“On what?”

In a soft, conspiratorial voice he said, “Lawyers. I ran lawyers.”

I stared at the man. My God, what audacity! And what stupidity as well. My heart sank as I thought about it. I hoped to heaven we could keep the finding secret. Otherwise, it could be the end of civilization as we know it. An outcome that had a few good points underpinning it, I’ll grant, but not enough to preserve civilization.

My phone rang, nearly startling me out of my skin. Merle pounced on it before I could even get my hand moving. “Yes.”

Then after a moment. “You’re kidding.” A long pause while he listened. “You’ve got to be kidding.” Merle’s voice had a waver to it as if he didn’t want to believe what he’d heard. I cut him off by grabbing the phone away from him.

“Jan, Karl here. Shut the machines down, box up the results and get them up here immediately. Yes, I mean immediately as in right now. Got it? Okay then.” Merle looked to be stunned and he slowly slouched back in his chair.

I replaced the receiver and sat back in my chair. How to explain the facts of life to a career scientist who had, as yet, never experienced the dark side of reality? Gently, I began, “Let me guess. Lawyers either don’t have any of the genes or, more likely, have mutated ones. Correct?”

Merle nodded once and then shook his head. “No, it’s not that. Well, I guess it is, but there’s mo—“

“—more differences. No doubt. Your discovery boils down to this, then. You can take a tissue sample from someone and after testing, know whether or not he or she should be a lawyer. Correct?”

Merle slowly nodded. He was thinking things through still. With a little luck, I could possibly save him from generating a neurosis or two. “Let me put it this way. You can tell if somebody is a blood-sucking leech of a person and likely to win lots and lots of court cases. That about the size of it?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well, we can’t let it out.” Merle looked strickened; I mean he really looked sick to his stomach. “Let me clue you, Merle. Like it or not, we need lawyers. I’d be the first one to call for the Shakespearean Solution if I thought civilization could really do without lawyers, particularly product liability ones. But we can’t. They are a necessary evil. Unfortunately. Oh how unfortunately. Worse, we shouldn’t even let this out. Because if we do, you can bet that prospective parents across the world are going to want to screen their prospective off-spring in vivo to avoid having any of the little monsters. And then where would we be?”

“A very good place?” Merle allowed, hopefully.

“Well, yes, but not in all respects. Oh, I suppose we could cut down on the number of them and eventually, I suppose that’s what your discovery will accomplish. But we have to go slow. I’m going to get in touch with some people in DC and I’m afraid we’re going to have to sit on your discovery for a while. Rough, but it can’t be helped. You can see that, can’t you?”

Merle slowly stood up and nodded his head. After a moment, he looked puzzled and asked, “Shakespearean Solution? What’s that?”