The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume One (6 page)

Only the best of the best of the best for our proud corps of moms-to-be,
she mused, smiling. Many of the women involved were simply peasant women paid a generous sum for their cooperation and silence; since the surrogates made no genetic contribution to the children they carried, the project didn’t need to be too picky when it came to recruiting extra wombs. As long as the women stayed healthy and drug-free, and agreed to be monitored on a daily basis, they were good enough to serve as human incubators for the vastly superior beings gestating within them.

One of these days we really have to develop some workable artificial wombs,
Kaur reflected. That would place yet one more crucial stage of human development under deliberate scientific control, not to mention sparing the project the burden of having to constantly recruit new surrogate mothers. She patted her abdomen, already bulging slightly beneath her voluminous white lab coat; in the meantime, she, along with nearly every other female member of Chrysalis, was glad to volunteer her own body as a biological petri dish in which the future of humanity was growing day by day.

She removed a cell sample from Subject #CHS-453-X and inspected it through the electron microscope, paying particular attention to the chromosomes as they paired off during cell division. Something didn’t look quite right about one pair, so, frowning, she increased the magnification. Through the lens of the microscope, the paired chromosomes looked like segmented black worms joined at their midsections so that each pair seemed to form a squiggly X shape. Except for one pair, that is. To Kaur’s chagrin, she saw that a piece of one chromosome seemed to have broken off and reattached itself to the wrong arm of the X, producing a distinctly lopsided and unsymmetrical set of chromosomes.

“Good heavens,” she said in Punjabi. How on Earth did
that
get
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through the screening process? Lifting her face from the microscope, she used a grease pencil to mark the embryo in question for immediate incineration. Probably just a random mutation, she surmised, of the sort that spontaneously occurred every now and then. Oh well; if nothing else, catching an aberration like this one justified the long hours she put in giving the embryos a final checkup.

Thankfully, the next cell sample, from #CHS-454-X, showed no apparent defects, while the fetus itself appeared to be developing normally. Peering at the tiny speck of pink protoplasm, she couldn’t help marveling at the exquisite machinery tucked away in the nucleus of every cell in the fetus: nearly two meters of stringy nucleic acids capable of producing an individual who might someday change the world.

Just like its older brothers and sisters.

Her imagination pictured the struggling, chaotic world outside this pristine laboratory, an endangered planet filled with flawed, imperfect men and women.
If they only knew,
she thought triumphantly,
what tomorrow brings
...
!

HOTEL PALAESTRO

ROME, ITALY

MAY 14, 1974

“WELCOME TO ROME, DR. NEARY,”
the man at the front desk said. “May I see some identification?”

“Sì,”
Roberta answered, fishing around in her handbag for her phony ID. Traveling under an alias no longer troubled her; she knew from experience that Seven’s advanced Beta 5 computer manufactured the best forgeries on the planet, even if the machine’s snobbish artificial intelligence had something of an attitude problem. She blithely handed over “Veronica Neary’s” passport and driver’s license.

Isis squawked impatiently from within the plastic carrying case at Roberta’s feet. The cat’s indignant outburst reached the ears of the hotel clerk, who leaned over the edge of the counter to check out Roberta’s belongings. Amber eyes stared back at him defiantly.

“
Scusi,
Doctor,” said the clerk, who spoke excellent English, “but I’m afraid the hotel does not permit pets.”

Roberta sighed inwardly.
It wasn’t my idea to bring the damn cat along,
she thought. But Seven had insisted that Isis accompany Roberta to Rome, leaving the young woman to wonder who was supposed to be looking out for whom. “Maybe you can make an exception,
per favore?”
She slid several thousand lira in paper bills across the counter toward the clerk. “I’d really appreciate it.”

[31]
The brightly colored bills, featuring high-powered denominations with plenty of eye-catching zeroes, were quite genuine. The Beta 5 was perfectly capable of producing perfect counterfeits, of course, but she and Seven tried to use real currency wherever possible, to avoid inviting the scrutiny of the world’s various treasury departments. Fortunately, covering their expenses was no problem, since Seven’s earthly predecessors had shrewdly invested in any number of developing industries and discoveries, from Kodak to cellophane. As the sole employees of a company supposedly devoted to “encyclopedia research,” she and her taciturn boss had money to burn, which certainly came in useful at times like this.

The clerk looked about quickly, to make sure no one was looking, then pocketed the cash.
“Prego,”
he said, returning his attention back to her documents. He handed them back to her along with a set of room keys. “The elevator is to the right,” he informed her. “Room 11-G.”

Roberta nodded gratefully, then hefted both her suitcase and Isis’s carrier off the floor. She yawned, pretending to be jet-lagged from the long flight from America. In fact, she and Isis had taken the Blue Smoke Express to a deserted back alley two blocks away, but there was no need to advertise that particular detail to everyone in the hotel lobby. As far as any curious onlookers might be concerned, she was just another newly arrived delegate to the International Conference on Genetic Research and Experimentation.

Two months of pursuing assorted useless leads had not brought her and Gary Seven any closer to solving the Mystery of the Missing Scientists. This conference was one of their few remaining hopes for locating the vanished researchers, a not-quite-last-ditch ploy entrusted to Roberta while Seven followed another line of inquiry back in the States.
Let’s hope this little expedition pays off,
she thought as she lugged her baggage across the lobby to the waiting elevator.
Or that Seven has better luck with his investigation.

Her mission in Rome was twofold: keep a sharp eye out for any of the absent geneticists who might be tempted to attend the conference, while simultaneously presenting a likely target to whomever was
[32]
responsible for the scientists’ disappearances.
Just call me bait,
she thought, a role she was all too familiar with from prior undercover operations; the hard part was going to be passing herself off as an up-and-coming Ph.D. for as long as it took to attract the right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) kind of interest.

The weight of her suitcase tugged relentlessly on her arm and shoulders. Besides three days’ worth of clothes and toiletries, the overstuffed bag also bulged with the latest scientific journals, along with a couple of weighty tomes on the theoretical applications of genetic engineering. She had started reading up on the subject after that eventful visit to Berlin, but she’d still brought along plenty of homework to keep her busy in her spare time, the better to impersonate a topflight biological whiz kid.

No moonlight excursions to the Fountain of Trevi this trip,
she thought, sighing wistfully.
No time for sight-seeing while the fate of the world hangs in the balance.
Unlocking the door to Room 11-G, she stumbled inside. Her suitcase landed with a thud on the carpeted floor, giving her tired arm a break, but she couldn’t help wishing that she were in Rome as a tourist, not a secret agent.
So what else is new?
she mused, liberating Isis from the confines of the plastic carrier. Without so much as a meow of thanks, or even a backward glance, the jet-black feline scurried away to check out the bathroom. A few seconds later, the door to the bathroom closed behind the cat.

At least she’s housebroken,
Roberta thought. Heck, Isis didn’t even need a litter box; human facilities more than suited her needs, for reasons Roberta knew only too well. “Don’t take all day in there,” she called irritably to Gary Seven’s so-called pet. “You’re not the only one who wants to freshen up.”

Roberta heard the toilet flush, followed by the sound of water pouring into the sink. Isis seemed to take her own sweet time washing up, but eventually the bathroom door swung open and the cat padded out onto the carpeted floor. Ignoring Roberta completely, Isis sprang onto the windowsill and settled down to watch the city streets below.
Fine,
Roberta thought. She didn’t feel like sparring with the cat anyway. ...

Shortly, after kicking off her shoes and making herself comfortable,
[33]
Roberta retrieved a sheaf of folded papers from her carry-on bag, then stretched out on the queen-size bed to give them a closer look. No doubt the exact schedule for the conference had changed since this tentative itinerary had been mailed out, but there was time enough to look into that later this evening. Right now she just wanted to refamiliarize herself with the programming options available to her.

Even the titles of the various panels and symposia were fairly daunting: “Replication of Chromosomal Segments by Means of Enzymes derived from
Escherichia coli
,” “Further Applications of Prokaryotic Bacteriophages as Transgenic Vectors,” “The Use of Recombinant DNA in Multiclonal Antibodies” ...

Let’s see,
Roberta thought, underlining some of indicated seminars with a colored pencil. Traffic noises drifted upward from the busy streets outside.
If I was a brilliant scientific genius on the cutting edge of the genetic frontier, where would I go?

The ten A.M. presentation on “Tomorrow’s Medicine: The Genetics of Health” was being held in a crowded lecture hall on the hotel’s mezzanine. Roberta arrived early to get a good seat, right up front where she could be nice and visible. The better to attract attention she had also worn a stylish polyester shirtdress in a cheerfully bright red-and-white print. A bit more conservative than her usual style—she felt like Florence Henderson on
The Brady Bunch
—but, then again, she wasn’t attending the conference as herself. Isis, thankfully, had been left behind in their hotel room, to watch Italian TV, call for room service, or do whatever insufferable alien kitties did to amuse themselves. Roberta couldn’t care less; she had bigger things to worry about.

As discreetly as she could, Roberta scanned the audience as the hall rapidly filled up, looking for one or more of the missing geneticists, whose photos she had committed to memory. So far the only faces she recognized, though, were from the dust jackets of some of the scholarly tomes she’d perused the night before.
Would I spot the others if they were in disguise?
she wondered; the Beta 5 had tracked down the best photo reference available on all of the missing scientists, but in some
[34]
instances, the results had been decidedly sketchy, especially for most of the Eastern Bloc subjects. In those cases, all Roberta had to go on were some blurry, black-and-white photos, sometimes years out of date.
I
might not even spot some of those characters if they sat down right beside me.

The conference was definitely drawing a real international crowd, she noted, munching on a
biscotti
as she waited for the lecture to start. Among the hubbub of voices surrounding her, she identified American, French, German, Dutch, even Haitian and Pakistani accents. Her automatic translator was getting a workout, even though she had deliberately picked a talk that was being delivered in English, just to make her mission simpler.
It was as good a criterion as any,
she thought.
Besides, this one sounds more general than some of the others.

At approximately five minutes to ten, not one of the absent geneticists had made the scene, and Roberta seriously considered skipping over to one of the other events to scope out the crowd there. That seemed a little
too
conspicuous, however, not to mention rude, so she settled back into her seat, posed with her pencil poised above an open notebook, and prayed that her eyes would not glaze over too obviously.

To her relief, the lecture, delivered by a Nobel Prize nominee whose name Roberta recognized from a couple of her marked-up scientific journals, was more accessible and interesting than she had feared. The good thing about gene splicing and cloning and all, it occurred to her, was that, since nobody could actually
do
all that stuff just yet, it was a lot easier to discuss their implications in the abstract than to get bogged down in all the messy little details.

“The promise of gene therapy holds the hope of preventing—and even eradicating—a wide variety of human diseases and frailties,” the Famous Professor said after a ninety-minute survey of hereditary disorders and their genetic causes. “Cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, mental retardation, sickle-cell anemia, juvenile diabetes, hemophilia, ADA deficiency, also known as ‘bubble boy’ disease—these and many other grievous human ailments will be stricken from the annals of mortal suffering once we can use recombinant DNA techniques to correct the chromosomal defects that cause such conditions. By
[35]
splicing healthy genes into the germ cells of individual parents, whose families may have carried one of these harmful mutations for generations, we will be able to lift this curse from their children, their grandchildren, and all their descendants to come. Thank you.”