The Prophecy

The Prophecy

by Mick Stringer

"Professor Dalton will see you now."

Maggie put the magazine she had been reading back onto the smoked glass
table and followed the nurse into a sunlit office, with a window
opposite the door. The walls were decorated by pastel prints depicting,
when she looked closely, large-headed, thumb-sucking foetuses, swimming
in different orientations in their secure bubbles. They were soothing,
in their way.

Professor Dalton looked younger than she remembered from their last
meeting, when the samples had been taken and the preliminary
questionnaires completed. Perhaps her three months of pregnancy were
already maturing her and, by full term, even popes and policemen would
be looking like boys. If she went to full term. If the risks were
acceptable.

The nurse settled her into a comfortable chair across the well-polished
desk from where the genetics expert sat, framed in the window with the
lush Surrey countryside beyond. He smiled at her and opened a
crisp-looking file. Young he may have been, but he exuded an
unmistakable air of authority.

"Well, Ms Fletcher," he began, brightly, "you are to be congratulated
on your good sense in arranging the genetic mapping consultation. Your
partner decided against accompanying you?"

"Geoff doesn't feel comfortable in this sort of situation," she lied.
"He's happy to leave the decision to me."

"Fine." He gave her a straight look, tinged with just the right degree
of compassion. "You're a level-headed woman, Ms Fletcher and deserve to
be treated as such." He glanced down at the file. "I'm afraid there are
risks that most would consider unacceptable."

She had to concentrate hard to keep a red mist from washing
comprehension from her thoughts.

"So there are abnormalities," she whispered. "Are they terrible ones?
Crippling ones?" There had been a hooped Great Aunt. Poor diet and
upbringing, they used to say. She shivered. They knew better now - now
that the code had been carefully mapped out, chromosome by chromosome,
gene by gene.

"They are not physical ones, as such." He pulled a paper from the file
and passed it to her. It looked like a bizarre game of snakes and
ladders, with brightly coloured boxes, connecting curves that twisted
and spiralled, and everywhere the repetition of the code, marching
across the page with minor variations - abbcddc, abccddc, abbccdc ...
Her eyes began to swim.

"The problem," he explained, "is here." He placed a finger on a purple
shaded box. "Band twelve on the left upper branch of chromosome eight."
He looked at her carefully. "Hence the designation, C8/UL/12," he
added, helpfully.
She struggled to keep her mind focused. Was this really happening to
her?
"And what is the nature of the abnormality?" she heard herself asking,
distantly.

"You must understand," he began, weighing his words, "that we are
dealing with complicated events. The gene in question carries a
potential, no more, no less. However, when combined with the overall
genetic profile that has presented here, we can predict the effects
with considerable confidence."

"What is the nature of the abnormality?" she repeated calmly, although
inside her head her voice was screaming.

"We call it USASDS - unstable, anti-social disposition. It means, in
effect, that there is a strong, behavioural predisposition to avoid
order and authority, to be more than normally self-seeking and to
develop thought processes that may sometimes be considered irrational
and bizarre."

"You mean my child could be a psychopath?"

"Good heavens no," he laughed - condescendingly, she thought. "In many
cases, an individual carrying this gene would be difficult and stubborn
and might hold off-beat views. But there would be no mental pathology.
Assimilation into society would be possible."

"But not with this one?" She placed a hand on her stomach.

The Professor sighed. "Unfortunately, there are no mitigating factors
elsewhere in the profile. On the contrary, there are impulsive,
creative tendencies that may make the individual's behaviour even less
stable, less predictable. I'm afraid the risks simply cannot be
considered acceptable"

"I see. The boy will be a dangerous, free-thinking misfit. That is your
prophecy."

"Not a word that I would use, but that's the gist of it."

"And no amount of loving parenting in a caring environment will change
that?"

"I'm sorry. Those old ideas have long since been discounted." He leaned
across towards her, seeking her hand and patting it reassuringly.
"Don't be too downhearted. You're a young woman, the termination will
be painless, and the probability of your presenting a similar profile
again is extremely remote."

He stood up, ending the consultation. "You can make the necessary
arrangements with Nurse Bishop. I really am sorry."

Outside, she turned down both the tea and biscuits and the termination
appointment that were offered. She would have to discuss things at
home, she said, to ensure that the arrangements were convenient.

In the flat, Geoff was busy with one of his complicated models.

"Well?" he asked, barely lifting his eyes from the delicate structure
of wings and antennae he was constructing.

"Everything's fine," she said, and when his head dropped by the
slightest millimetre, she added, "Don't worry. I won't expect a
contribution. I've decided it will be best if I move away."

"Whatever you think," he muttered and, suppressing her sorrow at the
unmistakable relief in his voice, she ran upstairs to pack.

***

Through her back window she watched the sun emerge from behind an
anvil-shaped cloud. In a few minutes it would slip away - gold, then
red, slowly obliterated by the purple curve of the moor. She sipped her
tea, contentedly. Soon Philip would be arriving with his new friend and
they would sit down to a warming dinner, enriched with tales of their
future and her past.

She had been happy here, after the early struggle. And what a struggle!
She had endured constant, semi-official pressure to reconsider her
decision and remove the social poison from her womb; she had listened
to Geoff - oh, they had got to him quickly enough - pleading and
threatening on the telephone; on one occasion she had had to firmly
propel her own mother through the door and forbade her to return until
she had come to terms with the reality of a grandchild with a certain
potential.

Then the Women's Group had found her, fought off the bureaucracy,
encouraged her and given her a wider purpose to her life. It had all
been so worthwhile. Who would have thought, at the beginning, that they
would have achieved so much? But they had. Genetic forecasting had been
outlawed and the whole, antiseptic apparatus of eugenics through
insidious social pressure had been dismantled. Their work done, the
group had dissolved, but the friendships remained. She wondered what
had happened to Professor Dalton. Something moderately uncomfortable,
she hoped.

And Philip had been a joy of a son. Certainly he had been exceptionally
inquisitive; undoubtedly he had a stubborn streak that could frustrate
and infuriate; and his mercurial mind could leap from thought to
thought in a dizzying fashion. But he had been loving and attentive, a
wonderful companion and, as he grew, marvellously at ease with her new
friends, whom he had learned both to flatter and entertain. Now he was
becoming pre-eminent in his field, sharing his time between Cambridge
and America. She was proud of him.

They stood, smiling and fresh-faced in the little hall. Philip was just
thirty and the vigorous, good-looking friend who accompanied him
perhaps a little under forty.

"Alan will be our next Prime Minister," Philip told her,
enthusiastically. "The old man is going to step down mid-term and the
succession is pretty well clear-cut."

"I'm very pleased for you," she smiled, looking from one to the other
with undisguised admiration.

"The best thing," continued Philip, "is that with his unassailable
majority, he'll be able to start to re-modernise, scrap all the
restrictive practices that have held back science for so long. Then
I'll be able to bring my real work into the open."

"Your real work ?" She felt a sudden pang of anxiety. "But I thought
..."

"You thought I was studying bio-diversity in marine environments. No,"
he laughed and took her hand in a way that gave her a terrible sense of
d?j? vu. "It's much more exciting than that - but I could scarcely come
clean when you were so closely wrapped up with that group of yours.
We're re-discovering the genetic code. And with Alan's help, the
blockages are already being removed. Just think," his eyes shone,
"before long, parents will have the ability to chose again. Inherited
disabilities will become a thing of the past."

She dropped her hand and leaned against the doorpost. Odd, foetal
images drifted through her mind.

"Mother, are you all right? What's the matter?"

"I'm sorry," she replied weakly. "I was thinking of a prophecy I once
heard."

He put a reassuring arm round her shoulder. "Mumbo-jumbo," he scoffed.
"Genetic profiling - that's the real future. You'll see."