Frameshift

Shari’s delicate eyebrows went up. “Like, if we’re an embryo, insert this amino, but if we’ve already been born, don’t insert it!” She clapped her hands together. The mystery of how cells differentiated throughout the development of a fetus still hadn’t been solved.

Pierre held up his hand. “It can’t be anything as direct as that, or geneticists would have noticed it long ago. But the choices of synonyms over a long stretch of DNA — be it in the active portions, or in the introns — might indeed be significant.”

“Or,” said Shari, now pouting slightly at having her idea rejected, “it might not.”

Pierre smiled. “Sure. But let’s find out, one way or the other.”

A Sunday morning.

Molly Bond loved going over to San Francisco — loved its seafood restaurants, its neighborhoods, its hills, its cable cars, its architecture.

The street Molly was on was deserted; not surprising, given how early it was. Molly had come to San Francisco to attend the Unitarian fellowship there; she wasn’t particularly religious, and had found the hypocrisy of most of the clergy she’d met in her life unbearable, but she did enjoy the Unitarian approach, and today’s guest speaker — an expert on artificial intelligence — sounded fascinating.

Molly had parked a few blocks from the fellowship hall. The meeting didn’t start until nine o’clock; she thought she might go into McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin beforehand — her one vice that she periodically but only halfheartedly tried to break was her fondness for fast food. As she headed along a steeply angled sidewalk approaching the restaurant, she noticed an old man up ahead at the side of the road in a black trench coat.

The man was bent over, poking with a walking stick at something lying at the base of a tree.

Molly continued along, enjoying the crisp early-morning air. The sky was cloudless, a pristine bowl of blue arching over the stuccoed buildings.

She was now only a dozen paces or so from the man in black. His trench coat was an expensive London Fog model, and his black shoes had recently been polished. The man was eighty if he was a day, but tall for a man that age. He was wearing a navy blue watch cap that pressed his ears against his head. He also had the collar of his trench coat turned up, but his neck was thick, with loose folds of skin hanging from it. The old guy was too absorbed in what he was doing to notice her approach. Molly heard a small whimpering sound. She looked down and her mouth dropped in horror. The black-clad man was poking at a cat with his stick.

The cat had obviously been hit by a car and left to die. Its coat, mottled white, black, orange, and cream, was smeared down the entire left side with blood. It had clearly been hit some time ago — much of the blood had dried to a brown crust — but it was still oozing thick red liquid from one long cut. One of the cat’s eyes had popped partway from its skull and was clouded over in tones of bluish gray.

“Hey!” Molly shouted at the man in black. “Are you crazy? Leave that poor thing alone!”

The man must have stumbled on the cat by accident, and had apparently been enjoying the pathetic cries it made each time he jabbed it with his stick. He turned to face Molly. She was disgusted to see that his ancient bone-white penis, erect, was protruding from his unzipped trousers, and that his other hand had been on it. “Blyat!” cried the man in an accented voice, his dark eyes narrowing to slits. “Blyat!”

“Get out of here!” Molly yelled. “I’m going to call the police!”

The man snapped “Blyat” at her once more, then hobbled away. Molly thought about going after him and detaining him until the police could arrive, but the very last thing in the world she wanted to do was touch the vile character. She loomed in to look at the cat. It was in terrible shape; she wished she knew a way to put it quickly out of its misery, but anything she might try would probably just torture the poor creature more. “There, there,” she said in soothing tones. “He’s gone. He won’t bother you anymore.” The cat moved slightly. Its breathing was ragged.

Molly looked around; there was a pay phone at the end of the block. She hurried over to it, called directory assistance, and asked for the SPCA emergency number. She then dialed that. “There’s a cat dying at the side of the road,” she said. She craned her neck to see the street signs. “It’s just off the sidewalk on Portola Drive, a half block up from the corner of Swanson. I think it was hit by a car, perhaps an hour or two ago… No, I’ll stay with the animal, thanks. Thanks ever so — and please hurry.”

She sat cross-legged on the sidewalk next to the cat, wishing she could find it in her heart to stroke the poor animal’s fur, but it was too disgusting to touch. She looked down the street, furious and distraught.

The black-clad old man was gone.

Chapter 11

Three weeks later