had been in the traditional green with the yellow check.
Dr Steven looked the business. And he was the business. Top of the tree in the field of biochemistry. The icing on the cake of DNA transfer symbiotics. And the ivory mouthpiece on the chromium-plated megaphone of destiny when it came to genetic engineering. He was also very good to his dear little white-haired old mother, a 33° Grand Master in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Sprout and a piercing enthusiast who boasted not only a Prince Albert but a double ampallang and apadravya.
Dr Steven sipped from a glass of liquid ether and gazed at the ranks of students with his cool grey eyes.
“And so,” he said. “What do we learn from these three short stories?”
The students gazed back at him, none, it seemed, inclined to offer comment.
“Come on, someone.” Dr Steven made an encouraging face in profile. By the law of averages, some of the students must have been listening. Some might even have been interested. One might even have got the point.
“Someone? Anyone?” Dr Steven eyed his audience once more. His gaze fell upon a young man with a beard. His name was Paul Mason and he was a first-year student of genetics. Dr Steven pointed. “Mason, what of you?”
The lad’s eyes focused upon his tutor. “Me, sir? Pardon?”
“What do we learn from these three short stories?”
“Not to believe the evidence of our own eyes?”
Dr Steven raised his grey eyebrows and lowered his off-white ears (a trick he had learned in Tibet). Mason’s eyes went blink, blink, blink. “I’m very impressed,” said the doctor. “Would you care to enlarge?”
Mason shook his hirsute head. “I think I’ll get out when I’m winning. If you don’t mind.”
“All right. But just before you do, tell me this: were they true stories?”
“Well, certainly the first one. Because I was the bearded passer-by in that.”
“And the other two?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
Dr Steven lowered his eyebrows and raised his ears once more. “Anybody else? Pushkin, what of you?”
Larry Pushkin, back for yet another year at the taxpayer’s expense and a chap who had as much chance of becoming the next Doctor Who as he had of becoming a medical doctor, was rooting about in his left nostril with a biro. “I’d rather not comment at this time, sir,” he said, in a Dalekian tone. “I think a cockroach has laid its eggs in my nose.”
“Anybody? Anybody at all?”
Those who could be bothered shook their heads. Most just stared on blankly. But then, somewhere near the back of the auditorium, a little hand went up.
“Who’s that back there?” asked Dr Steven.
“It’s me, sir. Molekemp, Harry Molekemp.”
“Why, Molekemp, this is an honour. You are out of your cosy bed somewhat early.”
“Wednesday, sir. The landlady always vacuums my room on a Wednesday.”
“Rotten luck. And so, do you have some erudite comment to make?”
“Yes I do, sir. I don’t believe Mason. You told the shaggy dog story in the first person. If Mason had been the bearded passer-by, you would have known.”
“Very good. Well, at least you were listening.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t very interested.”
“But you were listening.”
“Oh yeah, I was listening. But only in the hope that there might be some mention of genetic engineering. As that is what this course of lectures is supposed to be about.”
A rumble of mumbles signified that Molekemp was not all alone in this hope.
“Touche,” said the monochrome doctor. “But the stories did have a purpose. What do we really know about our own genetic makeup?”
“We don’t really know much at all, sir. We were hoping that you might enlighten us.”
“And that I was endeavouring to do. Let me briefly summarize. Firstly, the shaggy dog story. Here we have a mythic archetype. Cerberus, several-headed canine guardian of the Underworld. Ancient belief, brought fleetingly into a modern day setting. Of course, Mason was lying. The story was not true. It was a shaggy dog story with a twist in its tail. But think archetype, if you will. Think of old gods and old belief systems. Think of THE BIG IDEA, which existed in the beginning and from which all ideas come. I will return to this.
“Secondly we have the ghost story. The present-day scientists are studying the ghosts of the past. They can’t actually see them, but they think perhaps they might be able to hear them, to sense them. But then we discover that the scientists themselves are not of the present day. That they too are ghosts, mere shades and shadows. And the story could continue endlessly. The tramps turn out to be ghosts, witnessed by others who turn out to be ghosts and so on and so forth.
“So think here, the march of science, half-truth superseding half-truth superseding half-truth, on and on and on, towards what? Ultimate discovery? Ultimate revelation? Are you following any of this, Molekemp?”
“I suppose so, sir.”
“Jolly good. Third story. The fairy tale. The Old Pete character knows of the existence of fairies, he can see them with his own two eyes. But he cannot admit this to his friend who has just told him that only people with child-like minds can see fairies. Tricky dichotomy there, and one that cannot be resolved. The Old Pete character’s observation of the fairies is purely subjective. He may be a dullard, or he may be a visionary. And we all know how the scientific fraternity loves to mock the visionary. Science demands a provable hypothesis, repeatable experiments, double-blind testing and the seal of approval by those in authority. How well would fairies fare?”
Molekemp’s hand was once more in the air. “Surely this is all somewhat circuitous, sir,” he said. “Fascinating though it is, or, as far as I’m concerned, is not.”
Dr Steven shook his head. “I felt that the stories had a certain elegance,” he said, “and this too I wished to touch upon. Science holds elegance to be something worthy of veneration. The poetry of mathematics, always in stanzas rather than blank verse. The beauty of the models science creates to convey what can never truly be understood. The pigeon-holing of reason. The belief that one thing should actually balance another.”
“I’m lost again,” said Molekemp.
“Then you are a twat,” said Dr Steven, “and I shall waste no more time upon philosophical concepts.” He turned to the blackboard and chalked up the letters DNA. “So,” said he, “DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid, the main constituent of the chromosomes from which we are composed. The DNA molecule consists of two polynucleotide chains, in the form of a double helix, which contain…”
Somewhere in the distance a bell rang, and as if in silent tribute to Pavlov (whose lectures were apparently a howl a minute) the students gathered together their belongings and left the auditorium.
Dr Steven Malone stood alone before his black-board. Top of the tree, icing on the cake and ivory mouthpiece he might have been, but communicator of wisdom to the young and impressionable he was not. He was a visionary and he had glimpsed THE BIG IDEA, but getting this across to his students was proving tricky.
He had been leading up to his conviction that present-day scientists in the field of genetics (that field with the big tree in the middle on which perched Dr Steven Malone) went about things in all the wrong ways. They were obsessed with the study of present-day man’s DNA, in order to discover its secrets.
But the secrets did not lie in the DNA of present-day man. Present-day man was a genetic mutation, an evolutionary development. In order to learn the secrets of DNA you had to study it in its original form – the form that had existed in the very beginning. You would have to study the DNA of Adam and Eve. Or even go one better than that. God created man in his own image, so the DNA prototype was to be found in God himself.
But how could anyone study the DNA of God?
And what might you find if you did?
These were the thoughts that obsessed Dr Steven Malone, that had driven him into the field of
