White Teeth

Irie gritted her teeth, picked up the phone and redialled the number she had cut off. It was a journalist (it was always journalists these days), and she had something to read to him. She’d had a crash course in media relations since her exams, and dealing with them/it had taught her there was no point in trying to deal with each one separately. To give some unique point of view to the FT and then to the Mirror and then to the Daily Mail was impossible. It was their job, not yours, to get the angle, to write their separate book of the huge media bible. Each to their own. Reporters were factional, fanatical, obsessively defending their own turf, propounding the same thing day after day. So it had always been. Who would have guessed that Luke and John would take such different angles on the scoop of the century, the death of the Lord? It just went to prove that you couldn’t trust these guys. Irie’s job, then, was to give the information as it stood, every time, verbatim from a piece of paper written by Marcus and Magid, stapled to the wall.

‘All right,’ said the journo. ‘Tape’s running.’

And here Irie stumbled at the first hurdle of PR: believing in what you sell. It wasn’t that she lacked the moral faith. It was more fundamental than that. She didn’t believe in it as a physical fact. She didn’t believe it existed. FutureMouse© was now such an enormous, spectacular, cartoon of an idea (in every paper’s column, agonized over by journos – Should it get a patent? Eulogized by hacks – Greatest achievement of the century?), one expected the damn mouse to stand up and speak by itself. Irie took a deep breath. Though she had repeated the words many times, they still seemed fantastical, absurd – fiction on the wings of fantasy – with more of a dash of Surrey T. Banks in them:

PRESS RELEASE: 15 OCTOBER 1992

Subject: Launch of FutureMouse^©

Professor Marcus Chalfen, writer, celebrated scientist and leading figure of a group of research geneticists from St Jude’s College, intends to ‘launch’ his latest ‘design’ in a public space; to increase understanding of transgenics and to raise interest and further investment in his work. The design will demonstrate the sophistication of the work being done on gene manipulation and demystify this much maligned branch of biological research. It will be accompanied by a full exhibition, a lecture hall, a multimedia area and interactive games for children. It will be funded in part by the government’s Millennial Science Commission, with additional monies from business and industry.

A two-week-old FutureMouse^© is to be put on display at the Perret Institute in London on 31 December 1992. There it will remain on public display until 31 December 1999. This mouse is genetically normal except for a select group of novel genes that are added to the genome. A DNA clone of these genes is injected into the fertilized mouse egg, thus linking them to the chromosomal DNA in the zygote, which is subsequently inherited by cells of the resulting embryo. Before injection into the germ line, these genes are custom-designed so they can be ‘turned on’ and expressed only in specific mouse tissue and along a predictable timetable. The mouse will be the site for an experiment into the ageing of cells, the progression of cancer within cells, and a few other matters that will serve as surprises along the way!

The journalist laughed. ‘Jesus. What the fuck does that mean?’

‘I dunno,’ said Irie. ‘Surprises, I guess.’

She continued:

The mouse will live the seven years it is on display, roughly double the normal life expectancy of a mouse. The mouse development is retarded, therefore, at a ratio of two years for every one. At the end of the first year the SV40 large-T oncogene, which the mouse carries in the insulin-producing pancreas cells, will express itself in pancreatic carcinomas that will continue to develop at a retarded pace throughout its life. At the end of the second year the H-ras oncogene in its skin cells will begin to express itself in multiple benign papillomas that an observer will be able to see clearly three months later with the naked eye. Four years into the experiment the mouse will begin to lose its ability to produce melanin by means of a slow, programmed eradication of the enzyme tyrosinase. At this point the mouse will lose all its pigmentation and become albino: a white mouse. If no external or unexpected interference occurs, the mouse will live until 31 December 1999, dying within the month after that date. The FutureMouse^© experiment offers the public a unique opportunity to see a life and death in ‘close-up’. The opportunity to witness for themselves a technology that might yet slow the progress of disease, control the process of ageing and eliminate genetic defect. The FutureMouse^© holds out the tantalizing promise of a new phase in human history where we are not victims of the random but instead directors and arbitrators of our own fate.

‘Bloody hell,’ said the journo. ‘Scary shit.’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ said Irie vacantly (she had ten more calls to make this morning). ‘Do you want me to post on some of the photographic material?’

‘Yeah, go on. Save me going through the archive. Cheers.’

Just as Irie put down the phone, Joyce flew into the room like a hippy comet, a great stream of black fringed velvet, kaftan and multiple silk scarves.

‘Don’t use the phone! I’ve told you before. We’ve got to keep the phone free. Millat might be trying to ring.’

Four days earlier Millat had missed a psychiatrist’s appointment Joyce had arranged for him. He had not been seen since. Everyone knew he was with KEVIN, and everyone knew he had no intention of ringing Joyce. Everyone except Joyce.

‘It’s simply essential that I talk with him if he rings. We’re so close to a breakthrough. Marjorie’s almost certain it’s Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.’

‘And how come you know all this? I thought Marjorie was a doctor. What the fuck happened to doctor- patient privilege?’

‘Oh, Irie, don’t be silly. She’s a friend too. She’s just trying to keep me informed.’

‘Middle-class mafia, more like.’

‘Oh really. Don’t be so hysterical. You’re getting more hysterical by the day. Look, I need you to keep off the phone.’

‘I know. You said.’

‘Because if Marjorie’s right, and it is ADD, he really needs to get to a doctor and some methylphenidate. It’s a very debilitative condition.’

‘Joyce, he hasn’t got a disorder, he’s just a Muslim. There are one billion of them. They can’t all have ADD.’

Joyce took in a little gasp of air. ‘I think you’re being very cruel. That’s exactly the kind of comment that isn’t helpful.’

She stalked over to the bread board, tearfully cut off a huge lump of cheese and said, ‘Look. The most important thing is that I get the two of them to face each other. It’s time.’

Irie looked dubious. ‘Why is it time?’

Joyce popped the lump of cheese into her mouth. ‘It’s time because they need each other.’

‘But if they don’t want to, they don’t want to.’

‘Sometimes people don’t know what they want. They don’t know what they need. Those boys need each other like…’ Joyce thought for a moment. She was bad with metaphor. In a garden you never planted