Prototype

in good conscience, consider it an illness.

While a gross mutation, it was not a debilitating condition on par with Down’s and Wolf-Hirschborn syndromes. There was no developmental abnormality as with any of several misprints affecting the sex chromosomes. So far as she could discern, Helverson’s syndrome manifested itself — aside from benign facial- structure similarities, and such frequently reported quirks as resistance to sedatives and alcohol intolerance — in emotional and psychological affect. But detrimentally so: Its carriers seemed ill-equipped to contend with standard human stresses and interactions. If there was a common thread running through the dozen case studies, and now Clay’s life, this was it.

Experience can override biology, she had assured him, but here the data challenged that precept. Among the thirteen, there was not a single exception to what looked to be a depressing rule.

All along she had wanted to believe that, as in countless other behavioral disturbances, genetics may have played a factor in predisposing someone to certain tendencies, but whether or not these were manifested was due to upbringing and environmental conditions. An authoritarian father, an abusive mother, a loveless home… one or more trigger mechanisms. A room packed with gunpowder may sit calmly for a lifetime, as long as it’s never introduced to a spark.

While she could not know everything about the first dozen, their backgrounds seemed to transcend even those broad criteria. One of the Americans, a twenty-seven-year-old named Timothy Van der Leun, whose home was listed as Indianapolis, was the son of a Lutheran minister whose family had cooperated fully in research, and had been found to be quite loving and healthy. Yet Van der Leun’s life had been plagued by much the same turmoil as the rest.

While thirteen made a tiny research population by most lab standards, it was nevertheless difficult not to make sweeping conclusions based on available evidence. That extra chromosome did something to them. It heightened aggression and curtailed more tender emotions. It turned them into outsiders, adrift in societies for which they had more contempt than love.

What a find it would be if one were located whose life had taken a placid course. It would belie everything she was thinking while trying so hard not to. It would bury the notion that the stigma surrounding Helverson’s was pure biological determinism. It would prove they were not prisoners of a rogue chromosome.

For that matter, what a find it would be if one were located who was female. More statistical unease.

If she allowed her intuitive right brain to leapfrog ahead of its logical left counterpart, it would almost appear as if something were deliberately guiding this. Some bored god shuffling molecular parts in a new configuration — there, let’s see how this works.

She was big on theory, conjecture. Dutifully, she logged her evaluations of Clay in her notebook computer. She composed weekly reports and uploaded them to the mainframe at Arizona Associated Labs. She sought weekly feedback from Ferris Mendenhall, a link to the structure of Ward Five, almost distrusting his opinion that she was handling the case as well as could be expected from anyone.

She told them all how Clay professed to be more at ease with the world since having a trusted therapist to talk with, and they all found that of interest. She was just waiting for them to tell her to cut him off, therapeutically speaking; see if he reverted.

At his next Wednesday session, following Sarah’s introduction to the others at Graham’s, he was in fine form, low-key, and she gently worked her way around to a discussion of the possibility of a spontaneous mutation that had some as yet unexplainable reason behind it. Thinking this may be a good way, after another session or two, to reveal the existence of the others. Perhaps he would be strong enough now to handle the fact of them, their lives. Their sad lives.

She found his response to today encouraging, Clay as intrigued as if this were an evolutionary mystery to be solved, and he a smoking gun.

Her only real fear was ethical: In getting Clay to consider the possibility of some process at work here, rather than a random fluke, was she overstepping her bounds of authority? Dabbling in lines of thought for which she was unqualified?

No, that’s the problem with science, there are too many delineations, she told herself in rebuttal. Too many specialists who can’t let themselves see beyond their specialty. Too many experts dividing the material body from immaterial consciousness.

Western medicine was only recently beginning to admit what Eastern physicians had known for thousands of years: All things are one, connected, interdependent.

And most times she thought she would rather be boldly wrong than so narrowly timid she dared never stick her neck out.

The only drawback: You could never know how wrong you might be.

* * *

He came over Thursday afternoon, unexpected, unannounced, and, once she got a good look into his eyes, unbalanced. Clay stormed past her with a sheaf of papers clutched in one fist, trembling as he bristled from the core.

“Don’t lie to me,” he said, voice a raw crack of air. “I’ll smell it from you this time.”

She could feel it instantly, that same cold squeeze of her heart she’d known that day in her office when Clay had experienced a minor breakthrough, trembling with furies she did not wholly trust him to contain. He had become that Clay all over again, Clay at the breaking point, an atavism with the smell of the city wafting from his clothes.

Adrienne was acutely aware of the door at her back, how alone she was, Sarah off with Nina, doing Nina things, the two of them new friends, Nina probably asking for lessons, Teach me how to be a lesbian.

She shut the door, could not run now. She had expected this to be a smooth process? Setbacks were inevitable.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” she said.

“You held back from me. You held back information from me!”

Frowning, Adrienne stepped forward, inner alarms giving way to curiosity.

“Tell me if these places strike you as having anything in common.” He could not stand still, pacing with the frightening deliberate monotony of a lion in a cage, back and forth between the sofa and the open bar that bordered the kitchen. “Los Angeles, Texas — death row no less — Indianapolis.”

Her breath lodged in her throat.

“Seattle, let’s see, that’s it for this country, umm, oh yeah, Canada’s got one.”

One question huge, echoing: How had this happened?

“Two for Japan, the little fuckers probably build cars that blow up on impact' — wheeling on her then, screaming into her face — “Have you figured out yet what I’m talking about?'

Everything she had accomplished with him, the distances she had brought him in two months — Adrienne could sense them slipping away. Any danger from Clay was forgotten as soon as she recognized the hurt stamped upon every feature of his face. The ache, the sense of betrayal. The loathing. This must be the feeling of pulling someone to the brink of safety from a flood, and just as they rise cold and shivering from the murky depths, seeing them disappear once more, traceless in an eye blink, no second chances.

How? How?

Sarah? Could Sarah have copied some of this information and given it to him? Would she have? Surely not.

“All right, Clay, listen to me.” She strove for reasoned calm that she did not possess. “I understand that you must feel — ”

“No! No, you don’t! I used to think you might, but you don’t understand or you wouldn’t have let me find out this way!” One arm trembled in the air, then he snatched up a cereal box from the bar  — Sarah’s breakfast — and hurled it across the kitchen. It struck the corner of the range hood, bursting like a boil, cereal showering across the stovetop and counter and floor. “There’s twelve more and they’re just like I am, they’re all this way!”

She made herself take one more step in his direction. “Clay, show me what you’re holding.”

He threw them at her, most of the pages staying together in a sheaf that struck her full in the face. She