Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog Read Online Free PDF

identical genetic markers.”
    “So she is a clone.”
    “That’s not the conclusion the vet came to. He said the lab must have made a mistake. He said the markers couldn’t be identical. Then he explained the facts of life to me, as if I was an idiot. ‘The offspring gets fifty percent of its genes from the mother—that would be Blanche—and fifty percent from the father,’ he said. The pattern is random, which genes each pup will get from its mother and which from the father. But in this case, it appears your dog has no father.’ Before I could say anything, he said, ‘Oh, sure, it’s possible to have all the markers identical, but so rare as to be suspect.’ He said they must have tested one dog’s samples twice. He apologized for the lab’s error and the delay it would cause and suggested we run the tests again.”
    “And you said?”
    “I told him it wasn’t an error. Then I made the mistake of telling him why.”
    “And he said?”
    “That’s not the point. The point is that I need you to find the people at Side by Side for me, Rachel, this Loma West person and whoever she works for. They’re spending God knows how much money on this project and the seizure-alert ability doesn’t come through. They ought to be told that, that it’s probably not an inheritable ability. They’re going to break the hearts of whoever they gave those other puppies to. And their own as well. I have to find them and tell them. You will help me, won’t you?”
    I sat there for a while, saying nothing. Then I turned and looked at Bianca, asleep behind the bench, so hidden in shadow that she looked like a gray dog, not a white one. Or was that just dirt?
    Sure, scientists had cloned a sheep, some mice, and some cows. And the South Koreans claimed to have produced the first stages of a human embryo, then they’d halted the experiment for ethical reasons. Still, this was all too fantastic to believe, that someone would be willing to spend millions to clone dogs for other people, out of the goodness of his heart.
    Or did he think that once he’d accomplished this, cloning dogs with special abilities would be worth money? Was he planning on, let’s say, cloning Morris the cat, Lassie, Benji? A triple-crown-winning racehorse? Was that it? Was it about money after all?
    “Can I think this over?” I asked, the only sensible idea I’d had all day.
    “Well, sure.” She stood and picked up Bianca’s leash from where it lay next to her on the bench. “If you feel you have to.”
    When she turned to look at me, I saw there were tears in her eyes.
    “Sophie, I...”
    “No, I understand. That vet didn’t believe the story either. He had a good laugh at my expense. When he pulled himself together, he told me cloning dogs was not commercially viable. You lose a lot of embryos, he said, and it’s very expensive. He said that either the dogs were from totally inbred strains or there was a mix-up at the lab.”
    She gently unwrapped Blanche, who I could now see was wearing the red service-dog vest. She was stiff when she stood, but her tail began to wag as soon as she was up. She was a fantastic-looking dog, that great egg head with a flush of pink along the slope of her nose where the fur was nearly negligible. The only other color, aside from the black of her nose, the dark area right under it, and her small, deepset, dark eyes, was a single black spot at the lower-outside corner of her right eye, like a smudge of mascara.
    “I’ll call you tomorrow with an answer,” I said. “I promise.”
    Sophie blinked. One tear fell.
    She called to Bianca, and when the pup lifted her head, I got to see her up close for the first time, the wondrous stand-up ears, the great, broad Roman nose, the no-frills dark eyes, and the big goofy mouth, open in a smile. And the single black spot, like an ink blot, at the lower-outside corner of her right eye. The spot was pinched in near the eye and rounded at the bottom, exactly like the one