Frameshift (24 page)

The light turned green. Molly pressed down on the accelerator.

They drove the rest of the way home in silence.

Pierre, exhausted, came through the back door and immediately felt his spirits lifting. Their house wasn’t expensive, and their IKEA furnishings weren’t elaborate. But it was comfortable — the kind of life he never thought he’d have. A wife, a child, the smell of dinner cooking, toys scattered across the living-room floor, a fireplace.

Molly came into the living room, carrying Amanda. “Look who’s here!” she said to her daughter. “That’s right! It’s Daddy!… I don’t know. I’ll ask him.” Molly looked at her husband. “She wants to know if you liked the cookies we made for you.”

Pierre always brought a bagged lunch to work these days; it was easier to eat right in his lab than making his way down building 74’s long corridors to the snack bar. “They were delicious,” said Pierre. “Thank you.”

Amanda smiled.

Molly gave Pierre a kiss, Pierre sat down on the couch, and Molly transferred Amanda to his waiting arms. He lifted her above his head. She made little gurgling sounds of joy.

“How’s my girl?” he said to her. “How’s my little girl?”

Molly stepped briefly into the kitchen to stir the stew, then rejoined them. Pierre sat Amanda on his knee and bounced her up and down.

Sesame Street
was on the TV, the sound turned off.

“Were you a good girl today?” asked Pierre. “You didn’t give Mommy any trouble, did you?”

Amanda was squirming with delight, as if the suggestion that she might be a troublemaker pleased her greatly.

“Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes,” said Molly.

Pierre smiled. “Thanks. Sorry I wasn’t home in time to make it. I know it’s my turn.”

“Oh, don’t worry, hon. I’m enjoying this time.”

She looked a bit wistful. Neither of them knew exactly what they would do with Amanda when Molly’s two-year leave was over. They couldn’t put a mute child in a normal day care, and they’d yet to find a special-needs one that seemed suitable. There was one nearby for deaf children, but none for those who could hear but couldn’t speak. Molly had talked about not going back to the university at all, but they both knew she couldn’t do that. She was on the path toward tenure, and would need to build a solid career for the time when Pierre was no longer with them.

Pierre picked up Amanda again and held her in front of him. He started making goofy faces at her, and she giggled wildly. But after a few moments, she started flapping her hands about, trying to say something.

Pierre put her down on his lap, so that she could move her hands freely.

Drink
, she signed.

Pierre looked at her sternly, and signed,
What do you say
?

Please
, she signed.
Drink, please
.

Molly smiled. “I’ll get it. Apple juice?”

Amanda nodded. For a while, Amanda had resisted learning sign language; it had seemed a needless bother — until she came to understand that although her mother could hear what she was thinking, neither her father nor anyone else could.

Molly reappeared a few moments later with a small plastic glass half-filled with juice. Amanda took it with both hands and drained it in a couple of gulps. She handed the glass back to her mother.

“I’ve got to make the salad,” said Molly.

“Thanks,” said Pierre.

She smiled and went away. Pierre lifted Amanda off his lap and placed her on the couch next to him. He knew that sign language was, at best, a poor substitute for spoken language, and an even worse one for having thoughts read directly, but to be able to communicate with her meant the world to him. When they were signing, it was like that wall between them had disappeared. Pierre’s hands moved.
What did you do today
?

Played
, signed Amanda.
Watched TV. Drew a picture
.

What did you draw?

Amanda looked at him blankly.

What did you draw?
Pierre signed again.

Amanda shrugged a little.

Pierre didn’t get as much practice as he’d like at signing. He figured he must be making a mistake, so he tried a different way of asking.
You drew
a
picture of what
?

Amanda’s eyes were wide.

Pierre looked down at his hands… and saw that they were shaking. He hadn’t felt it at all. He gripped his right hand with his left, attempting to steady it. He tried to make the signs again, but they weren’t coming out properly. He couldn’t get his left palm to open correctly for “drew,” couldn’t get his right index finger to move smoothly across the fingers of his left hand for “what.”

Amanda’s brow was creasing. She could clearly see that Pierre was upset. Pierre tried again, but the gestures looked clawlike, unfriendly. He realized he was scaring his daughter, but, damn it, if he could only
control
his fingers he would—

Amanda began to cry.

“You know, hon, the Condor shareholders’ meeting is coming up next month,” said Molly that weekend. They were having steak, barbecued in their backyard. Molly had cut Pierre’s sirloin into manageable pieces; he had no trouble using knives on soft food, but had difficulty when consecutive slices in the same spot were required.

Pierre nodded. His hands moved constantly now, and his legs moved most of the time. “But they probably won’t let us in after what happened when we saw Craig Bullen.”

“They can’t legally bar you from attending. You’re a stockholder.”

“Still, it might be easier if we kept a low profile.”

“We could go in disguise,” said Molly.

“Disguise?” Pierre’s tone indicated his surprise.

“Sure. Nothing major, but — well, you could grow a beard. You’ve got four weeks after all, and…” She trailed off, but Pierre knew what she was thinking — that his jobs of shaving had been getting worse and worse as his hands had been shaking more and more. A beard would simplify his life anyway.

He nodded. “Okay, I’ll grow a beard. What about you?”

“No, I’d have to take testosterone pills for that.”

Pierre grinned. “I mean, what are you going to do about a disguise?”

“Well, I know Constance Brinkley over at the Center for Theater Arts pretty well. A lot of her acting students take psych courses. I’m sure she’d let me borrow a brown wig.”

Pierre considered. “Real undercover work, eh?”

Molly smiled. “Why not? That’s always been one of your strongest points…”

After a month of growth, Pierre’s beard turned out to be much more satisfactory than he’d imagined. Molly had brought home the wig the previous night. Pierre was startled by how different it made his wife look: her skin seemed almost porcelain white by comparison, and her cornflower eyes stood out piercingly. He’d talked her into wearing the wig to bed that night, and it inspired him to new levels of creativity. Molly gently teased him about being her six-foot vibrator.

The next day, Molly drove them to San Francisco; Pierre had quietly given up driving after an uncontrollable arm movement had almost sent them off Highway 1 into the Pacific.

As they approached the Condor Tower, Pierre caught sight of a small helicopter flying overhead. Although he couldn’t make out the markings on it, it was painted yellow and black, the Condor corporate colors. He shook his head as he watched it land on the roof of the forty-story building. More premiums well spent.

They parked the car and went inside.

Molly and Pierre got off the elevator in the basement of the Condor Tower. For the last few weeks, Pierre had been walking with the aid of a cane. There were long tables set up for shareholders to register, and he made his way slowly over to them, where he received a copy of the meeting agenda. Hundreds of people were milling about, drinking coffee or mineral water and snacking on canapes served by women in stylish uniforms.

Molly and Pierre entered the auditorium, which had about seven hundred seats. They found two chairs together near the middle, one of them on an aisle. Pierre took the aisle seat and held tightly to the handle of his cane, trying to control his shaking. Molly sat down, adjusted the position of her dark wig slightly, and read over the agenda.

On the stage, a line of nine white men and one white woman took seats behind a long mahogany table. Craig Bullen was in the middle. He was wearing a charcoal gray suit with a red carnation pinned to his lapel. He conferred with the men on either side of him, then rose to his feet and moved over to the podium. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the mike, “welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Condor Health Insurance. My name is Craig Bullen and I’m the president of the company.”

A few latecomers were still in the process of seating themselves, but everyone else broke into applause. Pierre resisted the urge to boo. The applause continued longer than mere manners would have required. The auditorium was three-quarters full. Many of the people were apparently individual stockholders, but Molly had pointed out several suited types who were probably representatives of mutual funds that had invested in the company.

Bullen was grinning from ear to ear. “Thank you,” he said as the applause finally died down. “Thank you very much. It
has
been a spectacular year, hasn’t it?”

More clapping.

“Our chief financial officer, Garrett Sims, will have a few words to say about that later, but for now, let me take you through our progress of the past year. We’ll start by introducing the auditors…”

All the usual reports were given, and three motions were brought to the floor — although it was clear that the board of directors had enough proxy votes to pass anything it wished. A few members of the audience asked questions. One young guy was all worked up about the fact that the annual report wasn’t printed on recycled paper. Pierre smiled. The spirit of California radicalism wasn’t dead.

Bullen returned to the podium. “Of course, the biggest impact on our cash flow has been Senator Patrick Johnston’s bill eleven forty-six, which became law on January first, three years ago. That bill has prevented us from denying policies to those who have genetic tests proving that they have serious disorders, so long as the disorder has not yet manifested itself. California insurance companies had lobbied hard in Sacramento to get that law defeated, and indeed had succeeded in getting Governor Wilson to veto it. But, as you may know, Senator Johnston kept reintroducing it, and Wilson finally signed it.” He looked out at the audience. “That’s the bad news. The good news is that we continue to lobby in Oregon and Washington State to make sure that no similar bills are introduced there. So far, the California law is still the only one of its kind in the nation — and we intend to keep it that way.”

The audience applauded. Pierre was fuming.

At the end of the formal presentations, Bullen — whose deep voice was now noticeably hoarse — asked if there was any new business. Pierre nudged Molly, who raised a hand on his behalf; he didn’t want people to see his arm waving wildly like some sixth-grade brownnose. Two other people were recognized first, and then Bullen pointed at Molly.

She rose briefly. “Actually,” she said loudly, “it’s my husband who wishes to speak.” Slowly, meticulously, Pierre got up, leaning on his cane.

He walked over to the microphone set up in the middle of the aisle. His feet were splayed as he moved, and his free arm — the one not holding the cane — was rising and falling at his side. There were gasps from a few people. Someone a few rows back said to his companion that the guy must be drunk. Molly turned around and gave him a withering stare.

Pierre at last reached the microphone stand. It was too low for him, but he knew he didn’t have the coordination to loosen the milled sleeve that would have let him raise one of the telescoping sections. Still, he grabbed the stand with his left hand to help steady its movements, and leaned hard on his cane with his right.

“Hello,” he said into the microphone. “I’m not just a stockholder; I’m also a geneticist.” Bullen sat up straight in his chair, perhaps recognizing Pierre’s accent. He motioned to someone offstage. “I heard Mr. Bullen tell you what an evil thing the California anti-genetic-discrimination law is.

But it’s not — it’s a wonderful thing. I come from Canada, where we believe that the right to health care is as inalienable as the right to free speech.

Senator Johnston’s law recognizes that none of us can control our genetic makeup.”

He paused to catch his breath — his diaphragm spasmed occasionally.

He noticed two security guards had appeared at the side of the theater; both had gun holsters. “I work on the Human Genome Project. We’re sequencing every bit of DNA that makes up a human being. We already know the location of the gene for Huntington’s disease — which is what I have — as well as the locations of the genes for some forms of Alzheimer’s and breast cancer and heart disease. But eventually we’ll know where e
very
gene is, what every gene does. We may very well have that knowledge in the lifetime of many people in this room. Today, there’s only a handful of things we can test genetically for, but tomorrow, we’ll be able to tell who will become obese, who will develop high cholesterol, who will get colon cancer. Then, if it weren’t for laws like Senator Johnston’s, it could be you or your already-born children or grandchildren who would have the safety net pulled out from beneath them, all in the name of profit.” His natural instinct at this moment was to spread his arms imploringly, but he couldn’t do that without losing his balance. “We shouldn’t be fighting to keep other states from adopting laws like the one here in California. Rather, we should be helping them all adopt such principles. We should—”

Craig Bullen spoke firmly into his own microphone. “Insurance is a business, Dr. Tardivel.”

Pierre started at the use of his name. The cat was clearly out of the bag.

“Yes, but—”

“And these good people” — he spread his arms, and Pierre wondered for a moment if Bullen was mocking the gesture he’d been unable to make himself — “have rights, too. The right to see their hard-earned money work for them. The right to profit from the sweat of their brows. They invest their money here, in this company, to give themselves financial security — the security to retire comfortably, the security to weather uncertain times. You identified yourself as a geneticist, correct?”