The bruises on her face and the welts on her arms were clear enough badges of courage. But so too was her smiling and dancing in the face of whatever was thrown at her. Like you, she has the gift of finding happiness in small things. She pans life for gold and finds it daily.
And so what if, like you, she loses things? It’s no more a sign of immaturity than my knowledge of where my possessions are is a sign of my adulthood. And imagine acquiring a new language and only learning the words to describe a wonderful world, refusing to know the words for a bleak one and in doing so linguistically shaping the world that you inhabit. I don’t think that’s naive, but fantastically optimistic.
The next morning I knew that I had to tell her what was going on. Who was I to think that after what happened to you, I could look after another person?
“I was going to tell her, but she was already on her mobile phoning half of Poland to tell them about bringing the baby to see them. And then I got another e-mail from Professor Rosen, asking to meet me. Kasia was still chatting to her family when I left the flat.”
I met Professor Rosen, at his suggestion, at the entrance to the Chrom-Med building, which was bustling despite it being Sunday. I was expecting him to escort me to his office, but instead he led me to his car. We got in and he locked the doors. The demonstrators were still there—a distance away—and I couldn’t hear their chants.
Professor Rosen was trying to sound calm but there was a shake in his voice that he couldn’t control. “An active virus vector has been ordered under my cystic fibrosis trial number at St. Anne’s.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Either there’s been a monumental cock-up,” he said, and I thought that he never used words like cock-up, that this was as extreme as his language would get, “or a different gene is being tested out at St. Anne’s, one that needs an active virus vector, and my cystic fibrosis trial is being used as a cover.”
“The cystic fibrosis trial has been hijacked?”
“Maybe, yes. If you want to be melodramatic about it.”
He was trying to belittle what was happening but couldn’t quite pull it off.
“For what?” I asked.
“My guess is that, if an illegal trial is happening, it is for genetic enhancement, which in the UK is illegal to test on humans.”
“What kind of enhancement?”
“I don’t know. Blue eyes, high IQ, big muscles. The list of absurdity goes on. But whatever gene it is, it needs an active virus vector to transport it.”
He was talking as a scientist, in facts, but beneath the words his emotion was clear. He was livid.
“Do you know who is giving the injection for the CF gene therapy at St. Anne’s?” I asked.
“I don’t have access to that type of information. They keep us very much inside our own pigeonholes at Chrom-Med. It’s not like a university, no cross-pollination of ideas or information. So no, I don’t know the doctor’s name. But if I were him or her, I would administer the genetic treatment for cystic fibrosis to fetuses who genuinely had CF and at the same time test the illicit gene. But maybe whoever it is became careless, or there just weren’t enough patients.” He broke off and I saw the anger and hurt in him. “Someone is trying to make babies even more perfect in some way. But healthy is already perfect. Healthy is already perfect.” I saw that he was shaking.
I wondered then if you’d found out about the hijacked trial—and the hijacker’s identity. Was that why you’d been murdered?
“You must tell the police.”
He shook his head, not meeting my eyes.
“But you have to tell them.”
“It’s still just conjecture.”
“My sister and her baby are dead.”
He stared through the windshield as if driving the car rather than hiding in it. “I need to get proof first that it’s a rogue trial that’s to blame. Once I have that proof, I can save my cystic fibrosis trial. Otherwise my trial will be stopped in all hospitals until they’ve found out what’s going on and that could be months away, or years away. It may never be resumed.”
“But the cystic fibrosis trial shouldn’t be affected at all. Surely—”
He interrupted. “When the press get hold of this, with their level of subtlety and intelligence, it won’t be a maverick trial that’s to blame for babies dying—and God knows what else—it will be my cystic fibrosis trial.”
“I don’t believe that’s true.”
“Really? Most people are so poorly informed and poorly educated that they don’t see a difference between genetic enhancement and genetic therapy.”
“But that’s absurd—”
Again he interrupted. “Mobs of imbeciles have hounded pediatricians, even attacked them, because they think pediatrician is the same thing as pedophile, so yes, they will target the cystic fibrosis trial as wicked too because they won’t understand there’s a difference.”
“So why did you investigate in the first place?” I asked. “If you’re going to do nothing with the findings?”
“I investigated because I’d told you I’d answer your questions.” He looked at me, anger sparking in his face, furious with me for putting him in this position. “I thought there’d be nothing to find.”
“So I’ll have to go to the police without your support?” I asked.
He looked physically intensely uncomfortable, trying to smooth out the sharp creases of his pressed gray trouser legs, which wouldn’t lie flat.
“The order of the virus vector could well be a mistake; computer glitches occur. Administrative errors happen worryingly frequently.”
“And that’s what you’ll tell the police?”
“It’s the most credible explanation. So yes, that’s what I’ll tell them.”
“And I won’t be believed.”
Silence hung between us like glass.
I broke it. “What’s this really about, curing babies or your own reputation?”
He unlocked the car doors, then turned to me. “If your brother were an unborn baby now, what would you have me do?”
I did hesitate, but only for a moment. “I’d want you to go to the police and tell them the truth and then work like hell at saving your trial.”
He walked away from the car, not bothering to wait for me, not bothering to lock it again.
The woman with the spiky hair recognized him and yelled at him, “Leave playing God to God!”
“If God had done his job properly in the first place, we wouldn’t need to,” he snapped at her. She spat at him.
The demonstrator with the gray ponytail shouted, “Say no to designer babies!”
Professor Rosen pushed his way through them and went back into the building.
I didn’t think he was wicked, just weak and selfish. He simply couldn’t bear to give up his newfound status. But he had a mental alibi for his lack of action, exonerating circumstances that he could plead to himself—the cystic fibrosis cure is very important. You and I both know that.
I reached the tube station and only then realized that Professor Rosen had given me a crucial piece of information. When I’d asked him if he knew who was giving the injections for the CF trial at St. Anne’s, he’d said that he didn’t know, that he didn’t have access to that information. But he had talked about that person’s choosing fetuses “who genuinely had CF and at the same time test the illicit gene.” In other words, the person giving the injection was the same person who was running the CF trial at St. Anne’s. It had to be, if that person was responsible for choosing who was on it. And finding out who was in charge of the CF trial at St. Anne’s was light-years easier than finding the identity of someone giving a single injection.