PROLOGUE Sept 20, 2070 The old woman lay in bed, not breathing well. She lay listening to the sounds of Paris through the open balcony doors. Ordinary city sounds: traffic, horns, sirens, people talking as they passed by below. But to Mrs. Wright, just being Paris sounds made them exquisite. She knew that there was not much longer for her. She would wait to see the sun set in pink and gold and purple behind the roofs across the street one last time, and then she would go. She knew that there were ways to prolong this--perhaps indefinitely. She knew very well, for she had invented some of the techniques, decades ago when she used Ph.D. behind her then- hyphenated name. She had dropped the hyphenation and the title nearly twenty years ago when she had moved here from America. Anonymity came easier with a one-syllable name. No, she had no wish to remain any longer. You became more tired every day, and your mind less clear. She had been a reluctant passenger as her once-beautiful body lost strength, her skin withered, and her once-brilliant mind slowed. Science had been her life's driving energy; what good could she do the world when she had to stop and think--hard--to remember what day of the week it was? The potential was there to revitalize all that-- recharge her batteries, if you will. A few weeks ago, when she felt the end approaching, she had flown over her personal physician. He was one of the few whom she felt could be trusted to perform the procedure--or not perform it without her consent. She had already told him to let her die when the time came, over his protests, but he had agreed. His orders before leaving America had been to destroy all of her known blood or tissue samples, and to erase all databases. He reported that this had been done. She had to trust him. Her eyes moved across the pictures on the wall, remembering. Her doctoral diploma from the Hellman Medical Institute. Tacy Tiana Divine-Wright, Ph. D. It always brought a curious mixture of joy and pain. How could her star have peaked in brilliance so early, and expired so suddenly? Her doctor came in. Dr. Thomas Robert, but he liked to be called Tom-Bob. He carried a box the size of a card deck, with a wire connecting it to a cap that looked like a yamulke with earflaps. "How are you feeling, Tacy?" "No worse than can be expected for my last hours. Say, that thing had better not be what it looks like." "You made me promise that there would be none of that," he said gently, slipping the device over her head. The earflaps rested just behind her ears. "This is simply to measure your brainwave activity, make sure it's still stable." "That had better be all that it is. If you're mapping me without my consent, I'll come back to haunt you." "I told you, no last-minute rejuvination procedures. Just as you asked." "All right then." Mrs. Wright turned her attention back to the walls while the thing on her head created a mild sensation of goosebumps on her scalp. There was her and Irene Gorse at the big grant party. She remembered it had been in that nice house on the hill overlooking town that she and her husband had owned briefly. They had lived there less than six months when this picture was taken. Irene and she had just gotten the biggest grant of their lives. They would use the newly-completed human genome project data--the first complete map of human DNA--and collaborate on the first-ever human tests of in-vitro genetic correction. What the 700-page grant proposal had boiled down to was this: they would take recently pregnant women, some with a family history of genetic defects, some without--they would not know which was which until later--and inject the embryo with a "smart protien" that Dr. Gorse had developed. The protien would carry only good copies of all DNA subsets which had been found to create defects and disease. The protien would find and replace any defective DNA sequences with the corrected sequences. In theory, the babies would be born risk-free from future health problems. These children would never need glasses, never get cancer or allergies, wouldn't be obese, and wouldn't be predisposed to asthma, or alcoholism. The children would be closely monitored for their first 20 years, at which time it would be decided whether to begin regular treatments on all fetuses. It hadn't worked out that way. The group had been large for a study. Because it was voluntary and offered renumeration, most of the subjects were teenage girls, prostitutes, and ghetto women. Which wasn't a problem in itself, just very hard for the rest of the world to understand. Right away they were criticized that they wanted to take advantage of poor people/black people/addicts, whoever. Most factions that you could imagine came out to decry that Drs. Gorse and Divine-Wright wanted to use their disadvantaged people as guinea pigs. Which wasn't true, Tacy and Irene argued. These were volunteers who had come to them, not the other way around. It just happened that few rich, white, married women had applied. Putting your unborn child up for medical experimentation is a scary, hard thing to do. Most of the study's women were desperate for either money or for prenatal medical attention that they could not normally afford. Tacy felt sympathy for most of the women--and sad for a few- -and she really believed that their children stood a better chance as part of their program than they would have had without. At the very least, she would have the comfort of knowing that she saved at least one or two children from the paralysis of spina bifida, or the demeaning fall of Alzheimer's. For the most part, everything went off perfectly. The babies were all born between March and November 2050. They were all normal, with ten fingers and toes, and in perfect baby health. The Hellman maternity ward was filled to capacity when the last babies were delivered in the last week of November that year. Tacy and Irene stood in front of the big hall windows, looking in on them. They congratulated each other on doing what medical science had dreamed of for a century--and discussing the one problem they had not forseen. Every single child in their study had mustard-yellow eyes. There was no explanation for it. Their protien had not included the sequence that determines eye color, and they could not find a direct sequential match for that string anywhere in the protien. Irene had a theory that one small part of the protien coating--the vehicle--had somehow cross-reacted and replaced part of the normal DNA sequence, but they were never able to prove it or replicate it in the computer. Public approval had been against them from the start, and now the media grabbed hold of the fact that a visible genetic mistake had surfaced. The press quickly churned the issue into a public revolt, and demands were coming from conservative congressmen to ban all genetic manipulation. And genetic research was one of the major branches of the Hellman Institute. The Institute was not happy that these two women had smeared their public image and threatened their status as one of the highest- regarded medical facilities in the world. Tacy was not surprised the evening that Irene had called to tell her that the NIH had withdrawn their grant. She was less surprised the following day when Hellman refused to fund their labs in the absence of grant support. A denial of institutional backing is their way of telling you to pack your bags and go. She and Irene were essentially scientists out on the street. Irene was able to find work at a pharaceutical company. Tacy was unable to escape her reputation no matter where she went. She eventually gave up the idea of resuming her career and concentrated on developing ideas she had never been able to devote time to. She ended up patenting several inventions that existed on paper alone. A few were bought by companies and actually produced. They were able to live off of her husband's salary, though they had to move into a more affordable house. There were other memories directly or indirectly related to the baby-study mishap. The accident which claimed her husband's life. The realization afterward that all of their friends had been his. Her own friends had drifted away in the wake of her disgrace. With her husband's life insurance and her patent royalties, Tacy left the United States and moved to Paris. It was much easier to live with herself here. And to die. The sun was beggining to touch the rooflines across the street. Somewhere out there were the children and grandchildren of those yellow-eyed babies, all of whom as far as she knew turned out just fine. There was that, and that was good. The goosebump sensation on her scalp ceased, and Tom-Bob removed the device. "All done, Mrs. Wright. Everything looks good. Is there anything else I can get for you?" "Yes, Tom. Is my daughter still here?" "Yes, she's just outside." "On your way out, would you ask her to come in for me? I'd like for her to watch the sunset with me."