Mount Dragon (8 page)

At precisely two minutes to three in the afternoon, Charles Levine opened his door and ushered a young woman, clad in jeans and sweatshirt, back into his outer office.

“Thank you, Ms. Fields,” he said, smiling. “We'll let you know if anything opens up for next term.”

As the student turned to leave, Levine checked his watch. “That's it, right, Ray?” he said, turning to his secretary.

With an effort, Ray shifted his eyes from Ms. Fields's departing ass to the open appointment book on his desk. He smoothed his hand over his immaculate Buddy Holly haircut, his fingers dropping to scratch the heavily muscled chest beneath the sleeveless red T-shirt. “That's it, Dr. Levine,” he said.

“Any messages? Sheriff's deputies bearing summonses? Offers of marriage?”

Ray grinned and waited until the outer door closed before answering. “Borucki called twice. Apparently that pharmaceutical company in Little Rock was unimpressed with last month's article. They're suing for libel.”

“How much?”

Ray shrugged. “A million.”

“Tell our legal friends to take the usual steps.” Levine turned away. “No interruptions, Ray.”

“Right.”

Levine closed the door.

 

With his notoriety as Foundation for Genetic Policy spokesman growing, Levine found it increasingly difficult to maintain a routine existence as professor of theoretical genetics. The nature of the foundation made it a lightning rod for a certain kind of student: lonely, idealistic, in need of a burning cause. It also made him and his office the target of a great deal of anger from business concerns.

When his former secretary quit after receiving a number of threatening phone calls, Levine took two precautionary steps. He had a new lock installed on his office door, and he hired Ray. Ray's office skills left a lot to be desired. But as an ex-Navy SEAL discharged because of a heart murmur, he was very good at keeping things peaceful. Ray seemed to spend most of his nonworking hours chasing women, but at the office he was serenely indifferent to all forms of intimidation, and for that alone Levine found him indispensable.

The heavy bolt of the lock slid home with reassuring finality. Levine tugged at the doorknob, then, satisfied, moved quickly between piles of term papers, scientific journals, and back issues of
Genetic Policy
to his desk. The affable, easygoing air he had maintained during his consultation hours quickly dissipated. Clearing the center of the desk with a sweep of his hand, he tugged his computer keyboard into typing range. Then he dug into a pocket of his briefcase and pulled out a black object the size of a cigarette box. A slender length of gray cable dangled from one end. Leaning forward in his chair, Levine disconnected his telephone, plugged the phone line into one end of the black box, and inserted the slender gray cable into the back panel of his laptop computer.

Even before his single-minded crusade to regulate genetic engineering made his name a foul word in a dozen top labs around the world, Levine had learned hard lessons about security. The black box was a dedicated cryptographic device for scrambling computer transmissions over telephone lines. Using proprietary public-key algorithms far more sophisticated than the DES standard, it was supposedly uncrackable even by government supercomputers. Mere possession of such devices was of questionable legality. But Levine had been an active member of the student antiwar underground before graduating from U.C. Irvine in 1971. He was no stranger to using unorthodox or even illegal methods to achieve his ends.

Levine switched on his PC, drumming his fingers on the desktop while the machine booted itself into consciousness. Typing rapidly, he brought up the communications program that would dial out over the phone lines to another computer, and another user. A very special user.

He waited while the call was rerouted, then rerouted again across the telephone long lines, threading a complex, untraceable path. At last, the call was answered by the hiss of another modem. There was a shrill squealing noise as the two computers negotiated; then Levine's screen dissolved into a now-familiar image: a figure, dressed in mime's costume, balancing the earth on one fingertip. Almost immediately the log-in device disappeared, and words appeared on Levine's screen: disembodied, as if typed by a ghost.

The screen went blank.

John Singer's office, which occupied the southwest corner of the administration building, was more living room than director's suite. A kiva fireplace was built into one corner, surrounded by a sofa and two leather wing chairs. Against one wall was an antique Mexican
trastero
, on which sat a battered Martin guitar and an untidy stack of sheet music. A Two Gray Hills Navajo rug lay on the floor, and the walls were lined with nineteenth-century prints of the American frontier, including six Bodmer images of Mandan and Hidatsa Indians on the Upper Missouri. There was no desk—only a computer workstation and telephone.

The windows looked over the Jornada desert, where the dirt road wandered off toward infinity. Sun streamed in the tinted window and across the room, filling it with light.

Carson seated himself in one of the leather chairs while Singer moved to a small bar on the far side of the room.

“Anything to drink?” he asked. “Beer, wine, martini, juice?”

Carson glanced at his watch. It was 11:45
A.M.
His stomach still felt a little queasy. “I'll have some juice.”

Singer returned with a glass of Cranapple in one hand and a martini in the other. He settled back on the sofa and propped his feet up on the table. “I know,” he said, “drinking before noon. Very bad. But this is a special occasion.” He raised his glass. “To X-FLU.”

“X-FLU,” Carson muttered. “That's what Brandon-Smith said killed the chimp.”

“Correct,” Singer took a sip, exhaling contentedly.

“Forgive my bluntness,” said Carson, “but I'd really like to know what this project is all about. I still can't understand why Mr. Scopes chose me out of—what—five thousand scientists? And why did I have to drop everything, get my ass out here on five minutes' notice?”

Singer settled back. “Let me start at the beginning. Are you familiar with an animal called a bonobo?”

“No.”

“We used to call them pygmy chimpanzees until we realized they were a completely different species. Bonobos are even closer to human beings than the more common lowland chimps. They are more intelligent, form monogamous relationships, and share ninety-nine-point-two percent of our DNA. Most importantly, they get all our diseases. Except one.”

He paused, sipped his drink.

“They don't get the flu. All other chimps, as well as gorillas and orangs, get the flu. But not the bonobo. This fact came to Brent's attention about ten months ago. He sent us several bonobos, and we did some genetic sequencing. Let me show you what we discovered.”

Singer opened a notebook lying on the coffee table, moving aside a malachite egg to make room. Inside, the sheets of paper were covered with strings of letters in complex ladder-like arrangements.

“The bonobo has a gene that makes it immune to influenza. Not just one or two strains, but
all
sixty known varieties. We've named it the X-FLU gene.”

Carson examined the printout. It was a short gene, going only to several hundred base pairs.

“How does the gene work?” Carson asked.

Singer smiled. “We don't really know. It would take years to figure it out. But Brent hypothesized that if we could insert this gene into human DNA, it would render humans immune to flu, as well. The initial in vitro tests we performed bore this out.”

“Interesting,” Carson replied.

“I'll say. Take the gene out of the bonobo, and insert it into yourself. Presto, you never get the flu again.” Singer leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Guy, how much do you know about the flu?”

Carson hesitated. He actually knew quite a bit. But Singer didn't seem the type who'd appreciate a braggart. “Not as much as I should. People are too complacent about it, for one thing.”

Singer nodded. “That's right. People tend to think of it as a nuisance. But it's not a nuisance. It's one of the worst viral diseases in the world. Even today, a million people die annually from the flu. It remains one of the top ten causes of death in the United States. During flu season, one
quarter
of the population falls ill. And that's in a good year. People forget that the swine flu epidemic of 1918 killed one person out of fifty worldwide. That was the worst pandemic in recorded history, worse than the Black Death. And it happened
in this century
. If it happened again today, we'd be almost as helpless now as we were then.”

“Truly virulent flu mutations can kill in hours,” Carson said. “But—”

“Just one moment, Guy. That word,
mutation
, is key. The serious pandemics occur when the flu virus undergoes significant mutation. It's already happened three times this century, most recently with the Hong Kong flu in 1968. We're overdue—we're
ripe
—for another pandemic right now.”

“And because the coating of the viral particle keeps mutating,” Carson said, “there's no permanent vaccine. A flu shot is just a cocktail of three or four strains, a guess on the part of epidemiologists as to what strain might be coming along in the next six months. Correct? They could guess wrong and you'd be just as sick.”

Singer smiled. “Very good, Guy. We're well aware of the work you did with flu viruses at MIT. That's part of the reason we chose you.”

He finished his drink with a short hard gulp. “One thing you may not have been aware of was that the world economy loses almost one
trillion
dollars a year in unrealized productivity to the flu.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Here's something else you may not know: the flu causes an estimated two hundred thousand birth defects annually. When a pregnant woman gets a fever above a hundred and four degrees, all kinds of developmental hell can break loose in the womb.”

He inhaled slowly. “Guy, we're working on the last great medical advancement of the twentieth century. And now you're a part of it. You see, with the X-FLU gene inserted into his body, a human being will be immune to all strains of the flu. Forever. What's more, his children will inherit the immunity.”

Carson slowly put down his drink and looked at Singer.

“Jesus,” he said. “You mean, a gene therapy aimed at reproductive cells?”

“That's right. We're going to alter the germ cell line of the human race permanently. And you, Guy, are central to this effort.”

“But my work with influenza was just preliminary,” Carson said. “My main focus was elsewhere.”

“I know,” Singer replied. “Bear with me a moment longer. Our major obstacle has been getting the X-FLU gene into human DNA. It has to be done, of course, using a virus.”