Robert Sawyer - Frameshift

Beep!

“Avi, call me as soon as you can. It’s Pierre Tardivel — the geneticist at Lawrence Berkeley. Call me right away. It’s important.” Pierre read out his number, then hung up.

“He’s out of town for the day,” said Pierre to Molly, who was sitting on a lab stool. “I’ll call him again Monday if he doesn’t call first.” He moved over to her and hugged her. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll get through this.”

Molly’s eyes were still bloodshot. “I know,” she said, nodding slightly. “I know.” She looked at her watch. “Let’s go get Amanda from Mrs. Bailey. I want to hold my daughter.”

Pierre hugged her again.

Pierre’s conscience had been bothering him for days. It wasn’t as though he’d taken anything valuable. But, still, a man’s razor was a very personal item. It might have meant a lot to Bryan Proctor’s widow — an important way of remembering him. And, well, if things did get out of hand with Klimus, and they had to flee to Canada, Pierre didn’t want this continuing to prey on his mind. He wasn’t sure what pretext he’d use to explain his visit, but if he could get back into the apartment, he could return the razor to the medicine chest, maybe hiding it behind some other items so that its reappearance wouldn’t be obvious.

He pulled up to the dilapidated apartment building in San Francisco, walked into the entryway, and pushed the intercom button labeled super.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Proctor? It’s Pierre Tardivel.”

Silence for several seconds, then buzzing from the door. Pierre made his way slowly over to suite 101. Mrs. Proctor was waiting for him in the doorway, hands on hips. “You took my husband’s razor,” she said flatly.

Pierre felt his face grow flush. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

He pulled a small, clear plastic bag containing the razor out of his pocket.

“I’m — I’m a geneticist; I wanted a DNA sample.”

“What on earth for?”

“I thought maybe he had a genetic disorder that you didn’t know about.”

“And?”

“He didn’t. At least not a common, easily-tested-for one.”

“Which is precisely what I told you. What’s this all about, Mr. Tardivel?”

Pierre wanted to be a million kilometers away. “I’m sorry. It’s all crazy. I feel terrible.”

She kept staring at him, unblinking, golf-ball chin thrust out.

“I just had this crazy theory that maybe your husband’s death and the attempt on my life were linked. You know I’ve got a genetic disorder, and I though maybe he did, too.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No, he was in perfect health.”

The woman looked at Pierre, surprise on her face. “Well, I’d hardly say that. He was on a waiting list for a kidney transplant.”

Pierre felt his heart skip a beat. “ What? ”

“He had bum kidneys.”

Pierre was angry. “But I asked you if he had any inherited disorders—”

“He didn’t inherit this problem. It was a result of an injury. His kidneys were damaged in a car accident about ten years ago and had gotten steadily worse.”

“God,” said Pierre. “Jesus God.”

“Justice.”

“Avi Meyer, OSI, please.”

“Just a sec.”

“Meyer.”

“Avi, it’s Pierre Tardivel.”

“Hi, Pierre. Sorry not to get back to you yet. I was out of town. Say, any luck with your complaint against Condor Health?” Pierre had previously called Avi to find out whether the coercing of abortions was legal under federal law; it was.

“No,” said Pierre, “but that’s not why I’m calling. I’m phoning about Burian Klimus.”

“We don’t have anything new,” said Avi with a sigh.

“Maybe you don’t, but I do. You’re right about him. He’s Ivan Grozny.”

Avi’s voice was excited, but cautious. “What makes you say that?”

“You know the attempt on my life? The guy who tried to kill me was a neo-Nazi, right? Chuck Hanratty?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, Hanratty previously killed a guy named Bryan Proctor — and Proctor had bum kidneys.”

“So?”

“And Joan Dawson, a diabetic here at LBNL, was murdered, too, by a very similar knife to the one used in the attack on me; it wasn’t Hanratty who killed her, of course — he was dead by that point. But it could very well have been someone connected to Hanratty — meaning someone connected to the Millennial Reich.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And three Huntington’s disease sufferers were murdered recently in San Francisco — and Burian Klimus had met all three of them.”

“Really?”

“And I’ve checked tissue samples from a hundred and seventeen victims of unsolved murders here in the Bay Area — a vastly disproportionate number of them had bad genes.”

“So you think — shit, you think Klimus is doing what? Purging society of defectives?”

“ Mein Kampf , chapter one, verse one,” said Pierre.

“You’re sure about all this?” said Avi.

“Positive.”

“You better be right,” said Avi.

“I am.”

“ ‘Cause if this is just some disgruntled-employee shit — if you’re just making trouble for your boss — then you’re making a huge mistake. OSI’s part of the Department of Justice, and you don’t fuck with Justice.”

Pierre’s tone was determined. “Klimus is Ivan the Terrible. I’m convinced of that.”

Pierre loved his daughter — of that he had no doubts. But, well, he was a scientist, and he couldn’t help being intrigued by her special heritage. He knew that her DNA would differ from that of a modern human by far less than 1 percent. Hell, chimpanzee DNA deviated from modern human DNA by only 1.6 percent (chimps and humans having diverged some six million years ago). The differences between Amanda and other children who hadn’t bypassed the last sixty thousand years of human evolution were surely very subtle. Still, something — some tiny genetic change — had given the less-physically-robust modern humans some sort of advantage over the Neanderthals, leading to the disappearance of the latter. The attachment areas for Neanderthal pectoral muscles were twice the size of those in modern humans; they would have had Arnold Schwarzenegger’s physique without working at it. Yet something tipped the balance in favor of Homo s apiens sapiens . Even while reviling Klimus’s outrageous experiment, Pierre could understand the fascination with studying Neanderthal DNA.

Using restriction enzymes to break up Amanda’s DNA into manageable fragments, he started looking for differences, and was surprised to find some unexpected ones. They weren’t in her protein-synthesizing DNA but rather in several long strands of junk DNA.

Intrigued, Pierre decided to visit the San Francisco Zoo. Surely he could cajole an array of primate tissue samples from the curator…

Pierre and Molly attended another meeting of the Bay Area Huntington’s Support Group in San Francisco; by this stage, he really did need the support.

The guest speaker was a loud PR woman from a company that made wheelchairs, walkers, and other aids for the mobility-impaired. Pierre hadn’t realized so many high-tech options were available.

After the meeting, he spoke again to white-haired Carl Berringer. “Good meeting,” said Pierre. “Interesting speaker.”

Carl’s whole upper body was shaking. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

“Umm, yes. Pierre Tardivel, from Montreal, originally. I came to a meeting about fifteen months ago.”

“Forgive me. My memory’s not what it used to be.”

Pierre nodded. He himself had not yet encountered many mental difficulties, but he knew they were a common part of Huntington’s.