Inheritance: The perfect child is now possible, page 20
‘How about we watch some cartoons?’ she offered.
‘No-no-no,’ Adelaide wailed. ‘It hurts.’
Emily was at her wits’ end, so she texted Rachel, who knew a thing or two about pain.
When Rachel arrived, she opened one cupboard and then another until she found the children’s Panadol. It never seemed to be strong enough to help Adelaide, but Rachel had an idea. She also grabbed green cordial and a roll of Berocca. She mixed the ingredients together then drew up 50 ml of the fizzing emerald liquid into a plastic syringe, which she carried lying flat across her palms to Adelaide, as if she was presenting her with a sceptre. ‘Now we only use this on extra special occasions,’ she said. ‘It’s very powerful. So just this once, we’ll try it, okay?’
Adelaide nodded. Her eyes were fixed on the green potion. Her lashes, still wet, were stuck together.
Emily took the plastic cylinder from Rachel and held it up to the light and flicked it, like she’d seen nurses do on TV, to convince Adelaide of its potency. Adelaide drank it down and almost immediately became calmer. She curled up on the couch and watched cartoons. The tension left her face and Emily’s hands unclenched.
Rachel smiled. ‘Strange thing, the placebo effect,’ she said.
From then on, whenever Emily went to the supermarket, she kept her eyes peeled for ingredients she could use to bring a little showmanship to Adelaide’s pain relief.
She was examining the ingredient list on a bottle of caramel syrup on Thursday afternoon while Adelaide read the labels on flavoured-milk tins: ‘Pink is for strawberry. Green is for peppermint. It doesn’t have pepper in it. Yellow is banana. I love banana. It’s my favourite. C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E spells chocolate. Chocolate is also my favourite.’
Emily was distantly listening, while trying to calculate the health effects of giving her four-year-old preservative E501d when a comment broke her concentration.
‘Well, aren’t you clever?’
Emily turned towards the not entirely kind voice. A woman with glasses hanging on a plastic chain around her neck was standing over Adelaide.
The woman placed a tin of Milo in her basket before leaning down further. ‘How old are you?’ she asked, peering at Adelaide like she was a new species of insect.
‘I’m four,’ Adelaide announced proudly. She held up four fingers and grinned.
‘Four?’ The woman said, astonished. ‘You’re very clever for four.’
‘Yes, she’s a bright one.’ Emily grabbed her daughter’s hand. ‘Come on, Addy, we have to get some milk.’
‘But I’m reading.’
‘We can read in the dairy section, come on.’
‘M-I-L-K spells milk,’ Adelaide chirped.
The woman straightened up. ‘Very bright,’ she said. Her words were complimentary, but her tone was not, and her yellow shirt made the hairs on the back of Emily’s neck prickle. She put her hand on Adelaide’s back and steered her down the aisle.
‘Let’s go, quickly,’ Emily said. When she was around the corner, out of the woman’s line of sight, she picked up Adelaide, deposited her in the trolley and quickened her pace.
Emily pushed the cart to the frozen-food section, where she abandoned it, then she positioned Adelaide on her hip and darted towards the exit. She spotted the woman in yellow in the car park and broke into a jog. She put Adelaide in her car seat and slammed the door shut, then got behind the wheel. Her hands shook as she grabbed hold of the gearstick.
‘But, Mum, what about our food?’ Adelaide asked.
‘We’ll order home delivery,’ Emily said.
That night, she relayed the story to Rachel over the phone. ‘There was just something off about her,’ Emily said. ‘She was studying Adelaide. I think she was in the Pure Movement.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘It’s hard to describe, but I could just sense it.’
‘She was probably just some lonely lady whose social graces are a bit rusty. There’s no way she’d be able to tell Adelaide was modified just by looking at her.’
‘Adelaide was reading things on the shelves. Long words. Spelling them out. This woman was watching her like she was assessing her.’
‘Perhaps she just thought she was cute,’ Rachel replied.
‘She was wearing yellow!’
‘Lots of people wear yellow. It’s a nice colour.’
Emily considered this point. It had been four years since she’d had an encounter with the Pure Movement.
‘Maybe you should cut back on the true crime podcasts,’ Rachel suggested.
‘Maybe,’ Emily said. But she was thinking that maybe she should listen to more, so that she was forewarned and forearmed.
*
After Adelaide had gone to bed, Emily logged into her MelissaH22 account and started typing: Has anyone ever been followed? Do you think there are people from the Pure Movement watching us?
She got three quick replies.
Marie_Horton07: You can’t trust anyone. There’s a man on our street who has a Stay Pure banner in his window.
LolaLuvsMonty: I wouldn’t worry. You know that saying about conspiracies being more likely the result of incompetence.
HaylyeysMumma: It could be a government agent.
Marie_Horton07: I just tell my boy, six, to keep away from the house with the yellow flag.
HayleysMumma: Of course, people with power would want to know the movements of the new breed of super humans.
LolaLuvsMonty: This government couldn’t organise their own sock drawer.
HayleysMumma: DM me if you want to know more.
Emily logged out and tiptoed into Adelaide’s room and found her lying awake, concentrating on a Miffy book. Emily wondered if it was time to start telling her daughter the truth of what she was. Hearing Adelaide freely tell a stranger her age, and demonstrate her intelligence, spooked Emily and she couldn’t be sure if it was safer if Adelaide knew the truth, or safer if she didn’t.
*
Emily gave Adelaide the stranger-danger talk again, stressing that we don’t tell our secrets to people we don’t know. Adelaide listened attentively, then nodded and said, ‘Okay, Mama.’
‘Good girl.’ Emily kissed her cheek, relieved.
Still, the next time they went to the supermarket she found herself keeping a close eye on anyone who came near Adelaide. In the vegetable aisle, Emily asked Adelaide to run and fetch a green capsicum and some broccoli, while she waited in line for the deli.
Emily was watching Adelaide’s little ginger ponytail roam from display to display, when she spied a woman with a basket hovering nearby. Adelaide walked to the bags of salad, and the woman walked to the bags of salad. Adelaide stopped to smell some basil, and the woman lingered over oregano. The woman was unremarkable, and not wearing any yellow. But she was definitely tailing Adelaide. Emily’s stomach tightened.
Adelaide hurried down the aisle to the tomatoes. The woman followed. She looked like a teacher with pens in her top pocket and a knee-length grey woollen skirt that said ‘maths lesson’ to Emily. Adelaide had located the capsicum and was running towards the greens. The woman started walking briskly towards her.
Forgetting the deli, Emily ran to her daughter. She bounded across the fruit aisle, scuttling a pyramid of grapefruits that fell heavily onto the ground and rolled in all different directions.
‘Adelaide!’ Emily called, to warn the woman the child was not unattended. Her daughter looked up. ‘Adelaide, we have to go.’
‘Wait!’ The woman held up her arm, her fist closed.
‘Come on, quickly.’ Emily beckoned to Adelaide.
‘Wait,’ the woman called again, striding towards them. Emily put her arms around her daughter and braced herself for a confrontation. ‘You don’t want to lose your treasures,’ the woman said, opening her hand and smiling.
‘My shells!’ Adelaide declared, reaching for them.
‘I think you have a hole in your backpack.’
Adelaide turned around and patted her bag, spraying sand as she did so. They’d been to the beach the weekend before, and Adelaide had meticulously collected shells and put them in her backpack. Apparently, she’d been dropping a trail like Hansel.
‘Thank you for saving them,’ Emily said, a little breathless, as the woman handed them over. ‘Adelaide what do we say?’
‘Thank you for saving them,’ Adelaide sang. ‘We went to the beach last week,’ she continued. ‘It was a long drive. We live in a street filled with trees. Our flat is red brick. Our neighbours came too. Their house is white.’
‘Addy.’ Emily touched her daughter’s shoulder. ‘We don’t tell strangers where we live.’ Her eyes flicked to the woman, a tacit apology for implying she might be in the business of abducting children. But the woman gave a good-natured wave, understanding the importance of the lesson.
‘I’m four!’ Adelaide announced, holding up four fingers.
‘Well, aren’t you a smart young lady? I’m so glad I could return your shells to you. I know how upsetting it can be when you lose something important to you.’
‘Thank you, and sorry about … thank you.’ Emily once again found herself eager to leave a supermarket, but this time it was more out of embarrassment than fear.
In the car on the way home, she repeated the lesson to Adelaide about stranger danger. She’d learned an important lesson too. It was definitely too early to tell Adelaide the truth.
18
Adelaide
While tucking into curry at Jeremy’s, picking around the Granny Smith pieces thrown in to add bulk, Adelaide interrogated Rand and Rowland on the details of their surrogacy experience. She asked specific questions about the paperwork, the process of arranging a passport for the baby, and whether there were any diplomatic booby traps intended parents should be prepared for.
‘You’re well-versed on this,’ Rand said.
‘Our office is running an inquiry into medical tourism, so …’ She trailed off. It wasn’t a lie. It also wasn’t why she was asking, but they didn’t press her and told her everything she wanted to know. As if suspecting her motive, Rand and Rowland answered slowly and clearly and repeated key points. Adelaide liked them immensely.
It had been in the Dandenongs, eleven months earlier, that everything had changed.
After she’d had her epiphany among the wooded mountains, Adelaide had hurried back to cabin six, where she climbed under the covers of the sleigh bed and pressed herself against Ollie. He lay on his back, gently snoring, and she let the bristles on his cheek scratch against her skin, regretting her own prickliness as she prepared to tell him of her decision. She had found another solution. Or rather, it had found her.
Instead of using the trip to gently break the news that she wanted them to stop trying, it would become the setting against which she would try to win him over to the idea of overseas surrogacy, and reverse-GM editing.
She had just drifted off to sleep when Ollie began stirring. He stretched as she burrowed further under the covers.
‘Come on, lazybones,’ he said, turning and kissing her cheek. ‘This is a rare moment, me having to get you out of bed. How did you sleep?’
‘Good. You?’ she said, surrendering and opening her eyes.
‘Like the dead. I thought we agreed no devices on this trip.’ He nodded at the phone on the bedcovers where it had fallen as she’d dozed.
‘Yes, you’re right.’ She grabbed it before he could glimpse what she’d been researching. ‘I was checking the weather,’ she said, putting it face down on the bedside table.
‘And what did you learn?’
She smiled at him sleepily. ‘Blue skies all day.’
‘Sounds like a good day for hiking. Come on.’ He climbed out of bed and held out his hand for her.
They walked all morning then stopped at a kiosk for ham sandwiches, and sat, looking out over the valley. After they’d eaten, Adelaide squeezed close to Ollie. ‘I want to show you something.’ She pulled out her phone and cued up a video.
‘Okay.’ He put his arm around her to watch.
The waving palm trees appeared on the small screen. Then the lilac hexagons. Ollie looked at Adelaide, smiling, but confused. Dr Tsu appeared in his white doctor’s coat.
‘What is this?’ Ollie asked.
‘Just watch. It will explain everything.’
The medical man began to speak. ‘For almost fifty years, our lab has been studying and perfecting genetic editing, with each protocol undergoing rigorous double-blind testing to ensure an unimpeachable standard. In 2025, when your country swept aside the moratorium on human embryo editing, we tried to warn your government about how unstable the processes still were. We feared rogue doctors could go too far, and in their haste to be first, would act without the proper precautions. Our entreaties fell on deaf ears. We now know there were consequences to the hurried introduction of GM technology. Much damage has been done. We see it as our mission to help those who have been impacted by the lack of understanding that allowed this to occur.
‘The maverick bioengineers who tested their theories on real-life humans came of age in a world where tech billionaires ruled, and declared the way forward was to “move fast and break stuff”. They lost sight of the awesome power they were dealing with. Their youths were spent in the pre-pandemic era of disruptors. We do not want to disrupt the human race. At Genolux, our mission is to restore altered blood lines to their untampered with form. Click through if you would like to learn more.’
Adelaide looked at Ollie. His features shifted into a sceptical grimace, but he nodded for her to go on. She played the next clip.
‘Welcome back.’ Dr Tsu’s face reappeared. ‘For decades, we have been devoted to untangling the mess made by reckless clinics around the world. Ghastly changes, introduced in a climate of fear without proper oversight, have created sickness and suffering. We know there to be a link between myostatin – the gene that helps muscles grow – and poor organ development. We’ve seen popular edits cause myocarditis and in some cases psychosis. Even reproductive systems have been affected. Click through if you would like to learn more.’
Adelaide tapped the continue button.
‘As we always warned, germline editing, that is, editing embryos, is particularly dangerous because the changes are passed on to future generations, and the entire human gene pool is altered forever.’ Dr Tsu stared down the barrel of the camera. ‘People who have been edited face one of two scenarios. Some pass on their edits to the next generation. All of their advantages but all of their ailments too. The other scenario is that they are unable to have children at all. At Genolux, we aim to provide solutions to both of these outcomes.’
*
When the series of videos finished, Ollie looked as though he was trying hard to erase the judgemental lines from his face. ‘You want to do this?’
‘It’s worth exploring …’ Adelaide said. ‘I think all this trouble we’ve been having is because of me and my compromised genes.’
He leaned in close to her. ‘I love your genes. I wouldn’t change a hair on your head.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘You’ve never let bigoted propaganda change the way you live your life before.’
This was true. She hated the ignorant people who spread disparaging misinformation about people who had undergone gene editing, and she always argued against anyone who suggested being GM was in any way something to be pitied, or wished away. In many ways, this prejudice had fuelled her and she had made herself into an unimpeachable paragon that proved modified people were the same as everyone else. Neither a burden nor a threat. She got so angry when the tightening of her muscles and the spasms in her back made it hard for her to concentrate. When her body let her down, she felt betrayed by it.
Adelaide shook her heard. ‘I’m not doubting my worth. But I am doubting my biology. More and more with each miscarriage.’
‘A lot of people have trouble—’
‘This isn’t the same as a normal couple having trouble.’ She knew Ollie was trying to be a comfort, but she also knew this wasn’t garden-variety infertility. ‘They did something to me, Ollie. When I was still a speck in a Petri dish, they changed something vital. Maybe they deleted some key protein that helps me carry a baby to term. Maybe that’s why I have these unexplainable attacks of spasming pain. I’m like a computer program missing a few lines of code. That doctor my mother saw was just after money. He was a hack. And that’s what he did to me. He went into my genome, and he hacked up my DNA.’
Ollie processed this. ‘You don’t know that for sure.’
‘I think I do. A lot of modified people find their normal functions impacted. Even reproductive systems. Especially reproductive systems. It’s like the bad genes have a built-in self-destruct mechanism.’
Some of this was from the Genolux video. But she’d read about it too. Medical journals were full of articles linking this edit to that syndrome. The sample sizes were small. But the little bit of data that was available resonated deeply with Adelaide. It felt like an explanation for the difference, the discomfort and discord she had felt her entire life.
‘How do you know these so-called doctors aren’t hacks?’ Ollie asked.
‘I’ve researched this doctor. He trained in Shenzhen,’ she said. ‘The university there is the world leader in gene editing.’
‘But he’s not there now?’
‘He teamed up with another doctor from New York. They got philanthropic funding from the Hayes Group.’ She’d done a background check, sitting among the Dandenong eucalypts, before deciding to present the videos to Ollie.
He took the phone from her. ‘The Hayes Group you say?’
‘Yes.’
The Hayes Group was a collective of billionaires who funded humanitarian efforts. Genolux felt like a silver bullet, and Adelaide wanted Ollie to recognise it as that too.
‘I can’t go through another miscarriage,’ she said. She tapped her phone. ‘Overseas surrogacy, supported by this service, could be the answer we need. If we had a baby the natural way, he or she would inherit all my damaged genetic code. That’s if they survived at all, which we know they don’t seem to.’
