The Deep Read Online Free PDF Page B

it—?”
    “Breathing?” Clayton said. “No. Doug’s muscles have grown through the new tissue. When its body twitches, so does the nose.”
    “What . . . what are you going to do with him?”
    Clayton shrugged, as if he hadn’t thought about it. He’d accomplished his goal—outdoing Dr. Vacanti. Now Doug existed. But what did the world want with a mouse with a nose on its back?
    Squeals came from under the lab bench. Luke noticed another tub.
    “What’s in there?” he asked.
    “Oh, that’s just Ernie.”
    Luke reached down and pulled the tub out. Clayton made no move to stop him. For a long moment, Luke’s eyes couldn’t register what they were seeing.
    “Oh no . . . oh . . .”
    The single mouse—could it really be called that anymore?—in the tub was hairless, its body as pink as the skin under a scab. Ernie’s legs . . . it had no legs. Three nubs projected from the bloat of its body—it was as if its legs had melted into scarified bulbs of flesh. One of its ears was normal, but the other tapered into a whip of flesh: its misplaced tail, the one that should’ve rightly been growing at the back of its body.
    “Clay . . . oh God what . . .”
    A pink, misshapen sac hung off Ernie’s side. It was sheer as a bat’s wing; tiny capillaries braided over its surface. Under this greasy stretching of skin, Luke could see the torpid movements of Ernie’s guts: itsstomach quivering, its intestines shuddering. The foreign structure was vaguely peaked, and there were two shallow divots on one side.
    “The nose didn’t hold its integrity,” Clayton explained clinically. “The cellular walls broke down, its insides migrating into the new structure. And . . . other structural collapses. You wouldn’t understand.”
    Ernie pulled itself in a lopsided circle using a smooth hook of skin that projected from its sternum. It dragged itself to a pile of food pellets and dipped its tubelike mouth to eat. The squeals became slurps, which switched back to squeals when it couldn’t get the pellets into its toothless mouth.
    “I’ve been crushing the pellets up,” Clayton said. “So Ernie can eat.”
    “Why? Why is it still alive?”
    “I don’t know,” Clayton said honestly. “Organisms are tough. They do not want to expire. But don’t worry. I was able to harvest tissue from Ernie and used it on Doug. And Doug worked .”
    Luke noticed the plugs of flesh that Clay had carved from the deformed mouse’s flanks. Seedlings from which Doug could grow. That was how Clayton saw things: as workable premises, or simply one of many faltering steps toward that workable premise. And Ernie belonged on Clayton’s blooper reel.
    Luke cupped Ernie in his hands. The mouse-thing mewled and shuddered.
    “I’m taking it,” said Luke.
    Clayton shrugged. “I don’t need it anymore.”
    Luke filled a bucket with water from the hose and drowned Ernie on the porch. It seemed the quickest, most painless way. He buried Ernie in the garden. While he was digging the hole, still backhanding tears from his eyes, he’d seen Clay staring at him from the basement window, his face set in a bemused and slightly scornful expression.
    “Yes, of course,” Luke told Felz after a long pause. “I remember what Clayton did with that mouse.”
    Clayton’s miracle mouse had set off a furor in the scientific community and soon, the media. Clayton was feted in some circles, demonizedin others. Over the next year the press coined a number of monikers, from “Kid Frankenstein” to “Cute Clay” on account of his striking good looks (he remains the only scientist to grace the pages of Tiger Beat and Bop magazines, which dispatched photographers to snap him coming and going from his house) to “Jonas Sulk,” for his moodiness with reporters. Clayton was approached by the heads of several major medical institutions; they pursued him with the ardor of a blue-chip athletic recruit, offering full run of their facilities. He