The Ambassador (10 page)

She ticked off on her fingers. ‘Stage one is the elimination of known disorders. Anything inherited that the parents don’t want – the asthma gene, for example, or diabetes or myopia. It can be a fiddly business if the condition is multifactorial. Of course, some of the choices are trivial and we do try to educate parents: each alteration costs money so the more simple discrepancies they can accept the better. Adds to human diversity. And we don’t like to meddle too much if we can help it – you never know what damage you may do.’

What an extraordinary woman. She’s so matter-of-fact about this, thought Strether. I could almost believe she is talking about bovine breeding. But she’s not.

Lisa had not paused in her narrative. ‘Some defects must be removed by law. Mental handicap is one – anything easily spotted such as Down syndrome. That’s trisomy 21, three copies of chromosome 21 instead of two. Though to be frank, if we found a serious chromosomal deficiency like that – and there are still lots – we’d probably discard the entire embryo, notify the authorities and start again.’

‘What else do you – discard?’ Strether kept his voice even.

‘By law? Well, we’re supposed to remove any predisposition to excessive aggression and violence; certain mental illnesses – not depression; that’s acceptable. Manic depressives are often useful members of society, sometimes geniuses. But obsessive personality disorders, which produce rapists, psychopaths and the like, schizophrenia, psychosis and such are eliminated. The predisposing gene to alcoholism is still a matter of parental choice, but that’s highly controversial. They’re hot on mental illness, the Health Commission, but they don’t realise it’s not so simple.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Strether agreed. He wondered what on earth had persuaded such a pretty woman to abandon attractive clothes, turn her back on any occupation that involved mixing with other young people, and adopt instead this drab white garb to spend her time peering down a microscope. Then he caught himself: that was not merely sexist, but unjust. She was patently a brilliant scientist or she wouldn’t have risen to the rank of assistant director so early. Her looks were a bonus.

He must have shifted in his seat for unexpectedly Lisa did the same. They were very close in the tiny office. Last time he had sat as near to a stranger it had been with Marius and the King on those creaky old thrones. Dr Pasteur was a distinct improvement. She wore no perfume but his nostrils detected a clean freshness about her. A natural fragrance, perhaps; was that bred into them too?

His reflections were unworthy and he chided himself. It was fortunate that these Europeans had not yet discovered how to add telepathy to their genes. Not as far as he knew,
anyhow.

Yet, as he gazed, she wriggled in her seat. He was aware that she was dividing her attention between her notepad, now covered in squiggles and arrows, and himself.

‘We are learning the whole time. Years ago,’ Lisa continued earnestly, ‘it was policy to remove any genetic proneness to cancer. That was before tobacco was banned throughout the Union. But it was discovered we were creating new problems. Take breast cancer. The gene was isolated quite early, BRCAl at location 17ql2-21. In the old days nothing could be done and healthy women had mastectomies as a precaution: that must have been dreadful. So the moment we had the skills, out came the gene and the women of the civilised world cheered. Then we realised our mistake.’

‘Go on.’ Strether reached furtively for another biscuit. His hand brushed her knee, inadvertently. Or perhaps not. He was surprised at himself. She did not move away, but flashed him that tantalising half smile.

‘Well …’ Lisa hesitated then squared her shoulders. Whatever else, she was absolutely professional. ‘We’d interfered with female hormone production. The babies born were physically unblemished, but when it came to their own pregnancies the daughters could not produce the right hormones. They were, in fact, infertile. We’d swapped one tragedy for another.’

Strether found part of his brain asking other questions, which he dared not put. Was this attractive woman – normal? Had her genes been checked? She did not lack breasts, though he could barely make out their shape beneath the voluminous protective garment. Did she have normal ovaries and eggs? How might she reproduce?
Was she married, or otherwise spoken for?
She wore no ring. He caught himself, startled. That was foolish thinking. He felt his face colour, though the furrow of concentration deepened on his brow.

‘So that particular form of gene therapy was halted and another solution was sought. That’s where stage two comes in.’

‘Stage two?’

‘That’s right. Stage one is genetic cleansing – taking out anything undesirable. Stage two involves adding something. We were barely in time with enhanced resistance to bacterial infection: the bugs mutate faster than pharmaceutical companies can develop new antibiotics to beat them. Anti-viral resistance is also now routine, though as the second and third generation come through, we don’t need to enhance again: they’ve got it already.’ She paused as if mentally checking her facts. Strether stayed silent. Then she continued, more slowly, ‘With breast cancer, it was decided to try adding an increased generalised resistance to malignancy. The families weren’t keen on any more disasters, as you can imagine, so there was opposition. Then, came a widespread epidemic of breast cancer, linked with the mid-twenties explosions. It was horrific – my great-aunt was a victim. Fortunately, extra resistance works, and is now standard. We don’t even have to ask for permission; it’s automatic.’

Strether grunted. ‘Forgive me, but this is revolutionary stuff to an American. We’re not totally ignorant about what you do here: CNN covers it occasionally, there are calls for it at home from time to time, but it’s not allowed. Been banned from the start. I have to put it to you. Doesn’t anyone object?’

Lisa thought for several moments. ‘They don’t have to ask for the treatment. They can
have unexamined embryos, if they want. Low-caste people mainly don’t bother.’

‘Isn’t that better?’

‘As a scientist, I have to say no. That’s so risky. Every parent wants a perfect baby. Who’d want to bring into the world a child who’s deaf or deformed or prone to disease, if it could be avoided? Or with a chromosome deficiency – my God, have you seen those kids with their elephantine heads and tumours growing out of the chest? Fused oesophagus and windpipe, transposed heart arteries? The cost, the pain, the misery … And that got harder, as you well know, Ambassador, after the mid-twenties explosions, with all the genetic mayhem the radiation caused.
Causes
,’ she corrected herself. ‘Still getting a lot of it. Awful – I see some of the poor patients when I lecture abroad.’ She shuddered.

Strether tried once more. ‘But at home it’s argued that the problem isn’t disability, it’s our cruel attitudes to it. If we stopped seeing one way, one kinda body as perfect – if we saw them as people, first …’ His voice trailed off; she gave him a withering look.

‘That’s all very well. But we don’t have the right to inflict tangled limbs and defective organs on our children. Not when we have the power to change them.
That
would be wicked.’

Strether drank his coffee and munched his biscuit thoughtfully. This lady was remarkable, far more forthcoming than the Director had been, more comprehensible too. And quite lovely. Here was a chance not to be missed. The cosy quarters in which they were seated, the easy hospitality they were sharing, enabled two intelligent adults to speak to each other with maturity and compassion. What else might she say?

‘Stage two,’ he mused. ‘I’d heard there was more to it than that. Not just resistance to disease?’

Lisa looked at him across the coffee cup. ‘Does that interest you especially, Ambassador? I heard your wife died of malignant melanoma. Perhaps if her genes had been inoculated …’

‘Call me Bill,’ Strether answered. He sighed. ‘Maybe, or maybe not. We have the treatments Stateside, but they are as unpleasant as ever. Beating cancer is not easy. She’d simply had enough.’ He hesitated. ‘I miss her still, though it’s a while now. Never had any children – they’d have made a difference, I guess.’

Lisa let her fingers touch his knee. ‘So many people never know love,’ she said softly. ‘You must feel yourself lucky.’

‘I do. But it leaves – a terrible gap.’

She nodded once. ‘Yes. I was married. No kids either.’ She seemed to shake herself, and resumed her narrative. ‘Look; the justification over here for this programme is that, here, cancer is almost unknown. We don’t only inoculate the embryos of cancer-prone families. We do it for every applicant now, unless they tick the box to say they don’t want it.’

He could not stop himself: it came out in a rush. ‘You could say that’s what my wife did. She ticked the box. If she couldn’t live healthily, doing the things she’d loved, riding and living out in the open – she was half Navajo – then she didn’t want to live on a cocktail of drugs or vegetate in a wheelchair. I tried to dissuade her, but I respected her decision. In a way, that’s why I’m here. After she died I needed another interest – another passion, you might say. Politics came along at exactly the right moment.’

Lisa smiled. ‘I’m glad, Ambassador.’

‘Call me Bill, please.’ He ventured a lop-sided grin back. When she smiled, dimples
appeared lightly at each side of her mouth. She was uncommonly stirring, no doubt about it. With a profound sense of shock, he realised that this was the first time since his wife’s death that he had noticed another woman, as a woman. He took a deep breath. ‘It’d give me great pleasure if you would use my name – a good-looking girl like you. If you don’t mind my saying so.’

To his alarm, her expression hardened.

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, Ambassador, but you should be careful. Comments like that are deemed sexist under our code here in Europe, and are thus illegal. If you weren’t a foreign citizen you could be arrested.’

‘Lord, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘You didn’t.’ She relaxed and tilted her head to one side. ‘In fact, Mr Strether, you’re not a bad-looking chap yourself.’

She was making fun of him. Strether’s embarrassment was complete. ‘I shall be more guarded in future. I apologise. But
Bill
. Please.’

‘Are you sure? We would regard that as a bit … familiar. Bill. Then you must call me Lisa – that is my given name.’

‘And Pasteur? You related? To Louis Pasteur, I mean?’

‘Certainly.’ Those dimples again. His naivety seemed to amuse and reassure her. ‘My grandparents chose very carefully. We are a medical family with direct inherited links with Marie Curie. She was Polish – that’s why I have dark hair and eyes. They checked the range of selections open to medical families and surnamed my father after the main genetic introduction, Louis Pasteur. The cell material came from a lock of his hair preserved at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. My family are tremendously proud of the connection. And so am I. Bred to perform top-grade medical research, Bill, that’s what I am. And fortunate to be so.’

There was not a trace of shyness about her statement, or arrogance. Strether gestured at the office, the printouts, the computer terminal. ‘Doesn’t it bother you, working on this – this manipulation? Don’t you have any feelings of conscience about it?’

Lisa sat back, a pout on her lips. ‘Not at all, not as a woman. Which would you prefer, Bill? Thousands of aborted handicapped foetuses sent to the shredder, or a little tidying up before re-implantation? Most Europeans – most educated women – feel there’s no contest.’ She bit her lip. ‘Me, for instance. I’d love a child, but I’d be terrified if I wasn’t sure it was absolutely normal. That implies using the best science on offer.’

Her manner had become challenging. He said, so quietly that she almost couldn’t hear, ‘All that means is that you’ve never been in love. Not properly.’

With a movement of his hand Strether tried to make peace. Lisa persisted. ‘You do the same with your cattle, Bill. You want greater conversion between food intake and muscle weight, don’t you? You need resistance to parasites, the capacity to withstand drought and poor conditions? Sure, I know you do. Heavens, the pioneer work with mammal embryos was done with cattle in Texas. In 1985 Steen Willadsen cloned hundreds of prize bull embryos. Unfortunately for him, farmers were not prepared to pay. Frozen semen and live cows were a lot cheaper.’

Strether nodded: he had heard the story. But Lisa was not to be deterred.

‘It’s the same with us.
Pro bono publico
– for the public good. And we mean it. We proceed with the utmost caution. The results are awesome – arguably, one reason why Europe
is so far ahead of America. We’ve taken a major scientific advance and instead of wishing, or pretending, that it isn’t possible, we made it work for us. What’s wrong with that?’

Strether shook his head but could not answer her.

There might be no camera recording the exchange and the body language, but there were other pressures. Time was nearly up; Marius and the Director would soon be back. Strether felt a sense of urgency, and suddenly realised that it was being communicated by her, to him. He leaned forward and looked hard at her.

Under his examination she wilted, then recovered herself. ‘Look, Bill, we’re civilised here in Europe. Or we try to be. That’s not just propaganda.’

Lisa seemed upset, as if he had touched a raw nerve. Strether drew back; he had pressed her ferociously, and now half regretted it. She glanced down. ‘It is so unusual to get an interested outsider. There are problems, inevitably. Scientists like to pretend that everything in the garden’s rosy, but that isn’t always so. Not at all,’ she concluded, and looked away.

Footsteps and muted voices could be heard in the corridor. He rose abruptly and, with Lisa’s assistance, began to tie on his mask. As she stood on tiptoe her face came close to his own. Those brown, honey-flecked eyes were fringed with long lashes. And he could smell her anew – that fresh, clean smell, as of a healthy creature, alive and alert. And quite lovely: his first impressions had been absolutely correct.