Part 21 (2/2)
Caleb inhaled sharply through his nose, a reflex he'd picked up somewhere in childhood. People at InterFinancial had done scathing impressions of it.
”Nights are where I'm weak.”
”Yosemite is still three months away. You've got to slow down.” Kevin dropped his voice. ”Steve Brzenski died there.”
”I don't plan,” Caleb said as he pulled on his cold-weather s.h.i.+rt, ”on having that experience.”
3.
The mouse was four inches from nose to tail.
He had been hand-delivered in a wooden crate, on a Tuesday near the end of February. No one had answered the door at Lab 301, so the courier had called the number he'd been given, and Shane's cell rang in the middle of a team videoconference. He had been hoping to motivate his Southern California reps, who seemed to him to be suffering some kind of overconfidence. He hesitated at the number and ducked out to take the call.
”Can you wait?” he asked the courier.
”Nope, I sure can't.”
”Can you leave it there by the door?
”Without a signature, I'll need to send it back.”
”Back? It's alive.” He could feel the courier's shrug. ”Look, wait ten minutes for me?”
Apologetically Shane excused himself, garnering looks from the reps on the monitor, and jogged to the parking lot. It was exceptionally sunny, late February at its San Francis...o...b..ightest, and he had left his sungla.s.ses on his desk. Squinting against the sun he felt vulnerable. He texted Prajuk.
M arrived. What do I do with it?
By the time he signed for his cargo, he had an answer. He unlocked the door and stepped into the cool swath of chemical air. Along the bench, rows of pink petri dishes were now covered in cl.u.s.tered tiny black b.a.l.l.s of bacteria, like BBs. They looked like cancer. He recoiled from them.
Shane opened the crate gently. Beneath some padding he felt a small metal cage. He lifted it out and held it in the air for a moment. Inside stood a mouse. Their eyes met.
Its fur was the yellowed white of a lily. It was neither a cute plump mouse, nor a skinny rodent; rather it was something much more like life. It aroused neither his empathy nor his disgust; no particular emotion at all came to him as he watched its pink pupils.
”Hey, little mouse,” Shane said, setting it down.
It walked in circles inside its cage like a dazed soldier.
He followed Prajuk's texted instructions, placed water and pellets of food inside, cleaned out the droppings, placed it on the bench, and shut the shades against the sun. Then he raced back to Helixia. When he reached the conference room, his meeting had ended.
”Sorry,” he shrugged to Stacey, who was leaving. ”My kid.”
That evening Shane skipped the lab and lay on the living room floor, teaching Nicholas to crawl. He loved being eye to eye with him, and breath to breath. His baby's black eyes flickered to the mouse's pink ones, and Shane blinked.Janelle came downstairs, her hands wet from cleaning up a bath, and pondered him.
”Want to get a sitter tomorrow?” She frowned. ”Or are you working late?”
This bothered him deeply. Referring to the lab as ”working late” implied that he had undertaken some new minor a.s.signment at work, and not the greatest venture of his life. Now that she knew everything, he expected more support. It was not forthcoming.
”Not sure yet,” he answered, keeping his eyes on Nicholas's face, which smiled at him with utter love. ”My boy,” Shane whispered to him, ”one day we will take a fis.h.i.+ng trip.”
Thinking the better of it, he added, ”Yeah sure, let's get a sitter.”
The following night, he stopped by Lab 301 intending to check in on the mouse. Healy burst upon him, holding an energy bar, grinning crazily.
”Congratulations.”
Shane moved into the room, his belly buzzing.
Healy gestured to the cage, his mouth full of dried oats. ”He's moving pretty slow. There a wheeze coming from his chest. I can tell you right now his oxygen's abnormal.”
”Maybe he's just tired from his trip. I don't think they flew him First.”
Healy slipped on a latex glove, opened the cage door, and lifted the mouse by the root of its rubbery tail. The mouse twitched as if touched by spirits.
”I always wondered,” Shane asked. ”Does that hurt them?”
”If he's hurting, he'll let you know.”
Healy carried it over to a metal lab table.
”See if there's any hillbilly music on my laptop,” Healy laughed.
”Sorry?”
”Because you're looking at one West Virginian hillbilly mouse.”
”They s.h.i.+pped it from Boston.”
As Healy took the mouse's measurements, he explained, ”This guy is double inbred. His parents are brother and sister. And each set of grandparents are brother and sister too. If he were human, he'd be qualified to work at the DMV.”
Shane shook his head.
”The guys at Charles River spliced his grandmother's DNA. They knocked out the gene that makes alpha-one ant.i.trypsin.”
”Knocked it out?”
”They added the code sequence to his grandmother's DNA. Shutting down the gene. Knocking it out. Injected that DNA into her embryonic stem cells. There are two copies of every gene, right? So when she had babies, all of them carried one of these reengineered genes, and then one normal one. That only gave her a fifty-percent chance of pa.s.sing the altered gene down, so they bred two of her babies together. These guys' offspring carried two copies of the knocked-out gene. Guaranteeing that this guy has himself one bada.s.s case of alpha-one ant.i.trypsin deficiency. You are the father of an inbred, but alpha-one ant.i.trypsindeficient mouse.”
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