"Frameshift" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sawyer Robert J.)

Chapter 8

Pierre and Molly’s relationship had been building nicely. He had been to Molly’s apartment three times now, but she had yet to see his place.

Tonight was the night, though: A E was showing another Cracker made-for-TV movie with Robbie Coltrane, and they both loved that series.

But Molly only had a thirteen-inch TV, and Pierre had a twenty-seven-inch set — you needed a decent size to properly follow a hockey game.

He’d cleaned up some, gathering the socks and underwear from the living-room floor, getting the newspapers off his green-and-orange couch, and doing what he considered to be a decent job of dusting — wiping the sleeve of the Montreal Canadiens jersey he was wearing across the top of the TV and stereo cabinet.

They ordered a La Val’s pizza during the final commercial break, and, after the movie was over, they chatted about it while waiting for the pizza to arrive. Molly loved the use of psychology in Cracker; Coltrane’s character, Fitz, was a forensic psychologist who worked with the Manchester police.

“He is an amazing fellow,” agreed Pierre.

“And,” said Molly, “he’s sexy.”

“Who?” asked Pierre, puzzled. “Not Fitz?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s a hundred pounds overweight, an alcoholic, a compulsive gambler, and he smokes like a chimney.”

“But that mind,” said Molly. “That intensity.”

“He’s going to end up in a hospital with a heart attack.”

“I know,” sighed Molly. “I hope he has decent health insurance.”

“Britain is like Canada — socialized medicine.”

“ ‘Socialized’ is kind of an ugly word here,” said Molly. “But I must say the idea of universal health care is appealing. It’s too bad Hillary didn’t get her way.” A pause. “I guess it was a shock for you to have to start paying for your health insurance.”

“I’m sure it will be. I haven’t got around to it yet.”

Molly’s jaw dropped. “You don’t have any health insurance?”

“Well… no.”

“Are you covered under the faculty-association group plan?”

“No. I’m not faculty, after all; I’m just a postdoc.”

“Gee, Pierre, you really should have some medical insurance. What would you do if you were in an accident?”

“I hadn’t thought about that, I guess. I’m so used to the Canadian system, which covered me automatically, that I hadn’t thought about having to actually do something to get insurance.”

“Are you still covered under the Canadian plan?”

“It’s actually a provincial plan — the Quebec plan. But I won’t meet the residency requirements this year, which means, no, I’m not really covered.”

“You better do something soon. You could be wiped out financially if you had an accident.”

“Can you recommend somebody?”

“Me? I have no idea. I’m under the faculty-association plan. That’s with Sequoia Health, I think. But for individual insurance, I haven’t a clue who’s got the best rates. I’ve seen ads for a company called Bay Area Health, and another called — oh, what is it? — Condor, I think.”

“I’ll call them up.”

“Tomorrow. Do it tomorrow. I had an uncle who broke his leg once and had to be put in traction. He didn’t have any insurance, and the total bill was thirty-five thousand dollars. He had to sell his house to pay for it.”

Pierre patted her hand. “All right already. I’ll do it first thing.”

Their pizza arrived. Pierre carried the box to the dining-room table and opened it up. Molly ate her pieces directly from the box, but Pierre liked his to be burn-the-roof-of-your-mouth hot, so he nuked each of his slices for thirty seconds before eating them. The kitchen smelled of cheese and pepperoni, plus an aroma of slightly moist cardboard coming from the box.

After she’d finished her third slice, Molly asked, out of the blue, “What do you think about kids?”

Pierre helped himself to a fourth piece. “I like them.”

“Me, too,” said Molly. “I’ve always wanted to be a mother.”

Pierre nodded, not knowing exactly what he was supposed to say.

“I mean,” continued Molly, “getting my Ph.D. took a lot of time and, well, I never met the right person.”

“That happens sometimes,” said Pierre, smiling.

Molly nibbled at her pizza. “Oh, yes. ‘Course, it’s hardly an insurmountable problem — not having a husband, I mean. I have lots of friends who are single moms. Sure, for most of them that wasn’t the way they planned it, but they’re doing fine. In fact, I…”

“What?”

She looked away. “No, nothing.”

Pierre’s curiosity was aroused. “Tell me.”

Molly considered for a time, then: “I did something pretty stupid — oh, six years ago now, I guess it was.”

Pierre raised his eyebrows.

“I was twenty-five, and, well, frankly, I’d given up any hope of finding a man I could have a long-term relationship with.” She raised a hand. “I know twenty-five sounds young, but I was already six years older than my mom was when she’d had me, and — well, I don’t want to go into the reasons right now, but I’d been having a terrible time with guys, and I didn’t see that that was likely to ever change. But I did want to have a child, and so I… well, I picked up some men — four or five different one-night stands.” She held up a hand again, as if feeling a need to make it all seem somewhat less sordid. “They were all medical students; I was trying to choose carefully. Each time I did it was at the right point in my cycle; I was hoping to get pregnant off one of them. I wasn’t looking for a husband, you understand — just for, well, just for some sperm.”

Pierre had his head tilted to one side. He clearly didn’t know how to respond.

Molly shrugged. “Anyway, it didn’t work; I didn’t get pregnant.” She looked at the ceiling for a few moments, and drew in breath. “What I got instead was gonorrhea.” She exhaled noisily. “I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t get AIDS. God, it was a stupid thing to do.”

Pierre’s face must have shown his shock; they’d slept together several times now.

“Don’t worry,” said Molly, seeing his expression. “I’m completely over it, thank God. I had all the follow-up tests after the penicillin treatment. I’m totally clean. Like I said, it was a stupid thing to do, but — well, I did want a baby.”

“Why’d you stop?”

Molly looked at the floor. Her voice was small. “The gonorrhea scarred my fallopian tubes. I can’t get pregnant the normal way anymore; if I’m ever going to do it, it’ll have to be via in vitro fertilization, and, well, that costs money. Around ten grand per attempt, last time I looked. My health insurance doesn’t cover it, since the blocked tubes weren’t a congenital condition. But I’ve been saving up.”

“Oh,” said Pierre.

“I — ah, I thought you should know…” She trailed off, and then shrugged again. “I am sorry.”

Pierre looked at his slice of pizza, now growing cold. He absently picked a green pepper off it; they were only supposed to be on half, but a stray one had ended up on one of his slices. “I would never say it’s for the best,” said Pierre, “but I guess I’m old-fashioned enough to think a child should have both a mother and a father.”

Molly did meet his eyes, and held them. “My thought exactly,” she said.

At two o’clock in the afternoon, Pierre entered the Human Genome Center office — and found to his surprise that a party was going on. Joan Dawson’s usual supply of home-baked goodies hadn’t been enough; someone had gone out and bought bags of nachos and cheesies, and several bottles of champagne.

As soon as Pierre entered, one of the other geneticists — Donna Yamashita, it was — handed him a glass. “What’s all the excitement about?” asked Pierre over the noise.

“They finally got what they wanted from Hapless Hannah,” said Yamashita, grinning.

“Who’s Hapless Hannah?” asked Pierre, but Yamashita had already moved away to greet someone else. Pierre walked over to Joan’s desk. She had a dark liquid in her champagne glass. Probably diet cola; as a diabetic, she wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol. “What’s happening?” said Pierre. “Who is Hapless Hannah?”

Joan smiled her kindly smile. “That’s the Neanderthal skeleton on loan from the Hebrew University at Givat Ram. Dr. Klimus has been trying to extract DNA from the bone for months, and today he finally finished getting a complete set.”

The old man himself had moved nearer — and for once there was a smile on his broad, liver-spotted face. “That’s right,” he said, his voice cold and dry. He glanced sideways at a chubby man Pierre recognized as a UCB paleontologist. “Now that we have Neanderthal DNA, we can do some real science about human origins, instead of just making wild guesses.”

“That’s wonderful,” replied Pierre above the din of people milling about the small office. “How old was the bone?”

“Sixty-two thousand years,” said Klimus triumphantly.

“But surely the DNA would have degraded over all that time,” said Pierre.

“That’s the beauty of the site where Hapless Hannah was found,” said Klimus. “She died in a cave-in that completely sealed her in — she was an actual, honest-to-goodness cave-woman. Aerobic bacteria in the cave used up all the oxygen, so she’d spent the last sixty thousand years in an oxygen-free environment, meaning her pyrimidines didn’t oxidize. We’ve recovered all twenty-three pairs of chromosomes.”

“What a lucky break,” said Pierre.

“It sure is,” said Donna Yamashita, who had suddenly appeared again at Pierre’s elbow. “Hannah will answer a lot of questions, including the big one about whether Neanderthal was a separate species — Homo neanderthalensis — or just a subspecies of modern humanity — Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, and—”

Klimus spoke over top of her. “And we should be able to tell whether Neanderthals died out without leaving any descendants, or whether they crossbred with Cro-Magnon, and therefore mixed their genes with ours.”

“That’s terrific,” said Pierre.

“Of course,” said Klimus, “there’ll still be many questions unanswered about Neanderthals — fine details of physical appearance, culture, and so on. But, still, this is a remarkable day.” He turned his back on Pierre, and in an unexpected display of exuberance, tapped the side of his champagne glass with his Mont Blanc pen. “Everybody — everybody! Your attention, please! I’d like to propose a toast — to Hapless Hannah! Soon to become the best-known Neanderthal in history!”