Eugenix

 

 

 

 

            Ryan drove up the smooth, snaky ramp to the ten-level parking garages of Genetix, while Debra smoothed Gavin's blond hair in the back seat.  Gavin was cradling Charcoal, and humming in a bored way to himself.

            "You gonna be a good boy in the creche today, sweetie?" Debra asked Gavin gently.  "Make friends and play quietly till we come for you?"

            "Uh huh."  His tone was still bored.  "None of those kids'll have a pet as cool as Charcoal."  Gavin squeezed his skunk till its claws came out and it tried to wriggle away. Charcoal was four months old, born sterile and stinkless, with a shiny coat of jet black hair--no stripe, just a touch of brown on the paws.  Gavin had designed Charcoal's color scheme himself.

            "It'll be workers' kids and customers' kids, and you treat them all just the same, now, you--"

            "I know, Ma, I know."

            Debra backed off.  Her five-year-old's tone had all the patient superiority of an adolescent soon to leave home.  He was smarter than she was, and he knew it.

            "Remember what level we're on, everyone," Ryan called from the front seat, and Debra made a mental note of the numbers and colors by the parking space he eased into.

            They took Gavin up to the creche on the third floor, and he sauntered into the room and waited for the other children to notice Charcoal.  Soon a cluster formed around him.

            "What's that, lemme see, lemme see!"  one little boy demanded.

            "He'll be fine," Ryan assured Debra.

            "Just a sec," she asked.  They moved to the one-way windowed wall by the door to watch their son.  Debra wanted to be sure that Gavin let all the children have a chance to see Charcoal, to pet the skunk and hold it if they liked.  He had a tendency, at community creches, to favor the rich kids, kids like him who were beautiful and smart and strong and obviously engineered.

            Her son had a horror of all things coarse and ugly. Sometimes when Debra's cheerful, blunt-featured, foul-mouthed Aunt Lily came for a visit, Gavin would hide in his room and refuse to come out.

            But all these kids were beautiful, she had to admit. Maybe even the menial workers at Genetix got to use its services when they reproduced--maybe that was one of the benefits, like salesgirls at Macy's getting great deals on clothes.

            Well--here came one worker who had not genetixed her offspring.  A black woman in a custodial smock stood by the door of the room, pushing ahead of her a little girl darker than herself, much darker than anyone chose these days, a

heavy-set kid with a flaring nose and a frightened expression.  Her hair was clearly kinky, done up as it was in braids; no child like that would ever be featured in a catalogue or film.  She was a freak: an image that would never be imprinted on any media.

            "Go ahead, baby," the woman softly urged, and gave the girl a little push into the room.  Now that she was inside, Debra and Ryan could follow her progress through the one-way window.  The girl took three steps into the room and stood there, gazing around at the other children: the ones still crooning over Charcoal, the toddlers building with blocks, the ones giving the Fisher-Price computers a rough and tumble time, the girls making pot-holders in the corner . . . she surveyed all this with the terror a child might show before jumping into the swirl of double-dutch jump-ropes.

            "Go on, now," her mother said more sternly, from the door.  Maybe she had had this kid before coming to work for Genetix?  The archaic, malformed little girl at last made her way toward the pot-holder corner, and sat down to watch the other girls at work.  The mother sighed in the doorway and turned away without making eye contact with Ryan or Debra.

            "Gavin's fine, he's making friends," Ryan said again. "And we really should get up there."

            Debra gave her son a final glance.  He was sitting with four other children, holding Charcoal in the air, lecturing them on skunks.  She could make out, amidst the din from the room, the thread of her son's prim little voice: ". . . quite smart, although he's just a rodent.  So are squirrels and bunnies.  Actually, people are descended from rodents . . ." It was more or less the same speech he had given when he took Charcoal in for Show and Tell, that he used in every creche.

            She followed her husband into the elevator.

            They spent forty minutes in the waiting room, nervously flipping through magazines and baby catalogues, as she had known they would.  "Crazy business," she could hear, in her mind, her Aunt Lily grumbling about service-centers like Genetix.  Her mother's most peculiar and most entertaining sister was a monorail repairwoman, a flamboyant, good-humored weirdo--but a bit of a Luddite for all that.  "Stay away from them, Debra," she had advised, when Debra and Ryan were planning to pick out their firstborn.  "They jerk you around, sell you a goddamn bill of goods.  Combination of used-car-salesmen and Dr. Frankensteins.  Gimme a good-old fashioned baby, warts and all, not some plastic, pre-fabricated  rosebud . . ."

            Abruptly, Dr. Rice came out, beaming, and pumped Ryan and Debra's hands.  She was an attractive woman, in her late forties now.  She had not changed much, to Debra's eyes, since they had last seen her, when she helped them pick out Gavin, nearly six years before.

            "Sorry for the delay, folks.  It's wonderful to see you again."

            "Great to see you again, Doctor.  Any luck?" Ryan jumped right to the point.  Dr. Rice had not been there when he had come in with Debra the previous week to have her eggs

harvested, and he had jerked off into a paper cup himself. But Dr. Rice would have the results for them, each floating in a petri dish.

            The doctor gave them another warm, reassuring smile.  "I think you'll be very, pleased.  Five viable eggs, each an interesting and attractive option."

            The walked with her into an inner office.  There were Rice family pictures and a few funny novelty items on the desk, a set of impressive diplomas and citations framed and hanging on the walls--on all but the wall with the vast DNA viewer.  Charlene, Dr. Rice's assistant, illuminated the viewer, and left.  Dr. Rice ran her hands, nails buffed and

manicured, but free of polish, over the keyboard at the screen's side.

            "Ovum Number One," she announced.  The image of a small, round fertilized egg appeared in the left-hand corner of the viewer, and a colorful double-helix strand of DNA shimmered and turned above it.  "Male, sound heart, lungs, complete set of fingers and toes.  Sperm selected for high IQ, egg tweaked for IQ projected at 130."

            Already, Debra was tuning out; she had made it clear, she felt, to her husband and to the egg harvester that she

wanted a girl this time.  The harvester had promised to pass on the message.

            "Here's our projection for physical appearance at five years old," Dr. Rice went on.  A few more fingerskips on the

wall keyboard--and a detailed illuminated drawing of an adorable, blond five-year-old appeared on the screen next to the egg and swirling DNA.  "Large eyes, winning smile, as you can see . . . but not a delicate boy.  He's on his way to being a tall, athletic, masculine young man."  Another few taps on the keyboard--and the last picture was projected.  It showed the fertilized egg as he might look at age twenty. Despite herself, Debra found herself pondering the image. Ryan's jawline, her own mother's smile . . . it was a nice smile.  But she wanted a baby girl.

            "When I came in to get my eggs harvested, I voiced a gender preference," she said quietly.

            Dr. Rice nodded. "So I heard. And three of the five fertilized eggs we have for you are XXs.  But sperm-screening is an expensive, difficult process.  We sift through many spermatazoa, we try to offer a variety of strong options--and we think we've come up with some very appealing combinations."

            Ryan chuckled.  "And after all, honey, boys aren't all bad."       

            Debra nodded, willing to accept the doctor's explanation, but felt annoyed at her husband for chiming in. Had he asked them to drop a few Ys into the mix?  Little Gavin had been asking for a baby brother, and in her more paranoid moments she suspected his daddy of encouraging him.

            "Now, here's the first double Xer," Dr. Rice was saying heartily.  The viewer went blank for a moment, and then a new ovum and double-helix strand, twirling like an old-fashioned barber shop pole, appeared.  Or were they new?  Was the same graphic used at the beginning of every display?

            The first little girl was cute at five, and passably pretty at twenty, with gene-tweaking. She had that unfortunate tendency of women on Ryan's side of the family to purse her lips.  Debra could see it in the expression in the glowing portrait.  But what knocked her out of the running was her IQ.  110, with tweaking.  Not acceptable.  Debra wanted a daughter who could keep up with Gavin, and leave Debra and Ryan in the dust.  She remembered how proud she was, as a little girl, when Aunt Lily had taken her along for track repair work, and pretended to let her find the mechanical trouble first.  She wanted her daughter to be that much smarter--for real.

            "110 doesn't get you into Harvard," she said glumly.  Her husband did not contradict her, and Dr. Rice let her buffed nails skip over the keys, to wipe the screen.

            The next girl was very, very pretty.  Ryan seemed quite taken with her as a five-year-old.  When Debra saw her as a young woman, she was bewitched.  Pale skin, fair hair, Ryan's high cheekbones.  It was a lovelier, fine-tuned version of

Debra herself, the butterfly she had always suspected lurked within the cocoon of her person.  This was who she almost was --who her daughter could be.

            "That's her, I think, that's Melanie," she breathed.  She had a name all picked out.

            Dr. Rice looked troubled.  "Ovum Number Three certainly makes a lovely young woman," she admitted.  "IQ of 130--"

            "That's fine!"

            "And a strong heart.  The only difficulty . . . "

            They waited.

            "Is the risk of cancer," the doctor finished softly. "The risk of leukemia is high, and there is a chemo-resistant gene present which is simply untweakable."

            Debra felt a chill run through her shoulders and arms. She remembered her dad's cousin, a young boy when the

leukemia had struck, and the nightmare world into which his family had been plunged, until he died at fourteen.

            "What are the odds of cancer?" Ryan asked, still looking speculatively at his lovely potential daughter.

            "Forget it," Debra cut in, her voice harsh.  "This ovum is out.  Let's see the next one."
            Her husband shot her a wistful look, but let it go.  The next ovum was an undistinguished male.  Average IQ, and his ears stuck out, as a child and a grown man, even though, as Dr. Rice pointed out, "We've tweaked them down."

            Debra was beginning to feel a little desperate.  "Ryan, didn't we say we wanted a daughter this time?

            "Sure we did, honey.  Dr. Rice explained why there are a few male options up there, and I think we should consider all of them.  After all," he said, breaking into a smile, attempting to coax one out of her, "Gavin has been lobbying pretty hard for a little brother."

            She shot him a look to cut short all such teasing.  God, doctors' offices stressed her out!  At least she had put her foot down about bringing Gavin along to pick out a sibling.

This was not like designing and selecting a puppy or skunk from the pound.

            "Let's take a look at the last fertilized ovum," Dr. Rice said briskly, to keep the peace.  "She's another interesting, quite viable option."

            When the image of the girl as a five-year-old appeared, Debra could see Ryan's face cloud over.  The kid was funny-looking.  And she had a big shnozz, no question. But there was something appealing about her jowly, direct gaze, something Debra liked.

            Dr. Rice was keeping up her perky saleswoman patter, as she did with every ovum.  "Healthy heart, lungs, cancer-resistant, strong, tall for her age at every age.  And you can't beat the IQ.  160, without tweaking."

            Ryan whistled.  But Debra could see--he had ruled this kid out.

            "This would be one smart, spunky, strong-willed kid." Almost reluctantly, Dr. Rice called up the image of the girl as a young woman.  "And as I said, her health trajectory is nothing short of remarkable.  I'd put the life-expectancy at over a hundred."

            Her upbeat words could not mask the image on the screen. As a young woman, this ovum got worse, not better.  The nose appeared wider and fleshier, and took up too much of her face.  The brows were dark and thick, positively beetling.

            "That's not the sort of kid you'd expect to come out of Genetix," Ryan said mildly.

            "Well, ordinarily . . . " Dr. Rice began, and checked herself.  "It was just that so much of the profile was remarkable.  The positive attributes were of such a magnitude --we didn't scrap it and select another," she explained apologetically.  "We thought we should at least offer her as an option."

            She stood, politely waiting in the silence.

            Debra felt a wave of irritation for all doctors and all salespeople, everyone who had ever hustled her and rushed her through a decision.  This wasn't as simple as choosing a new wintercoat, or hair-style, or even a new nose.  Choosing a child could have a million and one permutations, and these people gave you so little of their precious time, and left so many questions unanswered (what would the child's voice be like?  Melodious?  Grating?  Would it inherit her dad's bad digestion?  Would it throw a good curve ball?  Would it ever be President?) and only presented you with five fertilized viable options.  Out of the millions of spermatazoa Ryan had given them!  All the eggs they had harvested out of her!

            They charged you a fortune, and then--boom!  You had to choose.  They wouldn't even, at this place, download you a print-out of the various ovums and let you think about them. You could only see them in the office . . . and as it was,

Debra was still haunted by a few of the eggs they had rejected six years earlier.  Glowing screen-images, ghosts of sons and daughters she would never have.  Combinations of her and Ryan that would never come to be.

            Ryan broke the silence.  "Honey, I don't know.  This kid is smart, and I can see that she appeals to you.  But she looks kind of . . . face it, she's not--"

            "She looks like Lily."  It was what they had both been thinking.

            "Yeah.  She does.  She looks like Lily."

            And Debra realized that that was what she liked about the kid.  She had been disappointed to find that her favorite aunt and Gavin had never bonded.  The distaste was mutual. This daughter almost seemed like a peace offering, a tribute

she could lay before solitary, opinionated, possibly lesbian Lily.

            "She's an unusual-looking kid," Debra said out loud. "She's certainly no pre-fabricated rosebud."

            "She'd get eaten alive in the schoolyard.  She'd be tormented from the first day of kindergarten."  Her husband was trying to make her see reason.

            "I don't know.  She looks pretty tough to me."  Debra found herself fighting for the kid.  Not Melanie.  Definitely not.  Lily Jr?

            Dr. Rice stepped away from them politely, giving them a moment to confer, gliding across the thick, soft carpeting to straighten one of her diplomas on the wall.  Debra was aware that their time allotted for this appointment was almost up.

            "We could do something about that frizzy hair.  And she could have the nose fixed.  Maybe Dr. Rice can show us what she'd look like with a nicer nose."

            Ryan shook his head.  "Plastic surgery could never save that kid's face.  Certainly not until her teens. And remember, schools aren't as forgiving as when we were kids. Especially for girls . . . she'd be a freak, Debra.  We can't condemn a little child to a life like that."

            He sounded pained, as though choosing not to implant this ovum in Debra was a noble sacrifice they both were making.  I don't know, Debra thought. Aunt Lily's funny-looking, and she's always seemed pretty happy to me . . . "Maybe we should go home and think about it some more," she pleaded.

            Ryan shook his head.  "Come on, honey.  Four hundred dollars just to schedule another appointment, when we already know our options?"

            "Maybe we should get it done again.  If none of these kids is quite right."

            "Debra.  Don't start."

            That would be thousands of dollars more.  That would mean more egg scraping, more whacking off into cups . . . all of this, all over again.

            "Well.  Which one do you want then?" she asked defiantly.  "The boring dumb one, or the beautiful one with leukemia?  They're both so wonderful, I just can't decide," she added sarcastically.

            "I think we should go with the first egg we were shown," Ryan told her seriously.  "Simply because, by whatever accident, it was the best."

            Debra felt trapped.  She already knew that she would lose this battle.  That little boy had been perfect.  Another pre-fab rosebud.

            "We could get twins," she offered in a reasonable, compromising tone.  "I'm willing to carry them.  That boy and this last little girl.  That way, she'd always have someone to play with, someone looking out for her--"

            "Debra."  Her husband sounded impatient, annoyed.  Then he changed tactics, softened his voice.  "We just can't afford it, honey.  And you can't afford all that time off.  In a few years, we'll try again.  New eggs.  We'll get the daughter you've always wanted, I promise."

            This is the daughter I've always wanted.  Until she saw the weird-looking kid projected on the screen, she hadn't known that it was true.

            Dr. Rice joined them, moving soundlessly across the rug. "Well, folks, what's your decision?"

            Debra sighed and looked down.  She let her husband speak, as she allowed him to order for her in restaurants.

            "We're going to go with Ovum Number One," he told the doctor.  "That kid looked just about perfect."

            "Great!"  Dr. Rice shook hands with both of them, and walked swiftly toward the door.  They had to hurry to keep up with her.  "Speak to my secretary about scheduling the implantation.  It looks like we're on our way."

            The screen had been left on, glowing in the conference room for Charlene the assistant to turn off.

            "Doctor," Debra asked, "how much would it cost to freeze an egg and keep it for future reference?"

            The doctor frowned.  She clearly considered the discussion of fees to be a menial task, one for her staff to take care of.  "I believe it's $500.00 for freezing and storage.  Why, which one were you thinking of--"

            "Skip it," Debra sighed.

            Another quick nod, and the doctor was gone.  Standing there in the waiting room, Debra felt as if she were bewildered amidst the debris after the circus had left town.

            "It's going to be okay, honey.  He's gonna be a terrific kid."  Ryan squeezed her arm.  Debra fought down an impulse to jerk it away.

            They headed down to the creche, to pick up Gavin.