Sister

His words were a genie escaping, revealing I’d got him completely wrong. He did want the limelight, but he wanted it shining on him at lecterns in prestigious universities rather than on television. He did want accolades, but from his peers.

I was sitting a distance away from him but even so he leaned away from me as he spoke, as if the room were cramped. “In the e-mail you sent back you seemed to imply that there may be a link between your sister’s death and my trial.”

I noticed that he’d said “my trial” and remembered that on the TV he’d called it “my chromosome.” I hadn’t grasped before how much he personally identified with the cystic fibrosis trial.

He turned, not looking at me, but at his own half reflection in the glass wall of his office.

“It’s been my life’s work, finding a cure for cystic fibrosis. I’ve literally spent my life, spending everything I have that is precious—time, commitment, energy, even love—on that one thing. I have not done that for anyone to get hurt.”

“What did make you do it?” I asked.

“I want to know that when I die, I have made the world a better place.” He turned to face me and continued. “I believe that my achievement will be seen as a watershed by future generations, leading the way to the time when we can produce a disease-free population—no cystic fibrosis, no Alzheimer’s, no motor-neuron disease, no cancer.” I was taken aback by the fervor in his voice, and he continued, “We will not only wipe them out but ensure that these changes can carry on through the generations. Millions of years of evolution haven’t even cured the common cold let alone the big diseases, but we can and in just a few generations we probably will.”

Why, when he was talking about curing disease, did I find him so disturbing? Maybe because any zealot, whatever his cause, makes us recoil. I remembered his speech when he likened a scientist to a painter or a musician or a writer. I found that correlation disquieting now because instead of notes or words or paints, a genetic scientist has human genes at his disposal. He must have sensed my uneasiness, but misinterpreted the reason for it.

“You think I’m exaggerating, Miss Hemming? My chromosome is in our gene pool. I have achieved in under a lifetime a million years of human development.”

I handed in my temporary ID and left the building. The demonstrators were still there, more vocal now that they’d had some coffee out of their Thermoses. Ponytail Man was with them. I wondered how often he went on the seminar and provoked Perky Nancy. Presumably for PR and legal reasons they couldn’t ban him.

He saw me and came after me.

“Do you know how they measure IQ in those mice?” he asked. “It’s not just the maze.”

I shook my head and started to walk away from him but he followed.

“They are put into a chamber and given electric shocks. When they’re put in again, the ones with genetically enhanced IQ know to be afraid. They measure IQ by fear.”

I walked faster but still he pursued me.

“Or the mice are dropped into a tank of water with a hidden platform. The high-IQ mice learn to find the platform.”

I walked hurriedly toward the tube station, trying to find again my elation at the cystic fibrosis trial, but I was unsettled by Professor Rosen and by the mice. “They measure IQ by fear” becoming indelible in my head even as I tried to erase it.

“I wanted to believe that the CF trial was totally legitimate. I didn’t want it to be associated in any way with Tess’s murder or Xavier’s death. But I was disturbed by my visit.”

“Because of Professor Rosen?” asks Mr. Wright.

“Partly, yes. I had thought he didn’t like fame because he was so uncomfortable on TV. But he was boastful about the lecture tours he’d been asked to give; he made a point of saying they were at the ‘most prestigious’ universities in the world. I knew that I’d completely misjudged him.”

“Were you suspicious of him?”

“I was wary. Before, I’d assumed he’d come to Tess’s funeral, and offered to answer my questions, out of compassion, but I was no longer sure of his reason. And I thought that for most of his life he’d have been seen as the science geek, certainly through school and probably through university. But now he’d become the man of the moment—and, through his chromosome, the future too. I thought that if anything was wrong with his trial he wouldn’t want to jeopardize his newfound status.”

But it was the power of any genetic scientist, not just Professor Rosen, that disturbed me most. As I walked away from the Chrom-Med building, I thought of the Fates: one spinning the thread of human life, one measuring it, one cutting it. I thought of the threads of our DNA, coiling on their double helix, two strands in every cell of our body with our fate coded in them. And I thought that science had never been so intimately connected to what makes us human, what makes us mortal.

16

Preoccupied after my visit to Chrom-Med, I walked much of the way to the cafe opposite the art college. So many of your friends had come to your funeral, but I was unsure if any of them would turn out for me.

When I went inside the cafe, it was packed full of students, all of them waiting for me. I was completely at a loss, tongue-tied. I’ve never liked hosting anything, even a lunch party, let alone a group meeting with strangers. And I felt so staid compared to them, with their arty clothes and attitude hair and piercings. One of them with Rasta hair and almond eyes introduced himself as Benjamin. He put his arm around me and led me to a table.

Thinking I wanted to hear more about your life, they told me stories illustrating your talent, your kindness, your humor. And as they told their lovely stories about you, I looked at their faces and wondered if one of them could