Soul

THERE WERE FIFTY CASES PINNED up: twenty-five sets of twins. Under each army-file photo was pasted a synopsis of the soldier’s active duty; his family history including any evidence of violence or abuse; medical history (paraphrased into a neat page emphasising genetic illness or malformations); a photographic printout of his DNA blood analysis, tracking circulating hormones and mood-controlling neuropeptides like serotonin, endorphins, adrenaline and noradrenaline; and brain scans and EEG responses to violent visual imagery.

By a systematic survey of total gene activity profiles and computer analysis, Julia hoped to locate one gene—or possibly a network of genes—that was repeated in all the interviewees, linking their specific behaviour pattern to a genetic origin and thus proving it was a heritable trait.

The pinboard was the first thing you noticed when you entered the room. The collection of charts looked like some sort of bizarre topographical map, Julia thought. Some of the subjects were smiling; some appeared entirely vacant behind the eyes; and some of them seemed barely grown men. As Julia searched their faces she was surprised to find herself flooded with a sense of protectiveness. She paused, mortified.

As a scientist, she had learned to objectify the people involved in her research; it was a necessity as any emotional involvement could influence the outcome. Have I been too detached in the past? she asked herself. Does my enthusiasm blind me to the needs of others? Was that why Klaus left?

Pushing her doubts to the back of her mind, she returned to her work. But her anxieties stayed with her. She couldn’t look at these soldiers any more and see them merely as vessels for chemical codes for form and behaviour; they’d become victims of genetic predeterminism. What made an individual capable of killing without remorse, she pondered.

A tentative knock on the door interrupted her.

‘The Human Genome Project’s principal objective is to determine the sequence of the three billion nucleotide base pairs that make up the human DNA, identify the 20–25,000 human genes embedded in this sequence, and to store this information in databases for further research and for the betterment of mankind—’

‘“Advancement” might be a stronger word than “betterment”.’

‘I like betterment, better, even better than betterment.’

‘Stop being cute. You were doing great up until then.’

They were sitting at a small Formica table in the corner of Julia’s office. Gabriel had his notebooks spread out, his beaten-up laptop open and running and was reading aloud from a term paper on the debate around the ethics of genetic selection. His mobile phone stuck out of his shirt pocket and his jeans were slung dangeroulsy low.

He scratched his head, fighting off a desire for a cigarette, then took the opportunity to surreptitiously examine Julia as she leaned back in her chair. She looked sadder than before, if that was possible. It was as if someone had stolen her energy, the very element that defined her. Gabriel thought about the travesty that had been his parents’ marriage; was this the kind of misery he had to look forward to?

Perversely, he noted that this air of defencelessness suited Julia; it softened the edges of the dispassionate professionalism she usually emanated. Her long slim legs were stretched out before her; her black hair hung to her shoulders and was slightly messy, as if she’d run a comb once through it that morning and not touched it since. She was handsome as opposed to beautiful, he decided; the structure of her face was too strong to be called pretty; only her wide mouth and sea-green eyes saved her from a certain masculinity. She had a face full of stories, he marvelled, stories that begged to be caressed into being. The sensual note continued as his eyes wandered across the breadth of her shoulders and he found himself calculating that she must be almost exactly his height—how would that be in bed?

Stop, she’s your mentor, he cautioned himself; nevertheless, it was her intelligence that he found most exciting—the unique combination of scientific rigour and imagination. Secretly he was terrified he lacked that extra component—the ability to break away from preconceived ideas and look at a problem laterally. Was it fearlessness, or simply a question of practice? Whatever the answer, he hoped to absorb a little of her alchemy and use it to his advantage.

He glanced at the information board. A navigation of genetic disturbance was what Julia had called it; Gabriel hadn’t been sure whether she was being cynical. Sometimes he found it difficult to tell. The men stared back at him defiantly. Some of Julia’s subjects weren’t much older than him, and some of them looked Latino, too. Remorseless killers or heroes?

Either way, they all had the look of the outsider, the ostracised. No matter what Julia thought, Gabriel was convinced that nurture was the bigger villain.

He shifted his gaze to the window; in the distance he could just see the top of the quadrangle and the fountain. It was one of those warm summer days when you could almost smell the faint scent of eucalyptus on the breeze, the air shimmering with a vibrant buoyancy. The warm curve of sunlight falling across his face made him restless.

Julia’s jacket hung over a chair where she’d thrown it that morning. He liked the way it looked: it made him think of the woman he remembered from childhood: intense, a little reckless, but always focused. Julia had always shown a passion Naomi’s other friends lacked. Gabriel regarded most of them as resigned old hippies. Julia had been different. She was renowned in the way he wanted to be, eccentric in her thinking—and she worked in an industry that would affect future generations for decades to come. There was no ambiguity about the fact that he found her intensity erotic.

‘So you think I’m cute?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’

‘Don’t say that; it’s a negation of the Self, and I mean that in a Buddhist way, nothing to do with Nietzsche.’

‘You are precocious.’

‘Apparently. Okay, I’ll change “betterment” to “the advancement of mankind”. Or should I go “human species”? “Mankind’s” kind of sexist.’

‘How about Homo sapiens?’

‘Yeah, I like that, that’s very Planet of the Apes. What do you think about the rest of the paper?’

‘I think it’s good, but a little unsophisticated. The structure of DNA is more complex than that, as is the sequencing of the genes on the chromosome. We may be able to identify which gene or gene mutation makes someone susceptible to schizophrenia, but we don’t yet know the trigger that causes the gene to come into play. To make things even more complicated, the very same gene might have a positive function in another human being—say, to fight off a particular disease. Therefore, to talk about isolating genetic disorder and breeding it out is not a viable future scenario.’

‘Then why spend so much money on the Genome Project? Why open the box if you’re not going to play with the toys?’

‘Because it helps us understand disease, so we can streamline medicine, and also evolution. In a way, I think it unites us…’

‘How?’

‘Well, for a start it proves we really do spring from one mother.’