they have a proprietary interest. They’ve been calling me night and day about this since I contacted the family. I’ll see one of them—Aaron Lightner—
tomorrow morning in New Orleans. I’ll find out if they know anything else.”

Lark opened the door and walked towards the elevator, Mitch coming behind him hastily and awkwardly and then staring in his usual confused and unfocused way as Lark pressed the button and the elevator doors opened.

“Gotta go now, old boy,” said Lark. “You want to come with me?”

“Not on your life. I’m going right back into the lab. If you don’t call me tomorrow—”

“I’ll call you. In the meantime, this is all—”

“—totally under wraps. I mean totally. Is there something in the Keplinger Institute that isn’t under wraps? It’s a secret buried in a forest of secrets. Don’t worry about that part. No one has access to that computer in my office but me. No one could find the files if they did gain access. Don’t worry. This is regular for Keplinger. Someday I’ll tell you some of our stories…with names and dates changed of course.”