Филип Керр - The Second Angel

They were soon at the hospital. Located in a large park on the edge of the Zone and surrounded by monumental sculptures, one of them by Aria’s own father, the large glass building had the air of a Greek temple — an effect that was enhanced by the presence of a smaller altarlike blood transfusion center opposite the main entrance.

The little trio presented itself at an informal reception area that occupied a vast open space at the center of the building. There, a pleasant if slightly overweight woman, wearing a white paper dress, greeted the three individually by name and asked if they had enjoyed a comfortable journey.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Dallas, although he could not remember the smallest detail of the flight. Not the route they had taken, nor the traffic they had encountered. It was as if he had suffered a forty-five-minute amnesia.

‘Did you bring your digital thought recording?’ asked the woman.

Dallas handed over a gold disc that was about the size of an old-fashioned coin. It contained thoughts of Dallas’s father, for a Motion Parallax. For legal and insurance reasons, doctors were forbidden to communicate directly with patients, and all consultations were normally handled by a diagnostic computer. A Motion Parallax program using the image of a person who was familiar to a patient was held to be the best way of making the resulting dialogue seem less impersonal.

‘Please follow me,’ said the woman.

She led them to the long edge of the building and a private space with a couple of easy chairs.

‘Take a seat,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you now, to set up the Motion Parallax. It’ll be a minute or two before you can interact with the program that’s been dealing with your daughter’s case.’

They sat down and waited. Aria had never met Dallas’s father. These days he spent most of his time traveling outside of the States. But the impression she had gained of him from a variety of recorded images was of a handsome, immensely distinguished man with silver hair and a golden voice — like some grand old actor instead of a university professor.

The Motion Parallax fizzed into life, an invisible vessel filling up with sound and color. Seeing him now, she was struck by how much clearer in the old man’s broad features were Dallas’s own racial antecedents, for although he and his father had been born in America, they were of Greek descent. She had no idea of just how significant ancestry — her own as well as his — was about to become.

John Dallas smiled benignly at his son and daughter-in-law and leaned across the large walnut desk that his son always remembered whenever he tried to recall an image of his father.

‘Hi there,’ said Dallas.

‘Hello, son. Hello, Aria. Is that my granddaughter you have there?’

Aria nodded and hoped that by the time the real John Dallas saw Caro, there would be some change for the better in the child’s condition.

‘First of all,’ the Motion Parallax was saying, ‘I’d like to thank you both for your patience. I know things haven’t been easy for you of late. It’s taken us a little time to get where we are now. To a position where we can finally say, “Yes, we know what’s the matter with the child.” But you know, modern medicine still has a long way to travel. We have learned so much that’s new that sometimes we forget what we already knew. There are so many modern diseases we can cure today — HIV, P2, St. Petersburg fever, Waugh’s disease, Ebola fever, New Guinea cholera — that sometimes we don’t pay enough attention to some of the more ancient ones.’

‘Is that what this is?’ asked Dallas. ‘An old disease?’

‘Yes. Caro’s suffering from what the peoples of the ancient world used to call “sea fever.” ’

‘But we never swim in the ocean,’ protested Aria. ‘Do we, Dallas?’

‘That’s right,’ he confirmed. ‘People like us just wouldn’t go near it. The ocean’s not much more than a toilet these days. The diseases in the Atlantic are about the only things alive in it.’

Dallas Senior nodded patiently.

‘As I said, it’s merely what the peoples of the ancient world called this disease. That is, the people who lived around the Mediterranean Sea, since most of the early cases originated there. These days, however, we know the disease by a different name. We call it thalassemia. It comes from the Greek words thalassa, “sea,” an, “none,” and haimia, “blood.” ’

‘And this is what Caro’s got?’ asked Aria. ‘Thalassemia?’

‘That’s right, Aria. The thalassemias are a heterogeneous group of inherited disorders characterized by reduced or absent synthesis by one or more globin chain type. This leads to a situation in which body oxygen demands are not met by the circulating blood cell mass, which itself suffers a shortened life span.’

‘How did she get it?’ frowned Aria, who always thought she had been as careful with her child as was humanly possible.

‘Well, in a way, you both gave it to her.’

‘We did?’

‘If you’re at all familiar with Gregor Mendel’s Laws of Independent Assortment, then I’m sure I can explain it.’

Dallas shook his head. ‘I think you’d best try and keep it simple for now.’

‘All right. You are both descended from people who once lived in Mediterranean countries where malaria used to be endemic. Your ancestors, Dallas, came from Greece, while your people, Aria, originally came from Sardinia. That means you each inherited a gene from your parents that gave you some protection against malaria. But only in the heterozygous state, by which I mean a zygote formed by a union of two unlike gametes. The trouble is that you are both homozygous and your union was a union of two similar gametes. And that was unfortunate for Caro, because her illness is caused by these genetically determined abnormalities. It’s what gives her this peculiar blood disorder.’ Dallas Senior shook his head. ‘I’m not making a very good job of keeping it simple I’m afraid. Best just say that it’s the result of a recessive gene, and leave it there, eh?’

‘Wait a minute,’ protested Aria. ‘Before we tried to have children, we were both screened by our blood bank. Why didn’t they pick this up then?’

‘Because they only screen for viruses. Like P2. This is genetic. The screening process wouldn’t have picked this up at all. Wasn’t designed to. Besides, here in the States, it’s extremely rare. During the past fifty-seven years, there has been only one other case like it in this hospital. That’s why we took rather longer to find out what it was. Of course, now it all makes perfect sense. The absence of globin synthesis. The functional anemia. The hepatosplenomegaly, by which I mean her enlarged liver and spleen. The slight skeletal deformities such as the bossing of the skull and the curious maxillary prominence.’

Aria glanced down at the silent baby that lay in her lap. She had grown used to the shape of Caro’s head, and these days, she hardly thought it curious at all. ‘So how do we cure it?’ she asked quietly.

‘We can treat it,’ said the Motion Parallax. ‘But we can’t actually cure it. You can’t cure something that exists at a genetic level. You do see that, don’t you? It would be like trying to cure one of being Greek or Sardinian.’

Aria nodded. ‘But you can treat it.’

‘Yes.’ Dallas Senior’s voice sounded awkward. ‘It can be treated. However, the treatment is very expensive.’

Aria frowned. ‘We’re not poor people,’ she said, controlling the slight irritation she felt at the very suggestion that they might not be able to afford something. Of course this was why the hospital insisted that you bring your own digital thought recording — so that you were more disposed to maintain a calm and friendly interaction with the computer, instead of losing your temper and shouting at it.