When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [21]
Mutter was happy to supply examples of deformities they’d come across in recent years. They ranged from boys in Mexico with apelike hair all over their bodies to children with duplication of body parts, pituitary abnormalities, as in dwarfs and giants, and skin diseases that made some people resemble lizards more than human beings.
I don’t remember exactly what got David and me on the subject, but we did spend a couple of weekends on it. He also pulled out a book on the subject from his vast collection in storage:Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. I thought Anomalies was still around the house somewhere, but I couldn’t locate it that morning. Maybe it was back in the cabin along with the modern-day Neanderthal, Kit Harrison.
As I drove around the Bluff and nearby Clayton, I tried to let my mind run free. I didn’t rule out anything yet. I even considered the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. I finally rejected it, the idea of another E.T., but maybe I shouldn’t have.
I have a pretty strong memory. I’d been number one in my high school class, and the files in my head were filled with more information than I had expected. I had actually examined a hermaphrodite, a child having both male and female reproductive organs. I’d also come across humans and animals with missing body parts, and several with duplicate parts. I’d seen two ears on one side of a little girl’s skull. A boy with six toes. A girl with four breasts. In vet school I’d also witnessed what toxins and pesticides can do to alter livestock. Not a pretty sight, and not one you ever forget.
As far as pictures go, I’d seen images of “formed fingers”; that is, horns, on a human head. A parasitic horse body growing from an otherwise perfect one. A second head growing on the head of a calf. From somewhere in the back of my brain came a tidbit from ancient Babylon:An infant born with the face of a lion means the King shall not have a rival. I had once seen a child with the ears of a lion.
But never a very pretty, otherwise normal-looking girl with a pair of beautiful white and silver wings! Maybe she was an extraterrestrial.
Of course, there was also biotechnology and genetic engineering as a serious area of exploration and mystery. David’s chosen field, I reminded myself.
My memory files in David’s specialty area were a little less comprehensive than I would have thought. David and I had been good at sharing most things, but he never liked to talk much about his work.
Strange, as I thought about it now. David rarely brought work home with him. I, on the other hand, was always ready to chat about the Inn-Patient, or the beautiful colt I had delivered at four the previous morning on somebody’s horse farm.
So what did I already know about biotechnology? From the broadest overview, biotech involved harnessing natural biological processes of microbes and of animals and plant cells. Cross-species research and experiments would be in the field of molecular biology, too. David had been a molecular biologist, and a good one, though he never made much money as a researcher.
I remembered a couple of things he’d talked about that might relate to a little girl with—say it, Frannie—beautiful silver and white wings. When the film version of Jurassic Park came to Boulder, David told me that the idea of cross-species genetic work was actually a whole lot less far-fetched than the wonderful movie dinosaurs. He said cross-species experiments were being done now in a number of independent labs. The experiments were sometimes illegal.
Biotech was definitely the new frontier in science. It can, and undoubtedly will, push