Robert Sawyer - Frameshift

“We’d expected some of them. Sally Banas, for instance. In fact, she’d held on longer than any of us had thought she would.” Berringer’s head movements were distracting; Pierre fought the irritation growing within him. “Another one was a suicide. Young man, only been to a couple of meetings. Recently diagnosed.” Berringer shook his head. “You know how it is.”

Pierre nodded. Only too well.

“But the other three…” Berringer had reached his left arm over to help steady his right. “World’s a crazy place, Pierre. Maybe it’s not so bad up in Canada, but down here…”

“What happened?”

“Well, they were all pretty new members — only recently manifesting the disease. They should have had years left. One of them — Peter Mansbridge — was shot. Two others were knifed to death, six months apart. Muggings, it seems.”

“God,” said Pierre. What had he done, coming to the States? He’d been assaulted, Joan Dawson had been murdered, and every time he turned around he heard about more violent crime.

Berringer tried to shake his head, but the gesture was obscured by the jerking motion. “I don’t ask for pity,” he said slowly, “but you’d think anyone who saw one of us moving the way we do would leave us in peace, instead of killing us for the few bucks we might have in our wallets.”

At last, the long-awaited day came. Pierre drove Molly to Alta Bates Hospital on Colby Street. In the Toyota’s trunk, as there had been for the last two weeks, were Molly’s suitcase and a video camcorder — an unexpected gift from Burian Klimus, who had insisted to Pierre and Molly that videotaping the birth was all the rage now.

Alta Bates had beautiful delivery rooms, more like hotel suites than hospital facilities. Pierre had to admit that one thing missing from Canada’s government-run hospitals was any touch of luxury, but here — well, he was just thankful that Molly’s faculty-association health plan was covering the expenses…

Pierre sat on a softly padded chair, beaming at his wife and newborn daughter.

A middle-aged black nurse came in to check on them. “Have the two of you decided on a name yet?” she asked.

Molly looked at Pierre, making sure he was still happy with the choice.

Pierre nodded. “Amanda,” she said. “Amanda Helene.”

“One English name and one French,” said Pierre, smiling at the nurse.

“They’re both pretty names,” said the nurse.

“ ‘Amanda’ means ‘worthy of being loved,’ ” said Molly. There was a knock at the door, and then, a moment later, the door swung open. “May I come in?”

“Burian!” said Molly.

“Dr. Klimus,” said Pierre, a bit surprised. “How good of you to come.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said the old man, making his way across the room.

“I’ll leave you alone,” said the nurse, smiling and exiting.

“The birth went well?” asked Klimus. “No complications?”

“Everything was fine,” said Molly. “Exhausting, but fine.”

“You recorded it all on videotape?”

Pierre nodded.

“And the baby is normal?”

“Just fine.”

“A boy or a girl?” Klimus asked. Pierre felt his eyebrows lifting; that was usually the first question, not the fourth.

“A girl,” said Molly.

Klimus moved closer to see for himself. “Good head of hair,” he said, touching a gnarled hand to his own billiard-ball pate, but making no other comment about the child’s paternity. “How much does she weigh?”

“Seven pounds, twelve ounces,” said Molly.

“And her length?”

“Seventeen inches.”

He nodded. “Very good.”

Molly discreetly moved Amanda to her breast, mostly hidden by her hospital robe. Then she looked up. “I want to thank you, Burian. We both do. For everything you’ve done for us. We can’t begin to say how grateful we are.”

“ Oui ,”said Pierre, all his fears having dissipated. His daughter was an angel; how could she possibly have a devil’s genes? “ Millefois merci .”

The old man nodded and looked away. “It was nothing.”

Je ne suis pas fou , thought Pierre, a month later. I’m not crazy . And yet the frameshift was gone. He’d wanted to do more studies of the DNA sequence that produced the strange neurotransmitter associated with Molly’s telepathy. He’d used a restriction enzyme to snip out the bit of chromosome thirteen that coded for its synthesis. So far, so good. Then, to provide himself with an unlimited supply of the genetic material, he set up PCR amplification of it — the polymerase chain reaction, which would keep duplicating that segment of DNA over and over again. Needing nothing more than a test tube containing the specimen, a thermocycler, and a few reagents, PCR could produce a hundred billion copies of a DNA molecule over the course of an afternoon.

And now he had billions of copies — except that, although the copies were all identical to each other, they weren’t the same as the original. The thymine base that had wormed its way into Molly’s genetic code, causing the frameshift, hadn’t been incorporated into the copies. At the key point, the snips of DNA produced through PCR all read CAT CAG GGT GTC

CAT. Just like Pierre’s own did; just like everybody’s did.

Could he have screwed up? Could he have misread the sequence of nucleotides in that original sample of Molly’s DNA he’d extracted from her blood all those months ago? He rummaged in his file drawer until he found his original autorad. No mistake: the thymine intruder was there.

He went through the long process of making another autorad from another piece of Molly’s actual original DNA. Yup, the thymine showed up there, too — the frameshift was present, shifting the normal CAT CAG GGT

GTC CAT into TCA TCA GGG TGT CCA.

PCR was a simple chemical procedure. It shouldn’t care if the thymine really belonged there or not. It should have just faithfully duplicated the string.

But it had not. It — or something in the DNA reproduction process — had c orrected the string, putting it back the way it was supposed to be.

Pierre shook his head in wonder.

“Good morning, Dr. Klimus,” said Pierre coming into the HGC office to pick up his mail.

“Tardivel,” said Klimus. “How is the baby?”

“She’s fine, sir. Just fine.”

“Still have all that hair?”

“Oh, yes.” Pierre smiled. “In fact, she’s even got a hairy back — even I don’t have a hairy back. But the pediatrician says that’s not unusual, and it should disappear as her hormones become better balanced.”

“Is she a bright girl?”

“She seems to be.”

“Well-adjusted?”

“Actually, for someone just a month old she’s rather quiet, which is nice, in a way. At least we’re managing to get some sleep.”

“I’d like to come by the house this weekend. See the girl.”

It was a presumptuous request, thought Pierre. But then — dammit, he w as the child’s biological father. Pierre felt his stomach knotting. He cursed himself for thinking anything this complex would end up not being a source of problems. Still, the man was Pierre’s boss, and Pierre’s fellowship was coming up for renewal.

“Um, sure,” said Pierre. He hoped Klimus would detect the lack of enthusiasm and decide not to pursue the matter. He took his mail from its cubbyhole.

“In fact,” said the old man, “perhaps I’ll come over for dinner Sunday night. At six? Make an evening of it.”

Pierre’s heart sank. He thought of something Einstein had once said:

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. “Sure,”