Swinging her feet from under the covers, Marsha searched for her slippers. Getting up, she picked up her robe from the chair in the corner, opened the door, and stepped into the hall.
A sudden gust of wind hit the house and the old timbers groaned. She thought of going down to her study on the floor below, but instead continued down the long corridor, to VJ’s room. She pushed open the door. VJ had left his window open a crack and the lace curtains were snapping in the snowy breeze. Marsha slipped through the door and silently pushed the window shut.
Marsha looked down at her sleeping son. With his blond curls and high coloring, he looked perfectly angelic. She had to restrain herself from touching him. His aversion to affection was so strong; sometimes it was difficult to think of him and David as brothers. She wondered if his disinclination to hug or cuddle had anything to do with Victor’s injection of foreign genes. She’d probably never know. But she realized her earlier concern about VJ had some basis in reality.
Moving the clothes from the chair next to VJ’s bed, Marsha sat down. As an infant, he’d been almost too good to be true.
He rarely cried, and he slept almost every night the whole night through. To her astonishment, he began to talk when he was only a few months old.
Marsha realized that her excitement and pride of VJ’s accomplishments had been the reason she’d never questioned them. And she’d certainly never suspected any artificial enhancement. Now she realized she’d been naive. VJ’s brilliance was more than genius. She remembered when a French scientist and his wife had come to Chimera for a six-month stay when VJ was just three. Their daughter, Michelle, had been brought to the day-care center. She was five, and within a week she could say a number of sentences in English. But what was more astounding was that during the same period of time, VJ had become fluent in French.
And then there was VJ’s third birthday. To celebrate, Marsha had planned a surprise birthday party, inviting most of the children his age from the day-care center. When he came downstairs Saturday for lunch, he’d found a roomful of mothers and kids shouting “Happy Birthday.” It was not a success. VJ pulled Marsha aside and said, “Why did you ask these kids? I have to put up with them every day. I hate them. They drive me crazy!”
Marsha was shocked, but at the time she told herself that he was so much brighter than the other children that being forced to socialize was a punishment. VJ much preferred the company of adults, even at age three.
VJ suddenly turned over, muttering in his sleep, bringing Marsha back to the present and all the problems she wanted to forget. He was such a beautiful boy. It was hard to reconcile his innocent face in slumber with the monstrous truth revealed at the lab. At least now she felt she had some understanding of why he was so cold and unaffectionate. Maybe that was why he shared so many of the personality disorders displayed by Jasper Lewis. Ruefully, she reflected that at least her absences from home in VJ’s early years were not to blame.
Well, as long as Victor was insisting on a neuro-medical work-up, Marsha decided that she would give VJ a battery of psychological tests. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.
6
Tuesday Morning
THEY took separate cars to drive to Boston since Victor wanted to return directly to Chimera. VJ chose to ride with Marsha.
The ride itself was uneventful. Marsha tried to get VJ to talk, but he answered all her questions with a curt yes or no. She gave up until they were a few minutes away from Children’s Hospital.
“Have you been having any headaches?” she asked, breaking the long silence.
“No,” VJ said. “I told you I’m fine. Why the sudden concern about my health?”
“It’s your father’s idea,” Marsha said. She couldn’t think of any reason not to tell the truth. “He calls it preventive medicine.”
“I think it’s a waste of time,” VJ said.
“Have you had any change in your memory?” Marsha asked.
“I’m telling you,” VJ snapped, “I’m entirely normal!”
“All right, VJ,” Marsha said. “There is no reason to get angry. We’re glad that you’re healthy and we want you to stay that way.” She wondered what the boy would think if he were told he was a chimera, and that he had animal genes fused into his chromosomes.
“Do you remember back when you were three and suddenly couldn’t read?” Marsha asked.
“Of course,” VJ said.
“We’ve never talked much about that period,” Marsha said.
VJ turned away from Marsha and looked out the window.
“Were you very upset?” Marsha asked.
VJ turned to her and said, “Mother, please don’t play psychiatrist with me. Of course it bothered me. It was frustrating not being able to do things that I’d been able to do. But I relearned them and I’m fine.”
“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m available,” Marsha said. “Just because I’ve never brought it up doesn’t mean I don’t care. You have to understand that it was a stressful time for me too. As a mother I was terrified that you were ill. Once it was clear you were all right, I guess I tried not to think about it.”
VJ just nodded.
They all met in the waiting room of Dr. Clifford Ruddock, Chief of the Department of Neurology. Victor had beat them by fifteen minutes. As soon as VJ sat down with a magazine, Victor took Marsha aside. “I spoke with Dr. Ruddock as soon as I arrived. He’s agreed to compare VJ’s current neurological status with what he found at the time VJ’s IQ
dropped. But he is a little suspicious about why we brought him in today. Obviously, he knows nothing about the NGF gene, and I do not plan to tell him.”
“Naturally,” said Marsha.
Victor shot her a look. “I hope you are planning to be cooperative.”
“I’m going to be more than cooperative,” Marsha said. “As soon as VJ is finished here, I’m planning to take him to my office and have him go through a battery of psychological tests.”
“What on earth for?” Victor asked.
“The fact that you have to ask means that I probably couldn’t explain it to you.”
Dr. Ruddock, a tall, slender man with salt and pepper hair, called all the Franks into his office for a few minutes before the examination. He asked if the boy remembered him.
VJ told the man that he did, particularly his smell.
Victor and Marsha chuckled nervously.
“It was your cologne,” VJ said. “You were wearing Hermes after-shave.”
Somewhat taken aback by this personal reference, Dr.
Ruddock introduced everyone to Dr. Chris Stevens, his current fellow in pediatric neurology.
It was Dr. Stevens who examined VJ. In deference to the fact that both parents were physicians, Dr. Stevens allowed Victor and Marsha to remain in the room. It was as complete a neurological exam as either had ever witnessed. After an hour just about every facet of VJ’s nervous system had been evaluated and found to be entirely normal.
Then Stevens started the lab work. He drew blood for routine chemistries, and Victor had several tubes iced and put aside for him to take back to Chimera. Afterward, VJ was subjected to both PET and NMR scanning.
The PET scanning involved injecting harmless radioactive substances which emitted positrons into VJ’s arm while his head was positioned inside a large doughnut-shaped apparatus.
The positrons collided with electrons in VJ’s brain, releasing a burst of energy with each collision in the form of two gamma rays. Crystals in the PET scanner recorded the gamma rays, and a computer tracked the course of the radiation, creating an image.
For the second test, the NMR scanning, VJ was placed inside a six-foot-long cylinder surrounded by huge magnets supercooled with liquid helium. The resultant magnetic field, which was sixty thousand times greater than the earth’s magnetic field, aligned the nuclei of the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules of VJ’s body. When a radio wave of a specific frequency knocked these nuclei out of alignment, they sprang back, emitting a faint radio signal of their own which was picked up in radio sensors in the scanner and transformed by computer into an
