Ministry, technical inferiority would surely accelerate the decline of the republic’s world status and internal solidarity. That could not be. So, in desperation to salvage the country’s intellectual viability, the Malenko Procedure was given top secret priority. People would be made smarter.
The project had first struck him as foolishly naive—another scheme of a few old-fart Cold War—niks who measured scientific progress in terms of how to beat the Americans. Two decades earlier, like-minded KGB idiots squandered millions of rubles to finance research in ESP with the dream of creating telepathic superspies. There was no limit to their creative fantasies.
But as the social theoreticians worked on him, pounding him with the bleak statistics on Soviet society, scales seemed to melt from Lucius Malenko’s eyes: Stupid people were toxic to the Soviet system. They were responsible for three-quarters of the crime, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness, higher teenage pregnancies, and diseases. And they produced children destined to create more of the same
Of course, the step from rhesus macaques to the top of the Great Chain of Being was forbidding. The first problem was the lack of human neural cells. At the time, there had been some success in grafting brain tissue from aborted fetuses into adults with Parkinson’s disease. Although there was no shortage of aborted embryos, there were fundamental unknowns such as which regions of the fetal brain to extract from. With pea-sized mouse brains, the challenge was minimal. But human intelligence was a matter of memory and the retrieval of that memory, and those connections ranged globally throughout the brain. He tried extracts from numerous loci, but after four agonizing years of experimentation, he concluded that fetal grafts lacked environmental adaptability and, thus, were ineffective in enhancing human intelligence. Three years later, that failure led him to the needed breakthrough.
Unfortunately, the Soviet Union was in the throes of collapse. So Malenko found himself playing “beat the clock” with perhaps the most extraordinary discovery in the medical world—if not in all of science: a project on par with the splitting of the uranium atom, the discovery of the DNA molecule, and the first moon landing. There he was, a modern-day Paracelsus, converting base materials to gold—only to watch his lab close down.
But all was not lost. A year later, in 1987, he was granted a work visa to the U.S., whose government, hampered by the tenets of democracy, would not approve of his project—at least not publicly. Secretly recruited by a clandestine cell of the National Security Agency, he was eventually given full-citizen status. In exchange, Dr. Lucius Malenko labored to perfect human enhancement—a project that lasted two years until the agency closed him down, claiming the risk factor was too high. Three subjects had died.
In the intervening years, he worked his way up from research assistant in neurology at the Commonwealth Medical Center in Boston to chief surgeon until his eye failed him.
Ironically, he had discovered the keys to the kingdom, unlocking one of nature’s great black boxes—human intelligence—and, except for a handful of people in the world, nobody had a clue, including his colleagues at Nova Children’s Center. He was simply mild-mannered Dr. M. who came in twice a week to consult with his patients.
What they did not know was that he had moved his kingdom underground, which was fine since Lucius Malenko was beyond the need for recognition. Years of clandestine Soviet research had conditioned his ego to darkness. Besides, nothing about enhancement was fit for public consumption. So he did his public persona thing, while on the side he quietly played Shiva.
The telephone rang, bringing him back to the moment. It was Vera asking about the Whitman case.
“We’re still working on that, but it’s moving in the right direction.”
“Good. By the way, this last one is on yellow.”
As usual, Vera was being discreet in her word choice. What she meant was that little Lilly Bellingham was being readied for preop. “I’ll be up tomorrow,” he said. “There are a few things that need to be attended to on this end first.”
“Of course,” she said. “And I assume the package arrived.”
“Yes, it has.”
“I’m sorry I’ll miss all the fun.”
“Likewise, but I’m sure we’ll hear about it.”
40
Brendan felt ridiculous in the tuxedo and white shirt that was required of the wait staff on party nights—like some exotic partridge. He moved through the crowd with trays of fancy dips and canapes.
Nicole DaFoe was there with her parents, looking void of affect as usual. She was wearing an ice-white dress with white high heels. It was the first time Brendan had seen her dressed up.
“Would you like some hors d’oeuvres, Ms. DaFoe?” he whispered. “We have m-m-mushroom caps stuffed with dog vomit and road pizza on a stick. The yellow dip is p-pus, and the brown sauce is—”
“You’re not funny,” Nicole said under her breath. She took a mushroom cap and popped it into her mouth. “Too bad you’re not in school, or you’d have gotten one of these scholarships. You’re poor.”
Brendan’s mind flooded with comebacks, but he did not respond. She started away. “Congratulations, by the way,” he said.
She snapped her head toward him. “What for?”
She was playing coy. It was in the local newspaper. “I guess you got your A in history.”
“Pardon me?”
“You won the Andrew Dale Laurent Fellowship Award. F-first in your class. A perfect four-oh. You aced out Amy Tran.” Amy got honorable mention in the story, which ran with pictures including one with Nicole shaking hands with her history teacher, Michael Kaminsky. Amy’s photo was separate, and he recognized her as the girl in the field-trip photo on Nicole’s wall. The one with the holes in her eyes.
Nicole studied Brendan’s face as if trying to gauge his attitude. Then she said simply, “Thanks.” She started away, then stopped. “What time do you get off?”
“Eleven. Why?”
“Come to my place. I want to show you something. My parents are going to friends’ house after this. I’ll let you in the back way.”
Brendan could not read her expression. “What’s up?”
“Just be there.”
“I’m out of here. By the way, who’s that woman in the green?”
Vanessa Watts was standing with several people, including a woman with a long green dress with her back to them.
“She visited the school the other day.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Don’t move.” She slipped behind him. “I don’t want her to see me.”
“Her n-n-name is Rachel Whitman. She’s new. Moved here about seven months ago. Her husband’s the guy in the olive d-double-breasted Armani. He owns an egghead recruitment company called SageSearches. It’s the same suit on the cover of last month’s
“I don’t care about his suit,” she snapped. “They were on a parents’ tour. She must have a kid who wants to be a Bloomie.”
“They have a six-year-old son, Dylan, but he’s not Bloomie material. A nice little kid, but he’s kind of 1-1- limited.”
“Do they have other kids?”
“None listed on her m-membership application. Just Dylan—signed up for day care and tennis lessons. Has a good swing. Also sings like an English choirboy.”
“Then how come they were on tour?”
Brendan shrugged. “Maybe the old B-B-Bloomies are becoming more liberal with their standards. A kind of
