Race Across the Sky (18 page)

“I might have been dissecting a fetal pig that day.”

“Apologies. We did not have the luxury of using pigs for children's experiments in my school.”

“So, how do the genes know which switches to flip?”

“The brain follows simple instructions in our DNA. You would guess this recipe for human existence is quite complicated, with millions of different steps?”

“Sure.”

“But there are only four.”

Shane blinked.

“T, C, A, and G are the only four nucleotides in DNA. Depending on the pattern of these four letters, you can grow a fin, glow, you can process logic, you're a cat. And so on.”

Shane leaned back, listening.

“In an alpha-one antitrypsin deficient patient, there is a random disruption of the pattern in the DNA. Fixing it is fairly simple. We splice out the extra nucleotide, restoring the pattern that was intended.”

Shane cocked his head playfully. “Intended by who? Are you getting all Intelligent Design on me?”

“Ah,” Prajuk nodded seriously, stopping to look him in the eye. “That a pattern is intended is obvious from the fact that we share ninety to ninety-nine percent of our DNA with every living creature, and that our genes are interchangeable with all of them.”

Shane felt a desire to prod him. “Then changing someone's DNA means changing this pattern that was designed. Altering God's plan sounds, you know, concerning.”

Prajuk looked frustrated. “Do you have an ethical concern over a surgeon repairing a toddler's cleft palate? Or removing a cancerous tumor? Or giving a feverish child some Tylenol?”

“Of course I don't,” Shane grinned.

“You get pretty close to this thing, Christian Scientists, if you follow that path of thinking. When we fix faulty genetic code, we are not altering a plan, we are returning it to its Creator's intent.”

Shane sat forward on the metal stool, his elbows pressing into his knees. His voice was hoarser, lower. “When I was a kid, I read about the Middle Ages, how people died from strep throat and ear infections. I thought, thank God I was born at the end of medicine, after all that's been taken care of. Then I understood that we're not at the end of medicine at all. We're in the Middle Ages.”

“The Dark Ages,” Prajuk told him. “We know almost nothing. Our treatments for just about every ailment are primitive. Two hundred years from now, people will be thinking how lucky they are not to have been born today. They'll think of antibiotics the way we think of leeches. And radiation the way we think of bloodletting. Which might be healthier for us.” Prajuk looked around. “When is our mouse coming?”

“Charles River says March.”

“That's good. This thing is looking possible, Shane.” He nodded, seeming pleased. His high voice seemed brighter. “What are you doing with your holiday?”

Nicholas's first Christmas would involve a long, dumpling-filled day at Liu and Hua's, followed by an afternoon of watching football with Wenceslas and Cynthia. He could not wait to place a Santa hat on his head to the bewilderment of his five-month-old infant, to take those photos, to build those memories. To stand with Janelle and watch their sleeping infant and make love while Christmas music played. But Shane knew he would also feel an irresistible pull to drive back here and put more chairs together.

Leaving the lab, Prajuk explained this feeling to him. “I watched Poulos go through this. I know what you feel. You feel like an entrepreneur.”

But Shane knew a few entrepreneurs and felt this was not an accurate description. Those guys were driven by visions of houses in Beaver Creek and fame. Shane had no financial future at stake, and the mandatory anonymity made sure no one would ever know his name. His surges of euphoria and terror did not feel to him like an entrepreneur's. They felt like he was losing his mind.

The next afternoon, as he sat in his cubicle writing last month's Sorion sales spreadsheets, Prajuk texted him to stop by the lab on his way home. It hadn't mattered; he would have gone anyway.

• • • • • • • • • • • • 

“D
id you know,” Mack asked her, “that Caleb offered me a deal?”

June rubbed her eyes. She had not slept well.

She had lain still and watched her baby awaken. Lily was thin, and small, but whenever she woke, Lily's face assumed a blend of wonder and confidence; try as she might, June could not recognize herself in it. She had recently grown a singular bottom tooth of astonishing bone white. But Caleb was right. Her breathing was no better.

She was beginning to crawl, but when she got more than a foot away her eyes would narrow with strain, her wheeze would grow higher pitched, and inevitably one of their housemates would snatch her up and place her where she had intended to go. And she was deprived of the opportunity to reach it herself. It would be like having someone lift you up at eighty miles and carry you to the finish line, June thought. It wasn't right.

Downstairs at breakfast, Ryan rolled Lily a balled white sock. A mischievous smile overtook her face, as she dragged herself forward, made it, squeezed the sock between small fingers, and brought it to her lips.

“Don't stress, it's clean. I only wore it three times.”

June started laughing.

The door to Mack's room opened, and he walked out yawning. Mack was only five feet five, which always took her by surprise; whenever he came into a room, her first instinct was to look up, and she would have to adjust. This morning he wore a red Marlboro sweatshirt and black running shorts, his shaggy black beard bunched in varying directions. He walked over to Lily, a bemused smile on his face. He knelt by her, watching her play. Then he looked up, smiling.

“How's the day looking, Ms. June?”

“Great. I'm cleaning three apartments by Dushanbe. Do you want me to pick up anything?”

“Sencha would be great.” Mack sat down beside Lily. “How is she?”

“It was a rough night actually.”

Mack put his hand up the back of Lily's oversized yellow Goodwill shirt, flattened his palm on her back, and shut his eyes. “Teddy Roosevelt was born with severe asthma. Couldn't walk without wheezing. His father made him hike up hills for miles, and they didn't have trail shoes then either. He went from a sickly child to a bulked up motherfucker. The kinetic energy turned his body on. He was wrestling broncos and charging up hills before long.” He paused, watching her. That was when he asked about the deal.

June squinted. “I don't know about any deal.”

“I figured he had your approval?”

“Caleb didn't tell me anything like that.”

“I'm going into town. Why don't you ride with me? We'll talk about it in the car.”

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

The Jeep moved evenly through the snowpack. To her north, June watched Lone Eagle rise behind the sun. Somewhere out there, she knew, there were people moving along its trails.

“I'm going to Fadden's,” Mack said. “You need anything for Lily? A rattle? One of those ladybugs?”

“Sure,” June smiled. “She'd love that.”

“She's getting so big,” Mack said. “Our little girl.”

“Our girl,” June repeated softly.

“Hell of a family she has, right? Seventeen people?”

Mack slowed at the Oradell light, idling. Then he turned and looked at her with the full force of his visage. “Why would you ever want to take her away from them?”

June's mouth opened. But Mack was looking back at the road, driving slower now that they were in town. Outside she noticed the flannel jackets, wool hats, and beige work boots of the people who lived here. Many of them worked in Boulder or Denver, if they were lucky enough to be working at all.

“What do you mean?”

“Caleb says you want to leave here, because Shane has some
specialist
in San Francisco? Specialists,” Mack muttered, “like they're special.”

A cold shiver ran through her body.

“Let me tell you, doctors are employees of drug companies. They get them out of medical school when they're loaded with debt, and they sign them up for fucking life. To make their side money these doctors prescribe
infants
powerful psychotropic drugs, Prozac and Wellbutrin, sometimes three or four of them at a time. They tell their parents it's so they sleep through the night, cry less. And these dumbass parents are thrilled to give these drugs developed to treat schizophrenics to their babies. And then they're shocked to discover they have drug-addicted, psychotic teenagers on so many drugs it's impossible to ever get them back to baseline.” Mack tapped his temple. “They don't follow the money, Junebug. These doctors sell out children for thousand-dollar kickbacks, and it's not rare either. And you trust these people with Lily?”

June began swallowing hard.

“You've been there before. When they gave her steroids that almost gave her a heart attack.”

She shook her head. “But Caleb's brother . . .”

“Shane doesn't care about Lily. He cares about getting Caleb to leave here. Lily is his bait. And it's working. Caleb is all torn up, he doesn't know what to do.” Mack took a breath, and squinted. “Do you ever worry about him?”

June flashed back to their run through Flagstaff, when out of nowhere Caleb had brought up missing his family. It had struck her as unlike him.

“Sometimes,” she whispered.

“More and more, myself. Listen to what he offered me.”

A fear fluttered through her now, a coldness upon her skin.

“He wants you and Lily go to Shane, while he stays here. He said he'll be more likely to win under those conditions.” Mack slowed to let a yellow light turn red.

June's mind was racing, spinning. “He's just thinking about Lily.”

“He needs to be thinking about Yosemite. Not his brother. Not his parents. Not Lily. And not you. It's a dangerous race. If he's running it thinking about anything at all except his body, he's going to have another accident. And this time he won't land on a shelf.”

June inhaled sharply, her eyes reddening.

“I mean, June, you must feel terrible. You came here because you were so worried about your daughter, and now, you're worried about Caleb. It's like everyone you care for gets to a place where they need worrying over. He was perfect until you met him, you know?”

She started crying as he held her eye.

“I want you to help me save him. And Lily. Because June, if you go to San Francisco, hand to God, he's not the only one who's going to die.” Mack touched his chest. “Shane's drugs will kill Lily. I feel it. I
understand
it.”

She stared at him as he pulled into Fadden's parking lot. The tears came fast now.

“You need to cut him off. You need to cauterize his infection.” He grinned. “Be right back with one ladybug.”

When he pushed the door open, the cold flooded over her, and she understood right there how it would never stop.

• • • • • • • • • • • • 

T
hey began on the evening of December 27.

Prajuk was a blur, running what seemed to Shane to be a decathlon of chemistry, moving from the microscope to the centrifuge to the computer. Shane felt like a nurse, handing him parts and equipment when asked.

And he was following them fairly well. The 3-D images of twisting genetic code were still abstract and obtuse but lightening around the edges, starting to make more sense to him now. He found it fascinating to watch the manipulation of the basic blocks of life. Spinning them down, splicing them in new sequences. It was not science so much, he realized, as art.

Comprehending biology on this level, or at least comprehending the concepts behind it, made the whole world come alive for him. Eating a pear, he could feel its cells bursting against the roof of his mouth. Touching Janelle's skin, holding Nicholas naked against his chest, he could feel the movement of molecules, the energy of their friction. Their, dare he think it, kinetic energy.

On the second of January at eight o'clock in the evening, he walked into Greenway Plaza Lab 301 and stopped, startled. A twentysomething kid was standing at the metal bench, destroying a green apple.

Shane extended his hand. “Shane Oberest. Can I help you?”

“Hey,” the guy said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “Jeff Healy.”

“Jeff, how did you get in here?”

“I work here.”

The kid reached into a pocket, produced a phone, and held it up. Shane squinted at an e-mail.

“I'm supposed to meet Doctor Prajuk Acharn?” he mispronounced both names.

Healy seemed in the lower five-feet range and looked to be a serious weightlifter. He was possessed of menacing eyes and acned cheeks and shoulders. Shane suspected him of steroid abuses.

Some awkward minutes later, Prajuk arrived in a short-sleeved white shirt and clapped his hands, grinning. It struck Shane that this was a different Prajuk than he had seen before. Upbeat, confident; he could envision him leading a team of bioresearchers.

“Shane, this is Jeff Healy. Our postdoc.”

“We met.”

“Do you know how to Atkins a gene?” he asked Healy, walking to the bench.

“No worries.”

Shane stepped forward, wanting to stay included. “What's that mean?”

Prajuk lifted up the vector from the table. “The gene on the fourteenth chromosome, with the protein which produces alpha-one antitrypsin, is in this solution. A gene is full of carbohydrates and cellular matter, and we must strip these things away, to isolate the protein inside.”

“Eliminate the carbs,” Healy underscored.

“Oh, Atkins,” Shane whistled. “I get it.”

He watched closely as Prajuk held up the vector.

Healy cocked his head. “You look like you've never seen a human gene before.”

Prajuk and Healy bent over the vector, chatting offhandedly. Shane felt as he had as a boy when Caleb and Fred went running ahead up the long road. He was a spectator; this was as close as he might get.

In the parking lot later, Prajuk held a Parliament an inch from his lips in his fist and inhaled loudly under the night sky.

“How much does he know?” Shane asked.

“He thinks this is a Helixia project, that we rent outside space for overflow.”

“How much am I paying him?”

“Three hundred a week. Plus gas. I am very careful with company money, especially since the company is you.”

“Much appreciated.” Shane took a breath and pushed a hand through his hair. “So, when should I tell Caleb to bring the baby here?”

“Three months? Maybe four. It depends on our mouse.”

“Four months feels like a long time.”

“A minute can feel like a long time.”

Shane nodded and stretched his back. He supposed that was as true as anything.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

Isolating the protein took a week.

They had developed a rhythm. Shane arrived after work with food from Thai Orchard. Healy, his headphones on, accepted it with a nod and remained bent over his solutions. Once, Shane glanced at his iPod and was surprised to see club music. It seemed to him that the relentless beats would be aggravating to someone patiently stripping molecules from strands of DNA. It seemed to require more of an ambient kind of deal. But though he maintained his Facebook account on a laptop at all times and stopped to text every few minutes, Healy kept up. Neither he nor Prajuk wore lab coats, Shane noticed. Other than their latex gloves, there was no sense of reverence; this was just work for them. Though to Shane it was a miracle.

One night over noodles, Healy showed him the process. He opened a flask. Inside was a liquid that looked to Shane like apple juice.

“It's media,” Healy explained.

“What's media?”

“Just dead bacterial cells and sterile water. We place it in this shaker. Throw it in a plasmid. Spin it down in the centrifuge.” He switched on the shaker.

“Like a margarita,” Shane smiled.

“I wish. Over the next couple of days, when the culture grows turbid, we'll break the cells open, and wash out the purified protein.” He gestured toward a collection of pink petri dishes. “Transect it onto an E. coli cell, where it will multiply.”

“E. coli?” Shane asked, casting a worried glance at the petri dishes on the bench.

“Here's the secret of it all, bro. Everything bad has a good, and everything good has a bad. The gene that makes people dwarfs also makes them immune to mumps. You have to look at both sides. E. coli takes over your body and kills you horribly. But it also permits itself to be transferred peacefully into any organism as a carrier. Disabled E. coli is one of the bacteria we use most.”

Shane shook his head in awe. For fifteen years he had been selling the products of pharmaceutical chemical labs, never appreciating the artistry of biotechnology.

“Got to piss.” Healy stood up from the bench. “Don't let it eat your face while I'm gone.”

During these weeks, Shane lived in a euphoric state. In the mornings, he looked out of their window at the bay sky and let himself feel part of the energy Caleb summoned in Boulder. He had spent his whole life watching his brother's back, a shadow of sweat spreading across his dark green T-shirt. In middle school he would step into new classrooms and wonder if Caleb had sat at this desk. He ran the high school track imagining Caleb's feet falling in the same lanes. Now, after all of this time, he felt finally connected with Caleb, through the simple act of breathing air. He wondered if it had always been this easy.

The sublimity of the lab was always with him. Like an adulterer, Shane invented after-hours meetings to explain his late arrivals home to Janelle. His heart battled itself: when he stayed there to work, he suffered an avalanche of guilt for not having seen Nicholas before he fell asleep. What kind of father was he? But on the nights he did go straight home, he felt a separation anxiety from the lab which he could not quite bear. During his drive back to the city he would experience wild swings of exuberance and depression, a simultaneous sense of oncoming glory and approaching catastrophe.

In mid-January, Shane opened his front door to find Janelle sitting at their dining room table, waiting for him with a serious look. He sat down wondering if he carried a scent of the lab.

“I'm quitting,” she told him.

Shane exhaled slowly, nodding.

As he listened to her, Shane attempted to fight off huge waves of terror. This was no time to give up her salary and benefits. He might be caught and fired by Helixia any day. He reminded himself that this was the woman he had pursued even while she was fully committed to an all-consuming job, had slowly won over during stolen camping weekends, and waited for on Sunday nights after her endless dinners with her parents just to catch a quick drink, for whom he had videotaped a tree she adored from her last apartment window, and projected it onto their wall. Now she wanted to stay in their home, to take care of their son. This, of course, should have been all that he wanted.

“Okay,” he said, watching her face. “Whatever you need.”

She was crying. “Okay.”

“So, we're down to one paycheck,” he reminded her. “And only my insurance.”

“Don't fuck up at work.” She kissed his cheek.

He knew he had to tell her. The burden of his secret now fell upon her too. This was the moment, before she executed her decision, while there was still time.

During a brief interior struggle, he realized how telling her now could come off as some kind of emotional blackmail, to guilt her into not quitting. She might resent him, and the whole project, for interceding now. So he let it pass. This weekend, he promised himself. But the weekend passed as well.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

The whir of the centrifuge was proof of their progression. He watched Healy graft their protein—for now it belonged to all of them, he felt—onto the E. coli viruses on the pink petri dishes, and Prajuk transfer this work into a small millimeter Eppendorf tube and place it into the freezer. Each run produced a thimble full of clear liquid, which might mean six months of life for Lily.

If it worked. Which they would only know when their genetically modified mouse arrived.

On a Tuesday toward the end of the month, Healy burst in fiddling frustratedly with his phone. “They can make these things do anything you want, but they can't make headphones that don't get tangled?”

He tossed it into his backpack and washed up in the stainless steel sink. Then he took a Clif bar from his pocket and walked over to have a look at the centrifuge.

“How long's it been doing that?”

Shane raised his eyebrows. He was alone in the room while Prajuk had gone out for food. “Doing what?”

“Making that”—he waved the protein bar in the air— “sound.”

“I don't know.” He listened. The whir did seem a little labored. “Is it bad?”

Healy grunted and moved over to the machine. He pressed its power button off and gingerly lifted its top.

“Oh fuck.”

Shane stood up and peered over his shoulder.

Healy narrowed his eyes, lifting out something small and jagged. “Glass.”

“Did a vial break?”

Ignoring him, Healy carefully examined the inside bin with his fingertips. “This thing,” he whistled, “is fucked heinously.”

Prajuk returned carrying three styrofoam containers of fried rice. His lips compressed and released like a young boy's fist as he examined the centrifuge.

“How long will it take to get a new one?”

Shane realized the question was addressed to him, the money man, the producer, the fixer. He blinked.

“Well, it took six weeks for this one to get here. Is there a repair shop?”

“A repair shop?” Healy shook his head. “We can ship it back to where you got it and wait for a replacement.”

“We can't wait six weeks.” Shane heard Lily's sharp breaths in the whir of the crippled motor. “Do they have some others at your school?”

“Centrifuges?” Healy laughed. “Sure, they leave them lying next to the Porsches.”

Prajuk let out a phlegmy cough as he walked suddenly out of the lab. By the time Shane looked up, he was already out by the elevators.

Healy shrugged and nodded at the three containers of fried rice Prajuk had placed on the bench. “No thanks.”

Healy stood and took them all.