“I want you to make a substitution in the course of our new IVF research partnership” … An extract from Sebastian Faulks’s new novel The Seventh Son Science Photo Library/ZEPHYR/Getty Images
“I have a proposition.” Parn leant forward and put his hand on Malik Wood鈥檚 knee.
“Oh yes?”
Parn sat back again. 鈥楧id you know I fund a palaeoanthropology research programme? It鈥檚 attached to the University of London. They do top genetic work. Looking at old bones. Sequencing the genome of Homo vannesiensis. That kind of thing. I know people there. In the labs. I have access.”
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“I bet.”
“You know all that work they did in Leipzig a few years back. The Max Planck people. Putting together genomes from scraps of forty-thousand-year-old bone. Brilliant stuff. But those PCR machines they used, they鈥檙e pretty old now. We have better kit.”
“And?”
Lukas Parn鈥檚 voice had lost all trace of the Outback. “I鈥檓 interested in hybrids. What they can tell us about ourselves. How we got to be the way we are. The inexplicable leap. The ‘saltation’, as you call it.”
“My God. You鈥檙e not a creationist, are you? You鈥檙e not going to try to prove that Homo sapiens was put together all in one go by God?”
“No.” Parn laughed. “No, I鈥檓 not a creationist. But I鈥檓 an exceptionalist. I believe that the superiority of Homo sapiens hasn鈥檛 yet been explained.”
“You鈥檙e saying Darwin was wrong?”
“Sure. He was wrong about a lot of things. Women. Genetics.”
“But by the standards of what was known at the time, he鈥”
“Exactly. ‘The time’ was 1850-something. Getting on for two hundred years ago. Anyway, it鈥檚 not about a Victorian with a beard. It鈥檚 about genetics, a word unknown to Darwin.”
“How am I involved in this?”
“Your lab. Your touch.”
Dr Wood drank some wine. “I鈥檒l need to know more.”
“You will. In due course. But can I take it that you would be interested in having your salary increased. And a one-off bonus of, let鈥檚 say, five times salary on successful completion?”
“It depends on what I need to do.”
“Something well within your capabilities. I want you to make a substitution in the course of our new IVF research partnership with the NHS.”
“A substitution?”
“A simple switch. One guy鈥檚 sperm for another. Before it hits the egg.”
“That鈥檚 ethically鈥”
“Extremely important is what it is,” said Parn. “From a scientific point of view. We鈥檙e looking at a human hybrid.”
Extract taken from by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson Heinemann, out now), the latest pick for the New 女生小视频聽Book Club. Sign up and read along with us聽here
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