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CHAPTER 013

The coffin rose into sunlight. It looked the same as it had when buried a week earlier, except for the clumps of dirt that dropped from the underside.

“This is all so undignified,” Emily Weller said. She stood stiffly at the graveside, accompanied by her son, Tom, and her daughter Rachel. Of course, Lisa was not there. She was thecause of all this, but she could not be bothered to see what she had done to her poor father.

The coffin swung slowly in the air as the graveside workers guided it to the far side of the pit under the direction of the hospital pathologist, a nervous little man named Marty Roberts. He should be nervous, Emily thought, if he was the one who had given the blood to Lisa without anybody’s permission.

“What happens now?” Emily said, turning to her son. Tom was twenty-six, dressed in a sharp suit and tie. He had a master’s degree in microbiology and worked for a big biotech company in Los Angeles. Tom had turned out good, as had her daughter Rachel. Rachel was a senior at USC, studying business administration. “Will they take Jack’s blood here?”

“Oh, they’ll take more than blood,” Tom said.

Emily said, “What do you mean?”

“You see,” Tom said, “for a genetic test like this, where there is a dispute, they ordinarily take tissues from several organ systems.”

“I didn’t realize,” Emily said, frowning. She felt her heart pounding, thumping in her chest. She hated that feeling. Soon there was a squeezing feeling in her throat. It was painful. She bit her lip.

“You all right, Mom?”

“I should have taken my anxiety pills.”

Rachel said, “Will this take long?”

“No,” Tom said, “it should be only a few minutes. The pathologist will open the casket, to confirm the identity of the body. Then he’ll take it back to the hospital to remove the tissues for genetic analysis. He’ll return the body for reburial tomorrow or the next day.”

“Tomorrow or the next day?” Emily said. She sniffled, wiped her eyes. “You mean we have to come back here? We have to bury Jack again? This is all so…so…”

“I know, Mom.” He patted her arm. “I’m sorry. But there is no other way. You see, they have to check for something called a chimera-”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” she said, waving her hand. “I won’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Okay, Mom.” He put his arm around her shoulder.

In ancient mythology, chimeras were monsters composed of different animal parts. The original Chimera had the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and a serpent’s tail. Some chimeras were part human, like the Egyptian Sphinx, with the body of a lion, the wings of a bird, and the head of a woman.

But true human chimeras-meaning people with two sets of DNA-had been discovered only recently. A woman needing a kidney transplant had tested her own children as possible donors, only to discover that they did not share her DNA. She was told the children weren’t hers, and was asked to prove she had actually given birth to them. A lawsuit ensued. After considerable study, doctors realized that her body contained two different strands of DNA. In her ovaries, they found eggs with two kinds of DNA. The skin cells of her abdomen had her children’s DNA. The skin of her shoulders did not. She was a mosaic. In every organ of her body.

It turned out that the woman had originally been one of a pair of fraternal twins, but early in development, her sister’s embryo had fused with hers. So she was now literally herself and her own twin.

More than fifty chimeras had since been reported. Scientists now suspected that chimerism was not as rare as they had once thought. Certainly, whenever there was a difficult question of paternity, chimerism had to be considered. It was possible that Lisa’s father might be a chimera. But to determine that, they would need tissues from every organ of his body, and preferably from several different places on each organ.

That was why Dr. Roberts was required to take so many tissue samples, and why it would have to be done at the hospital, not at the grave site.

Dr. Roberts raised the lid and turned to the family on the opposite side of the grave. “Would one of you make the identification, please?”

“I will,” Tom said. He walked around the grave and looked into the coffin. His father appeared surprisingly unchanged, except the skin was much grayer, a dark gray now, and the limbs seemed to have shrunk, to have lost mass, especially the legs inside the trousers.

In a formal voice, the pathologist said, “Is this your father, John J. Weller?”

“Yes. He is, yes.”

“All right. Thank you.”

Tom said, “Dr. Roberts, I know you have your procedures, but…if there is any way you can take the tissues here…so my mother doesn’t have to go through another day and another burial…”

“I’m sorry,” Marty Roberts said. “My actions are governed by state law. We’re required to take the body to the hospital for examination.”

“If you could…just this once…bend…”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could.”

Tom nodded and walked back to his mother and sister.

His mother said, “What was all that about?”

“Just asking a question.”

Tom looked back and saw that Dr. Roberts was now bent over, his body half inside the casket. Abruptly the pathologist rose up. He walked over to speak in Tom’s ear, so no one else could hear. “Mr. Weller, perhaps we should spare your family’s feelings. If we can keep this between us…”

“Of course. Then you’ll…?”

“Yes, we’ll do everything here. It should take only a few moments. Let me get my kit.” He hurried off to a nearby SUV.

Emily bit her lip. “What’s he doing?”

“I asked him to do all the tests here, Mom.”

“And he said yes? Thank you, dear,” she said, and kissed her son. “Will he do all the tests that he would do at the hospital?”

“No, but it should be enough to answer your questions.”

Twenty minutes later, the tissue samples had been taken and placed in a series of glass tubes. The tubes were placed in slots in a metal refrigeration case. The casket was returned to the grave, disappearing into shadow.

“Come on,” Emily Weller said to her children, “let’s get out of here. I need a damn drink.”

As they drove away, she said to Tom, “I’m sorry you had to do that. Was Jack’s poor body very decayed, dear?”

“No,” Tom said. “Not much, no.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Emily said. “That’s very good.”