Little Deadly Things (24 page)

Eva pushed on. “First of all, just to be accurate, there is no cure for lactose intolerance. Nobody ever thought it was important enough. Sure, you can spray an enzyme onto your food. Add lactase to the production. But those remedies are afterthoughts. Billions in ice cream sales alone and nobody thought to cash in? Wake up, Plant Lady. NMech rolls out a nice little consumer nanoapp that builds the enzyme. An effective remedy. And it’s over-the-counter so that we don’t get stuck in trials for years. Dammit, everybody likes ice cream and nobody wants gas. So we fix it. We go to market. We make money. Then you take part of the profit and go cure something. Anything. Whatever you like. That’ll be your baby. But public health is a big investment and I’m not going hat in hand to some waste-of-skin bureaucrat for funding.”

There was a long silence. Eva started to speak but Marta held up her hand to stop the woman’s comments. The gesture was invisible, but Eva stopped in mid-sentence as if she were standing next to her.

Marta considered Eva’s explanation. At last, she spoke again. “Eva, where did you get the idea for this?”

“From you.”

“From me? I never spoke about lactose intolerance,” Marta said. “Didn’t say you did.”

“Then why do say you got it from me?”

Eva was silent. Marta waited. At last, she understood Eva’s cryptic comments and flushed. “Oh my god. Why didn’t you say something to me then?” When Eva didn’t answer, Marta blurted out, “Was it bad?”

“Uh-huh,” Eva said, stretching out the two syllables into simultaneous rebuke and exoneration. “Between you and Dana, when he needed to be changed, well, let’s just be ladies about it and say that Mother Nature has an odd sense of humor.”

“But that lab was tiny. It must have been... “Marta trailed off, embarrassed.

“Marta? You had enough on your mind back then. You had Dana. You weren’t getting much sleep. And you were pissed about your dataslate and barely civil to me. And besides, I’m not big on girltalk. You think
I
can find a diplomatic way to bring it up? Uh, no. Not my style. You liked your afternoon scoop from Toscanini’s. Plain vanilla ice cream, as I recall. But an hour later? Ewww. Gas. Every day. I never got used to it.”

“Oh, my god,” Marta repeated.

“But I can tell you one thing,” Eva said.

“What’s that?”

“If you still like your afternoon scoop? Then you’re going to be our first customer.”

Six months later, NMech released its first consumer product, Easy-Milk, every bit the success Eva predicted. They followed up with FreeSkin, a nanoagent complexion cream that targeted acne in teens and young adults. It was an even greater success. Nine months after the release of EasyMilk, before NMech went public and started Eva on the path to becoming the world’s wealthiest women, Eva delivered on her promise to fund medicine in the public interest. The uneasy alliance had worked.

Eva, Marta, and Jim met in the NMech boardroom. In keeping with Eva’s decorating sensibilities, the room was stark to the point of barrenness. A large oval cherry wood table dominated the room. The floor-to-ceiling drapes were set to a blood-red velvet, one that gave the room the look of an abattoir.

Marta subvocalized a command to the room’s pillar and the nanofiber drapes reorganized into calm green linen. Eva turned at the change and stared at Marta. Marta smiled.

“I just set the drapes. I like red,” said Eva.

“Well, good morning to you, too. Let’s have something with some life in it. I feel like I’m walking into a whorehouse.”

The two scientists regarded each other. Tension and the occasional contretemps seemed to be a permanent part of their friendship.

Jim walked in, too late to have heard the interchange. “Ladies, I feel like celebrating. Okay if I change the drapes to something festive?” Eva rolled her eyes and Marta managed a chuckle as Jim selected a display that depicted every recognized breed of dog. Marta took in Jim’s decorating sensibilities and lowered her eyes.

“Isn’t that better?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, Jim, very classy,” Eva said. Then she subvocalized.

The image shifted again and the room darkened as the drapes morphed to a black velvet. In place of Jim’s bright array of proud canines, Eva had substituted the image of a popular though gaudy painting. Seven dogs sat around a green felt table littered with poker chips and cards. Each had a highball glass half-full of melting ice and whiskey. A collie on the left side of the table held her cards close to her chest. Opposite her, a terrier with a worried expression stared at his hand. The black Dane smoking a pipe looked smug and the bulldog held an ace in his left hind paw out of sight, below the table. A small brown dog with its back to the viewer appeared to be winning.

Marta and Jim looked up at each other and Marta subvocalized. The drapes returned to Eva’s crimson.

Point and match to Eva Rozen.

Eva’s public health proposal surprised them. “I’ve got a great plan for public health.”

“Are we going to talk about it?” asked Marta.

“What’s to talk? I have a plan.”

“I’d like to have a say in what disease we choose.”

“Who said anything about disease?”

Marta’s temper flared. “Eva, you gave your word.”

“Yup.”

“And now you’re saying we’re not going to work on a disease? No medicine?”

“What’s so important about fabricating a medicine?” Eva, the Provocateur.

“What’s so important?” Marta exploded. “Our whole point in joining you was to give help to the people who couldn’t afford medicine.” Marta, The Crusader.

“Wrong.”

“You want to explain what you mean before I walk out the door?”

“Sure. You said public health. You, dear tolerant lady who always speaks so sweetly and never jumps to conclusions, are going to get public health. But nobody said we had to do pharmaceutical fabrication. It might not be too hard to assemble, but FDA trials and regulations would tie up our resources for years.”

“So, what? You’re going to give us an even better cure for gas?”

“Very funny. How about clean water?”

“What?” Marta and Jim said simultaneously.

“Yep. Good ol’ H
₂
O.”

Marta and Jim froze. Eva displayed a rare smile. She subvocalized and smiled again, and, in an uncharacteristic display, she laughed. Eva, the Surprising.

Marta did a double-take. Eva chuckling? Public health was momentarily relegated to an afterthought. “What’s so funny?” Marta asked, incredulous now, rather than incensed.

“The looks on your faces. Priceless. I recorded it so I can watch it again whenever I need a bit of comic relief. Now let’s think big, shall we?”

“Infectious disease isn’t big? Fifty-five million deaths a year?”

“More like seventy million—a lot of it is uncounted,” Eva said. “But one-quarter of the world doesn’t have clean water. That’s over two
billion
people who are thirsty.” Eva stood and paced, hands clasped behind her back. Her shoulders hunched forward and she looked even smaller than her four-foot, four-inch frame. Her pale skin was a stark contrast to her black nanosilk cargo pants. She paused, and then turned suddenly. Eva chuckling, and now dramatic gestures? Jim and Marta stood spellbound, mouths agape at her sudden animation.

“And you think it’s bad now? We’re just beginning a cycle of even more severe water shortages, thanks to droughts from climate change, from over-pumping of underground aquifers and from relaxing clean water standards. Then there are all the construction practices that pollute drinking water.” Eva, the Jeremiah.

She held Marta’s gaze. “Compare clean water with inventing a new drug. Want to spin your wheels with FDA trials? And nobody’s mentioned patent issues. What if our fabbed meds are indistinguishable from another company’s test tube version? Suppose we assemble a drug someone else claims is theirs? You want to spend a decade with litigators over who owns the rights to what?”

“Come on, let’s focus on what we can deploy immediately. There’s a real need, Marta. Not to mention the commercial applications. I mean, if we happen to make a profit later on, would that be okay with you two Samaritans? Not to mention the publicity we’ll generate.”

“Eva, you are the most exasperating person I know.” Jim, the Peacemaker. His voice was couched in tones of admiration.

“Just exasperating, Jim? Come on, say it: I’m the smartest, most wonderful person alive, and you worship the ground upon which I tread.”

“Smartest, no question. Worship? Got to give that title to my wife and my son. But you are my oldest and dearest friend and I regard the ground upon which you walk on as something close to a national treasure. How’s that?”

Eva said nothing. She felt warmth suffuse her—she was touched by Jim’s affirmation of their friendship. She flushed.

So did Marta, the Insecure.

There was an uneasy moment as the atmosphere in the boardroom changed, like the stillness before a thunderstorm.

Marta drew a breath. “Do you have something specific in mind?” she asked, refocusing on the project.

“You ever know me to be unprepared?” Eva snapped and then continued without waiting for a response. “There’s a water desalinization project in Venezuela that’s perfect for us,” She subvocalized and the room’s pillar projected a globe onto the conference table. An image of the Americas and the Caribbean faced them.

“What are we looking at?” asked Jim.

Eva zoomed in. “This is the Paraguaná Peninsula of northern Venezuelá, on the Caribbean coast. There’s a desalinization plant there that keeps people in Central America and the Caribbean from dying of thirst. The plant can’t keep up with the demand anymore.”

“How old is the plant?” asked Marta.

“It went online twenty years ago.”

“Why can’t it produce enough fresh water for the region?”

“First of all, it wasn’t designed to be the primary source of water. The principal source of fresh water in the Caribbean is rainwater, which is scarce during the best of times. After twelve years of the NAMSEA drought, reservoirs and emergency supplies are exhausted.” Eva referred to the twelve-year water shortage that desiccated much of North America, the Mediterranean and Southeast Asia—hence the name, NAMSEA.

Marta asked, “How bad is NAMSEA? Compared, say, to the Sahel drought?”

“Which Sahel drought? 1910?” Eva asked, “The 1940s? 1960s? Or do you mean the 1970s? 1980s? 2000s?”

Marta frowned. “Uh, the bad one, I guess.”

“The 1970s drought is the one most people think of. About 100,000 people died and millions were left homeless. That one?”

Marta nodded, still staring into holographic display.

“That drought was severe—for its time. The PDSI rating was bad, but not as bad as we’re going to see,” said Eva.

“PDSI?” Marta asked.

“Palmer Drought Severity Index. A zero means no drought, average rainfall and water table levels. Negative scores go higher as droughts increase. Sahel measured about a -4 on the PDSI scale. Right now, NAMSEA is running about -6, depending on where you measure it. Two years ago, you had water riots that killed over 20,000 people in cities across the Caribbean. We’re starting to see dust storms like the 1930s. The dust smothers vegetation and destroys machinery. It shears off the arable topsoil. Not so good for agriculture.” Eva paused and then continued, “Put it this way, I wouldn’t put the Caribbean on my next vacation itinerary.”