Darwin's Radio

  A short woman with a round pretty face brought their food and laid chopsticks beside their plates. When she left, Packer continued, “You think they’ve done a tissue match in Innsbruck and just won’t release the results?”

  Mitch nodded. “It’s so far out there, as an idea, that nobody is saying a thing. It’s an incredible long shot. Look, I don’t want to belabor . . . I don’t want to drag you down with all the details. Just give me a chance to find out whether I’m right or wrong. I’m probably so wrong I should start a new career in asphalt management. But . . . I was there, Wendell.”

  Packer looked around the restaurant, pushed aside the chopsticks, ladled a few spoons of hot pepper sauce onto his plate, and stuck a fork into his curried pork and rice. Around a mouthful, he said, “If I let you audit some classes, will you sit way in the back?”

  “I’ll stand outside the door,” Mitch said.

  “I was joking,” Packer said. “I think.”

  “I know you were,” Mitch said, smiling. “Now I’m going to ask just one more favor.”

  Packer lifted his eyebrows. “You’re pushing it, Mitch.”

  “Do you have any postdocs working on SHEVA?”

  “You bet,” Packer said. “The CDC has a research coordination program and we’ve signed on. You see all the women wearing gauze masks on campus? We’d like to help shine a little reason on this whole thing. You know . . . Reason?” He stared pointedly at Mitch.

  Mitch pulled out his two glass vials. “These are very precious to me,” he said. “I do not want to lose them.” He held them out in his palm. They clinked softly together, their contents like two little snips of beef jerky.

  Packer put down his fork. “What are they?”

  “Neandertal tissue. One from the male, one from the female.”

  Packer stopped chewing.

  “How much of them would you need?” Mitch asked.

  “Not much,” Packer said around his mouthful of rice. “If I was going to do anything.”

  Mitch waggled his hand and the vials slowly back and forth.

  “If I were to trust you,” Packer added.

  “I have to trust you,” Mitch said.

  Packer squinted at the fogged windows, the kids still milling outside, laughing and smoking their cigarettes.

  “Test them for what . . . SHEVA?”

  “Or something like SHEVA.”

  “Why? What has SHEVA got to do with evolution?”

  Mitch tapped the newspaper articles. “It would explain all this talk about the devil’s children. Something very unusual is happening. I think it’s happened before, and I found the evidence.”

  Packer wiped his mouth thoughtfully. “I absolutely do not believe this.” He lifted the vials from Mitch’s hand, stared at them closely. “They’re so damned old. Three years ago, two of my postdocs did a research project on mitochondrial DNA sequences from Neandertal bone tissue. All that remained were fragments.”

  “Then you can confirm these are the real thing,” Mitch said. “Dried out, degraded, but probably complete.”

  Packer gently set the vials on the table. “Why should I do this? Just because we’re friends?”

  “Because if I’m right, it’s going to be the biggest scientific discovery of our time. We may finally learn how evolution works.”

  Packer removed his wallet and took out a twenty. “I’m paying,” he said. “Big discoveries make me very nervous.”

  Mitch looked at him in dismay.

  “Oh, I’ll do it,” Packer said grimly. “But only because I’m an idiot and a sucker. No more favors, please, Mitch.”

  31

  The National Institutes of Health, Bethesda

  Cross and Dicken sat opposite each other at the broad table in a small executive conference room in the Natcher Building, and Kaye sat beside Cross. Dicken fiddled with a pen, staring down at the table like a nervous little boy.

  “When’s Mark going to make his grand entrance?” Cross asked.

  Dicken looked up and grinned. “I’d give him five minutes. Maybe less. He’s not very happy about this.”

  Cross picked her teeth with a long chipped fingernail.

  “The only thing you don’t have lots of is time, right?” Dicken asked.

  Cross smiled politely.

  “It doesn’t seem that long since Georgia,” Kaye said, just to make conversation.

  “Not long at all,” Dicken said.

  “You met in Georgia?” Cross asked.

  “Just briefly,” Dicken said. Before the conversation could go any further, Augustine entered. He wore an expensive gray suit that was showing a little wrinkling at the back and around the knees. He had been in a good many conferences today, Kaye guessed.

  Augustine shook hands with Cross and sat. He clasped his hands loosely in front of him. “So, Marge, this is a done deal? You’ve got Kaye and we have to share?”

  “Nothing’s final yet,” Cross said cheerfully. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  Augustine was not convinced. “What do we get out of it?”

  “Nothing you probably wouldn’t have gotten anyway, Mark,” Cross said. “We can work out the larger features of the picture now, and pencil in the details later.”

  Augustine colored a little, clamped his jaw for a moment, then said, “I do love bargaining. What do we actually need from Americol?”

  “This evening I’ll be having dinner with three Republican senators,” Cross said. “Bible Belt types. They don’t much care what I do, so long as I attend their little fund-raisers. I’ll explain to them why I think the Taskforce and the whole research establishment should get even more money, and why we should set up an intranet connection between Americol, Euricol, and selected researchers in the Taskforce and the CDC. Then I’ll explain the facts of life to them. About Herod’s, that is.”

  “They’re going to shout ‘Act of God,’ ” Augustine said.

  “I don’t think so, actually,” Cross said. “They may be smarter than you think.”

  “I’ve already explained this to every senator and most of the House of Representatives,” Augustine said.

  “Then we’ll make a good tag team. I’ll make them feel sophisticated and in the loop, something I know you’re not good at, Mark. And what we share . . . will lead to a treatment, possibly even a cure, within a year. I guarantee it.”

  “How can you guarantee anything like that?” Augustine asked.

  “As I told Kaye on the flight down here, I took her papers seriously years ago. I set some of my key people in San Diego looking into the possibility. When the news about activation of SHEVA came down, and then Herod’s, I was ready. I handed it over to the good folks in our Sentinel program. They kind of parallel what you do, Christopher, but on a corporate level. We already know the structure of SHEVA’s capsid coat, how SHEVA crawls into human cells, which receptors it attaches to. The CDC and the Taskforce can take half the credit eventually, and we’ll take on the business of getting the treatment to everybody. We’ll do it for little or nothing, of course, maybe not even break even.”

  Augustine looked at her with genuine surprise. Cross chuckled. She leaned over the table as if to throw a punch at him and said, “Gotcha, Mark.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Augustine said.

  “Mr. Dicken says he wants to work directly with Kaye. That’s fine,” Cross allowed.

  Augustine folded his arms.

  “But that intranet will really be something. Direct, fast, best we can put together. We’ll chart every damned HERV in the genome to make sure SHEVA is not duplicated somewhere, to catch us by surprise. Kaye can lead that project. The pharmaceutical applications could be wondrous, absolutely wondrous.” Her voice broke with enthusiasm.

  Kaye found herself buzzing with her own enthusiasm. Cross was something else.

  “What do your people tell you about these HERV, Mark?” Cross asked.

  “A lot,” Augustine said. “We’ve concentrated on Herod’s, of course.” r />
  “Do you know that the largest gene turned on by SHEVA, the poly-protein on chromosome 21, differs between simian expressions and human? That it’s one of only three genes in the whole SHEVA cascade that differ in apes and humans?”

  Augustine shook his head.

  “We’re close to knowing that,” Dicken said, then glanced around in some embarrassment. Cross ignored him.

  “What we’re looking at is an archaeological catalog of human disease, going back millions of years,” Cross said. “At least one old damned visionary has seen this already and we’re going to beat CDC to the ultimate description . . . Leave government research out in the cold, Mark, unless we cooperate. Kaye can help keep the channels open. Together, we can do it a whole lot faster, of course.”

  “You’re going to save the world, Marge?” Augustine asked softly.

  “No, Mark. I doubt Herod’s is much more than a nasty inconvenience. But it gets us where we live. Down where we make babies. Everyone who watches TV or reads newspapers is scared. Kaye is famous, she’s female, and she’s presentable. She’s just what we both need. That’s why Mr. Dicken here and the surgeon general thought she might be useful, isn’t it? Besides her obvious expertise?”

  Augustine aimed his next question at Kaye. “I assume you didn’t approach Ms. Cross yourself, after agreeing to go with us.”

  “I didn’t,” Kaye said.

  “What do you expect to get out of this arrangement?”

  “I think Marge is right,” Kaye said, feeling an almost chilly self-confidence. “We need to cooperate and find out what this is and what we can do about it.” Kaye Lang the corporate item, cool and distanced, knowing no doubt. Saul, you would be proud of me.

  “This is an international effort, Marge,” Augustine said. “We’re putting together a coalition of twenty different countries. WHO is a major player here. No prima donnas.”

  “I’ve already set up a crack management team to deal with that. Robert Jackson is going to head our vaccine program. Our functions will be transparent. We’ve been doing this on the world scene for twenty-five years. We know how to play ball, Mark.”

  Augustine looked at Cross, then at Kaye. He held out his hands as if to embrace Cross. “Darling,” he said, and stood to blow her a kiss.

  Cross cackled like an old hen.

  32

  The University of Washington, Seattle

  Wendell Packer told Mitch to meet him in his office in the Magnuson building. The room in the E wing was small and stuffy, windowless, packed with shelves of books and two computers, one of them connected to equipment in Packer’s laboratory. This screen showed a long series of proteins being sequenced, red and blue bands and green columns in pretty disarray, like a skewed staircase.

  “I did this one myself,” Packer said, holding up a long folded printout for Mitch. “Not that I don’t trust my students, but I don’t want to ruin their careers, either. And I don’t want my department slammed.”

  Mitch took the printout and thumbed through it.

  “I doubt it makes a lot of sense at first glance,” Packer said. “The tissues are way too old to get complete sequences, so I looked for small genes unique to SHEVA, and then I looked for products created when SHEVA enters a cell.”

  “You found them?” Mitch asked, feeling his throat constrict.

  Packer nodded. “Your tissue samples have SHEVA. And they’re not just contaminants from you or the people you were with. But the virus is really degraded. I used antibody probes sent to us from Bethesda that bind to proteins associated with SHEVA. There’s a follicle stimulating hormone that’s unique to SHEVA infection. Sixty-seven percent match, not bad considering the age. Then I relied on a little information theory to design and fabricate better probes, in case SHEVA has mutated slightly, or differs for other reasons. Took me a couple of days, but I got an eighty percent match. To make doubly sure, I did a Southwestern blot test with Herod’s provirus DNA. There are definitely bits of activated SHEVA in your specimens. Tissue from the male is thick with it.”

  “You’re sure it’s SHEVA? No doubt, even in a court of law?”

  “Considering the source, it wouldn’t survive in a court of law. But is it SHEVA?” Packer smiled. “Yes. I’ve been in this department for seven years. We have some of the best equipment money can buy, and some of the best people that equipment can seduce to join us, thanks to three very rich young folks at Microsoft. But . . . Sit down, please, Mitch.”

  Mitch looked up from the printout. “Why?”

  “Just sit.”

  Mitch sat.

  “I have a bonus. Karel Petrovich in Anthropology asked Maria Konig, just down the hall, the best in our lab, to work on a very old tissue sample. Guess where he got the sample?”

  “Innsbruck?”

  Packer held out another sheet of paper. “They asked Karel specifically to go to us. Our reputation, what can I say? They wanted us to search for specific markers and combinations of alleles most often used to determine parental relationship. We were given one small tissue sample, about a gram. They wanted very precise work, and they wanted it quick. Mitch, you got to swear to absolute secrecy on this.”

  “I swear,” Mitch said.

  “Just out of curiosity, I asked one of the analysts about the results. I won’t go into boring details. The tissue comes from a newborn. It’s at least ten thousand years old. We looked for the markers and found them. And I compared several alleles with your tissue samples.”

  “They match?” Mitch asked, his voice breaking.

  “Yes . . . and no. I don’t think Innsbruck is going to agree with me, or with what you seem to be implying.”

  “I don’t imply. I know.”

  “Yes, well, I’m intrigued, but in a courtroom, I could wriggle your male out of responsibility. No prehistoric child support. The female, however, yes. The alleles match.”

  “She’s the baby’s mother?”

  “Beyond a doubt.”

  “But he’s not the father?”

  “I just said I could wriggle him out of it in a courtroom. There’s some weird genetics going on here. Real spooky stuff that I’ve never seen before.”

  “But the baby is one of us.”

  “Mitch, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to back you up, I’m not going to help you write any papers. I have a department to protect, and my own career. You of all people should understand that.”

  “I know, I know,” Mitch said. “But I can’t go it alone.”

  “Let me feed you a few clues. You know that Homo sapiens sapiens is remarkably uniform, genetically speaking.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t think Homo sapiens neandertalensis was all that uniform. It’s a real miracle that I can tell you that, Mitch, I hope you understand. Three years ago, it would have taken us eight months to do the analysis.”

  Mitch frowned. “I’m losing you.”

  “The infant’s genotype is a close match to you and me. She’s close to modern. Mitochondrial DNA in the tissue you gave me matches with samples we have from old Neandertal bone. But I’d say, if you did not look at me too critically, that the male and female that supplied your samples are her parents.”

  Mitch felt dizzy. He bent over on the chair and rested his head between his knees. “Christ,” he said, his voice muffled.

  “A very late contender to be Eve,” Packer said. He held up his hand. “Look at me. Now I’m trembling.”

  “What can you do, Wendell?” Mitch asked, lifting his head to stare up at him. “I’m sitting on the biggest story in modern science. Innsbruck is going to stonewall, I can just smell it. They’ll deny everything. It’s the easy way out. What do I do? Where do I go?”

  Packer wiped his eyes and blew his nose into his handkerchief. “Find some folks who aren’t all that conservative,” he said. “People outside of academics. I know people at the CDC. I talk fairly often with a friend in the labs in Atlanta, a friend of an old girlfriend, actually. We stayed on go
od terms. She’s done some cadaver tissue analysis for a CDC virus hunter named Dicken, on the Herod’s Taskforce. Not surprisingly, he’s been looking for SHEVA in cadaver tissues.”

  “From Georgia?”

  Packer did not connect this immediately. “Atlanta?”

  “No, Republic of.”

  “Ah . . . yes, as a matter of fact,” Packer said. “But he’s also been looking for evidence of Herod’s flu in historical records. Decades, even centuries.” Packer tapped Mitch’s hand pointedly. “Maybe he’d like to know what you know?”

  33

  Magnuson Clinical Center, The National Institutes of Health, Bethesda

  Four women sat in the brightly lighted room. The room was equipped with two couches, two chairs, a television and video player, books, and magazines. Kaye wondered how hospital designers always managed to create an atmosphere of sterility: ash-colored wood, cool off-white walls, sanitary pastel art of beaches and forests and flowers. A bleached and calming world.

  She watched the women briefly through the window of the side door as she waited for Dicken and the director of the clinical center project to catch up with her.

  Two black women. One, in her late thirties and stout, sitting upright in a chair, inattentively watched something on the television, a copy of Elle draped across her lap. The other, in her early twenties, if that, very thin, with small pointy breasts and short cornrowed hair, sat with her cheek propped on her hand and her elbow on a couch arm, staring at nothing in particular. Two white women, both in their thirties, one bottle-blond and haggard and dazed-looking, the other neatly dressed, face expressionless, read battered copies of People and Time.

  Dicken approached along the gray-carpeted hallway with Dr. Denise Lipton. Lipton was in her early forties, small, pretty in a sharp sort of way, with eyes that looked as if they could shoot sparks when she was angry. Dicken introduced them.

  “Ready to see our volunteers, Ms. Lang?” Lipton asked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Kaye said.