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parent.”
    “So are the rest of us. There are twenty-one kids like Hannah, that we know of so far. We’ve set up a list serve with — “
    “I’d like to be on it.”
    “Certainly. With a flag program to scan the entire Net continually for news articles, medical references, personal letters, anything that relates to this situation. One of our parents is a programmer. We come from all segments of society, since Miller offered his services nearly free as part of a ‘clinical trial.’ “
    Keith saw Barbara standing sideways, proudly showing off her non-existent stomach bulge. “This clinic is on a sliding income scale, very cheap. It’s because they’re part of some test.”
    Reeder continued, “The families are wildly different, and so are the kids. Were, I mean. Male, female, good kids, troublemakers, academics, jocks, dropouts, everything. But every single one has that same quiescent growth in the frontal lobe and that same increase in cerebral neurons of as much as twenty percent and the same PLI firing patterns. Plus, of course, all those unknown genes on chromosome six.”
    “Are they completely unknown? Don’t we know what proteins they code for?”
    “Yes, in that codons only make twenty amino acids all together,” Reeder said patiently. Keith could tell he’d given this speech to non-scientists before. “But how those twenty then combine and fold—folding is the crucial part—can result in thousands of different proteins. Also, multiple alleles at multiple loci can influence gene expression. Hannah’s extra genes don’t seem to be making any proteins at all at the moment, or none that we can detect in her bloodstream.
    “But remember, Keith, that if the brain cells are making proteins to induce the trance Hannah and Lillie are in, the proteins or neurotransmitters or whatever is responsible may be found only in the brain, contained by the blood-brain barrier. Sixty percent of all messenger RNAs are expressed in the brain at some point. However, there’s nothing odd that we could detect in Hannah’s cerebrospinal fluid, either.”
    Keith sat quietly, trying to absorb it all.
    Reeder poured himself a second drink. “But of course genes do other things as well, including form the fetus. Presumably some of those extra genes are responsible for the anomalies in Hannah’s and Lillie’s brains.”
    “So Miller, when he was doing the in vitro fertilization, did he―”
    “No. Not possible,” Reeder said, and that made the third doctor who had said that to Keith. Yet here the impossibilities were, in the form of twenty-one children.
    “Inserting specific genes in specific places in the human genome is really difficult,” Reeder said. “And thirteen years ago we knew even less. The inserted genes have a way of splicing themselves into unsuitable locations, disrupting other working genes. Also, the transpons and retroviruses that were the means of delivering genes into an embryo twelve years ago could never have carried as big a gene load as this. That Miller could have accomplished that—not to mention designing the genes in the first place!—with identical results for at least twenty-one babies, isn’t possible. I don’t care how much of a genius he was. The techniques just didn’t, and don’t, exist.”
    Keith knew he was going to make a fool of himself. “What if it wasn’t Miller’s science? What if he got it, spelled out step by step, from elsewhere?”
    “From where?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Reeder frowned. “No other country is that far ahead of us, if that’s what you’re thinking. Genetic information is shared internationally.”
    “Not another country.”
    Linda Reeder spoke for the first time. “What are you hinting at?”
    “I’m not hinting, only speculating. Somebody knew a lot more genetics than we do. Aliens?”
    They both stared at him. Linda rose abruptly. “I better check on Hannah.” She strode from the room, every line of her body scornful.
    “I know