Energy had been building within the millions of neurons since they’d first formed six months previously. The nerve cells were sizzling with electrical energy steadily galvanizing toward a voltaic threshold. The arborization of the nerve cells’ dendrites and the supporting microglia cells had been increasing at an exponential rate, with hundreds of thousands of new synaptic connections arising every hour. It was like a nuclear reactor on the brink of hypercriticality.

At last it happened! The threshold was reached and surpassed. Microbolts of electric charges spread like wildfire through the complicated plexus of synaptic connections, energizing the whole mass. Intracellular vesicles poured forth their neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, increasing the level of excitation to another critical point.

Out of this complex microscopic cellular activity emerged one of the mysteries of the universe: consciousness! Mind had once more been born of matter.

Consciousness was the faculty that provided foundation for memory and meaning; and also terror and dread. Withconsciousness came the burden of knowledge of eventual death. But at that moment, the consciousness created was consciousness without awareness. Awareness was next and soon to come.

“Oh, God!” Mary Millman said, gripping the sheets with both hands. The agony was starting again in her lower abdomen, spreading rapidly into her groin and into her lower back like a shaft of molten steel.

“Give me something for the pain! Please! I can’t stand it!” Then she screamed.

“Mary, you’re doing fine,” Dr. Stedman said calmly. “Just take deep breaths.” He was putting on a pair of rubber gloves, snapping the fingers into place.

“I can’t take it,” Mary cried hoarsely. She twisted herself into a different position, but it didn’t provide any relief. Each second the pain intensified. She held her breath and, by reflex, contracted every muscle in her body.

“Mary!” Dr. Stedman said firmly, grabbing Mary’s arm. “Don’t push! It won’t help until your cervix is dilated. And it might hurt the baby!”

Mary opened her eyes and tried to relax her body. Her breath came out in an agonized groan. “I can’t help it,” she whimpered through tears. “Please — I can’t take it. Help me!” Her words were lost in another shriek.

Mary Millman was a twenty-two-year-old secretary who worked for a department store in downtown Detroit. When she’d seen the advertisement to be a surrogate mother, the idea of the money had seemed like a godsend — a perfect way for her to finally settle the seemingly endless debts left from her mother’s long illness. But never having been pregnant or seen a birth, except in movies, she’d had no idea what it would be like. At the moment she couldn’t think about the thirty thousand dollars she was to receive when it was all over, a figure much higher than the “going” fee for surrogacy in Michigan, the one state where an infant could be adopted before birth. She thought she was going to die.

The pain peaked, then leveled off. Mary was able to snatch a few shallow breaths. “I need a pain shot,” she said with some difficulty. Her mouth was dry.

“You’ve already had two,” Dr. Stedman answered. He was preoccupied with removing the pair of gloves he’d contaminated by grabbing her arm, replacing them with a new and sterile pair.

“I don’t feel them,” Mary moaned.

“Maybe not at the height of a contraction,” Dr. Stedman said, “but just a few moments ago you were asleep.”

“I was?” Mary looked up for confirmation into the face of Marsha Frank, one of the adoptive parents, who was gently wiping her forehead with a cool, damp washcloth. Marsha nodded. She had a warm, empathetic smile. Mary liked her and was thankful Marsha had insisted on being present at the birth. Both Franks had made that a condition of the agreement, though Mary was less enthusiastic about the prospective father, who was constantly barking orders at her.

“Remember, the baby gets whatever medications you get,” he was now saying sharply. “We can’t jeopardize his life just to ease your pain.”

Dr. Stedman gave Victor Frank a quick look. The man was getting on his nerves. As far as Dr. Stedman was concerned, Frank was the worst prospective father he’d ever allowed in the labor room. What made it particularly astounding was that Frank was a physician himself and had had obstetric training before going into research. If he had had such experience, it certainly didn’t show in his bedside manner. A long sigh from Mary brought Dr. Stedman’s attention back to his patient.

The grimace that had distorted Mary’s face slowly faded. The contraction was obviously over. “Okay,” Dr. Stedman said, motioning for the nurse to lift the sheet covering Mary’s legs. “Let’s see what’s going on.” He bent over and positioned Mary’s legs.

“Maybe we should do an ultrasound?” Victor suggested. “I don’t think we’re making much progress.”

Dr. Stedman straightened up. “Dr. Frank! If you don’t mind...” He let his sentence trail off, hoping that his tone conveyed his irritation.

Victor Frank looked up at Dr. Stedman, and Stedman suddenly realized the man was terrified. Frank’s face was porcelain white, with beads of perspiration along his hairline. Perhaps using a surrogate was a unique strain even for a doctor.

“Oh!” exclaimed Mary. There was a sudden gush of fluid onto the bed, drawing Dr. Stedman’s attention back to his patient. For the moment he forgot about Frank.

“That’s the rupture of the membranes,” Dr. Stedman said. “It’s entirely normal, as I explained before. Let’s see where we are with this baby.”

Mary closed her eyes. She felt fingers going back inside of her. Lying in sheets drenched with her own fluid, she felt humiliated and vulnerable. She’d told herself she was doing this not just for the money but to bring happiness to a couple who couldn’t have another baby. Marsha had been so sweet and persuasive. Now she wondered if she’d done the right thing. Then another contraction forced all thought from her head.

“Well, well!” Dr. Stedman exclaimed. “Very good, Mary. Very good indeed.” He snapped off the rubber gloves and tossed them aside. “The baby’s head is now engaged and your cervix is almost entirely dilated. Good girl!” He turned to the nurse. “Let’s move the show into the delivery room.”

“Can I have some pain medicine now?” Mary asked.

“Just as soon as we get in the delivery room,” Dr. Stedman said cheerfully. He was relieved. Then he felt a hand on his arm.

“Are you sure the head isn’t too big?” asked Victor abruptly, pulling Dr. Stedman aside.

Dr. Stedman could feel a tremor in the hand that gripped his arm. He reached up and peeled away the fingers. “I said the head was engaged. That means the head has passed through the pelvic inlet. I’m certain you remember that!”

“Are you sure the head is engaged?” asked Victor.

A wave of resentment wafted through Dr. Stedman. He was about to lose his temper, but he saw that Frank was trembling with anxiety. Holding his anger in check, Stedman just said, “The head is engaged. I’m certain.” Then he added: “If this is upsetting you, perhaps it would be best if you went to the waiting room.”

“I couldn’t!” Victor said with emphasis. “I’ve got to see this thing through.”

Dr. Stedman gazed at Dr. Frank. From the first meeting, he’d had a strange feeling about this man. For a while, he’d attributed Frank’s uneasiness to the surrogacy situation, but it was more than that. And Dr. Frank was more than the worried father. “I’ve got to see this thing through” was a strange comment for a father-to-be, even a surrogate one. He made it sound as if this was some kind of mission, not a joyous — if traumatic — experience involving human beings.

Marsha was vaguely aware of her husband’s curious behavior as she followed Mary’s bed down the hall to the delivery room. But she was so absorbed in the birth itself she didn’t focus on it. With all her heart she wished it were she in the hospital bed. She would have welcomed the pain, even though the birth of their son, David, five years earlier had ended in such a violent hemorrhage her doctor had had to perform an emergency hysterectomy to save her life. She and Victor had so desperately wanted a second child. Since she could not bear one, they had weighed the options. After some deliberation, they settled on surrogacy as the preferable one. Marsha had been happy about the arrangement, and glad that even before birth, the child was legally theirs, but she still would have given anything to have carried this much-longed-for baby herself. For a moment she wondered how Mary could bear to part with him. For that reason she was particularly pleased about Michigan law.

Watching the nurses move Mary to the delivery table, Marsha said softly, “You’re doing just fine. It’s almost over.”

“Let’s get her on her side,” said Dr. Whitehead, the anesthesiologist, to the nurses. Then, gripping Mary’s arm, she said: “I’m going to give you that epidural block we discussed.”

“I don’t think I want epidural,” said Victor, moving to the opposite side of the delivery table. “Especially not if you’re planning on using a caudal approach.”

“Dr. Frank!” Dr. Stedman said sternly. “You have a choice: either stop interfering or leave the delivery room. Take your pick.” Dr. Stedman had had enough. He’d already put up with a number of Frank’s orders, such as performing every known prenatal test, including amniocentesis and chorionic villus biopsy. He’d even permitted Mary to take an antibiotic called cephaloclor for three weeks in the early part of the pregnancy. Professionally, he’d felt none of these things were indicated, but he’d gone along with them because Dr. Frank had insisted and because the surrogacy status made the situation unique. Since Mary did not object, saying it was all part of the deal she’d struck with the Franks, he didn’t mind complying. But that was during the pregnancy. The delivery was a different story, and Dr. Stedman was not about to compromise his methodology for a neurotic colleague. Just what kind of medical training had Frank gone through? he wondered. Surely he could abide by standard operating procedures. But here he was questioning each of Stedman’s orders, second-guessing every step.

For a few tense seconds, Victor and Dr. Stedman stood glaring at each other. Victor’s fists were clenched, and for a brief moment Dr. Stedman thought that the man was about to strike him. But the moment passed, and Victor slouched away to stand nervously in the corner.

Victor’s heart was racing and he felt an unpleasant sensation in his abdomen. “Please make the baby normal,” he prayed to himself. He looked over at his wife as his eyes clouded with tears. She had wanted another baby so much. He felt himself begin to tremble again. He chided himself inwardly. “I shouldn’t have done it. But please, God — let this baby be all right.” He looked up at the clock. The second hand seemed to drag slowly around the face. He wondered how much longer he could stand the tension.

Dr. Whitehead’s skilled hands had the caudal analgesic in place in seconds. Marsha held Mary’s hand, smiling encouragement as the pain began to ease. The next thing Mary knew was that someone was waking her, telling her it was time to push. The second stage of labor went quickly and smoothly, and at 6:04 P.M. a vigorous Victor Frank Jr. was born.

Victor was standing directly behind Dr. Stedman at the moment of birth, holding his breath, trying to see as best he could. As the child came into view, he rapidly scanned the infant as Dr. Stedman clamped and cut the cord. Stedman handed the infant to the waiting resident pediatrician, whom Victor followed to the thermostatically controlled infant care unit. The resident put the silent infant down and began to examine him. Victor felt a rush of relief. The child appeared normal.

“Apgar of ten,” the resident called out, indicating that Victor Jr. had the highest possible rating.

“Wonderful,” said Dr. Stedman, who was busy with Mary and the imminent delivery of the afterbirth.

“But he’s not crying,” questioned Victor. Doubt clouded his euphoria.

The resident lightly slapped the soles of Victor Jr.’s feet, then rubbed his back. Still the infant stayed quiet. “But he’s breathing fine.”

The resident picked up the bulb syringe and tried to suction Victor Jr.’s nose once again. To the doctor’s astonishment, the newborn’s hand came up and yanked the bulb away from the fingers of the resident and dropped it over the side of the infant care unit.

“Well that settles that,” said the resident with a chuckle. “He just doesn’t want to cry.”

“Can I?” asked Victor, motioning toward the baby.

“As long as he doesn’t get cold.”

Gingerly, Victor reached into the unit and scooped up Victor Jr. He held the infant in front of him with both hands around his torso. He was a beautiful baby with strikingly blond hair. His chubby, rosy cheeks gave his face a picturesquely cherubic quality, but by far the most distinctive aspect of his appearance was his bright blue eyes. As Victor gazed into their depths he realized with a shock that the baby was looking back at him.

“Beautiful, isn’t he?” said Marsha over Victor’s shoulder.

“Gorgeous,” Victor agreed. “But where did the blond hair come from? Ours is brown.”

“I was blond until I was five,” Marsha said, reaching up to touch the baby’s pink skin.

Victor glanced at his wife as she lovingly gazed at the child. She had dark brown hair peppered with just a few strands of gray. Her eyes were a sultry gray-blue; her features quite sculptured: they contrasted with the rounded, full features of the infant.

“Look at his eyes,” Marsha said.

Victor turned his attention back to the baby. “They are incredible, aren’t they? A minute ago I’d have sworn they were looking right back at me.”

“They are like jewels,” Marsha said.

Victor turned the baby to face Marsha. As he did so he noticed the baby’s eyes remained locked on his! Their turquoise depths were as cold and bright as ice. Unbidden, Victor felt a thrill of fear.

Long, lacy shadows from the leafless maple trees lining the driveway inched across the broad cobblestone courtyard that separated the sprawling white colonial mansion from the barn. A wind had sprung up as the dusk approached, moving the shadows in undulating patterns and making them look like giant spiderwebs. Despite the fact it was almost officially spring, winter still gripped the land in North Andover, Massachusetts.

Marsha stood at the sink in the large country kitchen, staring out at the garden and the fading light. A movement by the driveway caught her eye, and she turned to see VJ peddling home on his bicycle.

For a second, she felt her breath catch in her throat. Since David’s death nearly five years ago, she never took her family for granted. She would never forget the terrible day the doctor told her that the boy’s jaundice was due to cancer. His face, yellow and wizened from the disease, was etched on her heart. She could still feel his small body clinging to her just before he died. She had been certain he had been trying to tell her something, but all she’d heard was his uneasy gasps as he tried to hold on to life.

Nothing had really been the same since then. And things got even worse just a year later. Marsha’s extreme concern for VJ stemmed partly from the loss of David, and partly from the terrible circumstances surrounding Janice’s death only a year after his. Both had contracted an extremely rare form of liver cancer, and despite assurances that the two cancers were in no way contagious, Marsha couldn’t shake the fear that lightning, having struck twice, might flash a third time.

Janice’s death was all the more memorable because it had been so gruesome.

It had been in the fall, just after VJ’s birthday. Leaves were falling from the trees, an autumn chill was in the air. Even before she got sick, Janice had been behaving strangely for some time, only willing to eat food that she prepared herself and which came from unopened containers. She’d become fiercely religious, embracing a particularly fanatic strain of born-again Christianity. Marsha and Victor might not have put up with her had she not become practically one of the family in the many years she’d worked for them.

During David’s final, critical months, she’d been a godsend. But soon after David’s passing, Janice started carrying her Bible everywhere, pressing it to her chest as if it might shield her from unspeakable ills. She’d only put it aside to do her chores, and then reluctantly. On top of that, she’d become sullen and withdrawn, and would lock herself in her room at night.

What was worse was the attitude that she’d developed toward VJ. Suddenly she’d refused to have anything to do with the boy, who was five at the time. Even though VJ was an exceptionally independent child, there were still times when Janice’s cooperation was needed, but she refused to help. Marsha had had several talks with her, but to no avail. Janice persisted in shunning him. When pressed, she’d rave about the devil in their midst and other religious nonsense.

Marsha was at her wits’ end when Janice got sick. Victor had been the first to notice how yellow her eyes had become. He brought it to Marsha’s attention. With horror, Marsha realized Janice’s eyes had the same jaundiced cast that David’s had had. Victor rushed Janice to Boston so that her condition could be evaluated. Even with her yellow eyes, the diagnosis had come as a tremendous shock: she had liver cancer of the same particularly virulent type that David had died of.

Having two cases of such a rare form of liver cancer in the same household within a year prompted extensive epidemiological investigations. But the results had all been negative. There was no environmental hazard present. The computers determined that the two cases were simply rare chance occurrences.

At least the diagnosis of liver cancer helped explain Janice’s bizarre behavior. The doctors felt she might have already suffered brain metastasis. Once she was diagnosed, her downhill course proved swift and merciless. She’d rapidly lost weight despite therapy, became skin and bones within two weeks. But it had been the last day before she’d gone to the hospital to die that had been most traumatic.

Victor had just arrived home and was in the bathroom off the family room. Marsha was in the kitchen preparing dinner, when the house had reverberated with a blood-chilling scream.

Victor shot out of the bathroom. “What in God’s name was that?” he yelled.

“It came from Janice’s room,” said Marsha, who’d turned very pale.

Marsha and Victor exchanged a knowing, fateful glance. Then they dashed out to the garage and up the narrow stairs to Janice’s separate studio apartment.

Before they reached her room, a second scream shattered the silence. Its primeval force seemed to rattle the windows.

Victor reached the room first with Marsha on his heels.

Janice was standing in the middle of her bed, clutching her Bible. She was a sorry sight. Her hair, which had become brittle, stood straight out from her head, giving her a demonic appearance. Her face was hollow, her jaundiced skin stretched tautly across her all-too-visible bones. Her eyes were like yellow neon lights and they were transfixed.

For an instant, Marsha was mesmerized by this vision of Janice as a harpy. Then she followed the woman’s line of sight. Standing in the doorway to Janice’s rear entry was VJ. He didn’t even blink but calmly returned Janice’s stare with one of his own.

Marsha immediately surmised what had happened: VJ had innocently come up Janice’s back stairs, apparently frightening her. In her illness-induced psychosis, Janice had screamed her terrible scream.

“He is the devil!” Janice snarled through clenched teeth. “He is a murderer! Get him away from me!”

“You try to calm Janice,” Marsha shouted, running for VJ. She scooped the six-year-old up into her arms, and retreated down the stairs, rushing him into the family room and kicking the door shut behind her. She pressed VJ’s head against her chest, thinking how stupid she’d been to keep the crazed woman at home.

Finally Marsha released VJ from her bear hug. VJ pushed away from her and looked up at her with his crystal eyes.

“Janice doesn’t mean what she said,” Marsha told him. She hoped this awful moment would have no lasting effect.

“I know,” VJ said with amazingly adult maturity. “She’s very sick. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

Since that day, Marsha could never relax and enjoy her life as she had before. If she did she was afraid God might strike again and if anything happened to VJ, she didn’t think she could bear the loss.

As a child psychiatrist, she knew she could not expect her child to develop in a certain way, but she often found herself wishing VJ were a more openly affectionate child. Since he had been an infant he had been unnaturally independent. He would occasionally let her hug him, but sometimes she longed for him to climb onto her lap and cuddle the way David had.

Now, watching him get off his bike, she wondered if VJ was as self-absorbed as he sometimes appeared. She waved to get his attention but he didn’t look up as he snapped off the saddlebags, letting them fall to the cobblestones. Then he pushed open the barn door and disappeared from sight as he parked his bike for the night. When he reappeared he picked up the saddlebags and started toward the house. Marsha waved again, but although he was walking directly toward her he did not respond. He had his chin pressed down against the cold wind that constantly funneled through the courtyard.

She started to knock on the window, then dropped her hand. Lately she had this terrible premonition there was something wrong with the boy. God knows she couldn’t have loved him more if she’d delivered him herself, but sometimes she feared he was unnaturally cold and unfeeling. Genetically he was her own son, but he had none of the warmth and carefree ways she remembered in herself as a child. Before going to sleep she was often obsessed with the thought that being conceived in a petri dish had somehow frozen his emotions. She knew it was a ridiculous idea, but it kept returning.

Shaking off her thoughts, she called, “VJ’s home,” to Victor, who was reading in front of a crackling fire in the family room next to the kitchen. Victor grunted but didn’t look up.

The sound of the back door slamming heralded VJ’s entrance into the house. Marsha could hear him taking off his coat and boots in the mud room. Within minutes he appeared at the doorway to the kitchen. He was a handsome boy, about five feet tall, somewhat large for a ten-year-old. His golden blond hair had not darkened like Marsha’s had, and his face had retained its angelic character. And just like the day he was born, his most distinctive feature remained his ice-blue eyes. For as cherubic as he seemed, those intense eyes hinted at an intelligence wiser than his years.

“All right, young man,” Marsha scolded in mock irritation. “You know you are not supposed to be out on your bike after dark.”

“But it’s not dark yet,” VJ said defensively in his clear, soprano voice. Then he realized his mother was joking. “I’ve been at Richie’s,” he added. He put his saddlebags down and came over to the sink.

“That’s nice,” Marsha said, obviously pleased. “Why didn’t you call? Then you could have stayed as long as you liked. I’d have been happy to come and get you.”

“I wanted to come home anyway,” VJ said as he picked up one of the carrots Marsha had just cleaned. He took a noisy bite.

Marsha put her arms around VJ and gave him a squeeze, aware of the strength in his wiry young body. “Since you have no school this week I’d have thought you would have wanted to stay with Richie and have some fun.”

“Nah,” VJ said as he wormed his way out of his mother’s grasp.

“Are you worrying your mother again?” Victor asked in a teasing tone. He appeared at the doorway to the family room, holding an open scientific journal, his reading glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose.

Ignoring Victor, Marsha asked, “What about this week? Did you make some plans with Richie?”

“Nope. I’m planning on spending the week with Dad at the lab. If that’s okay, Dad?” VJ moved his eyes to his father.

“Fine by me as usual,” Victor said with a shrug.

“Why in heaven’s name do you want to go to the lab?” Marsha asked. But it was a rhetorical question. She didn’t expect an answer. VJ had been going to the lab with his father since he’d been an infant. First to take advantage of the superb day-care services offered at Chimera, Inc., and later to play in the lab itself. It had become a routine, even more so after Janice Fay had died.

“Why don’t you call up some of your friends from school, and you and Richie and a whole group do something exciting?”

“Let him be,” Victor said, coming to VJ’s assistance. “If VJ wants to come with me, that’s fine.”

“Okay, okay,” Marsha said, knowing when she was outnumbered. “Dinner will be around eight,” she said to VJ, giving his bottom a playful slap.

VJ picked up the saddlebags he’d parked on the chair next to the phone and headed up the back stairs. The old wooden risers creaked under his seventy-four-pound frame. VJ went directly to the second-floor den. It was a cozy room paneled in mahogany. Sitting down at his father’s computer, he booted up the machine. He listened intently for a moment to make sure his parents were still talking in the kitchen and then went through an involved procedure to call up a file he’d named STATUS. The screen blinked, then filled with data. Zipping open each saddlebag in turn, VJ stared at the contents and made some rapid calculations, then entered a series of numbers into the computer. It took him only a few moments.

After completing the entry, VJ exited from STATUS, zipped up the saddlebags, and called up Pac-Man. A smile spread across his face as the yellow ball moved through the maze, gobbling up its prey.

Dr. William Hobbs was looking across the chessboard at his son, marveling over him as he did most every day, when the boy’s intensely blue eyes rolled back into his head, and the child fell backward off his seat. William didn’t see his son hit the floor, but he heard the sickening thud.

“Sheila!” he screamed, jumping up and rushing around the table. To his horror, he saw that Maurice’s arms and legs were flailing wildly. He was in the throes of a grand mal seizure.

As a Ph.D., not an M.D., William was not certain what to do. He vaguely remembered something about protecting the victim’s tongue by putting something between his teeth, but he had nothing appropriate.

Kneeling over the boy, who was just days short of his third birthday, William yelled again for his wife. Maurice’s body contorted with surprising force; it was hard for William to keep the child from injuring himself.

Sheila froze at the sight of her husband juggling the wildly thrashing child. By this time Maurice had bitten his tongue badly, and as his head snapped up and down, a spray of frothy blood arched onto the rug.

“Call an ambulance!” shouted William.

Sheila broke free of the paralyzing spell and rushed back to the kitchen phone. Maurice hadn’t felt well from the moment she’d picked him up from Chimera Day Care. He’d complained of a headache — one of a pounding variety, like a migraine. Of course most three-year-olds wouldn’t describe a headache that way, but Maurice wasn’t most three-year-olds. He was a true child prodigy, a genius. He’d learned to talk at eight months, read at thirteen months, and now could beat his father at their nightly chess game.

“We need an ambulance!” shouted Sheila into the phone when a voice finally answered. She gave their address, pleading with the operator to hurry. Then she rushed back into the living room.

Maurice had stopped convulsing. He was lying quite still on the couch where William had placed him. He’d vomited his dinner along with a fair amount of bright red blood. The awful mess had become matted in his blond hair and drooled from the corners of his mouth. He’d also lost control of his bladder and bowels.

“What should I do?” William pleaded in frustration. At least the child was breathing and his color, which had turned a dusky blue, was returning to normal.

“What happened?” Sheila asked.

“Nothing,” William answered. “He was winning as usual. Then his eyes rolled up and back and he fell over. I’m afraid he hit his head pretty hard on the floor.”

“Oh, God!” Sheila said, wiping Maurice’s mouth with the corner of her apron. “Maybe you shouldn’t have insisted he play chess tonight with his headache and everything.”

“He wanted to,” William said defensively. But that wasn’t quite true. Maurice had been lukewarm to the idea. But William couldn’t resist an opportunity to watch the child use his phenomenal brain. Maurice was William’s pride and joy.

He and Sheila had been married for eight years before they finally were willing to admit they were unable to conceive. Since Chimera had its own fertility center, Fertility, Inc., and since William was an employee of Chimera, he and Sheila had gone there free of charge. It hadn’t been easy. They had to face the fact that both of them were infertile, but eventually, via a surrogate and gamete-donation plans, they got their long-awaited child: Maurice, their miracle baby with an IQ right off the charts.

“I’ll get a towel and clean him up,” Sheila said, starting for the kitchen. But William grabbed her arm.

“Maybe we shouldn’t move him around.”

The couple sat watching the child helplessly, until they heard the ambulance scream down their street. Sheila rushed to let the medics in.

A few moments later, William found himself balancing on a seat in the back of the lurching vehicle with Sheila following behind in the family car.

When they reached Lowell General Hospital, the couple waited anxiously while Maurice was examined and evaluated, then declared stable enough for transfer. William wanted the child to go to Children’s Hospital in Boston, about a half hour’s drive. Something told him that his child was deathly ill. Maybe they had been too proud of his phenomenal brilliance. Maybe God was making them pay.

Breakfast was always casual at the Franks’. Fruit, cereal, coffee, and juice on the run. The major difference on this particular morning was that it wasn’t a school day for VJ so he wasn’t in his usual rush to catch the bus. Marsha was the first to leave, around eight, in order to give her time to see her hospital patients before starting office hours. As she went out the door she passed Ramona Juarez, the cleaning lady who came on Mondays and Thursdays.

Victor watched his wife get into her Volvo station wagon. Each exhale produced a transient cloud of vapor in the crisp morning air. Even though spring was supposed to arrive the next day, the thermometer registered a chilly 28 degrees.

Upending his coffee mug in the sink, Victor turned his attention to VJ, who was alternately watching TV and leafing through one of Victor’s scientific journals. Victor frowned. Maybe Marsha was right. Maybe the boy’s initial brilliance was returning. The articles in that journal were fairly sophisticated. Victor wondered just how much his son might be gleaning.

He debated saying something, then decided to leave it alone. The kid was fine, normal. “You sure you want to come to the lab today?” he asked. “Maybe you could find something more exciting to do with your friends.”

“It’s exciting to come to the lab,” said VJ.

“Your mother thinks you ought to spend more time with kids your own age,” Victor said. “That’s the way you learn to cooperate and share and all that kind of stuff.”

“Oh, please!” VJ said. “I’m with kids my own age every day at school.”

“At least we think alike,” Victor said. “I told your mother the same thing. Well, now that we have that cleared up, how do you want to get to the lab — ride with me or bike?”

“Bike,” VJ answered.

The small alarm on Marsha’s desk went off, signaling the end of the fifty-minute session with Jasper Lewis, an angry fifteen-year-old boy with a smudge of whiskers along his chin line. He was slouched in the chair opposite Marsha’s, acting bored. The fact of the matter was that the kid was heading for real trouble.

“What we haven’t discussed yet is your hospitalization,” Marsha said. She had the boy’s file open on her lap.

Jasper hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward Marsha’s desk. “I thought that bell means the session is over.”

“It means it is almost over,” Marsha said. “How do you feel about your three months in the hospital now that you are back home?” Marsha’s impression was that the boy had benefited from the hospital’s structured environment, but she wanted to learn his opinion.

“It was okay,” Jasper said.

“Just okay?” asked Marsha encouragingly. It was so tough to draw this boy out.

“It was like fine,” Jasper said, shrugging. “You know, no big deal.”

Obviously it was going to take a bit more effort to extract the boy’s opinion, and Marsha made a note of reminder to herself in the margin of the boy’s file. She’d start the next session with that issue. Marsha closed the file and made eye contact with Jasper. “It’s been good to see you,” Marsha said. “See you next week.”

“Sure,” Jasper said, avoiding Marsha’s eyes as he got up and awkwardly left the room.

Marsha went back to her desk to dictate her notes. Flipping open the chart, she looked at her preadmission summary. Jasper had had a conduct disorder since early childhood. Once he hit age eighteen, the diagnosis would change to an antisocial personality disorder. On top of that, he also had what appeared to Marsha as a schizoid personality disorder.

Reviewing the salient features of the boy’s history, Marsha noted the frequent lying, the fights at school, the record of truancy, the vindictive behavior and fantasies. Her eye stopped at the statement: cannot experience affection or show emotion. She suddenly pictured VJ pulling away from her embrace, looking at her coldly, his blue eyes frigid as mountain lakes. She forced her eyes back down on the chart. Chooses solitary activities, does not desire close relationships, has no close friends.

Marsha’s pulse quickened. Was she reading a summary of her own son? With trepidation, she reread the review of Jasper’s personality. There were a number of uncomfortable correlations. She was happy when her train of thought was interrupted by her nurse and secretary, Jean Colbert, a prim and proper New Englander with auburn hair. As she looked up, her eye caught a sentence that she had underlined in red: Jasper was essentially reared by an aunt, since his mother worked two jobs to support the family.

“You ready for your next patient?” Jean asked.

Marsha took a deep breath. “Remember those articles I saved on day care and its psychological effects?” she asked.

“Sure do,” Jean said. “I filed them in the storage room.”

“How about pulling them for me,” Marsha said, trying to mask her concern.

“Sure,” Jean said. She paused, then asked: “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Marsha said, picking up the next chart. As she scanned her recent notes, twelve-year-old Nancy Traverse slunk into the room and tried to disappear into one of the chairs. She pulled her head low into her shoulders like a turtle.

Marsha moved over to the therapy area, taking the seat opposite Nancy. She tried to remember where the girl had left off at the previous visit, describing her forays into sex.

The session began and dragged on. Marsha tried to concentrate, but fears for VJ floated at the back of her mind along with guilt for having worked when he had been little. Not that he’d ever minded when she’d left. But as Marsha well knew, that in itself could be a symptom of psychopathology.

Marsha looked across the dinner table at her husband and son. VJ was absorbed in reading a book on black holes, barely looking up to eat. She would have told him to put the book away, but Victor had come home in such a bad mood she didn’t want to say anything that would make it worse. And she herself was still troubled about VJ. She loved him so much she couldn’t bear the thought that he might be disturbed, but she also knew she couldn’t help him if she didn’t face the truth. Apparently he’d spent the whole day at Chimera, seemingly by himself because Victor admitted, when she’d specifically asked, that he’d not seen VJ since morning.

As if sensing her gaze, VJ abruptly put down his book and took his plate over to the dishwasher. As he rose, his intense blue eyes caught Marsha’s. There was no warmth, no feeling, just a brilliant turquoise light that made Marsha feel as if she were under a microscope. “Thank you for the dinner,” VJ said mechanically.

Marsha listened to the sound of VJ’s footsteps as he ran up the back stairs. Outside the wind suddenly whistled, and she looked out the window. In the beam of light from over the garage she could see that the rain had changed to snow. She shivered, but it wasn’t from the wintry landscape.

“I guess I’m not too hungry tonight,” Victor offered. As far as Marsha remembered, it was the first time he’d initiated conversation since she’d gotten home from making her hospital rounds.

“Something troubling you?” Marsha asked. “Want to talk about it?”

“I don’t need you to play psychiatrist,” Victor said harshly.

Marsha knew that she could have taken offense. She wasn’t playing psychiatrist. But she thought that she’d play the adult, and not push things. Victor would tell her soon enough what was on his mind.

“Well, something is troubling me,” Marsha said. She decided that at least she’d be honest. Victor looked at her. Knowing him as well as she did, she imagined that he already felt guilty at having spoken so harshly.

“I read a series of articles today,” Marsha continued. “They talked about some of the possible effects of parental deprivation on children being reared by nannies and/or spending inordinate amounts of time in day care. Some of the findings may apply to VJ. I’m concerned that maybe I should have taken time off when VJ was an infant to spend more time with him.”

Victor’s face immediately reflected irritation. “Hold it,” he said just as harshly, holding up both hands. “I don’t think I want to hear the rest of this. As far as I’m concerned, VJ is just fine and I don’t want to listen to a bunch of psychiatric nonsense to the contrary.”

“Well, isn’t that inappropriate,” Marsha stated, losing some of her patience.

“Oh, save me!” Victor intoned, picking up his unfinished dinner and discarding it in the trash. “I’m in no mood for this.”

“Well, what are you in the mood for?” Marsha questioned.

Victor took a deep breath, looking out the kitchen window. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

“In this weather?” Marsha questioned. “Wet snow, soggy ground. I think something is troubling you and you’re unable to talk about it.”

Victor turned to his wife. “Am I that obvious?”

Marsha laughed. “It’s painful to watch you struggle. Please tell me what’s on your mind. I’m your wife.”

Victor shrugged and came back to the table. He sat down and intertwined his fingers, resting his elbows on his place mat. “There is something on my mind,” he admitted.

“I’m glad my patients don’t have this much trouble talking,” Marsha said. She reached across to lovingly touch Victor’s arm.

Victor got up and went to the bottom of the back stairs. He listened for a moment, then closed the door and returned to the table. He sat down, and he leaned toward Marsha: “I want VJ to have a full neuro-medical work-up just like he did seven years ago when his intelligence fell.”

Marsha didn’t respond. Worrying about VJ’s personality development was one thing, but worrying about his general health was something else entirely. The mere suggestion of such a work-up was a shock, as was the reference to VJ’s change in intelligence.

“You remember when his IQ fell so dramatically around age three and a half?” Victor said.

“Of course I remember,” Marsha said. She studied Victor intently. Why was he doing this to her? He had to know this would only make her concerns worse.

“I want the same kind of work-up as we did then,” Victor repeated.

“You know something that you are keeping from me,” Marsha said with alarm. “What is it? Is there something wrong with VJ?”

“No!” Victor said. “VJ is fine, like I said before. I just want to be sure and I’d feel sure if he had a repeat work-up. That’s all there is to it.”

“I want to know why you suddenly want a work-up now,” Marsha demanded.

“I told you why,” Victor said, his voice rising with anger.

“You want me to agree to allow our son to have a full neuro-medical work-up without telling me the indications?” Marsha questioned. “No way! I’m not going to let the boy have all those X-rays etcetera without some explanation.”

“Damn it, Marsha!” Victor said gritting his teeth.

“Damn it yourself,” Marsha returned. “You’re keeping something from me, Victor, and I don’t like it. You’re trying to bulldoze right over my feelings. Unless you tell me what this is all about, VJ is not having any tests, and believe me, I have something to say about it. So either you tell me what’s on your mind or we just drop it.”

Marsha leaned back in her chair and inhaled deeply, holding her breath for a moment before letting it out. Victor, obviously irritated, stared at Marsha, but her strength began to wear him down. Her position was clear, and by experience he knew she’d not be apt to change her mind. After sixty seconds of silence, his stare began to waver. Finally he looked down at his hands. The grandfather clock in the living room chimed eight times.

“All right,” he said finally as if exhausted. “I’ll tell you the whole story.” He sat back and ran his fingers through his hair. He established eye contact with Marsha for a second, then looked up at the ceiling like a young boy caught in a forbidden act.

Marsha felt a growing sense of impatience and concern about what she was about to hear.

“The trouble is I don’t know where to begin,” Victor said.

“How about at the beginning,” Marsha suggested, her impatience showing again.

Victor’s eyes met hers. He’d kept the secret surrounding VJ’s conception for over ten years. Looking at Marsha’s open, honest face, he wondered if she would ever forgive him when she learned the truth.

“Please,” Marsha said. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

Victor lowered his eyes. “Lots of reasons,” he said. “One is you might not believe me. In fact, for me to tell you we have to go to my lab.”

“Right now?” questioned Marsha. “Are you serious?”

“If you want to hear.”

There was a pause. Kissa surprised Marsha by jumping up on her lap. She’d forgotten to feed him. “All right,” she said. “Let me feed the cat and say something to VJ. I can be ready in fifteen minutes.”

They took separate cars to drive to Boston since Victor wanted to return directly to Chimera. VJ chose to ride with Marsha.

The ride itself was uneventful. Marsha tried to get VJ to talk, but he answered all her questions with a curt yes or no. She gave up until they were a few minutes away from Children’s Hospital.

“Have you been having any headaches?” she asked, breaking the long silence.

“No,” VJ said. “I told you I’m fine. Why the sudden concern about my health?”

“It’s your father’s idea,” Marsha said. She couldn’t think of any reason not to tell the truth. “He calls it preventive medicine.”

“I think it’s a waste of time,” VJ said.

“Have you had any change in your memory?” Marsha asked.

“I’m telling you,” VJ snapped, “I’m entirely normal!”

“All right, VJ,” Marsha said. “There is no reason to get angry. We’re glad that you’re healthy and we want you to stay that way.” She wondered what the boy would think if he were told he was a chimera, and that he had animal genes fused into his chromosomes.

“Do you remember back when you were three and suddenly couldn’t read?” Marsha asked.

“Of course,” VJ said.

“We’ve never talked much about that period,” Marsha said.

VJ turned away from Marsha and looked out the window.

“Were you very upset?” Marsha asked.

VJ turned to her and said, “Mother, please don’t play psychiatrist with me. Of course it bothered me. It was frustrating not being able to do things that I’d been able to do. But I relearned them and I’m fine.”

“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m available,” Marsha said. “Just because I’ve never brought it up doesn’t mean I don’t care. You have to understand that it was a stressful time for me too. As a mother I was terrified that you were ill. Once it was clear you were all right, I guess I tried not to think about it.”

VJ just nodded.

They all met in the waiting room of Dr. Clifford Ruddock, Chief of the Department of Neurology. Victor had beat them by fifteen minutes. As soon as VJ sat down with a magazine, Victor took Marsha aside. “I spoke with Dr. Ruddock as soon as I arrived. He’s agreed to compare VJ’s current neurological status with what he found at the time VJ’s IQ dropped. But he is a little suspicious about why we brought him in today. Obviously, he knows nothing about the NGF gene, and I do not plan to tell him.”

“Naturally,” said Marsha.

Victor shot her a look. “I hope you are planning to be cooperative.”

“I’m going to be more than cooperative,” Marsha said. “As soon as VJ is finished here, I’m planning to take him to my office and have him go through a battery of psychological tests.”

“What on earth for?” Victor asked.

“The fact that you have to ask means that I probably couldn’t explain it to you.”

Dr. Ruddock, a tall, slender man with salt and pepper hair, called all the Franks into his office for a few minutes before the examination. He asked if the boy remembered him. VJ told the man that he did, particularly his smell.

Victor and Marsha chuckled nervously.

“It was your cologne,” VJ said. “You were wearing Hermès after-shave.”

Somewhat taken aback by this personal reference, Dr. Ruddock introduced everyone to Dr. Chris Stevens, his current fellow in pediatric neurology.

It was Dr. Stevens who examined VJ. In deference to the fact that both parents were physicians, Dr. Stevens allowed Victor and Marsha to remain in the room. It was as complete a neurological exam as either had ever witnessed. After an hour just about every facet of VJ’s nervous system had been evaluated and found to be entirely normal.

Then Stevens started the lab work. He drew blood for routine chemistries, and Victor had several tubes iced and put aside for him to take back to Chimera. Afterward, VJ was subjected to both PET and NMR scanning.

The PET scanning involved injecting harmless radioactive substances which emitted positrons into VJ’s arm while his head was positioned inside a large doughnut-shaped apparatus. The positrons collided with electrons in VJ’s brain, releasing a burst of energy with each collision in the form of two gamma rays. Crystals in the PET scanner recorded the gamma rays, and a computer tracked the course of the radiation, creating an image.

For the second test, the NMR scanning, VJ was placed inside a six-foot-long cylinder surrounded by huge magnets supercooled with liquid helium. The resultant magnetic field, which was sixty thousand times greater than the earth’s magnetic field, aligned the nuclei of the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules of VJ’s body. When a radio wave of a specific frequency knocked these nuclei out of alignment, they sprang back, emitting a faint radio signal of their own which was picked up in radio sensors in the scanner and transformed by computer into an image.

When all the tests were done, Dr. Ruddock summoned Victor and Marsha back to his office. VJ was left outside in the waiting room. Victor was plainly nervous, crossing and uncrossing his legs and running his hand through his hair. Throughout the testing neither Dr. Stevens nor the technician made any comment. By the end, Victor was almost paralyzed with tension.

“Well,” Dr. Ruddock began, fingering some of the print-outs and images from the tests, “not all the results are back, specifically the blood work, but we do have several positive findings here.”

Marsha’s heart sank.

“Both the PET and the NMR scans are abnormal,” Dr. Ruddock explained. He held up one of the multicolored PET scan images with his left hand. In his right hand he held a Mont Blanc pen. Carefully pointing to different areas, he said, “There is a markedly elevated but diffuse uptake of glucose in the cerebral hemispheres.” He dropped the paper and picked up another colored image. “In this NMR scan we can see the ventricles quite clearly.”

With her heart pounding, Marsha leaned forward to get a better look.

“It’s quite obvious,” Dr. Ruddock continued, “that these ventricles are significantly smaller than normal.”

“What does this mean?” Marsha asked hesitantly.

Dr. Ruddock shrugged. “Probably nothing. The child’s neurological exam is entirely normal according to Dr. Stevens. And these findings, although interesting, most likely have no effect on function. The only thing I can think of is that if his brain is using that much glucose, maybe you should feed him candy whenever he’s doing much thinking.” Dr. Ruddock laughed heartily at his own attempt at humor.

For a moment both Victor and Marsha sat there numbly, trying to make the transition from the bad news they’d expected to the good news they’d received. Victor was the first to recover. “We’ll certainly take your advice,” he said with a chuckle. “Any candy in particular?”

Dr. Ruddock laughed anew, enjoying that his humor was so well received. “Peter Paul Mounds is the therapy I recommend!”

Marsha thanked the doctor and ran out the door. Catching VJ unaware, she had him in a bear hug before he could move away. “Everything is fine,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re okay.”

VJ extracted himself from her grasp. “I knew I was fine before we came. Can we go now?”

Victor tapped Marsha on the shoulder. “I’ve got some other business here and then I’ll go directly to work. I’ll see you at home, okay?” Victor said.

“We’ll have a special dinner,” Marsha said, turning back to VJ. “We can leave but you, young man, are not finished. We are going to my office. I have a few more tests for you.”

“Oh, Mom!” whined VJ.

Marsha smiled. He sounded just like any other ten-year-old.

“Humor your mother,” Victor said. “I’ll see you both later.” He gave Marsha a peck on the cheek and tousled VJ’s hair.

VJ was curled up in a ball at the head of his bed, cradling his head in both hands. In the center of the room, resting on the rug, was a brick. A length of red ribbon was tied around it, securing a piece of paper, making the package appear like a gift. VJ’s window had been smashed and shards of glass littered the room. Obviously the brick had been thrown from the driveway.

Victor put out his hand to restrain Marsha from coming into the room and rushing to VJ’s side.

“Watch the glass!” Victor yelled.

“VJ, are you all right?” Marsha shouted.

VJ nodded.

Reaching around Marsha, Victor grabbed the Oriental runner that extended down the hall. Pulling it into VJ’s room, he let it roll out toward the window. Then he ran across it to look down at the driveway. He saw no one.

“I’m going out,” Victor said, running past Marsha.

“Don’t be a hero,” Marsha yelled, but Victor was already halfway down the stairs. “And don’t you move,” she said to VJ. “There’s so much glass, you’re sure to be cut. I’ll be right back.”

Marsha ran back to the master bedroom and hastily pulled on her slippers and her robe. Returning to VJ’s room, she finally got to the bed. VJ allowed her to hug him. “Hold on,” she said, as she strained to lift him up. He was heavier than she’d anticipated. Staggering to the hallway, she was glad to set him down.

“A few months from now I won’t be able to do that,” she said with a groan. “You’re getting too big for me.”

“I’m going to find out who did that,” VJ snarled, finding his voice.

“Did it frighten you, dear?” Marsha asked, stroking his head.

VJ parried Marsha’s hand. “I’m going to find out who threw that brick and I’m going to kill him.”

“You’re safe now,” Marsha said soothingly. “You can calm down. I know you’re upset, but everything is all right. No one got hurt.”

“I’ll kill him,” VJ persisted. “You’ll see. I’ll kill him.”

“Okay,” Marsha said. She tried to draw him to her but he resisted. For a moment she looked at him. His blazing eyes held a piercing, unchildlike intensity. “Let’s go down to the study,” she said. “I want to call the police.”

Victor ran the length of the driveway and stood in the street, looking both ways. Two driveways down, he heard a car being started. Just as he was debating sprinting in that direction, he saw the headlights come on and the car accelerate away. He couldn’t tell the make.

In frustration, he threw a rock after it, but there was no way he could have hit it. Turning around, he hurried back to the house. He found Marsha and VJ in the study. It was apparent they’d been talking, but as Victor arrived they stopped.

“Where’s the brick?” Victor asked, out of breath.

“Still in VJ’s room,” Marsha said. “We’ve been too busy talking about how VJ is planning on killing whoever threw it.”

“I will!” VJ promised.

Victor groaned, knowing how Marsha’s mind would take this as further evidence that VJ was disturbed. He went back to his son’s room. The brick was still where it had fallen after crashing through VJ’s window. Bending down, he extracted the paper from beneath the ribbon. “Remember our deal” said the typed message. Victor made an expression of disgust. Who the hell had done this?

Bringing the brick and the note with him, Victor returned to the study. He showed both to Marsha, who took them in her hands. She was about to say something when the downstairs doorbell sounded.

“Now what?” Victor questioned.

“Must be the police,” Marsha said, getting to her feet. “I called them while you were outside running around.” She left the room, heading down the stairs.

Victor looked at VJ. “Scared you, huh, Tiger?”

“I think that’s obvious,” VJ said. “It would have scared anyone.”

“I know,” Victor said. “I’m sorry you’re getting the brunt of all this, what with the phone call last night and the brick tonight. I’m sure you don’t understand, but I’ve some personnel problems at the lab. I’ll try to do something to keep this kind of thing from happening.”

“It doesn’t matter,” VJ said.

“I appreciate you being a good sport about it,” Victor said. “Come on, let’s talk to the police.”

“The police won’t do anything,” VJ said. But he got up and started downstairs.

Victor followed. He agreed, but he was surprised that at age ten, VJ knew it too.

The North Andover police were polite and solicitous. A Sergeant Widdicomb and Patrolman O’Connor had responded to the call. Widdicomb was at least sixty-five, with florid skin and a huge beer belly. O’Connor was just the opposite: he was in his twenties and looked like an athlete. Widdicomb did all the talking.

When Victor and VJ arrived in the foyer, Widdicomb was reading the note while O’Connor fingered the brick. Widdicomb handed the note back to Marsha. “What a dad-blasted awful thing,” he said. “Used to be that this kinda stuff only happened in Boston, not out here.” Widdicomb took out a pad, licked the end of a pencil and started taking notes. He asked the expected questions, like the time it happened, if they saw anyone, whether the lights had been on in the boy’s room. VJ quickly lost interest and disappeared into the kitchen.

After he ran out of questions, Widdicomb asked if they could take a gander around the yard.

“Please,” Marsha said, motioning toward the door.

After the police left, Marsha turned to Victor. “Last night you told me not to worry about the threatening call, that you would look into it.”

“I know...” Victor said guiltily. She waited for Victor to continue. But he didn’t.

“A threatening phone call is one thing,” Marsha said. “A brick through our child’s window is quite another. I told you I couldn’t handle any more surprises. I think you better give me some idea of these office problems you mentioned.”

“Fair enough,” Victor said. “But let me get a drink. I think I could use one.”

VJ had the Johnny Carson show on in the family room and was watching, his head propped up against his arm. His eyes had a glazed look.

“Are you okay?” Marsha called from the doorway to the kitchen.

“Fine,” VJ said without turning his head.

“I think we should let him unwind,” Marsha said, directing her attention to Victor, who was busy making them a hot rum drink.

Mugs in hand, they sat down at the kitchen table. In capsule form, Victor highlighted the controversy with Ronald, the negotiations with Gephardt’s attorney, Sharon Carver’s threats, and the unfortunate situation with Hurst. “So there you have it,” he concluded. “A normal week at the office.”

Marsha mulled over the four troublemakers. Aside from Ronald, she guessed any of the other three could be guilty of acting out.

“What about this note?” she asked. “What deal is it referring to?”

Victor took a drink, put the mug on the table, then reached across and took the note. He studied it for a moment, then said, “I haven’t the slightest idea. I haven’t made any deals with anyone.” He tossed the paper onto the table.

“Somebody must have thought you had,” Marsha said.

“Look, anyone capable of throwing a rock through our window is capable of fantasizing some mythical deal. But I’ll get in touch with each of them and make sure they know that we are not going to sit idly by and allow them to throw bricks through our windows.”

“What about hiring some security?” Marsha asked.

“It’s an idea,” Victor said. “But let me make these calls tomorrow. I have a feeling that it will solve this problem.”

The doorbell sounded again.

“I’ll get it,” said Victor. He put his mug on the table and left the kitchen.

Marsha got up and went into the family room. The TV was still on but Johnny Carson had changed to David Letterman. It was that late. VJ was fast asleep. Turning off the TV, Marsha looked at her son. He looked so peaceful. There was no hint of the intense hostility that he’d displayed earlier. Oh God, she thought, what had Victor’s experiment done to her darling baby?

The front door banged shut, and Victor came in saying, “The police didn’t find anything. They just said they’d try to watch the house best they could over the next week or so.” Then he looked down at VJ. “I see he has recovered.”

“I wish,” Marsha said wistfully.

“Oh, come on now,” Victor said. “I don’t want a lecture about his hostility and all that bull.”

“Maybe he was really upset when his IQ fell,” she said, following her own train of thought. “Can you imagine what kind of self-esteem loss the boy probably suffered when his special abilities evaporated?”

“The kid was only three and a half,” Victor pleaded.

“I know you don’t agree with me,” Marsha said, looking back at the sleeping boy. “But I’m terrified. I can’t believe your genetic experiment didn’t affect his future.”

Wondering how the other people put up with it on a daily basis, Victor suffered the congested traffic of a normal Boston rush hour.

Once he got on Storrow Drive heading west, traffic improved, only to slow down again near the Fenway. It was after nine when he finally entered the busy Children’s Hospital. He went directly to Pathology.

“Dr. Shryack, please?” Victor asked. The secretary glanced up at him and, without removing her dictation headset, pointed down the corridor.

Victor looked at the nameplates as he walked.

“Excuse me. Dr. Shryack?” Victor called as he stepped through the open door. The extraordinarily young-looking man raised his head from a microscope.

“I’m Dr. Frank,” Victor said. “Remember when I stopped in while you were autopsying the Hobbs baby?”

“Of course,” said Dr. Shryack. He stood up and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you under more pleasant circumstances. The name is Stephen.”

Victor shook his hand.

“I’m afraid we haven’t any definitive diagnosis yet,” Stephen said, “if that is what you’ve come for. The slides are still being processed.”

“I’m interested, of course,” Victor said. “But the reason I stopped by was to ask another favor. I was curious if you routinely take fluid samples.”

“Absolutely,” Stephen answered. “We always do toxicology, at least a screen.”

“I was hoping to get some of the fluid myself,” Victor said.

“I’m impressed with your interest,” Stephen said. “Most internists give us a rather wide berth. Come on, let’s see what we have.”

Stephen led Victor out of his office, down the hall, and into the extensive laboratory where he stopped to speak to a severely dressed middle-aged woman. The conversation lasted for a minute before she pointed toward the opposite end of the room. Stephen then led Victor down the length of the lab and into a side room.

“I think we’re in luck.” Stephen opened the doors to a large cooler on the far wall and began searching through the hundreds of stoppered Erlenmeyer flasks. He found one and handed it back to Victor. Soon he found three others.

Victor noticed he had two flasks of blood and two of urine.

“How much do you need?” Stephen asked.

“Just a tiny bit,” Victor said.

Stephen carefully poured a little from each flask into test tubes that he got from a nearby counter top. He capped them, labeled each with a red grease pencil, and handed them to Victor.

“Anything else?” Stephen asked.

“Well, I hate to take advantage of your generosity,” Victor said.

“It’s quite all right,” Stephen said.

“About five years ago, my son died of a very rare liver cancer,” Victor began.

“I’m so sorry.”

“He was treated here. At the time the doctors said there had only been a couple of similar cases in the literature. The thought was that the cancer had arisen from the Kupffer cells so that it really was a cancer of the reticuloendothelial system.”

Stephen nodded. “I think I read about that case. In fact, I’m sure I did.”

“Since the tumor was so rare,” Victor said, “do you think that any gross material was saved?”

“There’s a chance,” Stephen said. “Let’s go back to my office.”

When Stephen was settled in front of his computer terminal, he asked Victor for David’s full name and birth date. Entering that, he obtained David’s hospital number and located the pathology record. With his finger on the screen, he scanned the information. His finger stopped. “This looks encouraging. Here’s a specimen number. Let’s check it out.”

This time he took Victor down to the subbasement. “We have a crypt where we put things for long-term storage,” he explained.

They stepped off the elevator into a dimly lit hall that snaked off in myriad directions. There were pipes and ducts along the ceiling, the floor a bare, stained concrete.

“We don’t get to come down here that often,” Stephen said as he led the way through the maze. He finally stopped at a heavy metal door. When Victor helped pull it open, Stephen reached in and flipped on a light.

It was a large, poorly lit room with widely spaced bulbs in simple ceiling fixtures. The air was cold and humid. Numerous rows of metal shelves reached almost to the ceiling.

Checking a number that he had written on a scrap of paper, Stephen set off down one of the rows. Victor followed, glancing into the shelves. At one point he stopped, transfixed by the image of an entire head of a child contained in a large glass canister and soaking in some kind of preservative brine. The eyes stared out and the mouth was open as if in some perpetual scream. Victor looked at the other glass containers. Each contained some horrifying preserved testament to past suffering. He shuddered, then realized that Stephen had passed from sight.

Looking nervously around, he heard the resident call. “Over here.”

Victor strode forward, no longer looking at the specimens. When he reached the corner, he saw the pathologist reaching into one of the shelves, noisily pushing around the glass containers. “Eureka!” he said, straightening up. He had a modest-sized glass jar in his hands that contained a bulbous liver suspended in clear fluid. “You’re in luck,” he said.

Later, on the way up in the elevator, he asked Victor why he wanted the tissue.

“Curiosity,” Victor said. “When David died my grief was so overwhelming I didn’t ask any questions. Now after all these years, I want to know more about why he died.”

By the time Victor got to work, he had himself worked up to a minor fury over the killing of the family cat. With Marsha’s concern for VJ deepening, all they needed was the added problem of harassment. Victor knew that he had to act, and quickly, to prevent another attack, especially since they were progressively worsening. After killing the cat, what was next? Victor shuddered as he considered the possibilities.

He pulled into his parking place and killed the engine. VJ and Philip, who had been riding in the back seat, piled out of the car and took off toward the cafeteria. Victor watched them go, wondering if Marsha was right about VJ fitting a potentially dangerous psychiatric pattern. Last night after they’d gotten into bed, Marsha had told him that Mr. Remington said that VJ had been involved in a number of fights at school. Victor had been more shocked by that news than by anything else. It seemed so unlike VJ. He could not imagine it was true. And if it was, he didn’t know how he felt about it. In some ways he was proud of VJ. Was it really so bad to defend yourself? Even Remington seemed to have some admiration for the way the boy handled himself.

“Who the hell knows?” Victor said aloud as he got out of the car and started for the front door. But he didn’t get far. Out of nowhere a man dressed in a policeman’s uniform appeared.

“Dr. Victor Frank?” the man questioned.

“Yes,” Victor responded.

The man handed Victor a packet. “Something for you from the sheriff’s office,” he said. “Have a good day.”

Victor opened up the envelope and saw that he was being summoned to respond to the attached complaint. The first page read: “Sharon Carver vs. Victor Frank and Chimera, Inc.”

Victor didn’t have to read any further. He knew what he was holding. So Sharon was moving ahead with her threatened sex-discrimination suit. He felt like throwing the papers to the wind. It just made him fume all the more as he climbed the front steps and entered the building.

The office was alive with an almost electric intensity. He noticed that people eyed him as he approached, then murmured among themselves after he passed. When he got into his office and as he was removing his coat, he asked Colleen what was going on.

“You’ve become a celebrity,” she said. “It was on the news that you were the one to discover the Gephardt family murder.”

“Just what I need,” Victor said. He went over to his desk. Before he sat down he handed the Carver summons over to Colleen and told her to send it to the legal department. Then he sat down. “So what’s the good word?”

“Lots of things,” Colleen said. She handed a sheet of paper to Victor. “That’s a preliminary report concerning Hurst’s research. They just started and have already found serious irregularities. They thought you should know.”

“You are ever a bearer of good news,” Victor said. He fingered the report. Based on Hurst’s reaction to his decision to look into the matter, he wasn’t surprised, though he hadn’t thought the irregularities would show up so quickly. He would have guessed Hurst to be a bit more subtle than that.

“What else?” Victor asked, putting the report aside.

“A board meeting has been scheduled for next Wednesday to vote on the stock offering,” Colleen said, handing over a reminder slip for Victor to put in his calendar.

“That’s like getting invited to play Russian roulette,” Victor said, taking the paper. “What else?”

Colleen went down her list, ticking off myriad problems — mostly minor ones, but ones that had to be dealt with nonetheless. She made notes, depending on Victor’s reaction. It took them about half an hour to get through.

“Now it’s my turn,” Victor said. “Have I gotten any calls from security firms?”

Colleen shook her head.

“All right, next I want you to get on the phone and use your considerable charms to find out where Ronald Beekman, William Hurst, and Sharon Carver were around noon yesterday.”

Colleen made a note for herself and waited for more instructions. When she saw that was it, she nodded good-bye and slipped out of the office back to her desk.

Victor started to work through the pile of papers in his in-box.

Thirty minutes later, Colleen returned with her steno pad from which she read: “Both Dr. Beekman and Dr. Hurst were here in Chimera all day, although Dr. Hurst did disappear for lunch. No one saw him at the cafeteria. Heaven only knowns where he went. As for Miss Carver, I couldn’t find out a thing.”

Victor nodded and thanked her. He picked up the phone and tried one of the numbers of the security firms, one called Able Protection. A woman answered. After he had been put briefly on hold, a deep-voiced man got on the line, and Victor made arrangements to have his home watched from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M.

Colleen returned with a sheet of paper which she slipped under Victor’s nose. “Here’s an update on the equipment that Gephardt managed to have disappear.”

Victor ran down the list: polypeptide synthesizers, scintillation counters, centrifuges, electron microscope...

“Electron microscope!” Victor yelled. “How the hell did that vanish? How did this guy get the equipment off-site, much less fence it? I mean the market for a hot electron microscope has to be small.” Victor looked at Colleen questioningly. In his mind’s eye he saw the van parked in Gephardt’s driveway.

“You’ve got me,” was all she could offer.

“It’s a disgrace that he was able to get away with it for so long. It certainly says something about our accounting methods and our security.”

By eleven-thirty Victor was finally able to slip out the back of his office and walk over to his lab. The morning’s administrative work had only agitated him to an even more exasperated state. But, stepping into his lab, he began to unwind. It was an immediate, almost reflexive response. Research was the reason he’d started Chimera, not fussy paperwork.

Victor was walking to his lab office door when one of the technicians spotted him and hurried over. “Robert was looking for you,” she told him. “We were supposed to tell you as soon as we saw you.”

Victor thanked her and began to look for Robert. He found him back at the gel electrophoresis unit.

“Dr. Frank!” Robert said happily. “We had a positive on two of your samples.”

“You mean—” Victor asked.

“Both blood samples you gave me were positive for trace amounts of cephaloclor.”

Victor froze. For a moment he couldn’t even breathe. When he handed those samples over to Robert, he’d never expected a positive finding. He was just doing it to be complete, like a medical student doing a standard work-up.

“Are you sure?” Victor voiced with some difficulty. “That’s what Harry said,” said Robert. “And Harry’s pretty reliable. You didn’t expect this?”

“Hardly,” said Victor. He was already considering the implications if this were true. Turning to Robert he added, “I want it checked.”

Without another word, Victor turned and went back to his lab office. In one of his desk drawers he had a small bottle of cephaloclor capsules. He took one out and walked back through the main lab, through the dissecting room, and into the animal room. There he selected two compatible smart rats, put them in a cage by themselves, and added the contents of the capsule to their water. He watched as the white powder dissolved, then hooked the water bottle to the side of the cage.

Leaving his Department of Development Biology, Victor walked down the long hall and up one flight to the Department of Immunology. He went directly to Hobbs.

“How are you doing now that you’re back to work?” Victor asked him.

“My concentration isn’t one hundred percent,” Hobbs admitted, “but it is much better for me to be here and busy. I was going crazy at home. So was Sheila.”

“We’re glad to have you back,” Victor said. “I wanted to ask once more if there was any chance at all that your boy could have gotten some cephaloclor.”

“Absolutely not,” Hobbs said. “Why? Do you think that cephaloclor could have triggered the edema?”

“Not if he didn’t get any,” said Victor in a manner that conveyed case closed. Leaving a somewhat confused Hobbs in his wake, Victor set out for Accounting to question Murray. His response was the same. There was no way that either child had been given cephaloclor.

On the way back to his lab, Victor passed the computer center. Entering, he sought out Louis and inquired about the evening’s plans.

“We’ll be ready,” Louis said. “The phone company representatives will be here around six to start setting up. It’s just up to the hacker to log on and stay on. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

“Me too,” Victor said. “I’ll be in my lab. Have someone get in touch with me if he tries to tap in. I’ll come right over.”

“Sure thing, Dr. Frank.”

Victor continued on to his lab, trying to keep his thoughts steady. It wasn’t until he was sitting down at his desk that he allowed himself to consider the significance of cephaloclor in the two unfortunate toddlers’ bloodstreams. Clearly the antibiotic had somehow been introduced. There was no doubt it had turned the NGF gene on, which when activated, would effectively stimulate the brain cells to the point at which they’d begin dividing. With closed skulls unable to expand, the swelling brain could swell only to a certain limit. Unchecked, the swelling would herniate the brainstem down into the spinal canal, as discovered in the children at the autopsy.

Victor shuddered. Since neither child could have gotten the cephaloclor by accident, and since both got it at apparently the same time, Victor had to assume that they’d both received the antibiotic in a deliberate attempt to kill them.

Victor rubbed his face roughly, then ran his fingers through his hair. Why would someone want to kill two extraordinary, prodigiously intelligent babies? And who?

Victor could hardly contain himself. He rose to his feet and paced the length of the room. The only idea that came to mind was a long shot: some rapid, half-baked moralistic reactionary had stumbled onto the details of the NGF experiment. In a vengeful attempt to blot out Victor’s efforts, the madman had murdered the Hobbs and Murray kids.

But if this scenario were the case, why hadn’t the smart rats been disposed of? And what about VJ? Besides, so few people had access to the computer and the labs. Victor thought about the hacker who had deleted the files. But how would such a person gain access to the labs, or even the day-care center? All at once, Victor understood that it was only at the day-care center that the Hobbs and Murray babies’ lives intersected. They had to have received the cephaloclor at the day-care center!

Victor angrily considered Hurst’s threat: “You’re not the white knight you want us to believe.” Maybe Hurst knew all about the NGF project and this was his way of retaliating.

Victor started pacing again. Even the Hurst idea didn’t fit well with the facts. If Hurst or anyone wanted to get back at him, why not old-fashioned blackmail, or just exposure to the newspapers? That made more sense than killing innocent children. No, there had to be another explanation, something more evil, less obvious.

Victor sat down at his desk and took out some results from recent laboratory experiments and tried to do some work. But he couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts kept circling back to the NGF project. Considering what he was up against, it was too bad he couldn’t go to the authorities with his suspicions. Doing so would require a full disclosure of the NGF project, and Victor understood that he could never do that. It would amount to professional suicide. To say nothing of his family life. If only he had never done this experiment in the first place.

Leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head, Victor stared up at the ceiling. Back when VJ’s intelligence had dropped, Victor had never even considered testing him for cephaloclor. Could the antibiotic have been sequestered in his body since birth, only to leach out when he was between two and four years old? “No,” Victor voiced to the ceiling, answering his own question. There was no physiological process that could cause such a phenomenon.

Victor marveled at the storm of events whirling around him: Gephardt’s murder, the possible purposeful elimination of two genetically engineered children, an escalating series of threats to himself and his family, fraud, and embezzlement. Could these disparate incidents be related in some fantastic, grisly plot?

Victor shook his head. The fact that all these things were happening at once had to be coincidence. But the thought they were related nagged. Victor thought again of VJ. Could he be at risk? How could Victor prevent him from receiving cephaloclor if there was some sinister hand trying to effect just that?

Victor stared blankly ahead. The idea of VJ’s being at risk had disturbed him since Wednesday afternoon. He began to wonder if his warnings about Beekman and Hurst had been adequate. He got up from the desk and walked to the door. Suddenly he didn’t like the idea of VJ wandering around Chimera on his own.

Starting out in the lab just as he had done on Wednesday, he began asking if anyone had seen VJ. But no one had seen either him or Philip for some time. Victor left the lab building and went to the cafeteria. It was just before lunchtime and the cafeteria staff was in the final countdown in preparation for the noontime rush. A few people who preferred to get a jump on the others were already eating their lunches. Victor went directly to the manager, Curt Tarkington, who was supervising the stocking of the steam table.

“I’m looking for my son again,” Victor said.

“He hasn’t been in yet,” Curt said. “Maybe you should give him a beeper.”

“Not a bad idea,” Victor said. “When he shows up, would you ring my secretary?”

“No problem,” Curt said.

Victor checked the library, which was in the same building, but there wasn’t a soul there. Stepping outside, he debated going to the fitness and day-care centers. Instead, he headed for the security office at the main gate.

Wiping his feet on a straw mat, Victor entered the small office that was built between the entrance and the exit to the Chimera compound. One man was operating the gates, another sat at a small desk. Both wore official-looking brown uniforms with the Chimera insignia patch on the upper sleeves. The man at the desk jumped to his feet as Victor entered.

“Good morning, sir,” the guard said. His name tag gave his name: Sheldon Farber.

“Sit down,” Victor said in a friendly tone. Sheldon sat. “I have a question about protocol. When a truck or van leaves the compound, does someone take a look inside?”

“Oh, yes,” Sheldon said. “Always.”

“And if there is equipment on board you make sure it is supposed to be there?” Victor asked.

“Certainly,” Sheldon said. “We check the work order or call electronic maintenance. We always check it out.”

“What if it is being driven by one of the Chimera employees?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sheldon said. “We always check.”

“What if it is being driven by one of the management?”

Sheldon hesitated, then spoke. “Well, I suppose that would be different.”

“So if a van is driven out of here by one of the executives, you let it go?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” Sheldon said nervously.

“From now on I want all trucks, vans, and the like looked into no matter who is driving. Even me. Understand?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Sheldon said.

“One other question,” Victor said. “Has anyone seen my son today?”

“I haven’t,” Sheldon said. Then to the man operating the gates he said, “George, did you see VJ today?”

“Only when he arrived with Dr. Frank.”

Sheldon held up a hand for Victor to wait. Turning to a radio set up behind the desk, he put out a call for Hal.

“Hal’s been cruising around this morning,” Sheldon explained. Some crackles heralded Hal’s voice. Sheldon asked if VJ was around.

“I saw him down near the dam earlier this morning,” Hal said through a good deal of static.

Victor thanked the security men and left their office. He felt a minor amount of irritation, remembering how willful VJ was. Victor could remember telling him to stay away from the river at least four or five times.

Pulling his lab coat more closely around him, Victor started for the river. He thought about going back to the main building to get his regular coat, but didn’t. Although the temperature had dropped from the previous day, it still was not that cold.

Although the day had started clear, it was now cloudy. The prevailing breeze, from the northeast, smelled of the ocean. High above, several sea gulls circled, squawking shrilly.

Directly ahead stood the clock tower building with its Big Ben replica stopped at 2:15. Victor reminded himself to bring up the issue of renovating the structure as well as the clock at next Wednesday’s board meeting.

The closer he got to the river, the louder the roar from the waterfall over the spillway of the dam became.

“VJ!” Victor shouted as he approached the river’s edge. But his voice was lost in the crash of the water. He continued past the eastern edge of the clock tower building, crossed over a wooden bridge that spanned the sluice exiting from the basement of the building, and arrived at the granite quay built along the river below the dam. He looked down at the white water as it swirled furiously eastward toward the ocean. Glancing left, he gazed at the expanse of the dam spanning the river and at the broad millpond upstream. Water poured over the center of the dam in an imposing arch of emerald green. The force was enough for Victor to feel through his feet, standing on the granite quay. It was an awesome testimony to the power of nature that had started earlier that year with gentle snowflakes.

Turning around, Victor shouted at the top of his lungs: “VJ!” But he bit off his shout with the shock that VJ was standing directly behind him. Philip was a little farther away.

“There you are,” Victor said. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“I guessed as much,” VJ said. “What do you want?”

“I want...” Victor paused. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. “What have you been doing?”

“Just having fun.”

“I’m not sure I want you wandering around like this, especially down here by the river,” Victor said sternly. “In fact, I want you home today. I’ll have a driver from the motor pool give you and Philip a lift.”

“But I don’t want to go home,” VJ complained.

“I’ll explain more later,” Victor said firmly. “But I want you home for now. It’s for your own good.”

It was still windy and rainy when Victor went out to the garage and got in his car. He’d breakfasted, showered, shaved, and dressed, and still no one else had stirred. After leaving a note explaining that he would be at the lab most of the day, Victor had left.

But he didn’t drive straight to the lab. Instead he headed west and got on Interstate 93 and drove south to Boston. In Boston he got off Storrow Drive at the Charles Street and Government Center exit. From there it was easy to drive onto the Massachusetts General Hospital grounds and park in the multistory parking garage. Ten minutes later he was in the pathology department.

Since it was early Saturday morning none of the staff pathologists were available. Victor had to be content with a second-year resident named Angela Cirone.

Victor explained his wish to get a tumor sample from a patient that had passed away four years previously.

“I’m afraid that is impossible,” Angela said. “We don’t keep—”

Victor politely interrupted her to tell her of the special nature of the tumor and its rarity.

“That might make things different,” she said.

The hardest part was finding Janice Fay’s hospital record, since Victor did not know Janice’s birthday. Birthdates were the major method of cross-referencing hospital records. But persistence paid off, and Angela was able to find both the hospital record number as well as the pathology record. She was also able to tell Victor that a gross specimen existed.

“But I can’t give you any,” Angela said after all the effort they’d expended to find it. “One of the staff members is up doing frozens this morning. When he gets through, we can see if he’ll give authorization.”

But Victor explained about his son David’s death of the same rare cancer and his interest in examining Janice’s cancerous cells. When he tried to, he could be charming in a winning way. Within the space of a few minutes, he’d persuaded the young resident to help.

“How much do you need?” she asked finally.

“A tiny slice,” Victor said.

“I guess it can’t hurt,” Angela said.

Fifteen minutes later, Victor was on his way down the elevator with another small jar within a paper bag. He knew he could have waited for the staff man, but this way he could get to work more quickly. Climbing into his car, he left the Massachusetts General Hospital grounds and headed north for Lawrence.

Arriving at Chimera, Victor called Able Protection. But he got a recording — it was Saturday, after all — and had to be content to leave his name and number. With that done, he searched for Robert, finding him already deeply involved with the project that Victor had started the night before, the separation of the section of David’s tumor DNA that differed from his normal DNA.

“You are going to hate me,” Victor said, “but I have another sample.” He took out the sample he had just gotten at Mass. General. “I want this DNA fingerprinted as well.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Robert said. “I like doing this stuff. You’ll just have to realize that I’m letting my regular work slide.”

“I understand,” Victor said. “For the moment this project takes priority.”

Taking the rat specimens that he’d prepared the night before, Victor made slides and stained them. While he was waiting for them to dry, a call came through from Able Protection. It was the same deep-voiced man whom Victor had dealt with earlier.

“First, I’d like to commend Mr. Norwell,” Victor said. “He did a great job last night.”

“We appreciate the compliment,” the man said.

“Second,” Victor said, “I need additional temporary security. But it’s going to require a very special person. I want someone with my son, VJ, from 6 A.M. until 6 P.M. And when I say I want someone with him, I mean constantly.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” the man said. “When do you want it to start?”

“As soon as you can send someone,” Victor answered. “This morning, if possible. My son is at home.”

“No problem. I have just the person. His name is Pedro Gonzales and I’ll send him on his way.”

Victor hung up and called Marsha at home.

“How did you sneak out without waking me this morning?” she asked.

“I never got to sleep last night after all the excitement,” Victor said. “Is VJ there?”

“He and Philip are still sleeping,” Marsha said.

“I’ve just made arrangements to have a security man stay with VJ all day. His name is Pedro Gonzales. He’ll be over shortly.”

“Why?” Marsha questioned, obviously surprised.

“Just to be one hundred percent sure he is safe,” Victor said.

“You’re not telling me something,” Marsha warned. “I want to know what it is.”

“It’s just to be sure he’s safe,” Victor repeated. “We’ll talk more about it later when I come home. I promise.”

Victor hung up the phone. He wasn’t about to confide in Marsha, at least not about his latest suspicions: that the Hobbs and Murray kids might have been deliberately killed. And that VJ could be killed the same way if anyone introduced cephaloclor to his system. With these thoughts in mind, he returned to the slides of the rat brains that he had drying and began to examine them in one of the light microscopes. As he expected, they appeared very similar to the slides of the children’s brains. Now there was no doubt in his mind that the children had indeed died from the cephaloclor in their blood. It was how they got the cephaloclor that was the question.

Removing the slides from the microscope, Victor went back to where Robert was working. They’d worked together so long, Victor could join in and help without a single word of direction from Robert.

Victor regained consciousness gradually. Through a haze, he heard muffled noises he couldn’t make out. Then he realized the noises were voices. Finally he recognized VJ’s voice, and the boy was angry, yelling at someone, telling them that Victor was his father.

“I’m sorry.” The words carried a heavy Spanish accent. “How was I to know?”

Victor felt himself being shaken. The jostling made him aware that his head hurt. He felt dizzy. Reaching up, he felt a lump the size of a golf ball on the top of his forehead.

“Dad?” VJ called.

Victor opened his eyes groggily. For a moment the headache became intense, then waned. He was looking up into VJ’s icy blue eyes. His son was holding his shoulders. Beyond VJ were other faces with swarthy complexions. Next to VJ was a particularly dark man with an almost sinister expression on his face, heightened by the effect of an eyelid that drooped over his left eye.

Closing his eyes again and gritting his teeth, Victor sat up. Dizziness made him totter for a moment, but VJ helped steady him. When the dizziness passed, Victor opened his eyes again. He also felt the bump again, only vaguely remembering how he’d gotten it.

“Are you all right, Dad?” VJ persisted.

“I think so,” Victor said. He looked at the strangers. They were dressed in the typical Chimera security uniforms, but he didn’t recognize any of them. Behind them stood Philip, looking sheepish and afraid.

Glancing around the room to orient himself, Victor first thought he was back in his lab because he was surrounded by the usual bevy of sophisticated scientific instrumentation. Right next to him he noticed one of the newest instruments available on the market: a fast protein liquid chromatography unit.

But he wasn’t in his lab. The setting was an inappropriate combination of high-tech with a rustic background of exposed granite and hewn beams.

“Where am I?” Victor asked as he rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of his index fingers.

“You are where you aren’t supposed to be,” VJ said.

“What happened to me?” Victor asked as he tried to get his feet under him to stand.

“Why don’t you just relax a minute,” VJ said, restraining him. “You hit your head.”

“That’s an understatement,” Victor was tempted to say. He reached up and felt the impressive lump once more, then examined his fingers to see if there was any blood. He was still confused but his head was beginning to clear. “What do you mean, ‘I’m where I’m not supposed to be’?” he asked as if suddenly hearing VJ’s comment for the first time.

“You weren’t supposed to see this hidden lab of mine for another month or so,” VJ said. “At least not until we were in my new digs across the river.”

Victor blinked. Suddenly his mind was clear. He remembered the dark figure who’d clobbered him. He looked at his son’s smiling face, then let his eyes wander around the unlikely laboratory. It was as if he’d taken a step beyond reality where mass spectrometers competed with hand-chiseled granite. “Exactly where am I?” Victor asked.

“We are in the basement of the clock tower building,” VJ said as he let go of Victor and stood up. VJ made a sweeping gesture with his hand and said, “But we’ve changed the decor to suit our needs. What do you think?”

Victor swallowed and licked his dry lips. He glanced at his son only to see him beaming proudly. He watched as Philip nervously wrung his hands. Victor looked at the three men in Chimera security guard uniforms — swarthy Hispanics with tanned faces and shiny black hair. Then his eyes slowly swept around the high-ceilinged room. It was one of the most astounding sights he’d ever seen. Directly in front of him was the yawning maw of the opening into the sluice. A slime of green mold oozed out of the lower lip with a trickle of moisture. Most of the opening was covered with a makeshift hatch made of heavy old lumber. The huge wooden trough that used to carry the water through the room had been dismantled to serve as raw materials for the hatch, the lab benches, and bookshelves.

The room appeared to be about sixty feet across and about a hundred feet in length. The largest of the old paddle wheels still stood in its vertical position in the center of the room like a piece of modern sculpture. A number of the laboratory instruments were pushed up against its huge blades, forming a giant circle.

At both ends of the room were several heavy doors reinforced with metal rivets. The walls of the room on all four sides were constructed of the same gray granite. The ceiling consisted of open joists supporting heavy planking. In addition to the largest of the paddle wheels, most of the old mechanical apparatus of huge rods and gears that had transmitted the waterpower were still in their original places, supported from the ceiling joists by metal sheaths.

Just behind Victor was a flight of wooden stairs that rose up to the ceiling, dead-ending into wooden planks.

“Well, Dad?” VJ questioned with anticipation. “Come on! What do you think?”

Victor rose to his feet unsteadily. “This is your lab?” he asked.

“That’s right,” VJ said. “Pretty cool, wouldn’t you say?”

Wobbling, Victor made his way over to a DNA synthesizer and ran his hand along its top edge. It was the newest model available, better than the unit Victor had in his own lab.

“Where did all this equipment come from?” Victor asked, spotting a magnetic electron microscope on the other side of the paddle wheel.

“You could say it’s on loan,” said VJ. He followed his father and gazed lovingly at the synthesizer.

Victor turned to VJ, studying the boy’s face. “Is this the equipment that was stolen from Chimera?”

“It was never stolen,” VJ said with an impish grin. “Let’s say it was merely rerouted. It belongs to Chimera, and it’s still on Chimera grounds. I don’t think you could consider it stolen unless it left the Chimera complex.”

Walking on to the next laboratory appliance, an elaborate gas chromatography unit, Victor tried to pull himself together. His headache still bothered him, especially when he moved, and he felt quite dizzy. But he was starting to think the dizziness could be attributed as much to the revelation of this lab than the blow to his head. This was something out of a dream — a nightmare. Gently touching one of the chromatography columns, he assured himself it was real. Then he turned to VJ, who was right behind him.

“I think you had better explain this place from the beginning.”

“Sure,” VJ said. “But why don’t we go into the living quarters where we’ll be more comfortable.”

VJ led the way around the large paddle wheel, passed the electron microscope, and headed for the end of the room. When he got there, he opened the door on the left. He pointed to the door on the right: “More lab spaces through there. We never seem to have enough.”

As Victor followed VJ, he noticed over his shoulder that Philip was coming but the security guards paid them no heed. Two of them had already sat down on a makeshift bench and started playing cards.

VJ led Victor to the room that indeed looked like living quarters. Rugs in various sizes and shapes had been hung over the granite walls to provide a warmer atmosphere. About ten rollaway cots with bed linens cluttered the floor. Near the entrance door was a round table with six captain’s chairs. VJ motioned for his father to have a seat.

Victor pulled out a chair and sat down. Philip silently sat down several chairs away.

“Want something to drink? Hot chocolate or tea?” VJ asked, playing host. “We have all the comforts of home here.”

“I think you’d better tell me what this is all about,” Victor said.

VJ nodded, then quietly began. “You know I’ve been interested in what was going on in your lab from the first days you brought me to Chimera. The problem was nobody let me touch anything.”

“Of course not,” Victor said. “You were an infant.”

“I didn’t feel like an infant,” VJ said. “Needless to say, I decided early on I needed a lab of my own if I were to do anything at all. It started out small, but it had to get bigger since I kept needing more equipment.”

“How old were you when you started?” Victor asked.

“It was about seven years ago,” VJ said. “I was three. It was surprisingly easy to set the lab up with Philip around to lend the needed muscles.” Philip smiled proudly. VJ went on: “At first, I was in the building next to the cafeteria. But then there was talk about its being renovated, so we moved everything here to the clock tower. It’s been my little secret ever since.”

“For seven years?” Victor questioned.

VJ nodded. “About that.”

“But why?” Victor asked.

“So I could do some serious work,” VJ said. “Watching you and being around the lab I became fascinated with the potential of biology. It is the science of the future. I had some ideas of my own about how the research should have been conducted.”

“But you could have worked in my lab,” Victor said.

“Impossible,” VJ said with a wave of his hand. “I’m too young. No one would have let me do what I’ve been doing. I needed freedom from restrictions, from rules, from helping hands. I needed my own space, and let me tell you, it has paid off beyond your wildest dreams. I’ve been dying to show you what I’ve been doing for at least a year. You’re going to flip.”

“You’ve had some successes?” Victor asked hesitantly, suddenly curious.

“Several astounding breakthroughs is a better description,” VJ said. “Maybe you should try to guess.”

“I couldn’t,” Victor said.

“I think you could,” VJ said. “One of the projects is something that you yourself have been working on.”

“I’ve been working on a lot of things,” Victor said evasively.

“Listen,” VJ said, “my idea is to let you have credit for the discoveries so that Chimera can patent them and prosper. We don’t want anybody to know that I’m involved at all.”

“Something like the swimming race?” Victor asked.

VJ laughed heartily. “Something like that, I suppose. I prefer not to draw attention to myself. I don’t want anyone to pry, and people seem to get so curious when there’s a prodigy in their midst. I’d prefer you to get the credit. Chimera will get the patent. We can say I’ll offer you my results to compensate for space and equipment.”

“Give me an idea of what you’ve turned up.”

“For starters, I’ve solved the mystery of the implantation of a fertilized egg in a uterus,” VJ said proudly. “As long as the zygote is normal, I can guarantee one hundred percent implantation.”

“You’re joking,” said Victor.

“I’m not joking,” VJ said somewhat crossly. “The answer turned out to be both simple and more complicated than expected. It involves the juxtaposition of the zygote and the surface cells of the uterus, initiating a kind of chemical communication which most people would probably call an antibody-antigen reaction. It is this reaction that releases a polypeptide vessel proliferation factor which results in the implantation. I’ve isolated this factor and have produced it in quantity with recombinant DNA techniques. A shot of it guarantees one hundred percent implantation of a healthy fertilized egg.”

To emphasize his point, VJ pulled a vial out of his pocket and placed it on the table in front of his father. “It’s for you,” he said. “Who knows, maybe you’ll win a Nobel Prize.” VJ laughed and Philip joined in.

Victor picked up the vial and stared at the clear, viscous fluid within. “Something like this has to be tested,” he said.

“It’s been tested,” VJ said. “Animals, humans, it’s all the same. One hundred percent successful.”

Victor looked at his son, then at Philip. Philip smiled hesitantly, unsure of Victor’s reaction. Victor glanced at the vial again. He could immediately appreciate the academic and economic impact of such a discovery. It would be monumental, revolutionizing in-vitro fertilization techniques. With a product like this, Fertility, Inc., would dominate the field. It would have worldwide impact.

Victor took a deep breath. “Are you sure this works in humans?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” VJ said. “As I said, it’s been tested.”

“In whom?” Victor asked.

“Volunteers, of course,” VJ said. “But there will be plenty of time to give you the details later.”

Volunteers? Victor’s head reeled. Didn’t VJ realize he couldn’t blithely experiment with real people? There were laws to think of, ethics. But the possibilities were irresistible. And who was Victor to judge? Hadn’t he engineered the conception of the extraordinary boy he had before him now?

“Let me look at your lab again,” Victor said, pushing away from the table.

VJ ran ahead to open the door. Victor returned to the main room where the security men were still playing cards, talking loudly in Spanish.

Victor slowly walked around the circle, gazing at the instrumentation. Impressive was an understatement. He realized his headache seemed suddenly better. He felt a growing sense of elation. It was hard to believe that his ten-year-old son was responsible for all this.

“Who knows about this lab?” Victor asked, stopping to appreciate the electron microscope. He ran a hand over its curved surface.

“Philip and a handful of security people,” said VJ. “And now you.”

Victor shot VJ a quick glance. VJ smiled back.

All at once Victor laughed. “And to think this has been going on under our noses all this time!” Victor shook his head in disbelief, continuing around the circle of scientific appliances, tapping the tops of some of them with the tips of his fingers. “And are you sure about this implantation protein?” Victor asked, already considering likely trade names: Conceptol. Fertol.

“Completely,” VJ said. “And that’s just one of the discoveries that I’ve made. There are many more. I’ve made some advances in understanding the process of cellular differentiation and development I believe will herald a new era of biology.”

Victor stopped his wandering and turned back to VJ. “Does Marsha know anything about this?” he asked.

“Nothing!” VJ said with emphasis.

“She is going to be one happy lady,” Victor said with a smile. “She’s been worrying herself sick that something is wrong with you since you don’t have time for kids your own age.”

“I’ve been a little too busy for Cub Scouts,” said VJ.

Victor laughed. “God, I’ll say. She’s going to love this. We’ll have to tell her and bring her here.”

“I’m not convinced that’s such a good idea,” VJ said.

“It is, believe me,” Victor said. “It will relieve her enormously and I won’t have to listen to another lecture on your psychological development.”

“I don’t want people knowing about this lab,” VJ said.

“It was an unexpected accident that you discovered it. I wasn’t planning on telling you any of this until I’d moved the lab to the new location.”

“Where is that?” Victor asked.

“Nearby,” VJ said. “I’ll show it to you on another day.”

“But we have to tell Marsha,” Victor insisted. “You have no idea how worried she’s been about you. I’ll take care of her. She won’t tell anyone.”

“It’s a risk,” VJ said. “I don’t think she’ll be as impressed as you by my accomplishments. She’s not as enthusiastic about science as we are.”

“She’ll be ecstatic that you are such a genius. And that you’ve put all this together. It’s just extraordinary.”

“Well, maybe...” VJ said, trying to decide.

“Trust me,” Victor said enthusiastically.

“Perhaps on this one issue I’ll have to bow to your better judgment,” VJ said. “I guess you know her better than I do. All I can say is that I hope you’re right. She could cause a lot of trouble.”

“I’ll get her right now,” Victor said with obvious excitement.

“How will you get her over here to the building without people noticing?” VJ said.

“It’s Saturday,” Victor said. “Hardly anyone is around, especially so late in the day.”

“Okay,” VJ said with resignation.

Victor headed for the stairs, practically running. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes. Forty-five, tops,” he said. He charged up a half dozen steps, then came to a stop. As he noticed before, the stairs dead-ended into heavy planks.

“Is this the way out?” Victor asked.

“Just give it a shove,” VJ said. “It’s counterweighted.”

Victor went up the rest of the stairs more slowly until his hand rested on the overhead planks. Tentatively, he pushed upward. To his surprise, a large trapdoor opened with amazing ease. Casting a last glance down at VJ, Victor winked, then climbed up the rest of the stairs. When he let go of the trapdoor, it sank silently into place, cutting off the light from below.

Victor ran from the building, his pulse up from sheer exhilaration. He hadn’t felt so ecstatic in years.

At four-thirty in the morning Marsha woke up with a start. She had no idea what had awakened her, and for a few minutes she breathed shallowly, and listened to the nighttime noises of the house. She heard nothing out of the ordinary. She rolled over and tried to go back to sleep but it was impossible. In her mind’s eye, she kept seeing VJ’s eerie lab with its juxtaposition of the old and the very new. Then she’d see the strange appearance of the man with the lidded eye.

Swinging her feet from beneath the covers, Marsha sat on the edge of the bed. So as not to bother Victor, she stood up, wiggled into her slippers, and pulled on her robe. As quietly as possible she eased open the door to the bedroom and equally as quietly, pulled it shut.

She stood in the hall for a moment, thinking about where she should go. As if pulled by some unseen force, she found herself walking the length of the hall, heading toward VJ’s room. When she got there, she noticed the door was slightly ajar.

Marsha quietly pushed the door open wider. A gentle light was coming through the window from the post lamps lining the driveway. To her relief, VJ was fast asleep. He was lying on his side facing her. Sleeping, he looked like an angel of a boy. Could her darling baby really have had a hand in the dark events at Chimera? She couldn’t bring herself to think of Janice and David, her beloved first son. But with horror, a vision of David in his last days, his skin yellowed from the disease, flashed upon her.

Marsha stifled a cry. All of a sudden her mind conjured up a horrid image of her taking a pillow and pushing it down on VJ’s peaceful face, smothering him. Horrified, she recoiled from the thought and shook herself. Then she fled silently down the hall, running from herself.

Marsha stopped at the guest room door, which had temporarily become Philip’s room. Pushing the door open, she could make out Philip’s massive head silhouetted against the stark white of the bed linens. After a moment’s thought, Marsha slipped into the room and stood next to the bed. The man was snoring deeply, his breath softly whistling on exhale. Bending down, Marsha gave his shoulder a gentle nudge. “Philip,” she called softly. “Philip!”

Philip’s closely set eyes blinked open. Abruptly, he sat up. A look of momentary fear flashed across his face before he recognized Marsha. Then he smiled, revealing his square, widely spaced teeth.

“Sorry to awaken you,” she whispered. “But I need to talk to you for a moment.”

“Okay,” Philip said groggily. He leaned back on an elbow.

Marsha pulled a chair over to the bed, turned on the light on the nightstand, and sat down. “I wanted to thank you for being such a good friend to VJ,” she said.

Philip’s face broke out in a wide smile as he squinted in the light. He nodded.

“You must have been a great help in setting up the lab,” Marsha said.

Philip nodded again.

“Who else helped with the lab?”

Philip’s smile waned. He looked around the room nervously. “I’m not supposed to say.”

“I’m VJ’s mother,” Marsha reminded him. “It’s all right to tell me.”

Philip shifted his weight uneasily.

Marsha waited but Philip didn’t say anything.

“Did Mr. Gephardt help?” Marsha asked.

Philip nodded.

“But then Mr. Gephardt got into trouble. Did he get angry at VJ?”

“Oh, yeah!” Philip said. “He got angry and then VJ got angry. But VJ talked with Mr. Martinez.”

“What’s Mr. Martinez’s first name?”

“Orlando,” Philip said.

“Does Mr. Martinez work at Chimera, too?”

Philip’s agitation began to return. “No,” he said. “He works in Mattapan.”

“The town of Mattapan?” Marsha asked. “South of Boston?”

Philip nodded.

Marsha started to ask another question but she suddenly felt a presence that sent a shiver up her spine. She turned to the door. VJ was standing in the doorway with his hands on the jambs, his chin jutting forward.

“I think Philip needs his sleep,” he said.

Marsha stood up abruptly. She started to say something but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead she hurriedly brushed by VJ and ran down to her room.

For the next half hour, Marsha lay there, terrified that VJ would come into their bedroom. She jumped every time the wind blew the oak tree branches against the side of the house.

When he didn’t appear, Marsha finally relaxed. She turned over and tried to sleep, but her mind would not stop. Her thoughts drifted to the mysterious Orlando Martinez. Then she began to think about Janice Fay. She thought about David, feeling the familiar sadness. She thought about Mr. Remington and the Pendleton Academy. Then she recalled the teacher who tried to befriend VJ and the fact that he died. She wondered what he’d died of.

The next thing she knew, Victor was waking her to tell her he was leaving with VJ.

“What time is it?” Marsha asked, looking at the clock herself. To her surprise, it was nine-thirty.

“You were sleeping so soundly I didn’t have the heart to wake you,” Victor said. “VJ and I are off to his lab. He’s going to show me the details of the implantation work he’s done. Why don’t you come along? I have a feeling this is really going to be something.”

Marsha shook her head. “I’ll stay here,” she said. “You can tell me about it.”

“You sure?” Victor questioned. “If this is as good as I think it will be, maybe you’ll feel better about the whole situation.”

“I’m sure,” Marsha said, but her tone was doubtful.

Victor planted a kiss on her forehead. “Try to relax, okay? Everything is going to work out for the best. I’m sure of it.”

Victor went down the back stairs, literally shivering with excitement. If the implantation was real, he could surprise the other board members with the news at the Wednesday board meeting.

“Mom’s not coming?” VJ asked. He was near the back door with his coat already on. Philip was standing next to him.

“No, but she’s calmer this morning,” Victor said. “I can tell.”

“She was pumping Philip for information in the middle of the night,” VJ said. “That’s the kind of behavior that disturbs me.”

The atmosphere at breakfast was anything but normal. Marsha had promised herself as she took her morning shower that she would act as if everything was fine, but she found it impossible. When VJ appeared for breakfast about fifteen minutes behind schedule, she told him he’d better hurry since it was a school day. She knew she was baiting him, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Now that the secret is out,” VJ said, “I think it is rather ridiculous for me to go to school and pretend to be interested and absorbed in fifth-grade work.”

“But I thought it was important to maintain your anonymity,” Marsha persisted.

VJ glanced toward his father for support, but Victor calmly drank his coffee. He was staying out of it.

“At this point, going to school or not going to school will in no way affect my anonymity,” VJ said coldly.

“The law says you must go to school,” said Marsha.

“There are higher laws,” VJ retorted.

Marsha wasn’t going to make a stand alone. “Whatever you and Victor decide is fine with me,” she told them. She left for work before learning Victor’s decision.

“She is going to be trouble,” VJ warned once she was gone.

“She needs a little more time,” Victor said. “But you might have to come to some compromise on the school issue.”

“I don’t see why. It’s not going to help my work. If anything, it will slow things down. Aren’t results more important?”

“They’re important,” said Victor, “but they’re not everything. Now, how do you want to get to Chimera today? You want to ride with me?”

“Nope,” said VJ. “I want to take my bike. Is it all right for Philip to use yours?”

“Sure,” Victor said. “I’ll see you in your lab about midmorning. I’ll need the details on the implantation protein for the legal department to start the patent application. I also want to see the rest of your lab as well as the new lab.” Victor didn’t mention the episode with Ramirez earlier that morning.

“Fine,” VJ said. “Just be careful about coming. I don’t want any other visitors.”

Fifteen minutes later, VJ was plunging down Stanhope Street with the wind whistling past his head. Philip was right behind him on Victor’s bike, and behind Philip was Pedro in his Ford Taurus.

VJ told Philip and Pedro to wait for him outside when he went into the bank with his saddlebags. Luckily Mr. Scott was occupied with another customer, and VJ was able to use his safe deposit box for another large deposit without getting a lecture.

Victor’s ride to work was not as carefree. Although he tried to think of other things, his mind was haunted by Marsha’s words: “For an extremely rare cancer, a lot of people seem to be contracting it. People who cross VJ.” Victor was wondering just how he’d feel if Marsha contracted it. Just how was VJ prepared to handle trouble?

Despite his apprehensions, Victor was fueled by enthusiasm for the new implantation protein project. He tackled the laborious administrative details that had accumulated by Monday morning with a good deal more equanimity than usual. He welcomed the busywork; it kept his mind from wandering. Colleen came in with her usual stack of messages and situations needing attention. Victor had her go through them rapidly before making any decisions, half hoping for some kind of communication that would suggest blackmail about the NGF project, but there was nothing.

The most satisfying decision involved the question of whether Victor wanted to press charges against Sharon Carver. He told Colleen to let the parties know that he was willing to drop charges if the groundless sex-discrimination suit was also dropped.

The final item that Victor requested Colleen to do was to schedule a meeting with Ronald so that he could confront the man about the problems associated with the NGF work. If that didn’t turn up anything, which he didn’t expect it would, he would schedule a meeting with Hurst. Hurst had to be the culprit; in fact, Victor prayed as much. More than anything else he wanted to uncover some hard evidence that he could lay in front of Marsha and say: “VJ had nothing to do with this.”

Marsha had to run to keep up with Victor as he made his way toward the river. The two soon left the renovated part of the complex behind. In broad daylight the abandoned buildings did not look quite so sinister.

Entering the building, Victor went straight to the trapdoor, bent down, and rapped sharply on the floor several times.

In a minute or two the trapdoor came up. A man in a Chimera security uniform eyed Victor and Marsha warily, then motioned for them to descend.

Victor went first. By the time Marsha was down the stairs, Victor had rounded the paddle wheel and was heading toward the intimidating metal door barring the entrance to the unexplored portion of VJ’s lab. For Marsha, the lab itself was as forbidding as it had been the last time she’d been there. She knew that the fruits of scientific research could be put to good or evil use, but something about the eerie basement quarters gave Marsha the feeling that the research conducted here was for a darker purpose.

“Hey!” yelled one of the guards, seeing Victor approach the restricted door. He jumped up and sprinted across the room diagonally, and grabbed Victor by the arm. He pulled him around roughly. “Nobody’s allowed in there,” he snarled in his strong Spanish accent.

To Marsha’s surprise, Victor put his hand squarely on the man’s face and pushed him back. The gesture took the man by surprise, and he fell to one knee, but he maintained a hold on Victor’s jacket sleeve. With a forcible yank, Victor shook free of the man’s grasp and reached around to the door.

The security guard pulled a knife from his boot and flicked it open. A flash of light glinted off its razor surface.

“Victor!” Marsha screamed. Victor turned when he heard her scream. The guard came at him, holding the knife out in front of his body like a miniature rapier. Victor parried the thrust but the man got hold of his arm. The knife rose menacingly.

“Stop it!” VJ yelled as he burst through the door toward which Victor had been heading. The two other security men who were in the room got between the two combatants, one restraining Victor, the other dealing with the knife-wielding guard.

“Let my father go!” VJ commanded.

“He was going into the back lab,” the guard with the knife cried.

“Let him go,” VJ ordered even more sternly than before.

Victor was released with a shove. He staggered forward, trying to maintain his balance. Doing so, he made another move for the door. VJ reached out and grasped his arm just as Victor was about to push through to the other side.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” VJ asked.

“I want to see it all,” Victor said flatly.

“Remember the Tree of Knowledge?”

“Of Good and Evil,” countered Victor. “You can’t talk me out of this.”

VJ pulled his hand back. “Suit yourself, but you may not appreciate the consequences.”

Victor looked to Marsha, who nodded for him to go. Turning again to the door, he pulled it open. Pale blue light flooded out. Victor stepped over the threshold with Marsha right behind him. VJ followed, then pulled the door closed.

The room was about fifty feet long and rather narrow. On a long bench built of rough-hewn lumber sat four fifty-gallon glass tanks. The sides were fused with silicone. The tanks were illuminated by heat lamps and gave off the eerie blue light as it refracted through the contained fluid.

Marsha’s jaw dropped in horror when she realized what was in the tanks. Inside each one and enveloped in transparent membranes were four fetuses, each perhaps eight months old, who were swimming about in their artificial wombs. They watched Marsha as she walked down the aisle, their blue eyes fully open. They gestured, smiled, and even yawned.

Casually, but with an air of arrogant pride, VJ gave a cursory explanation of the system. In each tank the placentas were plastered onto a plexiglass grid against a membrane bag connected to a sort of heart-lung machine. Each machine had its own computer, which was in turn attached to a protein synthesizer. The liquid surface of each tank was covered with plastic balls to retard evaporation.

Neither Marsha nor Victor could speak, so appalled were they by the sight of the gestating children. Although they had tried to prepare themselves for the unexpected, this was a shock too outrageous to behold.

“I’m sure you’re wondering what this is all about,” VJ said, moving up to one of the tanks and checking one of the many read-out devices. He hit it with his fist and a stuck needle indicator sprang into the green-painted normal zone. “My early work on implantation had me modeling wombs with tissue culture. Solving the implantation problem also solved the problems of why a uterus was needed at all.”

“How old are these children?” Marsha asked.

“Eight and a half months,” VJ said, confirming Marsha’s impression. “I’ll be keeping them gestating a lot longer than the usual nine months. They will be easier to raise the longer I keep them in their tanks.”

“Where did you get the zygotes?” Victor asked, although he already knew the answer.

“I’m pleased to say that they are my brothers and sisters.”

Marsha’s incredulous gaze went from the fetuses in the tanks to VJ.

VJ laughed at her expression. “Come now, this can’t be that much of a surprise. I got the zygotes from the freezer in Father’s lab. No sense letting them go to waste or letting Dad implant them in other people.”

“There were five,” Victor said. “Where’s the fifth?”

“Good memory,” VJ said. “Unfortunately, I had to waste the fifth on an early test of the implantation protocol. But four is plenty for statistical extrapolation, at least for the first batch.”

Marsha turned back to the gestating children. They were her own!

“Let’s not be too surprised at all this,” VJ said. “You knew this technology was on its way. I’ve just speeded it up.”

Victor went up to one of the computers as it sprang to life and spewed out a half page of data. As soon as it was finished printing, the protein synthesizer turned on and began making a protein.

“The system is sensing the need for some kind of growth factor,” VJ explained.

Victor looked at the print-out. It included the vital signs, chemistries, and blood count of the child. He was astounded at the sophistication of the setup. Victor knew that VJ had had to artificially duplicate the fantastically complicated interplay of forces necessary to take a fertilized egg to an entire organism. The feat represented a quantum leap in biotechnology. A radically new and successful implantation technology was one thing, but this was entirely another. Victor shuddered to consider the diabolic potential of what his creation had created.

Marsha timidly approached one of the tanks and peered in at a boy-child from closer range. The child looked back at her as if he wanted her; he put a tiny palm up against the glass. Marsha reached out with her own and laid her hand over the child’s with just the thickness of the glass separating them. But then she drew her hand back, revolted. “Their heads!” she cried.

Victor came up beside her and leaned toward the child. “What’s the matter with his head?”

“Look at the eyebrows. Their heads slant back without foreheads.”

“They’re mutated,” VJ explained casually. “I removed Victor’s added segment, then destroyed some of the normal NGF loci. I’m aiming at a level of intelligence similar to Philip’s. Philip has been more helpful in aiding me in all my efforts than anyone else.”

Marsha shuddered, gripping Victor’s hand out of VJ’s sight. Victor ignored her and pointed to the door at the end of the room. “What’s beyond that door?”

“Haven’t you seen enough?” VJ asked.

“I’ve got to see it all,” Victor said. He left Marsha and walked down the length of the room. For a moment Marsha stared at the tiny boy-child with his prominent brow and flattened head. It was as if human evolution had stepped back five hundred thousand years. How could VJ deliberately make his own brothers and sisters — such as they were — retarded? His Machiavellian rationale made her shudder.

Marsha pulled herself away from the gestation tanks and followed Victor. She had to see everything too. Could there really be anything worse than what she had just seen?

The next room had huge stainless-steel containers lined in a row. They looked like giant kettles she’d seen at a brewery when she was a teenager. It was warmer and more humid in this room. Several men without shirts labored over one of the vats, adding ingredients to it. They stopped working and looked back at Victor and Marsha.

“What are these tanks?” Marsha asked.

Victor could answer. “They’re fermentors for growing microorganisms like bacteria or yeast.” Then he asked VJ, “What’s growing inside?”

“E. coli bacteria,” VJ said. “The workhorse of recombinant DNA technology.”

“What are they making?” Victor said.

“I’d rather not say,” VJ answered. “Don’t you think the gestational units are enough for one day?”

“I want to know everything,” Victor said. “I want it all out on the table.”

“They are making money,” VJ said with a smile.

“I’m not in the mood for riddles,” Victor said.

VJ sighed. “I had the short-term need for a major capital infusion for the new lab. Obviously, going public wasn’t an alternative for me. Instead, I imported some coca plants from South America and extracted the appropriate genes. I then inserted these genes into a lac operon of E. coli, and using a plasmid that carried a resistance to tetracycline, I put the whole thing back into the bacteria. The product is marvelous. Even the E. coli love it.”

“What is he saying?” Marsha asked Victor.

“He’s saying that these fermentors are making cocaine,” Victor said.

“That explains Martinez Enterprises,” Marsha said with a gasp.

“But this production line is purely temporary,” VJ explained. “It is an expedient means of providing immediate capital. Shortly the new lab will be running on its own merit without the need for contraband. And yes, Martinez Enterprises is a temporary partner. In fact, we can field a small army on a moment’s notice. For now, a number of them are on the Chimera payroll.”

Victor walked down the line of fermentors. The degree of sophistication of these units also amazed him. He could tell at a glance they were far superior to what Chimera was using. Victor pulled away from them with a heavy sigh and rejoined Marsha and VJ.

“Now you’ve seen it all,” said VJ. “But now that you have, we have to have a serious talk.”

VJ turned and walked back toward the main room with Victor and Marsha following. As they passed through the gestation room, the fetuses again moved to the glass. It seemed they longed for human company. If VJ noticed, he didn’t show it.

Without a word, VJ led them through the main room, back into the living quarters. Victor realized then that even here there was space he had not seen. There was a smaller room off the main area. Judging from the decor and journals, Victor guessed this was where VJ stayed. There was one bed, a card table with folding chairs, a large bookcase filled with periodicals, and a reading chair. VJ motioned toward the card table and sat down.

Victor and Marsha sat down as well. VJ had his elbows on the table with his hands clasped. He looked from Victor to Marsha, his piercingly blue eyes sparkling like sapphires. “I have to know what you are planning to do about all this. I’ve been honest with you, it’s time you were honest with me.”

Victor and Marsha exchanged glances. When Victor didn’t speak, Marsha did: “I have to know the truth about David, Janice, and Mr. Cavendish.”

“At the moment, I’m not interested in peripheral issues,” VJ said. “I’m interested in discussing the magnitude of my projects. I hope you can appreciate the enormity of these experiments. Their value transcends all other issues that otherwise might be pertinent.”

“I’m afraid I have to know about these people before I can judge,” Marsha said calmly.

VJ glanced at Victor. “Is this your opinion also?”

Slowly, Victor nodded.

“I was afraid of this,” VJ murmured. He eyed them both severely, as though he was their parent and they were his erring children. Finally he spoke. “All right, I’ll answer your questions. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. The three people you mentioned were planning to expose me. At that point it would have been devastating for my work. I tried to keep them from finding out much about the lab and my experiments, but these three were relentless. I had to let nature handle it.”

“What does that mean?” Victor asked.

“Through my extensive research on growth factors involved in solving the problem of the artificial womb, I discovered certain proteins that acted as powerful enhancers for proto-oncogenes. I packed them in RBC sacs, then let nature take over.”

“You mean you injected them,” Victor said.

“Of course I injected them!” VJ snapped. “That’s not the kind of thing you can take orally.”

Marsha tried to remain calm. “You’re telling me you killed your brother. And you felt nothing?”

“I was only an intermediary. David died of cancer. I pleaded with him to leave me alone. But instead he followed me, thinking he could bring me down. It was his jealousy that drove him.”

“And what about the two babies?” Marsha asked.

“Can’t we talk about the major issues?” VJ demanded, pounding the table with his fist.

“You asked what we were going to do about all this,” Marsha said. “First we have to know all the facts. What about the children?”

VJ drummed his fingers on the surface of the card table. His patience was wearing thin. “They were getting too smart. They were beginning to realize their potential. I didn’t want the competition. A little cephaloclor in the day-care center’s milk was all it took. I’m sure it was good for most of the kids.”

“And how did it make you feel when they died?” Marsha asked.

“Relieved,” VJ said.

“Not sorry or sad in any way?” Marsha persisted.

“This isn’t a therapy session, Mother,” VJ snapped. “My feelings aren’t at issue here. You now know all the dark secrets. It’s your turn for some honesty. I need to know your intentions.”

Marsha looked to Victor, hoping he would denounce VJ’s demonic actions, but Victor only stared blankly at VJ, too stunned for speech.

Marsha interpreted his silence to mean acquiescence, possibly even approval. Could Victor be so caught up in VJ’s achievements that he could dismiss five murders? The murder of their own little boy? Well, she wasn’t going to take this silently. Victor be damned.

“Well?” VJ demanded.

Marsha turned to face him. His unblinking eyes looked at her in calm expectation. Their crystal blue color, so striking since birth, and his angelic blond hair, dissolved Marsha to tears. He was their baby, too, wasn’t he? And if he committed such horrors, was it really his fault? He was a freak of science. For whatever Victor had accomplished in terms of ensuring his brilliance, a conscience seemed to have been lost in the balance. If VJ were guilty, Victor was as culpable as he. Marsha felt a sudden wave of compassion for the boy. “VJ,” she began. “I don’t believe that Victor realized all the repercussions of his NGF experiment—”

But VJ cut her off. “Quite the contrary,” he told her. “Victor knew precisely what he wanted to achieve. And now he can look at me and at what I’ve accomplished and know that he has been ultimately successful. I am exactly what Victor wanted and hoped for; I’m what he’d like to be himself. I am what science can be. I am the future.” VJ smiled. “You’d better get used to me.”

“Maybe you are what Victor intended in scientific respects,” Marsha continued, undaunted. “But I don’t think he foresaw the kind of personality he was creating. VJ, what I’m trying to say is, if you did commit those murders, if you are manufacturing cocaine... and can’t see the moral objections to these actions, well, it’s not all your fault.”

“Mother,” said VJ, exasperated, “you always get so sidetracked. Feelings, symptoms, personality. I reveal to you the greatest biological achievement of all time and you probably want me to take another Rorschach test. This is absurd.”

“Science is not supreme,” Marsha said. “Morality must be brought to bear. Can’t you understand that?”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” VJ said. “And Victor proved that he holds science above morality by the act of creating me. By conventional morality’s dictates, he should not have gone through with the NGF experiment, but he did anyway. He is a hero.”

“What Victor did in creating you was born out of unthinking arrogance. He didn’t stop to consider the possible outcome; he was so obsessed with the means and his singular goal. Science runs amok when it shakes loose from the bonds of morality and consequence.”

VJ clucked his tongue in disagreement. Then he turned his fierce blue eyes on Marsha. “Morality cannot rule science because morality is relative and therefore variable. Science is not. Morality is based on man and his society, which changes over the years, from culture to culture. What’s taboo for some is sacred for others. Such vagaries should have no bearing here. The only thing that is immutable in this world are the laws of nature that govern the present universe. Reason is the ultimate arbiter, not moralistic whims.”

“VJ, it’s not your fault,” Marsha said softly, sadly shaking her head. There would be no reasoning with him. “Your superior intelligence has isolated you and made you a person who is missing the human qualities of compassion, empathy, even love. You feel you have no limits. But you do. You never developed a conscience. But you can’t see it. It’s like trying to explain the concept of color to someone blind since birth.”

VJ leaped from his chair in disgust. “With all due respect,” he said, “I don’t have time for this sophistry. I’ve got work to do. I must know your intentions.”

“Your father and I will have a talk,” Marsha said, avoiding VJ’s gaze.

“Go ahead, talk,” VJ said, putting his hands on his narrow hips.

“We’ll have a talk without children present,” Marsha said.

VJ set his mouth petulantly. His breath had quickened, his eyes were afire. Then he turned and left the room. The door slammed and clicked. VJ had locked them in.

Marsha turned to face Victor. Victor shook his head in helpless dismay.

“Is there any question in your mind at this point what we’re dealing with?” Marsha asked.

Victor shook his head lamely.

“Good,” said Marsha. “Now, what are you prepared to do about it?”

Victor only shook his head again. “I never thought it would come to this.” He looked at his wife. “Marsha, you have to believe me. If I’d known...” His voice broke off. He needed Marsha’s support, her understanding. But even he had trouble comprehending the magnitude of his error. If they ever got through this, he wasn’t sure he could live with himself. How could he expect Marsha to?

Victor put his face in his hands.

Marsha touched his shoulder. For as awful as the situation was, at least Victor had finally come to his senses. “We have to decide what to do now,” she said gently.

Victor pulled himself up out of his chair, suddenly emboldened. “I’m the one responsible. You’re perfectly right about VJ. He wouldn’t be the way he is if it weren’t for me and my scientific meddling.” He turned again to his wife. “First, we have to get out of here.”

Marsha looked at him gravely. “You think VJ is about to let us waltz out of here? Be reasonable! Remember how he’s handled trouble in the past? David, Janice, that poor teacher, those kids, and now his troublesome parents.”

“You think he’ll just keep us here indefinitely?” Victor asked.

“I haven’t the slightest idea of what his intentions are. I just don’t think it’s going to be so easy to get out. He must have some feeling for us. Otherwise he wouldn’t have even bothered explaining, and he wouldn’t be interested in our opinions or plans. But he certainly isn’t going to let us leave here until he’s convinced we’ll present no problem for him.”

For a moment, the two were silent. Then Marsha said, “Maybe we could make some kind of bargain. Get him to let one of us go while the other stays here.”

“So one of us becomes a hostage?”

Marsha nodded.

“If he’ll agree, I think you should go,” Victor told her.

“Uh-uh,” Marsha said, shaking her head. “If it comes to that, then you go. You’ve got to figure out how to put a stop to him.”

“I think you should go,” Victor said. “I can handle VJ better than you can at this point.”

“I don’t think anybody can handle VJ,” said Marsha. “He’s in a world of his own, with no restraints and no conscience. But I’m confident he won’t harm me, at least not until he’s sure that I mean to cause him trouble. I do think he trusts you more than he trusts me. In that sense, you can deal with him better than I can. He seems to seek your approval. He wants to make you proud. In that respect he seems to be like any other child.”

“But what to do?” said Victor, pacing. “I’m not sure the police would be a lot of help. The best route to go might be via the DEA. I suppose he’s the most vulnerable with the drug stuff.”

Marsha only nodded. Tears sprang to her eyes. She couldn’t believe it had come to this. It was still hard to think of VJ as anything but her little boy. But there was no question: because of the nature of his genetic manipulation, he’d become a monster. There’d be no reining him in.

“Could we get him committed to a psychiatric hospital?” Victor asked.

“We’d be hard put to commit him without psychotic behavior, which he hasn’t demonstrated, or without getting him acquitted of murder by reason of insanity. But I doubt we could even get him indicted. I’m sure he was careful not to leave any evidence, especially with such a high-tech crime. He has a personality disorder, but he’s not crazy. You’re going to have to come up with something better than that. I only wish I could say what.”

“I’ll think of something,” Victor assured her. He smoothed out his coat and ran his fingers through his hair in an attempt to comb it. Taking a deep breath, he tried the door. It was locked. He banged on it with his fist four times.

After some delay the lock clicked and the door swung open. VJ appeared in the doorway with several of the South Americans backing him.

“I’m ready to talk,” Victor said.

VJ looked from Victor to Marsha. She looked away to avoid his cold stare.

“Alone,” Victor added.

VJ nodded and stepped aside while Victor crossed into the main living quarters. Victor walked directly out into the main lab as he heard VJ locking Marsha in. It was clear that he and Marsha really were prisoners, held by their own son.

“She’s really upset,” Victor said. “Killing David. That was inexcusable.”

“I didn’t have any choice,” VJ said.

“A mother has a hard time dealing with that,” Victor said. VJ’s eyes didn’t blink.

“I knew we shouldn’t have told Marsha about the lab,” said VJ. “She doesn’t have the same regard for science as we do.”

“You’re right about that,” Victor said. “She was appalled at the artificial wombs. I was astounded by them. I know what an achievement they represent scientifically. The impact they’ll have on the scientific community will be stupendous. And their commercial potential is enormous.”

“I’m counting on the commercial profits to enable me to dump the cocaine connection,” VJ said.

“That’s a good idea. You’re putting your work in serious jeopardy dabbling in the drug business.”

“I took that into consideration some time ago,” VJ said. “I have several contingency plans if trouble starts.”

“I bet you do.”

VJ eyed Victor closely. “I think you’d better tell me what your intentions are about my lab and my work.”

“My main goal is to deal with Marsha,” Victor said. “But I think she’ll come around, once the shock of everything wears off.”

“How do you plan to deal with her?”

“I’ll convince her of the importance of your work and your discoveries,” Victor said. “She’ll feel differently once she understands that you’ve done more than any other person in the history of biology, and you are only ten years old.”

VJ seemed to swell with pride. Marsha had been right: like any other kid, he sought his father’s praise. If only he really could be like any other kid, Victor thought ruefully. But he never will be, thanks to me.

Victor continued. “As soon as possible, I’d like to see a list of the protein growth factors that are involved with the artificial womb.”

“There are over five hundred of them,” VJ said. “I can give you a print-out, but of course it won’t be for publication.”

“I understand,” Victor said. He glanced down at his son and smiled. “Well, I have to get back to work and I’m sure Marsha has patients to see. So I think we’ll be leaving. We’ll see you at home.”

VJ shook his head. “I think it is too soon for you to leave. I think it will be better if you plan to stay for a few days. I have a phone hookup so you can do your business by phone. Mom will have to reschedule her patients. You’ll find it quite comfortable here.”

Victor laughed a hollow laugh at this suggestion. “But you’re joking, of course. We can’t stay here. Marsha may be able to reschedule her patients, but Chimera can’t be put on hold. I have a lot of work to do. Besides, everyone knows I’m on the grounds. Sooner or later they’d start searching for me.”

VJ considered the situation. “Okay,” he said at last. “You can go. But Mom will have to stay here.”

Victor was impressed that Marsha had been able to anticipate him so correctly. “I’d be with her every minute,” Victor said, still trying to get them both out.

“One or the other,” VJ said. “It’s not up for discussion.”

“All right, if you insist,” said Victor. “I’ll tell Marsha. Be right back.”

Victor made his way back to the door to VJ’s living quarters. One of the guards had to come and open it with a key. Victor went over to Marsha and whispered, “He’s agreed to let one of us out. Are you sure you don’t want to be the one to go?”

Marsha shook her head no. “Please just contact Jean and tell her I won’t be available until further notice. Tell her to refer emergencies to Dr. Maddox.”

Victor nodded. He kissed Marsha on the cheek, grateful she didn’t recoil. Then he turned to go.

Back in the main lab room VJ was giving instructions to two of the guards.

“This is Jorge,” VJ said, introducing Victor to a smiling South American. He was the same man who’d earlier tried to knife Victor. Apparently there were no hard feelings on his side, because along with the smile, he stuck out his hand for Victor to shake.

“Jorge has offered to accompany you,” VJ said.

“I don’t need a baby-sitter,” Victor said, suppressing his anger.

With a grim smile, VJ said, “I don’t think you understand. It’s not your choice. Jorge is to stay with you to remind you not to be tempted to talk with anyone who might give me trouble. He will also remind you that Marsha is here with one of Jorge’s friends.” VJ let the threat hang unspoken.

“But I don’t need a guard. And how will I explain him? Really, VJ, I didn’t expect this of you.”

“I have perfect confidence that you will think of a way to explain him,” VJ said. “Jorge will make us all sleep just a little better. And let me warn you: trouble with the police or other authorities would only be a bother and slow the program, not stop it. Don’t disappoint me, Father. Together we will revolutionize the biotechnology industry.”

Victor swallowed with difficulty. His mouth had gone dry.

The day had turned cloudy and blustery by the time Victor emerged from the clock tower building and set off for his office. A few steps behind him was Jorge, who’d made a show of displaying the knife he kept hidden in his right boot. But the gesture had had the desired effect. Victor knew that he was in the presence of a man accustomed to killing.

Despite telling Marsha he’d think of something, Victor had no idea what to do. He was in a dazed frenzy by the time he reached his office. He traversed the pool of secretaries unsteadily, with Jorge one step behind him.

“Excuse me!” Colleen said as Victor cruised by her desk. She jumped up, snatching a pile of messages. Victor had reached the door to his office. He turned to the South American. “You’ll have to wait out here,” he said.

Jorge brushed past Victor as if Victor had not said anything. Colleen, who had witnessed the exchange, was appalled, especially since the South American was wearing a Chimera security uniform. “Should I call security?” she whispered to Victor.

Victor said it wouldn’t be necessary. Colleen shrugged and got down to business. “I have a lot of messages,” she said. “I’ve been trying to call you. I need—”

Victor placed his hand on her arm and eased her back so he could swing the door shut. “Later,” he told her.

“But—” Colleen intoned as the door was shut in her face.

Victor locked the door as an added precaution. Jorge had already made himself comfortable on the couch in the rear of the room. The man was casually attending to his fingernails.

Victor went behind his desk and sat down. The phone rang immediately but he didn’t answer. He knew it was Colleen. He looked over at Jorge, who waved with his nail clipper and smiled a toothy grin.

Victor let his head sink into his hands. What he needed was a plan. Jorge was an unwanted distraction. The man exuded a reckless, haughty confidence that said, “I’m a killer and I’m sitting in your office and you can’t do a thing about it.” It was difficult for Victor to concentrate with Jorge watching over him.

“You don’t look like you’re doing much work to me,” Jorge said suddenly. “VJ said that you needed to leave because you had a lot of work to do. I suggest you get busy unless you want me to call VJ and tell him that you are just sitting around holding your head.”

“I was just gathering my thoughts,” Victor said. He leaned over and pressed his intercom. When Colleen responded, he said, “Bring in my messages and let’s get to work.”

“You have one more patient,” Jean said, poking her head through the door, “then you’re free.”

“It’s an add-on?” Marsha asked, slightly perturbed. She had planned on being free by four. With another patient she wouldn’t be out until five. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have cared, but today she was supposed to meet Joe Arnold, David’s old history teacher, at six o’clock. He was taking her to the pet shop in the mall to pick up that golden retriever puppy he’d persuaded her to get. “It’ll do you good,” he told her. “Pet therapy. I’m telling you, dogs could put you psychiatrists out of business.”

A few days after he’d read of the tragedy in the papers, he’d called Marsha to say how sorry he was and that he’d always regretted not contacting her to express his condolences after David’s death. Gradually, the two were becoming friends. Joe seemed determined to break her willful isolation.

“The woman was insistent,” Jean said. “If I didn’t squeeze her in today, we couldn’t have seen her for a week. She says it’s an emergency.”

“Emergency!” Marsha grumbled. True psychiatric emergencies were luckily few and far between. “Okay,” she said with a sigh.

“You’re a dear,” Jean said. She pulled the door shut.

Marsha went around her desk and sat down. She dictated her last session. When she was through, she whirled her chair around and gazed out the large picture window at the scenic landscape. Spring was coming. The grass had become a more vibrant green than its pale winter blue. The crocuses would be up soon. A few buds were already on the trees.

Marsha took a deep breath. She’d come a long way. It was just a little over a year now since that fateful night when she’d lost her husband and second son in what had been deemed a freak accident. The newspapers had even carried a picture of the rusty bolt that had apparently given way on an old sluice gate when the Merrimack had been at its spring thaw heights. Marsha had never tried to contradict the story, preferring the nightmare to end with a seemingly accidental tragedy. It was so much simpler than the truth.

Dealing with her grief had been exceedingly difficult. She’d sold the big house that she and Victor had shared, as well as her stock in Chimera. With some of the profits from these sales, she had bought herself a charming house on an ocean inlet in Ipswich. It was only a short walk to the beach with its glorious sand dunes. She’d spent many a weekend alone on the beach in pensive seclusion with no sounds to trouble her save the waves and an occasional squawk of a sea gull. Marsha had found solace in nature ever since she was a little girl.

Neither Victor’s nor VJ’s body had been recovered. Evidently the tremendous force of the rushing water had washed them God knows where. But the fact there were no bodies made Marsha’s adjustment all the more difficult, though not for the reasons most psychiatrists would suspect. Jean had gently suggested to Marsha that she go in for some therapy herself, but Marsha resisted this encouragement. How could she explain that by not finding their remains, she was left with the uncomfortable sense that the horrid episode was not over yet. No remains of the four fetuses had been found either, not that anyone had known to look for them. But, for months after, Marsha had had disturbing nightmares in which she would come across a finger or a limb on the beach where she walked.

Marsha’s biggest savior had been her work. After the initial shock and grief had abated, she’d really thrown herself into it, even volunteering for extra hours in various community organizations. And Valerie Maddox had also been of tremendous help, often staying with Marsha for weekends at Marsha’s new beach house. Marsha knew she was indebted to the woman.

Marsha swung back to her desk. It was just about four o’clock. Time to see the last patient and then get to the pet store. Marsha buzzed Jean to indicate she was ready. Getting to her feet, she went to the door. Taking the new chart Jean handed her, Marsha caught sight of a woman who was about forty-five years old. She smiled at Marsha and Marsha smiled back. Marsha gestured for the woman to come into her office.

Turning around, Marsha left the door ajar and walked over to the chair she always used for her sessions. Next to it was a small table with a box of tissues for patients who couldn’t contain their emotions. Two other chairs faced hers.

Hearing the woman enter the office, Marsha turned to greet her. The woman wasn’t alone. A thin girl in her teens who looked sallow and drawn followed in behind her. The girl’s sandy blond hair was stringy and badly in need of a wash. In her arms was a blond baby who looked to be about eighteen months old. The baby was clutching a magazine.

Marsha wondered who the patient was. Whichever one it was, she’d have to insist the other leave. For the moment, all she said was, “Please sit down.” Marsha decided to let them present their reasons for coming. Over the years, she’d found that this technique yielded more information than any question-and-answer session could.

The woman held the child while the girl sat down in one of the chairs facing Marsha, then settled him in the girl’s lap. He seemed quite preoccupied with the magazine’s illustrations. Marsha casually wondered why they’d brought the child along. Surely it couldn’t be that difficult to get a baby-sitter.

Marsha felt that the young girl was not in the best physical health. Her frail frame and extremely pale complexion indicated depression if not malnutrition.

“I’m Josephine Steinburger and this is my daughter, Judith,” the woman began. “Thank you for seeing us. We’re pretty desperate.”

Marsha nodded encouragingly.

Mrs. Steinburger leaned forward confidentially, but spoke loudly enough for Judith to hear. “My daughter here is not too swift, if you know what I mean. She’s been in a lot of trouble for a long time. Drugs, running away from home, fighting with her brother, no-good friends, those kinds of things.”

Marsha nodded again. She looked at the daughter to see how she responded to this criticism, but the girl only stared blankly ahead.

“These kids are into everything these days,” Josephine continued. “You know, sex and all that. What a difference when I was young. I didn’t know what sex was until I was too old to enjoy it, you know what I mean?”

Marsha nodded again. She hoped the daughter would participate, but she remained silent. Marsha wondered if she might be on drugs right then.

“Anyway,” Josephine continued, “Judith here tells me she never had sex, so obviously I was surprised when she delivered this little bundle of joy about a year and a half ago.” She laughed sarcastically.

Marsha wasn’t surprised. Of all the defense mechanisms, denial was the most common. A lot of teenagers initially tried to deny sexual contact even when the evidence was overwhelming.

“Judith says that the father was a young boy who gave her money to put his little tube in her,” Josephine said, rolling her eyes for Marsha’s benefit. “I’ve heard it called a lot of things but never a little tube. Anyway—”

Marsha rarely interrupted the people who came to see her, but in this case, the girl in question wasn’t getting a word in. “Perhaps it would be better if the patient told me her story in her own words.”

“What do you mean, her words?” Josephine asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.

“Exactly what I said,” Marsha said. “I think the patient should tell the story, or at least participate.”

Josephine laughed heartily, then got herself under control. “Sorry, it struck a funny bone. Judith is fine. She’s even gotten a little more responsible now that she’s a mother. It’s the kid who’s messed up. He’s the patient.”

“Oh, of course,” said Marsha, somewhat baffled. She’d treated children before, but never so young.

“The kid is a terror,” Josephine went on. “We can’t control him.”

Marsha had to get her to be more specific. Plenty of parents could call their toddlers terrors. She needed more specific symptoms. “In what way is he a problem?” she asked.

“Ah!” Josephine intoned. “You name it, he does it. I’m telling you, he’s enough to drive you to drink.” She turned to the child. “Look at the lady, Jason.”

But Jason was absorbed in his magazine.

“Jason!” Josephine called. She reached across and yanked the magazine out of the infant’s hand and tossed it on Marsha’s desk. It was then that Marsha noticed it was the latest issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.

“The kid can already read better than his mother. Now he’s asking for a chemistry set.”

Marsha felt a jolt of fear as it grabbed her by the throat. Slowly she raised her eyes.

“Frankly, I’m afraid to get the kid a chemistry set at age one and a half,” Josephine continued. “It ain’t normal. He’ll probably blow the whole house up.”

Marsha looked at the boy in Judith’s lap. The child returned her stare with his own piercing, ice-blue eyes. There was an air of intelligence about him that far outstripped his cherubic baby face. Marsha was taken back in time. This boy was the spitting image of VJ at the same age.

Marsha knew instantly what was before her: the final zygote. The one VJ said he’d wasted on the implantation study. A child created from her own sixth ovum.

Marsha couldn’t move. A small cry escaped her as she realized the chilling truth: the nightmare wasn’t over.

Josephine got to her feet and stepped over to Marsha. “Dr. Frank?” she asked with some alarm. “Are you all right?”

“I... I’m fine,” Marsha said feebly. “I’m sorry. Really, I’m okay.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the child.

“So like I was saying,” continued Josephine, “this kid’s beyond all of us. Why, just the other day—”

Marsha cut her off. Doing her best to keep a quiver out of her voice, she said, “Mrs. Steinburger, we’ll have to set up an appointment for Jason himself. I really think it would be best if I saw him privately. But it has to be another day.”

“Well, whatever,” sighed Josephine. “You’re the doctor. You’re the one to know. I suppose we can wait a few days. I just hope you can help us.”

Once they had gone, Marsha closed the door behind them and leaned heavily against it. She sighed and said aloud, “I hope so too.”

She knew she had to do something about this child, this prodigy whose villainy might match or even surpass her son’s. But what to do?

She picked up the phone to call Joe Arnold to say she was running a little late. Just hearing his voice on the line helped calm her down.

“Well, I’m glad you’re not trying to cancel on me, ’cause I’m not letting you off the hook.” He laughed warmly. “I thought we might eat in tonight. Can’t leave a dog alone his first night home. I hope you’re up to braving my cooking. I make a mean chili. I’m working on it right now.”

Marsha hoped she was up to braving quite a lot of things, starting with the truth. And of the people she felt closest to — Valerie, Joe, Jean — Joe might be the one to confide in, the one she could count on the most. “Chili sounds great,” she told him. “And I’d just as soon eat in.” It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about Jason, but it would keep. She didn’t want to say anything over the phone.

“Terrific. I was beginning to think I’d have to sign up as a patient to get to see you alone. Meet you at the pet shop at seven? I think they’re open until eight.”

“Seven will be fine. And, Joe... thanks.”

She hung up the phone and got her coat.

Marsha drove to the mall, feeling better already just knowing she’d soon be telling someone the true story behind Victor’s and VJ’s deaths. She’d bottled the whole thing up for so long. It would be a relief to finally get it off her chest. She felt all the luckier for having Joe to talk to. Ever since he’d come into her life, he’d been a real godsend.

She drove into the mall parking lot and picked a spot near the entrance closest to the pet shop and turned the engine off. Gripping the steering wheel, she broke into soft sobs. Somehow, she would have to face this last demon-child, and with Joe’s help, end forever the nightmare her husband had begun.