blotter, looking him directly in the eye.
“I know you would rather not do anything,” she said. “I know you don’t want to upset VJ, and I know you are excited about his accomplishments, but you are going to have to face the reality that the boy is not playing by the rules. Let me tell you about my latest discovery. VJ is involved with a group of Colombians who are supposedly opening a furniture import business in Mattapan. I met these men and let me tell you, they don’t look like furniture merchants to me.”
Marsha stopped abruptly. Victor wasn’t reacting. “Victor?”
Marsha said questioningly. His eyes had a dazed, unfocused look.
“Marsha, sit down,” Victor said, shaking his head with sad, slow deliberation. He cradled his head in his hands and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk. Then he ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed his neck, and straightened up. Marsha sat down, studying her husband intently. Her pulse began to race.
“I’ve just learned something worse,” Victor said. “A few days ago I got samples of David’s and Janice’s tumors. Robert has been working on them. He just called to tell me that their cancers had been artificially induced. A foreign cancer-causing gene was put into their bloodstreams.”
Marsha cried out, bringing her hands to her mouth in dismay. Even though she had begun to suspect as much, the confirmation was as horrifying as if she’d been given the news cold. Coming from Victor, who’d fought her tooth and nail when it came to hear fears and apprehensions, made it all the more damning. She bit her lower lip while she quivered with a combination of anger, sadness, and fear. “It had to be VJ!” she whispered.
Victor slammed his palm on top of his desk, sending papers flying. “We don’t know that for sure!” he shouted.
“All these people knew VJ intimately,” Marsha said, echoing Victor’s own thoughts. “And he wanted them out of the way.”
Victor shook his head in grim resignation. How much blame lay at his door, and how much lay at VJ’s? He was the one who’d ensured the boy’s brilliance. But did he stop for one second to think what might go hand in hand with that genius?
If David and Janice and that teacher had died by VJ’s hand, Victor wasn’t sure he could live with his conscience.
Marsha began hesitantly, but her conviction made her strong. “I think we have to know exactly what VJ is doing in the rest of that lab of his.”
Victor let his arms fall limply to his side and stared out the window. He looked at the clock tower, knowing that VJ was working there right now. He turned to Marsha and said, “Let’s go find out.”
14
Monday Afternoon
MARSHA had to run to keep up with Victor as he made his way toward the river. The two soon left the renovated part of the complex behind. In broad daylight the abandoned buildings did not look quite so sinister.
Entering the building, Victor went straight to the trapdoor, bent down, and rapped sharply on the floor several times.
In a minute or two the trapdoor came up. A man in a Chimera security uniform eyed Victor and Marsha warily, then motioned for them to descend.
Victor went first. By the time Marsha was down the stairs, Victor had rounded the paddle wheel and was heading toward the intimidating metal door barring the entrance to the unexplored portion of VJ’s lab. For Marsha, the lab itself was as forbidding as it had been the last time she’d been there. She knew that the fruits of scientific research could be put to good or evil use, but something about the eerie basement quarters gave Marsha the feeling that the research conducted here was for a darker purpose.
“Hey!” yelled one of the guards, seeing Victor approach the restricted door. He jumped up and sprinted across the room diagonally, and grabbed Victor by the arm. He pulled him around roughly. “Nobody’s allowed in there,” he snarled in his strong Spanish accent.
To Marsha’s surprise, Victor put his hand squarely on the man’s face and pushed him back. The gesture took the man by surprise, and he fell to one knee, but he maintained a hold on Victor’s jacket sleeve. With a forcible yank, Victor shook free of the man’s grasp and reached around to the door.
The security guard pulled a knife from his boot and flicked it open. A flash of light glinted off its razor surface.
“Victor!” Marsha screamed. Victor turned when he heard her scream. The guard came at him, holding the knife out in front of his body like a miniature rapier. Victor parried the thrust but the man got hold of his arm. The knife rose menacingly.
“Stop it!” VJ yelled as he burst through the door toward which Victor had been heading. The two other security men who were in the room got between the two combatants, one restraining Victor, the other dealing with the knife-wielding guard.
“Let my father go!” VJ commanded.
“He was going into the back lab,” the guard with the knife cried.
“Let him go,” VJ ordered even more sternly than before.
Victor was released with a shove. He staggered forward, trying to maintain his balance. Doing so, he made another move for the door. VJ reached out and grasped his arm just as Victor was about to push through to the other side.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” VJ asked.
“I want to see it all,” Victor said flatly.
“Remember the Tree of Knowledge?”
“Of Good and Evil,” countered Victor. “You can’t talk me out of this.”
VJ pulled his hand back. “Suit yourself, but you may not appreciate the consequences.”
Victor looked to Marsha, who nodded for him to go. Turning again to the door, he pulled it open. Pale blue light flooded out. Victor stepped over the threshold with Marsha right behind him. VJ followed, then pulled the door closed.
The room was about fifty feet long and rather narrow. On a long bench built of rough-hewn lumber sat four fifty-gallon glass tanks. The sides were fused with silicone. The tanks were illuminated by heat lamps and gave off the eerie blue light as it refracted through the contained fluid.
Marsha’s jaw dropped in horror when she realized what was in the tanks. Inside each one and enveloped in transparent membranes were four fetuses, each perhaps eight months old, who were swimming about in their artificial wombs. They watched Marsha as she walked down the aisle, their blue eyes fully open. They gestured, smiled, and even yawned.
Casually, but with an air of arrogant pride, VJ gave a cursory explanation of the system. In each tank the placentas were plastered onto a plexiglass grid against a membrane bag connected to a sort of heart-lung machine. Each machine had its own computer, which was in turn attached to a protein synthesizer. The liquid surface of each tank was covered with plastic balls to retard evaporation.
Neither Marsha nor Victor could speak, so appalled were they by the sight of the gestating children. Although they had tried to prepare themselves for the unexpected, this was a shock too outrageous to behold.
“I’m sure you’re wondering what this is all about,” VJ
said, moving up to one of the tanks and checking one of the many read-out devices. He hit it with his fist and a stuck needle indicator sprang into the green-painted normal zone.
“My early work on implantation had me modeling wombs with tissue culture. Solving the implantation problem also solved the problems of why a uterus was needed at all.”
“How old are these children?” Marsha asked.
“Eight and a half months,” VJ said, confirming Marsha’s impression. “I’ll be keeping them gestating a lot longer than the usual nine months. They will be easier to raise the longer I keep them in their tanks.”
“Where did you get the zygotes?” Victor asked, although he already knew the answer.
