Mendel's Dwarf Read Online Free PDF

The incident was trivial and normality was soon reestablished (my desire spent into the lavatory bowl; the old lady equipped with book from upper shelf; Miss Piercey settled once more on her stool with her skirt pulled demurely down to her knees), but the memory lived on. White cotton with pink flowers, Miss Piercey’s knickers. They were etched into my mind. I saw the same design at the British Home Stores shortly afterwards, and I rushed in to spend my pocket money. “For my sister,” I explained. The assistant looked skeptical; yet surely, if it had been for any other purpose, I would have been rooting around among the black lace, the suspender belts and diaphanousFrench knickers, not the plain floral underpants. One must look at the matter realistically.
    Back in the safety of my bedroom, hugging the scrap of cotton to my face, I dreamt of Miss Piercey lying as white as a mouse beneath my gaze, wearing only those underpants. Sexual dimorphism is under the control of a pair of chromosomes, the X and the Y, but what is it that controls desire? That is a question that has defied the greatest geneticists of our time. There are those who claim that a rogue portion of the long arm of the X chromosome (section Xq28, to be exact 1 ) may be responsible for homosexual desires; but what was it that drove my body into paroxysms of lust for mouselike Miss Piercey?
    I haven’t mentioned her eyes, have I? I have mentioned, by implication, other parts of her anatomy, and, specifically, her hair; but I haven’t mentioned her eyes. They were of differing color. One was blue, the other green. How do you explain that by the mathematical dance of genes …?
    Miss J. Piercey. The name card on the librarians’ desk said so (I could catch a glimpse of it only if I stood far back). I didn’t even know her first name. J? I imagined “June”—June, moon, swoon; it would have been perfect. She was doing some kind of training in librarianship at the polytechnic, combined with work experience in the library. I was sixteen and was studying biology and chemistry and math, all those things that she had failed. The gulf between us was vast, being constructed of things material and things emotional, things structural and things spiritual. I suppose that had she known my feelings she’d have uttered a squeal of revulsion and accused me of being filthy-minded. But it was something approaching love.

    I did very well in biology, of course; particularly well in the questions on genetics. The words segregation, dominance, recessive, mutation flowed from my pen. My Punnet squares were punctilious. My ratios were rational.
    Mice of the strain known as waltzers suffer from a defect in the cerebellum that makes them move around in an uncoordinated way described as waltzing. When waltzers are crossed with normal mice all the offspring are normal …
    Aren’t they lucky?
    Humans of the type known as achondroplastic dwarfs suffer from a lack of cartilage cells, so that bones that depend on cartilage models for development cannot grow. When dwarfs of this type are crossed with normal humans fifty percent of the offspring are normal and fifty percent are dwarf .
    Aren’t they unlucky?
    Toss a coin. It is all a matter of probability and chance. Try it. Go on, take a coin out of your pocket or your purse. Toss it, call heads or tails, and there you are. Cursed or not?

    The biology laboratory at school possessed five microscopes. They were gleaming, ancient things with more than a hint of brass about them, but their optics were good. Only the seniors were allowed to use them, and then only under the supervision of the dull Mr. Perkins, but there are ways and means, always. I obtained a key to the room (the cleaning lady reported the loss, but everyone just assumed she had mislaid it) and stayed behind one afternoon. The impoverished school library was available for late study on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I spent some time reading there to establish an alibi