Catnip Read Free Page A

just once, ” he wailed when he got home.
    Father and son sat in the kitchen and the
elder Goldman carefully applied the bandages. Job over, he put the
materials down and for the first time in what seemed like forever
he got angry and gave his son a baleful stare. “You’re not cut out
to be the next street fighter. That much is clear. But you can
fight back in different ways. You’d better learn how. I can’t keep
patching you up forever.”
    He strode out of the room and left Harry to
search for the truth in his own way. Harry sat back on the chair
and gently fingered the wounds. So I can’t fight worth spit and I
can’t run fast, he thought. What else can I do?
    You can fight back in different ways. In his case, science came to the rescue. His father happened to be
one of the foremost transgenic researchers in the United States.
His specialty lay in cross-breeding fruits and vegetables for
greater hardiness and growth. His company, a private pharmaceutical
company named Leader Drugs, Inc., was located in the greater
downtown Portland area. His mother also worked there as a
chemist.
    For Harry, both fields meant more than their
names indicated. Chemistry to most other people involved simply
mixing chemicals in a beaker. To him, it meant creating something
that could help solve people’s problems.
    As for transgenic research, when he got his
first look at a real lab at the age of eight, the shiny
centrifuges, the electron microscopes, the thermal cyclers, the DNA
probes and the electric fields and dyes used, he lost his breath
for a second. In the same way another guy lusted after a beautiful
girl, he lusted after those machines.
    Using them, he observed the materials used to
create and shape and mold the human condition, and when he saw his
first DNA helix it was like he’d discovered the secret of the
universe. He realized this chain, this strand that held everything
he was, everything everyone was, could be manipulated and
altered into something special.
    But first, he had to deal with the everyday
facts of life, like survival. An extremely large and fat kid named
Bob Hospers used him for target practice daily before school
started and then would walk off as if nothing had happened. On an
everyday Wednesday after his umpteenth ass-kicking, Harry snapped.
Call it an epiphany or whatever you wanted, he’d had enough.
    He went to the bathroom, washed the blood off
his face, and then doused his shirt and pants with a powder he’d
whipped up at home. After entering his homeroom, he walked over to
the desk where Fat Bob sat. The kid looked up and smirked. “Whatta
you want?”
    Harry slapped him hard across his mouth and
the other kids eagerly looked on. Massacre time at Hell High! “Go
ahead, fatso, it’s time for round two,” he dared.
    The bully did not take kindly to being
punked. Face red, he jumped up, grabbed Harry and hip-tossed him to
the floor. The smaller boy went along with it and lay on the
ground, arms spread out.
    Predictably, Bob sat on his chest and grinned
at the other kids in triumph. “Aren’t you gonna try hard, punk?” he
crowed to his victim. “You gotta get up first.”
    Harry remained curiously quiet and forced
himself to fashion an equally enigmatic answer so as not to spoil
the surprise. “Don’t have to.”
    He didn’t. Bob suddenly jumped up,
frantically scratched his butt and his face. His fingernails scored
deep gashes in his skin while the other kids screamed for the
teacher to do something. “It’s burning me!” he cried and ran out of
the classroom. Everyone heard his screams from down the
hallway.
    While the other students got the proverbial WTH look on their faces, Harry simply glared back at them.
Yeah, make way for the master, he thought. He walked out of the
classroom, over to his locker, and after collecting his textbooks
he waited calmly in the hallway. It was just a matter of time
before…
    “Goldman, get over here!”
    The voice belonged to Principal Morgan.