Read Online Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan - Free Book Online Page A

Know what's in it?"
     
    "It's not water?"
     
    "It's half water, half vodka. The bottle next to it is twenty-five percent vodka. They'll go to that one if the end one is empty. The third bottle contains ten percent vodka, and the fourth is pure water. If there's anything in the other bottles, they won't touch the water. What they have there is a self-service bar, and they operate it themselves."
     
    "What about the ones in this cage?" Paula asked, indicating the one on the second tier. "They seem livelier. Are they alcoholics too?"
     
    "Watch and see," Fran said. The two girls sat silent a moment, intent upon the performance of the animals. Then Fran asked, "Well?"
     
    "They're drinking from the water bottle. That is, unless you've changed the order."
     
    "No, that's straight water, all right. This is my control group. They can't stand alcohol. I think they'd die of thirst before they'd take a swig of half-and-half. What I'm proving, Paula"—Fran's eyes were shining with excitement—"is that the tendency toward alcoholism is genetically inherited."
     
    "You mean somebody with an alcoholic father or mother has a better chance of being alcoholic himself than the average person?" Paula frowned, trying to understand. "I thought that had already been proven. Didn't Mr. Carncross say something about it in class?"
     
    "Yes," Fran said, "but he made a very definite distinction between heredity and environment. He said that children growing up in a family where heavy drinking is common are more likely to drink as adults than kids who grow up in a family of nondrinkers. His idea, though, is that it's for psychological reasons. The kids get used to seeing liquor around the house and seeing people drink it when they're having a good time. It's an accepted part of their lives. But if a child of alcoholic parents is separated from them at birth and is adopted into a nondrinking family, Mr. Carncross thinks he'd have no more tendency toward alcoholism than anybody else.
     
    "That's what I'm challenging. My theory is that the compulsive desire for alcohol is not psychological but physical. It's in the genes. You can pass it down from generation to generation, like curly hair or brown eyes. That's what I'm proving with my experiment."
     
    "But, how—" Paula began.
     
    "I ran through a lot of rats the month I started," Fran told her. "I had them in a cage with my bottles, and almost all of them drank the water, but there were a couple who liked the water with the ten percent vodka. I put those in a separate cage and bred them, and out of a couple of litters there were a few who liked the ten percent stuff and a couple who went for the twenty-five percent. I got rid of the water drinkers, and bred the heavier drinkers to each other. I kept doing that until—behold—my alcoholic generation!"
     
    "That's incredible," Paula said.
     
    "You're darned right it's incredible!" Fran gestured toward the second cage. "Those are the descendants of the nondrinkers. I've kept records on all of them. And those two sectioned cages are for breeding. I'm so excited about it, Paula—the way it's all working out—it's revolutionary! It'll set those science writers on their ears!"
     
    "How do you suppose Mr. Carncross will take it?" Paula asked. "Won't he be sort of set back to have you go out and prove the stuff he's been telling us in class is wrong?"
     
    "Oh, I don't think so," Fran said. "He's a pretty cool guy. Besides, that's what the field of science is all about—breaking through old beliefs and proving new things. That's why it's so challenging and why it means so much to me to win that scholarship."
     
    "You'll win it," Paula said with certainty. "How could you miss!"
     
    "I've got to admit, I feel like that myself. And you can see why I can't risk the health of these guys by keeping them out in a cold garage?"
     
    "Of course!"
     
    "Though with the amount of booze this one batch gulps down, they probably wouldn't feel the cold."