Unborn Again Part 1

Chris Lawson.

Unborn Again.

Take lamb's brains fresh from the butcher's block and soak them in icy water. Starting from the underside, peel off all the arteries under running water, add lemon and salt, and boil in water. Once boiled, dry the brains, quarter them, and marinate them for ten minutes. Serve them with steamed custard and Tabasco sauce.

The delicacy of the dish is exquisite, and I can easily digest two portions. Eating is more than a necessity; sometimes it is a pleasure; now it is a duty.

The brains slide down like oysters. I love the texture and the tang of the sauce. The pinot noir is a touch dry, but not enough to tarnish the flavor of the brains. Good wine is virtually unaffordable in Hong Kong nowadays.

The marinade is an old family secret, but I don't want it to die with me, so here it is: ginger, spring onion, rice wine, sesame oil, and oyster sauce. And my own variation: a dash of pituitary extract.

"In here." The nurse shows the way into the room. The walls are antiseptic white. The bed is made with clinical precision. Sitting in a chair is the room's sole occupant: a woman in her mid-forties who rocks and drools like a demented centenarian.

"Ignore it," says the nurse. "She always does that when a visitor comes.

She's perfectly able to hold one end of a conversation during the day. She only becomes confused at night."

Stepping into the room is a small man in a brown suit. His tie is knotted too tightly, and the purple paisley teardrops clash with the khaki suit so gratingly that his colleagues have been known to grind their teeth down to the gums. His hair has somehow defied the short cut and fallen into disarray.

"She has Alzheimer's?" the brown-suited man asks the nurse.

"Something like that," the nurse says. "If you need anything, just hit the buzzer there."

The nurse leaves, and the brown-suited man finds himself standing, briefcase in hand, in front of this woman. Her face and skin look young, but she sways in time as she hums an unrecognizable tune.

"Dr. Dejerine? I'm from the customs department."

Dejerine smacks her lips and fixes the visitor with an unfriendly stare.

"You look like a cheap detective."

"I suppose I am. My name is Gerald Numis."

"I won't remember that, you know. Not by tomorrow."

Numis nods. "I'll give you a business card. How's your long-term memory?"

"Better than my short-term memory, I'm disappointed to say. I didn't expect it to be this way. I can quote verbatim the monograph I wrote twenty years ago."

"What was it?"

"It's called Utilitarian Neurology." Dejerine looks at Numis as if that should mean something.

"What's it about?"

Dejerine laughs. "I don't know. Maybe, if you're interested, you could look it up and then you can tell me what it means."

Numis coughs. "Do you remember what prions are?"

Dejerine nods. "Of course I do."

"There was an outbreak of Lethe disease in Hong Kong last year. Two people have already died and another five are infected. It's unprecedented - a prion disease that was once confined to the Papuan highlands, and a disease that has virtually disappeared with the decline of ritual cannibalism. The Chinese health ministry was terrified that they had a new, virulent form, so they posted the amino acid sequence on the Internet. It corresponds to a rare variation that was registered to your lab."

"What a remarkable coincidence," says Dejerine.

Numis continues. "Coincidence? Lethe disease has never been known to jump a thousand miles overseas to a non-cannibal culture, and no one can suggest a natural vector for this unprecedented event. And there's the matter of ten missing vials from your lab. And the visas. You visited Hong Kong twice five years ago, which just happens to be the incubation period of Lethe disease. The coincidences are piling up."

"A close shave with Occam's razor," she says.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Occam's razor. Very good for shaving." She laughs.

Numis thinks for a moment. This woman is blatantly demented, or an exceptional actor; either way he doubts that charges will ever be laid.

The Director of Public Prosecutions will probably let her rot in this room. If the Chinese police see her, they will lose interest in extradition. Numis concludes that the whole visit will be a waste of his efforts. However, he has a job to do and he believes in procedure.

"Did I mention the visas?" Numis asks.

"No," says Dejerine, and smiles crookedly.

Numis knows he mentioned the visas. He knows her short-term memory is not that badly affected. He decides this woman is not nearly as demented as she makes out. He wonders how much of her disability is from disease and how much is a sham.

"Dr. Dejerine, I have to caution you that transporting a biohazard without customs approval is a serious offense. You may request legal advice before answering any further questions."

"So convict me. It's just a change of prison."

"Are you declining legal counsel?"

"Did you know that 'prison' is just 'prion' with an s?" She giggles at her own joke.

"Dr. Dejerine, are you declining legal counsel?" he asks again.

"Yeah, sure." Dejerine nods in agreement.

Numis places a tape recorder on the bed and taps the record b.u.t.ton. "This is a taped recording of an interview with Dr. Claudia Dejerine. Present are Dr. Dejerine and Mr. Gerald Numis, Senior Customs Investigator, Biomedical Division." He checks his watch. "The time is 2:47 p.m. on the 19th of March. Tell me what happened, Dr. Dejerine. In your own words."

Dejerine says, "I wrote it down somewhere so I could explain it when someone like you came along. Now where did I put it?" She rummages in her bedside drawer and withdraws a foolscap notebook, bound in leather. "Here it is."

Numis opens the pages. They are hand-written. The scrawl is cramped and careless, the work of an author unconcerned with appearance.

"Dr. Dejerine has just given me a hand-written doc.u.ment," he says for the benefit of his tape recorder. Numis sits down to read; the recorder recognizes silence and switches to standby.

My name is Claudia Dejerine and I was once Professor of Pathology. The other things you need to know about me are that I had a friend called Leon Shy-Drager; I cook as well as any cordon bleu chef; and I speak to John Stuart Mill in my dreams. It's not so strange. They say one of the U.S.

presidents' wives used to seek advice from an imaginary Eleanor Roosevelt.

My father died when I was a girl. I remember him sitting me on his lap in his study and pointing out all his favorite books. On the desk he kept two antique portraits of serious-looking men.

"Two great minds," my father said. "Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the Fathers of Utilitarianism. They wrote about morals. They said the best outcome is the one that gives the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Life's not as simple as that, you know, but their ideas were magnificent."

After Dad's funeral, I asked Mum what "Tootilitism" was, and she pointed out Dad's copies of On Liberty and System of Logic, and held back tears.

"You can read them when you're older," she said.

Dad had been tall and gaunt, like Mill. His build was imposing and I remember it clearly, but his face started to blur in my memory. His lanky frame and my strong a.s.sociation of Dad with the antique portraits sculpted an image for me. Over the years, the image I had of my father merged into that of John Stuart Mill. Dad was in the grave, but On Liberty was on the shelf any time I liked, so even his words started to merge. Eventually the figure who visited me in my dreams became indistinguishable from the portrait on Dad's desk. Over the years, the works of John Stuart Mill consumed the memory of my father.

By my thirty-ninth birthday, my hands shook more than the young Elvis Presley. I did my best to keep the shakes from public view, but my tremor was too coa.r.s.e to hide. My hands were safe at rest, but when I tried to use them they would turn stiff as lead and shudder just like a learner bunny-hopping a car. Cooking became impossible.

I knew the diagnosis before my doctor gave it to me: Parkinson's disease.

Deep in my brain, the substantia nigra was rotting away.

Leon Shy-Drager, my friend, also had Parkinson's, but at the more reasonable age of fifty-eight. For him, though, age was no excuse for complacency. He wanted every chance, regardless of legality.

Leon was no stranger to breaking the law. He frequently downloaded illegal research from the black net, and used the work of unethical researchers to design his own studies. Ethics committees vetted his work, of course, but none of his "ethical" work would have been possible without the black research. I have always wondered exactly how well informed the ethics committees were. Surely they must have been aware that much of Leon's work bore an uncanny resemblance to the more infamous examples of illegal research that leaked out of the black net. Leon always laughed when I brought it up.

"Of course they know," he used to say. "But it's a waste when good research goes unpublished. I make black research respectable for the mainstream journals."

It was a sort of laundering process. "Money, like research, is just another avatar of information. Casinos launder cash. I launder science."

He flew to Hong Kong, where he auctioned his life insurance for a nigral implant. It is illegal for any Australian citizen to procure one, even if the operation is performed overseas. This law - guilty even if committed on foreign soil - applies to only two other felonies: war crimes and pedophile s.e.x.

Of course Leon told no one about the procedure, but suspicion could not be contained. He flew out of the country on long-service leave and returned three months later with a marked improvement in motor skills. Some thought it a miracle. Most knew better.

Leon was a brave man. When he saw my hands shaking, he knew that I was falling off the same cliff that nearly claimed him. With enormous courage, he took me aside and risked jail by telling me what he had done. He told me every detail about the operation, even the petty ones. He gave me a contact number.

Leon never asked me to keep our conversation to myself, never begged me to stay away from the police. He trusted my friendship.

"I can't do this," I told him.

"You have to look after yourself. No one else will." When I looked away he said, "Think about it at least."

I thought about it.

John Stuart Mill used to appear in my dreams every month or so, but he came more often during crises of conscience. That week he spoke to me every night.

I would dream of a study lined with leather journals. Book-dust sparkled in the candlelight. On the other side of a t.i.tanic oak desk sat Mill, age-whitened sideburns spilling over his coat and collar. He never wore shirtsleeves. Even in dreams, he would not allow himself such informality.

Every night for a week, he would lean on the desk and say, "The fetuses are dying anyway. You know that. It's silly to fret over the use of a by-product. You can implant those brains and heal people, or you can throw the fetus in the bin. It makes no difference to the fetus."

"But it's illegal in Australia!" I objected.

He smiled at me. "Illegal, eh? I have always maintained that Law and Morality are at best dancing partners, and clumsy ones at that. For every deft step, a hundred toes are trampled."

Ever so slowly, the ghost of John Stuart Mill whittled away my objections, one moral sliver a day.

Numis puts down the book and stretches his arms. He can not believe his luck. This demented woman wrote down all the incriminating evidence he would need to fire the prosecutor's engine. Numis is not aware that the law insists the defendant must be mentally fit to stand trial, even if the crimes were committed in a lucid state of mind. Numis is not a lawyer. He is familiar only with the Customs Act.

He looks over at Dejerine. She is rocking back and forward, staring out the window, still entranced by a view that has remained exactly the same for the last hour. A prison sentence is out of the question, but perhaps a conviction could act as a deterrent to others. He returns to the book.

The clinic was called The Lucky Cat Hotel: "Lucky Cat" to appeal to superst.i.tious millionaires, "Hotel" to conceal its purpose. My room had a million-dollar view over Kowloon harbor, but unlike a hotel room it had a nurse's buzzer and a medical dataport.

The hotel is ignored by the Chinese authorities, who find it a useful way of bringing hard currency to mainland China in exchange for thousands of recycled fetus brains. I find it hard to imagine the Hong Kong of twenty years ago, when the ultra-capitalist port was an unwelcome barnacle on the hull of communist China. Now the old British colony is too moneyed to shut down, and China's bicycling ma.s.ses give way to retired Maoists in Mercedes.

The hotel reeked of pine and ammonia. The hospital must have spent a sizeable portion of its operating budget on disinfectant, which banished the spice and sweat and humidity that had nearly overwhelmed me when I first arrived in Hong Kong. In a melancholy mood, I got to thinking that all this sterility was driving away life itself. I thought life was more than happy children and sunny parks. Life was bacteria and fungi and virions. What the h.e.l.l was I doing here? Then I looked down at my rolling hands and remembered what it was like to cut sushi from a slab of tuna meat. When Dr. Tang came to talk, I signed all the consent forms.

Dr. Tang took care of me. He explained the procedure, told me the graft had an eighty percent success rate, and a.s.sured me that all fetal tissue came from abortions that were to be performed anyway. Then I waited for a donor to match my immune markers. I only waited two days. Leon had waited three weeks.

The operation was seamless. I can't see the scar at all. Dr. Tang drilled a needle through my skull into the substantia nigra, and injected a bolus of fresh young brain cells. Within a few weeks, the new brain cells had differentiated into nigral tissue, and my tremors waned dramatically.

I could use my hands again. People could read my handwriting. At last I could cook the way I had always loved cooking: with exquisite precision.

Now Numis holds a written confession that Dejerine had bought an illegal graft, but her journal has not answered his main question: What did she do with the Lethe prions? Did she sell it to China as a biological weapon?

Was it a trade - a weapon for a cure?

The sun has moved noticeably, but she still stares out the same window and her only movement is a gentle rocking, as if she is impatient for something. Numis can not imagine what she could be waiting for. The next mealtime? The evening games shows on cable? A more entertaining visitor?

The results of the surgery were stunning. I felt my dexterity renewed. The Parkinson's was a fading memory, just a sepia photograph of a long-dead disease. My hands did exactly what I asked of them. Tremors only affected my fingers when I was tired, and they were barely discernible even then.

When we met, Leon smiled at me and never said a word. I tried to thank him but he always cut me off. He did not want to hear the words. My improved health was enough for him. He knew I was grateful without being told, and for a while I really was grateful.

Then, just as I was adapting to my wonderful new hands, the pain started.

At first it only happened in my sleep. I woke curled up with pain and in a pall of sweat. I recalled dreaming about bright lights and a deep pain that I could not name. As soon as I awoke, the sensations disappeared, but the memory remained.