The Third Twin Page 0,103

wish I hadn't. It's awful. How can you eat here?"

She dug a spoon into some kind of dessert. "I don't notice what I eat, Berry, I think about my particle accelerator. Tell me about the new library."

Berrington had been like her, obsessed by work, once upon a time. He had never allowed himself to look like a hobo on account of it, but nevertheless as a young scientist he had lived for the thrill of discovery. However, his life had taken a different direction. His books were popularizations of other people's work; he had not written an original paper in fifteen or twenty years. For a moment he wondered whether he might have been happier if he had made a different choice. Slovenly Jane, eating cheap food while she ruminated over problems in nuclear physics, had an air of calm and contentment that Berrington had never known.

And he was not managing to charm her. She was too wise. Perhaps he should flatter her intellectually. "I just think you should have a bigger input. You're the senior physicist on campus, one of the most distinguished scientists JFU has - you ought to be involved in this library."

"Is it even going to happen?"

"I think Genetico is going to finance it."

"Well, that's a piece of good news. But what's your interest?"

"Thirty years ago I made my name when I started asking which human characteristics are inherited and which are learned. Because of my work, and the work of others like me, we now know that a human being's genetic inheritance is more important than his upbringing and environment in determining a whole range of psychological traits."

"Nature, not nurture."

"Exactly. I proved that a human being is his DNA. The young generation is interested in how this process works. What is the mechanism by which a combination of chemicals gives me blue eyes and another combination gives you eyes which are a deep, dark shade of brown, almost chocolate colored, I guess."

"Berry!" she said with a wry smile. "If I were a thirty-year-old secretary with perky breasts I might imagine you were flirting with me."

That was better, he thought. She had softened at last. "Perky?" he said, grinning. He deliberately looked at her bust, then back up at her face. "I believe you're as perky as you feel."

She laughed, but he could tell she was pleased. At last he was getting somewhere with her. Then she said: "I have to go."

Damn. He could not keep control of this interaction. He had to get her attention in a hurry. He stood up to leave with her. "There will probably be a committee to oversee the creation of the new library," he said as they walked out of the cafeteria. "I'd like your opinion on who should be on it."

"Gosh, I'll need to think about that. Right now I have to give a lecture on antimatter."

Goddamn it, I'm losing her, Berrington thought.

Then she said: "Can we talk again?"

Berrington grasped at a straw. "How about over dinner?"

She looked startled. "All right," she said after a moment.

"Tonight?"

A bemused look came over her face. "Why not?"

That would give him another chance, at least. Relieved, he said: "I'll pick you up at eight."

"Okay." She gave him her address and he made a note in a pocket pad.

"What kind of food do you like?" he said. "Oh, don't answer that, I remember, you think about your particle accelerator." They emerged into the hot sun. He squeezed her arm lightly. "See you tonight."

"Berry," she said, "you're not after something, are you?"

He winked at her. "What have you got?"

She laughed and walked away.

Chapter 35

TEST-TUBE BABIES. IN VITRO FERTILIZATION. THAT WAS THE link. Jeannie saw it all.

Charlotte Pinker and Lorraine Logan had both been treated for subfertility at the Aventine Clinic. The clinic had pioneered in vitro fertilization: the process by which sperm from the father and an egg from the mother are brought together in the laboratory, and the resulting embryo is then implanted in the woman's womb.

Identical twins occur when an embryo splits in half, in the womb, and becomes two individuals. That might have happened in the test tube. Then the twins from the test tube could have been implanted in two different women. That was how identical twins could be born to two unrelated mothers. Bingo.

The waitress brought Jeannie's salad, but she was too excited to eat it.

Test-tube babies were no more than a theory in the early seventies, she was sure. But Genetico had obviously been years ahead in