Double Helix Read online

  Double Helix

  Sigmund Brouwer

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 1995 by Sigmund Brouwer. All rights reserved

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  Author’s note for ebook edition:

  In the early 1990s, although some geneticists disagreed, others predicted that within twenty or thirty years, it just might be possible to clone a mammal. Intrigued, I began to read as much as I could about genetics, wondering about the fascinating possibilities for potential novels. Soon, armed with what I had learned, I wrote one of the first speculative novels on the subject. Double Helix, a tale of a scientist who tries to clone humans, used fiction to explore some of the real-life implications of DNA research.

  But two years—not twenty or thirty—after Double Helix was published, I was astounded to read headlines announcing that a Scottish scientist had just introduced Dolly the sheep to the world. Cloning had arrived.

  While I am grateful for Dolly—thanks to her, Double Helix briefly resurfaced as a best-seller—I was both indignant and amused four years after publication of Double Helix when I saw review refer to the novel as an “unsophisticated and over-worn plot regarding human cloning.” In less than a decade, cloning had gone from science fiction to science fact to science cliché.

  One thing, that hasn’t changed, however, is the need to beware of the double-edged sword that this genetic tinkering has become. I confess that this theme and the Pandora’s Box we’ve opened is something that led me to fictional speculation in novels written more than a decade later, unrelated to Double Helix. These are novels which I did my best to ensure would never be regarded as cliched: Broken Angel and its sequel Flight of Shadows, and The Canary List.

  Prologue

  Three people occupied the room on the sixth floor of the Institute – a tall man in a lab coat and a short, dark-skinned woman hovered near the operating table in the center of the room. A second woman, on her back on that table, screamed through the pains of labor.

  The woman’s screams abated briefly,

  The tall man examined the white translucent rubber of his gloved hands against the light above the operating table. “Velma,” he said. “How much longer must I tolerate this?”

  Velma lifted the sheet draped over the screaming woman’s belly. “Soon it will arrive,” she said in her broken, lilting accent. “That I can plainly see.”

  “Not soon enough,” the man said. He absently pulled at the rubber on his right index finger then released it with a snap lost in the screaming. “Roll up a towel and stuff it in her mouth.”

  Velma nodded. The black skin of her broad face glistened with sweat brought by the heat of the light and the exertion of holding the woman down.

  As Velma reached for the towel on a cart near the table, the woman screamed again. And again. With enough agony to bring her into a half-sitting position.

  The man brought his hand back in a threat to slap her, but she was far beyond noticing.

  She screamed and writhed, pulling at the sheet that covered her lower body.

  “Velma!” the man shouted to be heard above the woman’s screams.

  Velma had already dropped the half-rolled towel and had her hands on the woman’s shoulders, trying to push her down. But the woman was frantic with pain and shook off Velma’s strong hands.

  Her screams somehow grew in volume. Quickened in pace. Her body lurched and shuddered, and she managed to rip away the covering sheet.

  They all saw the gleaming dark wetness of the top of the baby’s head.

  Now the man did slap the woman, then he pushed her back and threw the sheet into place again. He leaned his weight onto her, feeling her struggle like a fish pulled from water.

  Velma positioned herself between the woman’s legs. She placed a hand below the sheet on the woman’s belly to feel for the rhythm of her contractions.

  Slowly, scream by scream, the baby’s head emerged.

  Velma eased the baby’s movement, ready to assist, to turn the baby’s shoulders during the next contraction.

  The woman screamed with shorter, stronger bursts, matching her short, strong pushes of agony.

  When Velma felt the baby’s shoulders emerge, she lifted her eyes to the tall man. That’s all it had taken for her to know – contact with the baby’s shoulders.

  The tall man had been watching, waiting for Velma’s reaction.

  She shook her head no to his silent question as a final contraction pushed the baby into her hands.

  The tall man turned his head to the side and spit disgust onto the floor.

  In that moment of distraction, the woman rose to her elbows, ripped at the sheet, and saw, for the first time, the baby she had brought dead into the world.

  She tried to scream again, but the shock of what she saw robbed her of breath.

  They were all three frozen for that single moment. The tall man at the side of the table. The short woman at the end of the table. And the woman on the table unable to comprehend.

  The moment ended as the woman’s body finally delivered air to her lungs, and she screamed with a different sound, a primal, piercing cry of horror.

  The tall man turned from the table and exited the room on the sixth floor of the Institute. He slammed the door shut and angrily strode down the wide corridor.

  Behind him came the heavy thumping of leather soles.

  The tall man turned. He frowned at the sight of a giant sprinting down the hall toward him.

  Why would Zwaan be running?

  The tall man put up a hand to stop Zwaan. “Listen,” the tall man said. “Velma is in the birthing room. The woman with her cannot be permitted to return to the ward.”

  “Josef,” the giant said. His voice came out as a strained whisper, made more eerie by his efforts to control his hard breathing.

  “Understand, Zwaan. Do not let the woman live. She saw too

  much.".

  “Josef!”

  “Yes, Zwaan.” Josef Van Klees knew well that Zwaan had an urgent message. But the Institute’s master never showed concern, not even to Zwaan.

  “It is not good,” Zwaan said. “There has been an escape.”

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday, May 14

  Slater Ellis slammed on his brakes, throwing chunks of gravel as he fought his 4 x 4 to a sliding stop. At First he’d figured the shiny red spots reflected at that height to be the eyes of a deer, mesmerized by his headlights. A second later, no. Not with white reflected in the halogen glare; too much white far any animal that size. The white of human skin. It had been a boy, naked, held motionless for the final seconds before impact, startled into forward flight by the grinding roar of skidding gravel as Slater had finally believed the message delivered to his eyes.

  A boy? Here in the canyon?

  Slater took a deep breath, reached into the glove compartment for a flashlight, stepped into the night, and left his truck idling in the center of the road, headlights now bouncing off dust that settled like fog. It’d be good if another vehicle came this way, was forced to stop and park behind him. Give him another set of eyes to search for the boy – if he could get anyone to believe him about the boy.

  Yet there it was, where the gravel gave way to sand on the shoulder of the road. The print of a bare foot, small, its edge softening as grains of sand trickled inward.

  Bare feet?

  “Son!” he
called into the brush beside the road. “You all right?”

  No answer. Chittering of insects. Droning of an airplane. Ticking of the truck’s engine. But no answer from the boy.

  “Son! It’s okay! l can take you to your home!”

  Again no answer. Slater shook his head. Home? What could possibly be home for a boy lost here in New Mexico’s canyons? Cuba was the closest town to the west, twelve miles ahead, ten of it this narrow gravel and sand that wound through the mountains. Yet wouldn’t it be in the news if one of the town boys were missing in these canyons?

  No tourists in this area. Not exactly the beaten path for run-aways to Los Angeles either. And the boy’s skin had been too pale. This was no Navajo kid on some sort of manhood ritual, and anyway the edge of the Jemez reserve was a half-hour south, over mountains as the crow flies, where the mountain wall dropped abruptly to the desert flats.

  “Son!” Slater drew breath to shout more, but stopped. The kid still had to be in hearing range. Why didn’t he answer?

  Okay. If he hadn’t answered by now, he didn’t want to be found. Frightened maybe? Dropped off or escaped from some loony who thought this part of New Mexico was remote enough for whatever he’d planned to do with the boy?

  Maybe the boy was hurt, too hurt to reply.

  But Slater would have sworn his front bumper had missed the kid. Still, it had happened quickly. Best, Slater decided, to follow the footprints.

  Slater pushed into darkness, letting his flashlight probe the ground. A few steps later he found another print. Way ahead, the next. The kid had been running some kind of fast to stretch them apart like this. But through brush at night – did the kid have headlights for eyes?

  Slater checked the ground for blood. Nothing. Sand. Wiry grass like thin shadow dancers in the beam of his flashlight. Dry grass. Dry brush. Skinny trunks of ponderosa pines. Nothing that gleamed black-red. Because that was how blood appeared at night, Slater knew. Dark glittering jewels more expensive than any ruby. And not nearly as rare.

  Slater continued to follow the footprints. How stupid was this? At least two hundred yards into the tangled wildness of brush and snake-filled gullies that normally he wouldn’t attempt in daylight.

  “Come on kid,” he tried again at a half-yell. “This is crazy. You need help. I’ll take you straight to town.”

  “Uvilla strodum nodi! Va go! Va go!”

  Slater froze, almost as startled by the sound as by the fact that the kid had finally responded. The voice had come from the deep darkness to his right. Maybe fifty yards away. Had the kid spoken Spanish?

  “Español?” Slater called. He struggled to find words in that language and briefly cussed himself for the lack. In New Mexico for four years now, and pressed like this, he couldn’t even say hello in Spanish. Would have to do something about that. But for now, there was some kid out there who needed to know Slater could help. “Español?” Slater called again.

  “Uvilla strodum nodi! Va go! Va go!” Accurate or not, it’s what the words sounded like to Slater.

  Slater took a half-dozen steps toward the voice. Something whizzed nearby in the darkness, clipped a branch.

  “Kid, it’s just me. One of the good guys.” Right, Slater told himself with a shake of his head. A forty-year-old runaway, and you’re calling yourself one of the good guys, when maybe the best you could say about yourself is that you haven’t let yourself run to fat, you have no debts, and you’ve managed to live here in the canyons for nine months without intruding or being intruded on. The next rock caught Slater just above the wrist and knocked the flashlight loose. It felt like he’d been hit by a baseball bat. Slater grunted, swore, danced, picked up the flashlight, and examined his wrist to find a deep gash, blood gleaming black-red. Slater decide a second later that the flashlight was a dumb idea. Nothing like giving the kid a target. He was not prepared to believe that last rock had been lucky.

  He shut off the flashlight. “You win, kid. I’m out of here.”

  Slater began his retreat, feeling his way back, glad that his eyes had begun to adjust to the new darkness. If it weren’t for the clearness of the night sky and the light that came from the moon...

  A snap of broken branch nearby and behind him.

  He felt his first chill of fear. The kid had moved on him. Why was the kid following him after throwing rocks at him?

  More rustling. Now closer. Then, incredibly, ahead of him even though he’d picked up his pace. How’d the kid do it?

  His fear became a slick sheen of cold sweat. Slater fought the urge to sprint ahead, barely held himself from crashing through the brush like a wounded animal. Slater told himself, commanded himself, to relax. What was the kid going to do? Jump him? Jump an adult three times his size? Hardly.

  Slater heard himself breathing, and despite his fierce warnings to himself, he broke into a half-run. Branches tore at his arms. His face.

  A high keening sound came from beside him. Too close.

  This kid was crazy.

  And in full pursuit.

  Slater could no longer push it away. Irrational panic. As if a deep instinct was overloading him with the sense of his own violent death.

  He snapped on his flashlight and began to sprint, running away in desperation from a kid he knew had barely stood higher than his headlights. What was this screaming fear that possessed him so completely?

  Slater ducked what branches he saw, ripped through brush he couldn’t avoid. He finally reached the last gully before the road and scrambled upward.

  Almost to the truck, he made the mistake of turning his head. Like he was trying to convince himself he had a reason to run from some kid here in the middle of the desert night.

  He had time to blink. But that was it. What he saw was a shadow hurtling through the air. Slater wasn’t conscious to hear how the chunk of wood bounced off his head like a heavy marble against a melon. And he certainly wasn’t able to hear the sigh that left his mouth in a whispered gush, nor did he hear the thump of his own body topple onto the sand shoulder of the road.

  ***

  Two time zones east, in the cloying sweet humidity of a Florida summer night, Paige Stephens, too, lay alone and motionless on her back. But it was with the forced composure of someone who did not expect the relief of sleep. Beneath the silk sheets, she unclenched the fists at her sides and crossed her hands, resting them palms down on her lower ribs, as if she were in a coffin.

  That thought crossed her mind, and she nearly laughed bitterly into the darkness. The red negligee, straps now cutting into her shoulders, had cost two hundred plus tax; another sixty dollars for the Paloma Picasso because maybe he just didn’t notice the other perfumes anymore; eighty for the champagne that she imagined she could hear fizzing into deadness from the half-empty flute glasses; and two thousand a year, plus endless hours of sweat – no, perspiration – for the workouts that kept enough sags out of her thirty-six-year-old body, so that it shouldn’t have been too ridiculous, in the strip-me-now negligee, to arch her back and stretch against the doorway and invite him from his office into the low light of bedroom candles and background Kenny G on the saxophone.

  But, as usual, she could have been in a coffin for all that he’d responded.

  Sleepless, in the terrible long minutes of self-doubt, Paige finally dared ask herself the question she knew she had been avoiding for months, a question she decided wives probably avoided for as long as possible in the face of overwhelming evidence.

  Who was the other woman?

  Paige Stephens wanted to step to the window, throw it open regardless of how much air-conditioned coolness it cost the room, and scream that question across the clipped sawgrass lawn, past their docked thirty-six-foot SeaRay that rocked slightly with the swells of the canal beyond the lawn. Who are you?

  Paige knew it was another woman. What else could explain what Darby had become over the last few months? Edgy. Secretive. Subject to long, late work nights. Too many weekends on business trips. Unromantic. De
finitely unromantic.

  Who are you?

  Auburn hair too? My height? Or had Darby’s taste changed with his obvious disinterest? Was it his secretary, a cliched suspicion only cliched because it too often did happen that way?

  So what hurts worse, Paige asked herself, that he has another woman, or that he won’t even bother with me anymore?

  The phone rang. A half-ring. Darby in his home office down the hall had snatched it up quickly, as if that could convince her the phone had not rung at all, that the damage had not been done.

  But the damage had been done. Unless it was an emergency, none of their friends would call at this hour. She’d really have to practice self-deception to believe it was a business call, that her husband-in-name, the head accountant for International World Relief Committee, was responding to yet another funding crisis.

  Paige sat up and hugged her knees as she wondered what to do about the telephone.

  Today, she now told herself, had been the first day of competition. Her careful choice of negligee, the long bubble bath, all of it had been a subconscious plan to fight back for what she had lost. Her husband. She’d been fighting the unknown, yes, even at that point, the unadmitted enemy.

  Until now. The choice was here to be made. Fight on. Or retreat.

  She pivoted to set her feet on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. She worked a finger beneath the handset of the extension telephone and pressed the release button, holding the pressure so that she could lift the handset to her ear. She eased the pressure slowly, hoped the connecting click would not be obvious to Darby.

  “...you think I care you’re upset 1 called you at home?”

  Paige nearly gasped with surprised pleasure to discover the enemy’s voice was low and male. Raspy, rough, strained. Not female, throaty, husky, purring as she’d feared.