Part 18 (2/2)
”You've been there before. When they gave her steroids that almost gave her a heart attack.”
She shook her head. ”But Caleb's brother . . .”
”Shane doesn't care about Lily. He cares about getting Caleb to leave here. Lily is his bait. And it's working. Caleb is all torn up, he doesn't know what to do.” Mack took a breath, and squinted. ”Do you ever worry about him?”
June flashed back to their run through Flagstaff, when out of nowhere Caleb had brought up missing his family. It had struck her as unlike him.
”Sometimes,” she whispered.
”More and more, myself. Listen to what he offered me.”
A fear fluttered through her now, a coldness upon her skin.
”He wants you and Lily go to Shane, while he stays here. He said he'll be more likely to win under those conditions.” Mack slowed to let a yellow light turn red.
June's mind was racing, spinning. ”He's just thinking about Lily.”
”He needs to be thinking about Yosemite. Not his brother. Not his parents. Not Lily. And not you. It's a dangerous race. If he's running it thinking about anything at all except his body, he's going to have another accident. And this time he won't land on a shelf.”
June inhaled sharply, her eyes reddening.
”I mean, June, you must feel terrible. You came here because you were so worried about your daughter, and now, you're worried about Caleb. It's like everyone you care for gets to a place where they need worrying over. He was perfect until you met him, you know?”
She started crying as he held her eye.
”I want you to help me save him. And Lily. Because June, if you go to San Francisco, hand to G.o.d, he's not the only one who's going to die.” Mack touched his chest. ”Shane's drugs will kill Lily. I feel it. I understand it.”
She stared at him as he pulled into Fadden's parking lot. The tears came fast now.
”You need to cut him off. You need to cauterize his infection.” He grinned. ”Be right back with one ladybug.”
When he pushed the door open, the cold flooded over her, and she understood right there how it would never stop.
12.
They began on the evening of December 27.
Prajuk was a blur, running what seemed to Shane to be a decathlon of chemistry, moving from the microscope to the centrifuge to the computer. Shane felt like a nurse, handing him parts and equipment when asked.
And he was following them fairly well. The 3-D images of twisting genetic code were still abstract and obtuse but lightening around the edges, starting to make more sense to him now. He found it fascinating to watch the manipulation of the basic blocks of life. Spinning them down, splicing them in new sequences. It was not science so much, he realized, as art.
Comprehending biology on this level, or at least comprehending the concepts behind it, made the whole world come alive for him. Eating a pear, he could feel its cells bursting against the roof of his mouth. Touching Janelle's skin, holding Nicholas naked against his chest, he could feel the movement of molecules, the energy of their friction. Their, dare he think it, kinetic energy.
On the second of January at eight o'clock in the evening, he walked into Greenway Plaza Lab 301 and stopped, startled. A twentysomething kid was standing at the metal bench, destroying a green apple.
Shane extended his hand. ”Shane Oberest. Can I help you?”
”Hey,” the guy said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, ”Jeff Healy.”
”Jeff, how did you get in here?”
”I work here.”
The kid reached into a pocket, produced a phone, and held it up. Shane squinted at an e-mail.
”I'm supposed to meet Doctor Prajuk Acharn?” he misp.r.o.nounced both names.
Healy seemed in the lower five-feet range and looked to be a serious weightlifter. He was possessed of menacing eyes and acned cheeks and shoulders. Shane suspected him of steroid abuses.
Some awkward minutes later, Prajuk arrived in a short-sleeved white s.h.i.+rt and clapped his hands, grinning. It struck Shane that this was a different Prajuk than he had seen before. Upbeat, confident; he could envision him leading a team of bioresearchers.
”Shane, this is Jeff Healy. Our postdoc.”
”We met.”
”Do you know how to Atkins a gene?” he asked Healy, walking to the bench.
”No worries.”
Shane stepped forward, wanting to stay included. ”What's that mean?”
Prajuk lifted up the vector from the table. ”The gene on the fourteenth chromosome, with the protein which produces alpha-one ant.i.trypsin, is in this solution. A gene is full of carbohydrates and cellular matter, and we must strip these things away, to isolate the protein inside.”
”Eliminate the carbs,” Healy underscored.
”Oh, Atkins,” Shane whistled. ”I get it.”
He watched closely as Prajuk held up the vector.
Healy c.o.c.ked his head. ”You look like you've never seen a human gene before.”
Prajuk and Healy bent over the vector, chatting offhandedly. Shane felt as he had as a boy when Caleb and Fred went running ahead up the long road. He was a spectator; this was as close as he might get.
In the parking lot later, Prajuk held a Parliament an inch from his lips in his fist and inhaled loudly under the night sky.
”How much does he know?” Shane asked.
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