Darwin's Radio Page 22

  Merton grinned proudly at the confusion.

  Kaye entered the green room after Jackson, followed by Pong, Subramanian, and the rest of the scientists. Cross sat in the middle of a large blue couch, her expression grave. Four of her top attorneys stood in a half circle around the couch.

  “What in the hell was that all about?” Jackson demanded, swinging his arm out to poke in the general direction of the stage.

  “The little rooster out there is right,” Cross said. “Richard Bragg convinced somebody at the PTO that he isolated and sequenced the SHEVA genes before anyone else. He started the patent process last year.”

  Kaye took a faxed copy of the patent from Cross. Listed among the inventors was Saul Madsen; EcoBacter was on the list of assignees, along with AKS Industries—the company that had purchased and then liquidated EcoBacter.

  “Kaye, tell me now, tell me straight,” Cross said, “did you know anything about this?”

  “Nothing,” Kaye said. “I’m at a loss, Marge. I specified locations, but I did not sequence the genes. Saul never mentioned Richard Bragg.”

  “What does it mean for our work?” Jackson stormed. “Lang, how could you not know?”

  “We’re not done with this,” Cross said. “Harold?” She glanced at the nearest gray-haired man in his immaculate pinstripe suit.

  “We’ll challenge with Genetron v. Amgen, ‘Random patenting of retrogenes in mouse genome,’ Fed. Cir. 1999,” the attorney said. “Give us a day and we’ll have a dozen more reasons to overturn.” He pointed to Kaye and asked her, “Does AKS or any subsidiary use federal funds?”

  “EcoBacter applied for a small federal grant,” Kaye said. “It was approved, but never funded.”

  “We could get NIH to invoke Bayh-Dole,” the attorney mused happily.

  “What if it’s solid?” Cross interrupted, her voice low and dangerous.

  “It’s possible we can get Ms. Lang an interest in the patent. Unlawful exclusion of primary inventor.”

  Cross thumped the couch cushions with a fist. “Then we’ll think positive,” she said. “Kaye, honey, you look like a stunned ox.”

  Kaye held up her hands in defense. “I swear, Marge, I didn’t—”

  “Why my own people didn’t weed this out, I’d like to know. I want to talk with Shawbeck and Augustine right away.” She turned to the attorneys. “See where else Bragg has poked his finger. Where there’s scum, there’s bound to be a slipup.”

  39

  Bethesda

  March

  It was a very short trip,” Dicken said as he dropped a paper report and a diskette on Augustine’s desk. “The WHO folks in Africa told me they were handling things their way, thank you. They said cooperation on past investigations could not be assumed here. They only have one hundred and fifty confirmed cases in all of Africa, so they say, and they don’t see any reason for panic. At least they were kind enough to give me some tissue samples. I shipped them out of Cape Town.”

  “We got them,” Augustine said. “Odd. If we believe their figures, Africa’s being hit much more lightly than Asia or Europe or North America.” He looked troubled—not angry, but sad. Dicken had never seen Augustine look so down before. “Where are we going with this, Christopher?”

  “The vaccine, right?” Christopher asked.

  “I mean you, me, the Taskforce. We’re going to have over a million infected women by the end of May in North America alone. The national security advisor has called in sociologists to tell them how the public’s going to react. The pressure is increasing every week. I’ve just come from a meeting with the surgeon general and the vice president. Just the veep, Christopher. The president considers the Taskforce a liability. Kaye Lang’s little scandal was completely unexpected. The only joy I got out of that was watching Marge Cross chug around this room like a derailed freight train. We’re getting pasted in the press—’Incompetent Bungling in an Age of Miracles.’ That’s the general tone.”

  “Not surprising,” Dicken said, and sat in the chair across from the desk.

  “You know Lang better than I do, Christopher. How could she have let this happen?”

  “I was under the impression that NIH was getting the patent reversed. Some technicality, inability to exploit a natural resource.”

  “Yes—but in the meanwhile, this son of a bitch Bragg is making us look like donkeys. Was Lang so stupid as to sign every paper her husband thrust in front of her?”

  “She signed?”

  “She signed,” Augustine said. “Plain as day. Handing over control of any discovery based on primordial human endogenous retrovirus to Saul Madsen and any partners.”

  “Partners not specified?”

  “Not specified.”

  “Then she’s not really culpable, is she?” Dicken said.

  “I don’t enjoy working with fools. She crossed me quite literally with Americol, and now she’s brought ridicule down on the Taskforce. Any wonder the president won’t meet with me?”

  “It’s temporary.” Dicken bit at a fingernail but stopped when Augustine looked up.

  “Cross says we go ahead with the trials and let Bragg sue us. I agree. But for the time being, I’m burying our relationship with Lang.”

  “She could still be useful.”

  “Then let her be anonymously useful.”

  “Are you saying I should stay away from her?”

  “No,” Augustine said. “Keep everything hunky-dory between you. Make her feel wanted and in the loop. I don’t want her going to the press—unless it’s to complain about Cross’s treatment. Now . . . for the next bit of unpleasantness.”

  Augustine reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a glossy black-and-white photo. “I hate this, Christopher, but I see why it’s being done.”

  “What?” Dicken felt like a little boy about to be scolded.

  “Shawbeck asked the FBI to keep tabs on our key people.”

  Dicken leaned forward. He had long since developed a civil servant’s instinct for keeping his reactions in check. “Why, Mark?”

  “Because there’s talk about declaring a national emergency and invoking martial law. No decision has been made yet . . . it may be months away . . . But under the circumstances, we all need to be pure as the driven snow. We’re angels of healing, Christopher. The public is relying on us. No flaws allowed.”

  Augustine handed him the photo. It showed him standing in front of Jessie’s Cougar in Washington, D.C. “It would have been very embarrassing if you had been recognized.”

  Dicken’s face flushed with both guilt and anger. “I went there once, months ago,” he said. “I stayed fifteen minutes and left.”

  “You went into a back room with a girl,” Augustine said.

  “She wore a surgical mask and treated me like a leper!” Dicken said, showing more heat than he had intended. The instinct was wearing very thin. “I didn’t even want to touch her!”

  “I hate this shit as much as anybody, Christopher,” Augustine said stonily, “but it’s just the beginning. We’re all of us facing pretty intense public scrutiny.”

  “So I’m under probation and review, Mark? The FBI is going to ask for my little black book?”

  Augustine did not feel the need to answer this.

  Dicken stood and threw the photograph down on the desk. “What next? Shall I tell you the name of everyone I’m dating, and what we do together?”

  “Yes,” Augustine said softly.

  Dicken stopped in midtirade and felt his anger fly out of him like a loose burp. The implications were so broad and frightening that he suddenly felt nothing more than cold anxiety.

  “The vaccine won’t be through clinical trials for at least four months, even on emergency fast track. Shawbeck and the VP are taking a new policy to the White House this evening. We’re recommending quarantine. It’s a good bet we’re going to need to invoke some sort of martial law to enforce it.”

  Dicken sat down again. “Unbelievable,” he said.

/>   “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this,” Augustine said. His face was gray with strain.

  “I don’t have that kind of imagination,” Dicken said bitterly.

  Augustine swiveled to look out the window. “Springtime soon. Young men’s fancy and all that. A really good time to announce segregation of the sexes. All women of childbearing age, all men. OMB will have a ball figuring out how much this will slow down the GNP.”

  They sat in silence for a long moment.

  “Why did you lead with Kaye Lang?” Dicken asked.

  “Because I know what to do with her,” Augustine said. “This other stuff . . . Don’t quote me, Christopher. I see the necessity, but I don’t know how in hell we can survive it, politically.” He pulled another print from the folder and held it up for Dicken to see. It showed a man and a woman on a porch in front of an old brownstone, illuminated by a single overhead light. They were kissing. Dicken could not see the man’s face, but he dressed like Augustine and had the same physique.

  “Just so you don’t feel bad. She’s married to a freshman congressman,” Augustine said. “We’re finished. Time for all of us to grow up.”

  * *

  Dicken stood outside the Taskforce center in Building 51, feeling a little ill. Martial law. Segregation of the sexes. He hunched his shoulders and walked to the parking lot, avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk.

  In his car, he found a message on the cell phone. He dialed in and retrieved it. An unfamiliar voice tried to overcome a real antipathy toward leaving messages, and after a few false starts, suggested they had mutual acquaintances—two or three removed—and possibly some mutual interests.

  “My name is Mitch Rafelson. I’m in Seattle now but I hope to fly East soon and meet with some people. If you’re interested . . . in historical incidents of SHEVA, ancient examples, please get in touch with me.”

  Dicken closed his eyes and shook his head. Unbelievable. It seemed everyone knew about his crazy hypothesis. He took down the phone number on a small notepad, then stared at it quizzically. The man’s name sounded familiar. He marked it through once with his pen.

  He rolled down the window and took a deep breath of air. The day was warming and the clouds over Bethesda were clearing. Winter would be over soon.

  Against his better judgment, against any judgment worthy of the name, he punched in Kaye Lang’s number. She was not at home.

  “I hope you’re good at dancing with the big girls,” Dicken murmured to himself, and started the car. “Cross is a very big girl indeed.”

  40

  Baltimore

  The attorney’s name was Charles Wothering. He sounded pure Boston, dressed with rumpled flair, wore a rough-knit wool cap and a long purple muffler. Kaye offered him coffee and he accepted.

  “Very nice,” he commented, looking around the apartment. “You have taste.”

  “Marge set it up for me,” Kaye said.

  Wothering smiled. “Marge has no taste in decoration at all. But money does wonderful things, doesn’t it?”

  Kaye smiled. “No complaints,” she said. “Why did she send you here? To . . . amend our agreements?”

  “Not at all,” Wothering said. “Your father and mother are dead, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Kaye said.

  “I’m a middling lawyer, Ms. Lang—may I call you Kaye?”

  Kaye nodded.

  “Middling at law, but Marge values me as a judge of character. Believe it or not, Marge is not a very good judge of character. Lots of bravado, but a string of bad marriages, which I helped untangle and pack away into the distant past, never to be heard from again. She thinks you need my help.”

  “How?” Kaye asked.

  Wothering sat on the couch and took three spoons of sugar from the bowl on the serving tray. He stirred them deliberately into his cup. “Did you love Saul Madsen?”

  “Yes,” Kaye said.

  “And how do you feel now?”

  Kaye thought this over, but did not look down from Wothering’s steady gaze. “I realize how much Saul was hiding things from me, just to keep our dream afloat.”

  “How much did Saul contribute to your work, intellectually?”

  “That depends which work.”

  “Your endogenous virus work.”

  “Only a little. Not his specialty.”

  “What was his specialty?”

  “He likened himself to yeast.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “He contributed to the ferment. I brought in the sugar.”

  Wothering laughed. “Did he stimulate you, intellectually, I mean?”

  “He challenged me.”

  “Like a teacher, or a parent, or . . . a partner?”

  “Partner,” Kaye said. “I don’t see where we’re going, Mr. Wothering.”

  “You attached yourself to Marge because you did not feel yourself adequate to deal with Augustine and his people alone. Am I right?”

  Kaye stared at him.

  Wothering lifted a bushy eyebrow.

  “Not exactly,” Kaye said. Her eyes stung from not blinking. Wothering blinked luxuriously and set down his cup.

  “To be brief, Marge sent me here to separate you from Saul Madsen every way I can. I need your permission to conduct a thorough investigation of EcoBacter, AKS, and your contracts with the Taskforce.”

  “Is that necessary? I’m sure there aren’t any more skeletons in my closet, Mr. Wothering.”

  “We can never be too cautious, Kaye. You understand that things are getting very serious. Embarrassments of any sort can have a real impact on public policy.”

  “I know,” Kaye said. “I’ve said I’m sorry.”

  Wothering held out his hand and made a soothing face as he patted the air with his fingers. In a different age, he might have patted her knee in a fatherly fashion. “We’ll clean up the mess.” Wothering’s eyes took on a flinty look. “I don’t want to replace your own growing sense of individual responsibility with the automatic personal housekeeping of a good lawyer,” he said. “You’re a grown woman now, Kaye. But what I will do is untangle the strings, and then . . . I’ll cut them. You will owe nothing to anybody.”

  Kaye bit her lip. “I’d like to make one thing clear, Mr. Wothering. My husband was sick. He was mentally ill. What Saul did or did not do is no reflection on me—nor on him. He was trying to keep his balance and get on with his life and work.”

  “I understand, Ms. Lang.”

  “Saul was very helpful to me, in his own way, but I resent any implication that I am not my own woman.”

  “No such implication intended.”

  “Good,” Kaye said, feeling her way through a subtle minefield of irritation, threatening to flare into anger. “What I need to know now is, does Marge Cross still find me useful?”

  Wothering smiled and gave a tilt of his head in a way that expertly expressed acknowledgment of her irritation and the need to continue his task. “Marge never gives more than she takes, as I’m sure you will learn soon. Can you explain this vaccine to me, Kaye?”

  “It’s a combination antigen coat carrying a tailored ribozyme. Ribonucleic acid with enzymelike properties. It attaches to part of the SHEVA code and splits it. Breaks its back. The virus can’t replicate.”

  Wothering shook his head in amazement. “Technically wonderful,” he said. “For most of us, incomprehensible. Tell me, how do you think Marge will get women all over the world to consider using it?”

  “Advertising and promotion, I suppose. She said she’d practically give it away.”

  “Who will the patients trust, Kaye? You are a brilliant woman whose husband deceived her, kept her in the dark. Women can feel this unfairness in their very wombs. Believe me, Marge will go to great lengths to keep you on her team. Your story just gets better and better.”

  41

  Seattle

  Mitch pushed up in bed, in a sweat and shouting. The words leaped out in a guttural tumble even as he realized he was
awake. He sat on one side of the bed, leg still tangled in the covers, and shivered. “Nuts,” he said. “I am nuts. Nuts to this.”

  He had dreamed of the Neandertals again. This time, he had flowed in and out of the male’s point of view, a fluid sort of freedom that had at once immersed him in a very clear and unpleasant set of emotions, and then lofted him away to observe a jumbled flow of events. Crowds had formed at the edge of the village—not on a lake this time, but in a clearing surrounded by deep and ancient woods. They had shaken sharpened, fire-hardened sticks at the female, whose name he could almost remember . . . Na-lee-ah or Ma-lee.

  “Jean Auel, here I come,” he murmured as he extricated his foot from the covers. “Mowgli of the Stone Tribe saves his woman. Jesus.”

  He walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. He was fighting off some virus—a cold, he was sure, and not SHEVA, considering the state of his relationships with women. His mouth tasted dry and foul and his nose was dripping. He had caught the cold somewhere on his trip to Iron Cave the week before. Maybe Merton had given it to him. He had driven the British journalist to the airport for a flight to Maryland.

  The water tasted terrible, but it cleaned out his mouth. He looked out over Broadway and the post office, nearly deserted now. A March snowstorm was throwing small crystal flakes down on the streets. The orange sodium vapor streetlights turned the accumulated snow into scattered piles of gold.

  “They were kicking us off the lake, out of the village,” he murmured. “We were going to have to fend for ourselves. Some hotheads were getting ready to follow us, maybe try to kill us. We . . .”

  He shuddered. The emotions had been so raw and so real he could not easily shake them. Fear, rage, something else . . . a helpless kind of love. He felt his face. They had been shedding some sort of skin from their faces, little masks. The mark of their crime.

  “Dear Shirley MacLaine,” he said, pressing his forehead against the cold glass of the window. “I’m channeling cavemen who don’t live in caves. Any advice?”

  He looked at the clock on the VCR perched precariously on top of the small TV. It was five in the morning. It would be eight o’clock in Atlanta. He would try that number again, and then try to log on with his repaired laptop and send an e-mail message.