Next: A Novel by Michael Crichton Page A

that ran down the center of the room.

    “What’re we dosing today?” Tom Weller said.

    Josh read off a string of numbers. Tom checked his PDA listing of numerical locations. They walked down the aisle until they found the cages with that day’s numbers. Five rats in five cages.
    The animals were white, plump, moving normally. “They look okay. This is the second dose?”

    “Right.”

    “Okay, boys,” Josh said. “Let’s be nice for Daddy.” He opened the first cage, and quickly grabbed the rat inside. He held the animal by the body, forefingers expertly gripping the neck, and quickly fitted the small plastic cone over the rat’s snout. The animal’s breath clouded the cone. A brief hiss as the virus was released; Josh held the mask in place for ten seconds, while the rat inhaled. Then he released the animal back into the cage.

    “One down.”

    Tom Weller tapped his stylus on the PDA, then moved to the next cage.

    The retrovirus had been bioengineered to carry a gene known as ACMPD 3N7, one of the family of genes controlling aminocarboxymuconate paraldehyde decarboxylase. Within BioGen they called it the maturity gene. When activated, ACMPD 3N7 seemed to modify responses of the amygdala and cingulate gyrus in the brain. The result was an acceleration of maturational behavior—at least in rats. Infant female rats, for example, would show precursors of maternal behavior, such as rolling feces in their cages, far earlier than usual. And BioGen had preliminary evidence for the maturational gene action in rhesus monkeys, as well.

    Interest in the gene centered on a potential link to neurodegenerative disease. One school of thought argued that neurodegenerative illnesses were a result of disruptions of maturational pathways in the brain.

    If that were true—if ACMPD 3N7 were involved in, say, Alzheimer’s disease, or another form of senility—then the commercial value of the gene would be enormous.

    Josh had moved on to the next cage and was holding the mask over the second rat when his cell phone went off. He gestured for Tom to pull it from his shirt pocket.

    Weller looked at the screen. “It’s your mother,” he said.

    “Ah hell,” Josh said. “Take over for a minute, would you?”

    “Joshua, what are you doing?”

    “I’m working, Mom.”

    “Well, can you stop?”

    “Not really—”

    “Because we have an emergency.”

    Josh sighed. “What did he do this time, Mom?”

    “I don’t know,” she said, “but he’s in jail, downtown.”

    “Well, let Charles get him out.” Charles Silverberg was the family lawyer.

    “Charles is getting him out right now,” his mother said. “But Adam has to appear in court.
    Somebody has to drive him home after the hearing.”

    “I can’t. I’m at work.”

    “He’s your brother, Josh.”

    “He’s also thirty years old,” Josh said. This had been going on for years. His brother Adam was an investment banker who had been in and out of rehab a dozen times. “Can’t he take a taxi?”

    “I don’t think that’s wise, under the circumstances.”

    Josh sighed. “What’d he do, Mom?”

    “Apparently he bought cocaine from a woman who worked for the DEA.”

    “Again?”

    “Joshua. Are you going to go downtown and pick him up or not?”

    Long sigh. “Yes, Mom. I’ll go.”

    “Now? Will you go now?”

    “Yes, Mom. I’ll go now.”

    He flipped the phone shut and turned to Weller. “What do you say we finish this in a couple of hours?”

    “No problem,” Tom said. “I have some notes to write up back in the office, anyway.”

    Joshua turned, stripping off his gloves as he left the room. He stuck his cylinder, goggles, and paper mask into the pocket of his lab coat, unclipped his radiation tag, and hurried to his car.

    Driving downtown, he glanced at the cylinder protruding from the lab coat, which he had tossed onto the passenger seat. To stay within the protocol, Josh had to return to the lab and expose the