Prophet of Bones Read Free Page B

genes, the stable elements through which God provided for the transport of heritable characteristics from one generation to the next.
    Paul did research and found that the pigmentation loci of mice were well mapped and well understood. He categorized his population by phenotype and found one mouse, a pale, dark-eyed cream, that must have been a triple recessive: bb, dd, ee. Three gene pairs lining up in just the right way, each diluting the coat pigmentation by a certain quantum, until you were left with a mouse with almost no coat pigment at all. But not an albino, because albinos had red eyes.
    In November the school sent home an announcement about the science fair, which would be held in the spring.
    “Are you going to participate?” his mother asked him as she signed the parental notification.
    Paul shrugged. “If I can think of something,” he said. He knew instantly that his mice were the answer, though he wasn’t sure how exactly.
    It wasn’t enough to just have them, to observe them, to run the Punnett squares. He’d need to do real science. He’d need to do something new. And because real scientists used microscopes and electronic scales, Paul asked for these things for Christmas. His parents were pleased with his sudden analytical interest and bought him what he asked for.
    But mice, Paul quickly discovered, did not readily yield themselves to microscopy. They tended to climb down from the stand.
    The electronic scale, however, proved useful. Paul weighed every mouse and kept meticulous records. He considered developing his own inbred strain—a line with some combination of distinctive characteristics—but he wasn’t sure what characteristics to look for. He imagined that his special new strain would be useful to science someday, a genetic model destined to play a role in some far-future discovery, but he didn’t know where to start.
    He imagined winning the science fair. He imagined his father proud of him, clapping him on the shoulder with his big hand.
    Paul was going over his notebook when he saw it. January-17. Not a date but a mouse, January-17. The seventeenth mouse born in January.
    He went to the cage and opened the door. A flash of sandy fur, and he snatched it up by its tail—a brindle specimen with large ears. Over the previous several months he’d become good at handling the mice. It was a knack you picked up without realizing it—the ability to hold the mice softly, so that you didn’t hurt them, and yet firmly, so they couldn’t get away. This mouse was not particularly fast or hard to catch. There was nothing obviously special about it. It was rendered different from the other mice only by the mark in his notebook. Paul looked at the mark, looked at the number he’d written there.
    Of the more than ninety mice in his notebook, January-17 was, by two full grams, the largest mouse he’d ever weighed.
    *   *   *
    In school they taught him that through science you could decipher the truest meaning of God’s word. God wrote the language of life in four letters: A, T, C, and G. A family of proteins called AAA + initiated DNA replication, genetic structures conserved across all forms of life, from men to archaebacteria—the very calling card of the great designer.
    That’s not why Paul did it, though: to get closer to God. He did it because he was curious.
    It was late winter before his father asked him what he spent all his time doing in the attic.
    “Just messing around,” Paul answered.
    They were in his father’s car, on the way home from piano lessons. “Your mother said you built something up there.”
    Paul fought back a surge of panic. The lie came quickly, unbidden. “I built a fort a while ago.”
    Paul’s father glanced down at him. “What kind of fort?”
    “Just a few pieces of plywood and a couple blankets. Just a little fort.”
    “You’re almost twelve now. Aren’t you getting a little old for forts?”
    “Yeah, I guess I am.”
    “I don’t want you