Робин Кук - Mutation

Booting up the computer, VJ loaded Pac-Man and tried to concentrate.

The fluorescent lights blinked, then filled the room with their rude light. Victor stepped aside and let Marsha precede him into the lab. She’d been there on a few occasions, but it had always been during the day. She was surprised how sinister the place looked at night with no people to relieve its sterile appearance. The room was about fifty feet by thirty with lab benches and hoods along each wall. In the center was a large island comprised of scientific equipment, each instrument more exotic than the next. There was a profusion of dials, cathode ray tubes, computers, glass tubing, and mazes of electronic connectors.

A number of doors led from the main room. Victor led Marsha through one to an L-shaped area filled with dissecting tables. Marsha glanced at the scalpels and other horrid instruments and shuddered. Beyond that room and through a glass door with embedded wire was the animal room, and from where Marsha was standing she could see dogs and apes pacing behind the bars of their cages. She looked away. That was a part of research that she preferred not to think about.

“This way,” Victor said, guiding her to the very back of the L, where the wall was clear glass.

Flipping a switch, Victor turned on the light behind the glass. Marsha was surprised to see a series of large aquariums, each containing dozens of strange-looking sea creatures. They resembled snails but without their shells.

Victor pulled over a stepladder. After searching through a number of the tanks, he took a dissecting pan from one of the tables and climbed the ladder. With a net, he caught two creatures from separate tanks.

“Is this necessary?” asked Marsha, wondering what these hideous creatures had to do with Victor’s concern about VJ’s health.

Victor didn’t answer. He came down the stepladder, balancing the tray. Marsha took a long look at the creatures. They were about ten inches long, brownish in color, with a slimy, gelatinous skin. She choked down a wave of nausea. She hated this sort of thing. It was one of the reasons she’d gone into psychiatry: therapy was clean, neat, and very human.

“Victor!” Marsha said as she watched him impale the creatures into the wax-bottomed dissecting pan, spreading out their fins, or whatever they were. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

“Because you wouldn’t believe me,” Victor said. “Be patient for a few moments more.” He took a scalpel and inserted a fresh, razor-sharp blade.

Marsha looked away as he quickly slit open each of the animals.

“These are Aplasia,” Victor said, trying to cover his own nervousness with a strictly scientific approach. “They have been used widely for nerve cell research.” He picked up a scissor and began snipping quickly and deliberately.

“There,” he said. “I’ve removed the abdominal ganglion from each of the Aplasia.”

Marsha looked. Victor was holding a small flat dish filled with clear fluid. Within, floating on the surface of the liquid, were two minute pieces of tissue.

“Now come over to the microscope,” Victor said.

“What about those poor creatures?” Marsha asked, forcing herself to look into the dissecting pan. The animals seemed to be struggling against the pins that held them on the bottom of the tray.

“The techs will clean up in the morning,” Victor said, missing her meaning. He turned on the light of the microscope.

With one last look at the Aplasia, Marsha went over to Victor, who was already busily peering down and adjusting the focus on the two-man dissecting scope.

She bent over and looked. The ganglia were in the shape of the letter H with the swollen crosspiece resembling a transparent bag of clear marbles. The arms of the H were undoubtedly transsected nerve fibers. Victor was moving a pointer, and he told Marsha to count the nerve cells or neurons as he indicated them.

Marsha did as she was told.

“Okay,” Victor said. “Let’s look at the other ganglion.”

The visual field rushed by, then stopped. There was another H like the first. “Count again,” Victor said.

“This one has more than twice as many neurons as the other.”

“Precisely!” Victor said, straightening up and getting to his feet. He began to pace. His face had an odd, excited sheen, and Marsha began to feel the beginnings of fear. “I got very interested in the number of nerve cells of normal Aplasia about twelve years ago. At that time I knew, like everyone else, that nerve cells differentiated and proliferated during early embryological development. Since these Aplasia were relatively less complicated than higher animals, I was able to isolate the protein which was responsible for the process which I called nerve growth factor, or NGF. You follow me?” Victor stopped his pacing to look directly at Marsha.

“Yes,” Marsha said, watching her husband. He seemed to be changing in front of her eyes. He’d developed a disturbing messianic appearance. She suddenly felt queasy, with the awful thought that she knew where this seemingly irrelevant lecture was heading.

Victor recommenced his pacing as his excitement grew. “I used genetic engineering to reproduce the protein and isolate the responsible gene. Then, for the brilliant part...” He stopped again in front of Marsha. His eyes sparkled. “I took a fertilized Aplasia egg or zygote and after causing a point mutation in its DNA, I inserted the new NGF gene along with a promoter. The result?”

“More ganglionic neurons,” Marsha answered.

“Exactly,” Victor said excitedly. “And, equally as important, the ability to pass the trait on to its offspring. Now, come back into the main room.” He gave Marsha a hand, and pulled her to her feet.

Dumbly she followed him to a light box, where he displayed some large transparencies of microscopic sections of rat brains. Even without counting, Marsha was able to appreciate that there were many more nerve cells in one photograph than the other. Still speechless, she let him herd her into the animal room itself. Just inside the door he slipped on a pair of heavy leather gloves.

Marsha tried not to breathe. It smelled like a badly run zoo. There were hundreds of cages housing apes, dogs, cats, and rats. They stopped by the rats.

Marsha shuddered at the innumerable pink twitching noses and hairless pink tails.

Victor stopped by a specific cage and unhooked the door. Reaching in, he pulled out a large rat that responded by biting repeatedly at Victor’s gloved fingers.

“Easy, Charlie!” Victor said. He carried the rat over to a table with a glass top, raised a portion of the glass, and dropped the rat into what appeared to be a miniature maze. The rat was trapped just in front of the starting gate.

“Watch!” Victor said, raising the gate.

After a moment’s pause, the rat entered the maze. With only a few wrong turns the animal reached the exit and got its reward.

“Quick, huh?” Victor said with a satisfied smile. “This is one of my ‘smart’ rats. They are rats in which I inserted the NGF gene. Now watch this.”

Victor adjusted the apparatus so that the rat was returned to the start position, but in a section that did not have access to the maze. Victor then went back to the cages and got a second rat. He dropped it inside the table so the two rats faced each other through a wire mesh.

After a moment or two he opened the gate and the second rat went through the maze without a single mistake.

“Do you know what you just witnessed?” Victor asked.

Marsha shook her head.

“Rat communication,” Victor said. “I’ve been able to train these rats to explain the maze to each other. It’s incredible.”

“I’m certain it is,” Marsha said with less enthusiasm than Victor.