Double Helix

Table of Contents

 

 

Eli,

It's clear to me now that somehow you've gotten to know Quincy Wyatt, and that your new job is with Wyatt Transgenics. I don't want to know the details of how that happened. I don't care. I simply ask you not to take the job. In fact, I ask you not to let this man be in your life in any way.

I can't tell you why, Eli. But I am begging you to do what I ask, and to do it immediately and without question.

 

Love, Dad

SLEUTH

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First published in the United States of America by Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2003

Published by Sleuth, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2005

Copyright © Nancy Werlin, 2004

All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DIAL EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Werlin, Nancy.

Double helix / Nancy Werlin.

p. cm.

ISBN : 978-1-101-57739-4

[1. Genetic engineering—Fiction. 2. Bioethics—Fiction.

3. Huntington's chorea—Fiction. 4. Science fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.W4713Do 2004 [Fic]—dc22 2003012269

IT WAS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE for me to sit still—but I had to. I - couldn't be pacing frantically back and forth across the rich gray carpet of Wyatt Transgenics's expansive reception area when Dr. Wyatt—
the
Dr. Wyatt—

But he'd send an assistant to get me, wouldn't he? To escort me to his office? He wouldn't come himself.

My knuckles were tapping out a random jumpy rhythm on the arm of the chair. I clenched my fist to stop it. I shifted my legs.

The chair I sat in was small and hard and low to the ground. Obviously, whoever designed the corporate reception area had been focused not on the comfort of visitors, but on showcasing the enormous double-helix staircase that dominated the atrium with its depiction of DNA structure. And though anyone would find the chairs uncomfortable, they were particularly bad for me. My knees stuck up awkwardly, making the pant legs of my borrowed suit look even shorter than they were. There was nothing I could do about that—my father was only six foot three. His jacket, also, was too tight across the shoulders on me.

I tugged at my tie. I suspected—no, I knew I looked ridiculous. The suit didn't even make me look older. And I now thought it had been completely unnecessary. In the time I'd been sitting here, at least a dozen Wyatt Transgenics employees had moved purposefully across the mezzanine area at the top of the double-helix staircase, and they'd all been wearing casual clothes. Sneakers. Jeans. T-shirts under lab coats. The only people in suits were the two security guards.

I could hear Viv's voice in my ear. Philosophical.
Well, who knew? We both thought you ought to wear a suit
.

We had. Viv had at first tried to convince me to buy a suit in the right size from a store. She'd been appalled when I explained the cost of a man's suit, and, undeterred, had spent all yesterday afternoon dragging me through used clothing stores in Cambridgeport.
Excuse me, but do you have any suits that would fit my boyfriend?

When she'd failed to find one, she'd burst into tears. Right in the middle of Central Square.

Viv. If she weren't in my life . . . well. I couldn't imagine how lonely I would be.

Guilt stirred in me, though. Viv thought this was a job interview of some kind. A summer internship. I hadn't lied to her. I never lied to Viv. I had just, as always, kept quiet and let her think whatever she chose.

Of course, I could have kept it a secret that I was coming. But I'd felt as if I would burst if I couldn't say something. And who was there but Viv to confide in, even a little? I wasn't going to tell my father.

Once more I caught myself fidgeting, looking at the clock. My appointment had been for twenty minutes ago. I'd checked in with the receptionist ten minutes early, so I'd been here half an hour. I tried to work up irritation at being kept waiting. Dr. Wyatt was a busy man, an important man, a Nobel Prize winner, probably one of the most important scientists alive today—but it was he who'd invited me. He who'd set the date and time. I'd had to duck out of school an hour early to get here by bus. It was rude of him to keep me waiting so long.

But the truth was, I didn't care. I was consumed by curiosity . . . and anxiety. I'd wait all afternoon if I had to.

Bottom line: I had no idea why I was here. Why I'd been . . . summoned. The woman who called me had simply said:
We got your email. Dr. Wyatt has read it. He would like to meet you
.

She did not say it was a job interview. She had not asked me to send, or bring, a résumé or a school transcript or any teacher recommendations.

We got your email
.

I had emailed Dr. Wyatt. I had found his address on the Wyatt Transgenics website and I had written to him. That was a fact. Three weeks ago. But it had been a big mistake, a drunken impulse that had embarrassed me seconds after I'd clicked Send, and certainly it had never occurred to me that Dr. Wyatt himself would read my message. It was inconceivable that it had caused an invitation—no, my earlier word was more accurate: a summons.

A command?

What was I doing here? Was this truly a job interview with Quincy Wyatt himself?

“Eli Samuels?” The voice from the mezzanine level was pitched normally, but it carried down to me as clearly as if the speaker were using a microphone.

My head jerked up. I found myself scrambling out of my chair. Staring up.

And . . . there he was. Dr. Quincy Wyatt, the man himself, twenty feet above me, standing at the top of the spiral of the double helix. He looked exactly like he did in the photographs. That big head with the tight, grizzled, reddish-white hair. The round black-rimmed glasses. The steel cane clenched in his left hand.

Viv's voice again.
He's a legend, Eli! I mean, from seventh-grade biology class—Gregor Mendel, Watson and Crick, Quincy Wyatt. We had to learn all that stuff, remember?