Mutation (3 page)

     "I wanted to come home anyway," VJ said as he picked up one of the carrots Marsha had just cleaned. He took a noisy bite.

     Marsha put her arms around VJ and gave him a squeeze, aware of the strength in his wiry young body. "Since you have no school this week I'd have thought you would have wanted to stay with Richie and have some fun."

     "Nah," VJ said as he wormed his way out of his mother's grasp.

     "Are you worrying your mother again?" Victor asked in a teasing tone. He appeared at the doorway to the family room, holding an open scientific journal, his reading glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose.

     Ignoring Victor, Marsha asked, "What about this week? Did you make some plans with Richie?"

     "Nope. I'm planning on spending the week with Dad at the lab. If that's okay, Dad?" VJ moved his eyes to his father.

     "Fine by me as usual," Victor said with a shrug.

     "Why in heaven's name do you want to go to the lab?" Marsha asked. But it was a rhetorical question. She didn't expect an answer. VJ had been going to the lab with his father since he'd been an infant. First to take advantage of the superb day-care services offered at Chimera, Inc., and later to play in the lab itself. It had become a routine, even more so after Janice Fay had died.

     "Why don't you call up some of your friends from school, and you and Richie and a whole group do something exciting?"

     "Let him be," Victor said, coming to VJ's assistance. "If VJ wants to come with me, that's fine."

     "Okay, okay," Marsha said, knowing when she was outnumbered. "Dinner will be around eight," she said to VJ, giving his bottom a playful slap.

     VJ picked up the saddlebags he'd parked on the chair next to the phone and headed up the back stairs. The old wooden risers creaked under his seventy-four-pound frame. VJ went directly to the second-floor den. It was a cozy room paneled in mahogany. Sitting down at his father's computer, he booted up the machine. He listened intently for a moment to make sure his parents were still talking in the kitchen and then went through an involved procedure to call up a file he'd named STATUS. The screen blinked, then filled with data. Zipping open each saddlebag in turn, VJ stared at the contents and made some rapid calculations, then entered a series of numbers into the computer. It took him only a few moments.

     After completing the entry, VJ exited from STATUS, zipped up the saddlebags, and called up Pac-Man. A smile spread across his face as the yellow ball moved through the maze, gobbling up its prey.

     Marsha shook the water from her hands, then dried them on the towel hanging from the refrigerator handle. She couldn't get her growing concern for VJ out of her mind. He wasn't a difficult child; there certainly weren't any complaints from teachers at school, yet tough as it was to put her finger on it, Marsha was increasingly certain something was wrong. It was time she brought it up. Picking up Kissa, their Russian Blue cat who'd been doing figure eights around her legs, Marsha walked into the family room where Victor was sprawled on the gingham couch, perusing the latest journals as was his habit after work.

     "Can I talk to you for a moment?" Marsha asked.

     Victor lowered his magazine cautiously, peering at Marsha over the tops of his reading glasses. At forty-three, he was a slightly built, wiry man with dark wavy, academically unkempt hair and sharp features. He'd been a reasonably good squash player in college and still played three times a week. Chimera, Inc., had its own squash courts, thanks to Victor.

     "I'm worried about VJ," Marsha said as she sat down on the wing chair next to the couch, still petting Kissa, who was momentarily content to remain on her lap.

     "Oh?" said Victor, somewhat surprised. "Something wrong?"

     "Not exactly," Marsha admitted. "It's a number of little things. Like it bothers me that he has so few friends. A few moments ago when he said he'd been with this Richie boy, I was so pleased, like it was an accomplishment. But now he says he doesn't want to spend any time with him over his spring break. A child VJ's age needs to be with other kids. It's an important part of normal latency development."

     Victor gave Marsha one of his looks. She knew he hated this kind of psychological discussion, even if psychiatry was her field. He didn't have the patience for it. Besides, talk of any problems related to VJ's development had always seemed to fuel anxieties Victor preferred not to fire. He sighed, but didn't speak.

     "Doesn't it worry you?" Marsha persisted when it was apparent Victor wasn't about to say anything. She stroked the cat, who took the attention as if it were a burden.

     Victor shook his head. "Nope. I think VJ is one of the best-adapted kids I've ever met. What's for dinner?"

     "Victor!" Marsha said sharply. "This is important."

     "All right, all right!" Victor said, closing his magazine.

     "I mean, he gets along fine with adults," Marsha continued, "but he never seems to spend time with kids his own age."

     "He's with kids his own age at school," Victor said.

     "I know," Marsha admitted. "But that's so highly structured."

     "To tell the truth," Victor said, knowing he was being deliberately cruel, but given his own anxiety about VJ-anxiety very different from his wife's-he couldn't bear to stay on the subject, "I think you're just being neurotic. VJ's a great kid. There's nothing wrong with him. I think you're still reacting to David's death." He winced inwardly as he said this, but there was no getting around it: the best defense was an offense.

     The comment hit Marsha like an open-hand slap. Emotion bubbled up instantly. Blinking back tears, she forced herself to continue. "There are other things besides his apparent lack of friends. He never seems to need anyone or anything. When we bought Kissa we told VJ it was to be his cat, but he's never given her a second glance. And since you've brought up David's death, do you think it normal that VJ has never mentioned his name? When we told him about David he acted as if we'd been talking about a stranger."

     "Marsha, he was only five years old. I think you're the one who's disturbed. Five years is a long time to grieve. Maybe you should see a psychiatrist."

     Marsha bit her lip. Victor was usually such a kind man, but any time she wanted to discuss VJ, he just cut her off.

     "Well, I just wanted to tell you what was on my mind," she said, getting up. It was time to go back into the kitchen and finish dinner. Hearing the familiar sounds of Pac-Man from the upstairs den, she felt slightly reassured.

     Victor got up, stretched, and followed her into the kitchen.

2. March 19, 1989

Sunday, Early Evening

     Dr. William Hobbs was looking across the chessboard at his son, marveling over him as he did most every day, when the boy's intensely blue eyes rolled back into his head, and the child fell backward off his seat. William didn't see his son hit the floor, but he heard the sickening thud.

     "Sheila!" he screamed, jumping up and rushing around the table. To his horror, he saw that Maurice's arms and legs were flailing wildly. He was in the throes of a grand mal seizure.

     As a Ph.D., not an M.D., William was not certain what to do. He vaguely remembered something about protecting the victim's tongue by putting something between his teeth, but he had nothing appropriate.

     Kneeling over the boy, who was just days short of his third birthday, William yelled again for his wife. Maurice's body contorted with surprising force; it was hard for William to keep the child from injuring himself.

     Sheila froze at the sight of her husband juggling the wildly thrashing child. By this time Maurice had bitten his tongue badly, and as his head snapped up and down, a spray of frothy blood arched onto the rug.

     "Call an ambulance!" shouted William.

     Sheila broke free of the paralyzing spell and rushed back to the kitchen phone. Maurice hadn't felt well from the moment she'd picked him up from Chimera Day Care. He'd complained of a headache-one of a pounding variety, like a migraine. Of course most three-year-olds wouldn't describe a headache that way, but Maurice wasn't most three-year-olds. He was a true child prodigy, a genius. He'd learned to talk at eight months, read at thirteen months, and now could beat his father at their nightly chess game.

     "We need an ambulance!" shouted Sheila into the phone when a voice finally answered. She gave their address, pleading with the operator to hurry. Then she rushed back into the living room.

     Maurice had stopped convulsing. He was lying quite still on the couch where William had placed him. He'd vomited his dinner along with a fair amount of bright red blood. The awful mess had become matted in his blond hair and drooled from the corners of his mouth. He'd also lost control of his bladder and bowels.

     "What should I do?" William pleaded in frustration. At least the child was breathing and his color, which had turned a dusky blue, was returning to normal.

     "What happened?" Sheila asked.

     "Nothing," William answered. "He was winning as usual. Then his eyes rolled up and back and he fell over. I'm afraid he hit his head pretty hard on the floor."

     "Oh, God!" Sheila said, wiping Maurice's mouth with the corner of her apron. "Maybe you shouldn't have insisted he play chess tonight with his headache and everything."

     "He wanted to," William said defensively. But that wasn't quite true. Maurice had been lukewarm to the idea. But William couldn't resist an opportunity to watch the child use his phenomenal brain. Maurice was William's pride and joy.

     He and Sheila had been married for eight years before they finally were willing to admit they were unable to conceive. Since Chimera had its own fertility center, Fertility, Inc., and since William was an employee of Chimera, he and Sheila had gone there free of charge. It hadn't been easy. They had to face the fact that both of them were infertile, but eventually, via a surrogate and gamete-donation plans, they got their long-awaited child: Maurice, their miracle baby with an IQ right off the charts.

     "I'll get a towel and clean him up," Sheila said, starting for the kitchen. But William grabbed her arm.

     "Maybe we shouldn't move him around."

     The couple sat watching the child helplessly, until they heard the ambulance scream down their street. Sheila rushed to let the medics in.

     A few moments later, William found himself balancing on a seat in the back of the lurching vehicle with Sheila following behind in the family car.

     When they reached Lowell General Hospital, the couple waited anxiously while Maurice was examined and evaluated, then declared stable enough for transfer. William wanted the child to go to Children's Hospital in Boston, about a half hour's drive. Something told him that his child was deathly ill. Maybe they had been too proud of his phenomenal brilliance. Maybe God was making them pay.

     "Hey, VJ!" Victor shouted up the back stairs. "How about a swim!" He could hear his voice carom off the walls of their spacious house. It had been built in the eighteenth century by the local landowner. Victor had bought and renovated it shortly after David's death. Business at Chimera had begun to boom after the company had gone public, and Victor felt Marsha would be better off if she didn't have to face the same rooms where David had grown up. She'd taken David's passing even harder than he had.

     "Want to go in the pool?" Victor shouted again. It was at times like this that he wished they'd put in an intercom system.

     "No, thanks," came VJ's answer echoing down the stairwell.

     Victor remained where he was for a moment, one hand on the handrail, one foot on the first step. His earlier conversation with Marsha had reawakened all his initial fears about his son. The early unusual development, the incredible intelligence which had made him a chess master at three years of age, the precipitous drop in intelligence before he was four; VJ's was by no means a standard maturation. Victor had been so guilt-ridden since the moment of the child's birth that he had been almost relieved at the disappearance of the little boy's extraordinary powers. But now he wondered if a normal kid wouldn't jump at the chance to swim in the family's new pool. Victor had decided to add a pool for exercise. They'd built it off the back of the house in a type of greenhouse affair. Construction had just been completed the previous month.

     Making up his mind not to take no for an answer, Victor bounded up the stairs two at a time in his stocking feet. Silently, he whisked down the long hall to VJ's bedroom, which was located in the front of the house overlooking the driveway. As always, the room was neat and orderly, with a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica  lining one wall and a chemical chart of the elements on the wall opposite. VJ was lying on his stomach on his bed, totally absorbed in a thick book.

     Advancing toward the bed, Victor tried to see what VJ was reading. Peering over the top of the book, all he could make out was a mass of equations, hardly what he expected.

     "Gotcha!" he said, playfully grabbing the boy's leg.

     At his touch, VJ leaped up, his hands ready to defend himself.

     "Whoa! Were you concentrating or what?" Victor said with a laugh.

     VJ's turquoise eyes bore into his father. "Don't ever do that again!" he said.

     For a second, Victor felt a familiar surge of fear at what he had created. Then VJ let out a sigh and dropped back onto the bed.

     "What on earth are you reading?" Victor asked.

     VJ closed the book as if it had been pornography. "Just something I picked up on black holes."

     "Heavy!" Victor said, trying to sound hip.

     "Actually, it's not very good," VJ said. "Lots of errors."

     Again Victor felt a cold chill. Lately he had wondered if his son's precocious intelligence wasn't returning. Attempting to shrug off his worries, Victor said firmly, "Listen, VJ, we're going for a swim."