Mutation

“If VJ wasn’t so intent on secrecy,” Victor said, “he could be in contention for a Nobel Prize. I’m convinced of it. As it is, he wants me to take all the credit and Chimera to get all the economic benefit. What do you think? Does that sound like a personality disorder to you? To me it sounds pretty generous.”

Without any response from Marsha, Victor ran out of things to say. After he was quiet for a moment, she said, “I hate to ruin your day, but I’m afraid I have learned more disturbing things about VJ.”

Victor rolled his eyes as he ran his fingers through his hair. This was not the response he was hoping for.

“The one teacher at the Pendleton Academy who made a big effort to get close to VJ died a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He died of cancer.”

“Okay, he died of cancer,” Victor said. He could feel his pulse quicken.

“Liver cancer.”

“Oh,” Victor said. He did not like the drift of this conversation.

“It was the same rare type that both David and Janice died of,” Marsha said.

A heavy silence settled over the family room. The refrigerator compressor started. Victor did not want to hear these things. He wanted to talk about the implantation technology and what it would do for all those infertile couples when the zygotes refused to implant.

“For an extremely rare cancer, a lot of people seem to be contracting it. People who cross VJ. I had a talk with Mr.

Cavendish’s wife. His widow. She’s a very kind woman. She teaches at Pendleton too. And I spoke to a Mr. Arnold. It turns out he was close to David. Do you know that VJ

threatened David?”

“For God’s sakes, Marsha! Kids always threaten each other.

I did it myself when my older brother wrecked a snow house I’d built.”

“VJ threatened to kill David, Victor. And not in the heat of an argument.” Marsha was near tears. “Wake up, Victor!”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Victor said angrily, “at least not now.” He was still high from the day’s tour of VJ’s lab. Was there a darker side to his son’s genius? At times in the past, he’d had his suspicions, but they were all too easy to dismiss. VJ seemed such a perfect child. But now Marsha was expressing the same kind of doubts and backing them up so that they made a kind of evil sense.

Could the little boy who gave him a tour of the lab, the genius behind the new implantation process, also be behind unspeakable acts? The murder of those children, of Janice Fay, of his own son David? Victor couldn’t consider the horror of it all. He banished such thoughts. It was impossible. Someone at the lab killed the kids. The other deaths had to have been coincidental. Marsha was really pushing this too far. But then, she’d been on the hysterical side ever since the Hobbs and Murray kids had died. But if her fears were in any way justified, what would he do? How could he blithely support VJ in his many scientific endeavors? And if it was true, if VJ was half prodigy, half monster, what did it say of him, his creator?

Marsha might have insisted more, but just then VJ arrived home. He came in just as he had a week ago Sunday night, with his saddlebags over his shoulder. It was as though he’d known what they’d been talking about. VJ glared at Marsha, his blue eyes more chilling than ever. Marsha shuddered. She could not return his stare. Her fear of him was escalating.

Victor paced his study, absently chewing on the end of a pen. The door was closed and the house was quiet. As far as he knew, everybody was long since tucked into bed. It had been a strained evening with Marsha closeting herself in the bedroom after Victor had refused to discuss VJ anymore.

Victor had planned to spend the night working on his presentation of the new implantation method for Wednesday’s board meeting. But he just couldn’t concentrate. Marsha’s words nagged him. Try as he would, he couldn’t put them out of his mind. So what if VJ threatened David? Boys would be boys.

But the idea of yet another case of the rare liver cancer ate at him, especially in light of the fact that both David’s and Janice’s tumors had that extra bit of DNA in them. That had yet to be explained. Victor had purposefully kept the discovery from Marsha. It was bad enough he had to think of it. If he couldn’t spare her the pain of what might be the awful truth of the matter, at least he’d spare her each small revelation that pointed to it.

And then there was Marsha’s question of what else VJ was doing behind his lab’s closed doors. The boy was so resourceful, and he had all the equipment to do almost anything in experimental biology. Aside from the implantation method, just what was he up to? Even during the tour, extensive though it was, Victor couldn’t help but feel VJ

wasn’t letting him in on everything.

“Maybe I ought to take a look,” Victor said aloud as he tossed the pen onto his desk. It was quarter to two in the morning, but who cared!