Lizardskin (53 page)

Beau was thinking that there wasn’t a bad man he’d ever met, didn’t like to put a nice shine on his crimes, work it out so he was really a good guy, like he really had no choice or it was all for the good of the nation. He said nothing.

“You know, Beau, I often wonder why men think that the next hill or the next ocean wave has the great mystery concealed behind it when all a man has to do is look up, fly a few miles, and he comes to the real frontier—not a thousand miles up the Amazon or three days’ ride into the Bridger range or halfway up Kilimanjaro. There isn’t a dull little town or a shopping mall or a bank or a gas station that isn’t just a few short miles from the perfect silences of space. Just a delicate membrane of air. We could peel it back.…” He shuddered and slapped the controls.

“This machine will approach Mach One. I had it refitted according to military specs. I can even cut oxygen into the afterburners. It’ll go up to fifty thousand feet. If I pushed it, maybe sixty thousand. That’s as far as this plane goes. I could take us up in a climb, go to the afterburners, we could break out of the atmosphere and ride a perfect arc, like a slingshot rides the opposing forces of gravity and velocity. We could break through into the … immensity around us.
See
it, however briefly.”

“What would happen if you did?”

Hogeland laughed, sipped some Scotch.

“Flame-out. You’d lose all power. No control. You’d wing over, go into an uncontrollable dive. We used to call it ‘auger in.’ ”

“So it would be
damned
brief.”

“Hell, Beau! Life is brief. We get up above the grasses, break out of the earth and glide for a while, we feel the sun and we see the wide world, and then we come back to the
earth and sink into it. Why not go higher and fall farther? In the end, what’s the cost?”

“So far? Seven people. Dell Greer almost died. God knows how many women who had their babies stolen. The babies themselves.”

The doctor was shaking his head. “My intent was not to—”

“It happened. Your intentions have nothing to do with it.”

“My intentions have
everything
to do with it. Did you understand anything of what I’ve been saying, Beau?”

“Yes.”

“I know you did! I can sense it in you. You play the bull cop, but you don’t have the flatness in your eyes, that wild boar look. You think and you
feel
, Beau. You try to keep it hidden, but it shows. I think you can understand where I was trying to go, where I was trying to take all of us.”

“I know what I found in your truck, Doc. I saw where
that
was going.”

“But
did
you? Really
see
?”

“Doc, I got it on my boots. That’s real enough for me.”

They flew awhile in silence. Outside the cabin the air was clear and ice-cold. The jets whistled softly behind them, and the wind flowed over the screen. The stars glittered like knives against the limitless black night.

Hogeland let out a long breath.

“Was I wrong, Beau?”

“It
looked
wrong.”

“They weren’t
alive
, Beau. Not like you and I are alive.”

“I saw heartbeats. I saw a tiny human in that box.”

“They had a kind of life, yes. But there was no
thought
! No memory. No awareness of their own existence. They’re like seeds. They can
become
life. But life is a process of becoming. You’re not suddenly
human
, suddenly
seeing
and
knowing
. That kind of awareness is what we call consciousness, and consciousness comes on us slowly, like coming up from a deep dreamless sleep. We are awake, and we know we are awake. Man is the animal who
knows
.”

“How can you decide for them? How can you know whether or not they were alive that way?”

“But science is always making distinctions of that order. That’s why even the most humane and enlightened doctor will resist an abortion after the first trimester, because he knows that life is not a switch thrown at the moment of orgasm, a life flicking on in a darkened room. It is a process of change, of becoming, and that
becoming
is exponential as the cells divide and subdivide. If the fundamentalists and the fanatics are right, then masturbation is murder.”

“You went too far.”

“And how far is too far?”

“These were individuals. Little people. Not a collection of cells or an egg.”

“Tell me where the line is, then. Tell me at what point in the development of this organism does it become an individual, a person.”

“I don’t know.”

“Nor do I, Beau. But I can make an educated guess, and that is what this is all about. Do you know what a blastocyst is?”

“What’s the point, Doc? It isn’t going to change anything.”

“It’s important to me that you understand why I know I
did nothing wrong
! I may have done nothing that was even
illegal
!”

“How about immoral? Or is science the last refuge of the scoundrel now?”

“If you understand the process, you’ll understand my … what I tried to do. What I can
still
accomplish!”

“Try me.”

Hogeland straightened in his seat. Beau could see the change come over him, see the man rebuilding himself in his mind, becoming the grand old man of medicine. He looked at his watch. They’d be closing in on Billings in about an hour. Hogeland’s voice was rich and full of persuasion now that he had found familiar ground. The doctor wasn’t used to being perceived as anything less than a monument to medicine and compassion.

“Two weeks after the sperm has fertilized the ovum, cell division has produced perhaps a hundred cells. Fluid has accumulated
within the cellular mass to form a kind of irregular inner cavity. At around the same time, this cellular aggregate has arrived in the uterus and begins to attach itself to the uterine wall. Is it a person yet, Beau?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do we have funerals for miscarried eggs at two weeks?”

“No. The woman wouldn’t even have known she was pregnant.”

“Exactly. So we can say that there’s no
soul
in there yet. Unless you’re with the Catholics?”

“I am Catholic. But I … it’s more complicated than that.”

“Yes. That’s the trouble, when you’re Catholic and you like to think. It creates an existential tension. Now, when the blastocyst has reached this stage, the cells are … adherent. They stick together. Instead of just being like a bag of marbles, they are becoming connected. This is the first time that you can say there
is
a single entity, and not just a bundle of unconnected cells. Is it human now?”

“No.”

“In this entity, there are two separate cellular groupings. There’s an external layer, and a small cellular protrusion that extends into the inner cavity. This inner mass is the part of the blastocyst that actually becomes the human. The other mass, the exterior mass, ultimately becomes the placenta and the outer membranes. They’re discarded at the birth. Is it human yet?”

“I’ll tell you when I think so.”

“We call this stage ‘primary embryonic organization.’ This is the first time we can discern the beginning of the actual embryo. In this process, we see the basic structure begin, we see what we call the ‘primitive streak.’ This is an actual line, a thickening of the cells along the main body axes, front and back, left and right, head and tail. Now this is critical. If two streaks appear, you get twins. If three, you get triplets. Each streak is the—let’s say almost the spine—of an actual individual. But it has no neurons, no cortical development. It can’t feel or know anything. Am I boring you?”

“Just keep going, Doc. I’ll stop you when I’m in too deep.”

“Now we have reached ‘organogenesis.’ This streak begins to fill out into the major regions and organs. We’re headed out of developmental individuality and into
functional
individuality. This goes on until about the end of the eighth week.”

“When does it get a heart?”

“That’s the first organ to become functional. It starts to beat around the fourth week after the egg is fertilized.”

“And when does it get a spinal column?”

“Now you’re making the classic layman’s error. You have to understand that the fetus—we’re now at the stage where it’s a fetus—may have the outward appearance of a human child, but internally it is still very far from having any kind of organized neuronal connectivity—”

“What?”

“From feeling or reacting to anything. Now, if we go back to the third week, we have seen a layer of cells in that streak start to form a neural plate,
but
the cells of that plate are not neurons. They
will
be, but not yet.”

“When does this baby start to
think
, Doc?”

“You’re really asking, when does the fetus start to undergo some form of inner experience. Can it feel pain?”

“Or fear, Doc.”

“Precisely, and that’s the vital question. You’ll agree that pain and fear are internal sensations?”

“Yeah.”

“So if they’re internal sensations, they have to pass along
sensory
conduits. Along neurons and into an organized thalamic—into a real brain?”

“Okay.”

“So if pain and fear depend on a significant degree of brain function, you’re not going to see that in any truly valid way until the fetus is twenty-two weeks old. Because all the science, all the anatomical studies have invariably shown that these vital neuronal connections are not complete until the first fibers from the thalamus enter the cortex. Then we can say that the channel for feeling, for fear and pain, is now complete. But that only means that the
wires
are there. That doesn’t mean the
current
is flowing. You don’t see any kind of rhythmic
organized electrical activity—such as you might see in the brain waves of a sleeping person—until the neural substrate is very well advanced, and you don’t see
that
until the seventh
month
of pregnancy. That’s when premature babies are easily viable, because they are developed enough to carry on the business of being alive on their own. But are they
conscious
? Are they humans yet?”

“Look, Doc. Boil it down. What’s the minimum level of experience for you to say these babies were conscious?”

“I’d say the absolute minimum would be when they can
feel
pain and
know
it as pain.”

“And when does that happen?”

“As I said, probably around the time that the upper brain stem and the cerebral cortex begin to function. But let’s be conservative. Say six months, to be on the safe side.”

“And how old were the—”

“Some of the donors you saw were fetuses in the area of five months. And the term babies, of course.”

“
And
the term babies! Yes, Doc, I saw them. They were full-term babies, born alive. Don’t give me any horseshit about ‘harvesting fetuses.’ You were taking living babies.”

“Not always!”

“Oh, right. Only now and then. That makes it okay. How’d you get the short-term babies? The five- or six-month ones?”

Hogeland looked out the windshield and sighed. “Maybe we crossed the line there. I know I suffered for it, and there were nights when it wasn’t as
clear
as it should have been. We made it a point to recommend early testing in cases where the mother had a history of alcohol or substance abuse. Occasionally, when the opportunity … when the mother seemed incapable of caring, we took babies that had no other purpose in life, babies that were doomed to a cycle of poverty and cruelty, many that weren’t ever going to become human.”

“Why not?”

“You understood my point about pain and feeling being absolutely dependent upon higher cortical function?”

“I think so.”

“And you’re persuaded?”

“Yes … I guess so.”

“Then, by your own standards, these … babies … were not
alive
, and could
never
be expected to feel pain or awareness, because they have—in the simplest terms, they have no brains to feel
with
.”

“Anencephalic. Is this where Maureen came in, Doc?”

“Your wife—I know she was a difficult woman to live with, but she had real compassion for the people we would see in our clinics.”

“That’s the source, isn’t it?”

“If you mean, were the clinics the places where we were able to harvest these tragically deformed babies? Then I guess you’re right.”

“Just how did you do that, Doc?”

“There were deficiencies in the understanding of birth control. They were always getting pregnant. Many of these children were … Maureen saw a lot of anencephalic babies, and we—they can be
saved
you know. Many of them have a sufficiently developed brain function to keep most of the autonomic functions going—heart, lungs, kidney and liver, the renal systems. Life can be maintained, if a system for providing nutrients in a sterile environment can be applied.”

“Your little carts in the truck?”

“Yes. Jenji provided those. He is a brilliant man and a courageous researcher.” “Not anymore, Doc.”

The old man grimaced and looked sideways at Beau.

“A waste. A terrible waste.”

“So where was the profit, Doc? Or was it just for the love of science?”

“This country is—we are burdened with a kind of yahoo mindset in America. We think with our stomachs if we think at all. The legislators curry favor. They don’t have the heart to lead. There’s no vision here.”

“But there is in Kyoto? For a price.”

“They recognize the potential for genetic research. For the transplant system. It would be possible to maintain these subjects, to allow them to grow. They could be a source of life
when they reached maturity. Their organs would be harvested and distributed on a compassionate basis. There are also great implications for research. There’s growing revulsion toward animal experimentation. That’s not going to go away. My backers saw a way to address all these social issues. They were willing to pay for the whole project. We had made a great beginning.”