Darwin's Radio Page 23

  In the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror. Hair awry, face sweaty and oily, two days’ growth of beard, wearing a ripped T-shirt and BVDs. “A regular Jeremiah,” he said.

  Then he started another general cleanup by blowing his nose and brushing his teeth.

  42

  Atlanta

  Christopher Dicken had returned to his small house on the outskirts of Atlanta at three in the morning. He had worked at his CDC office until two, preparing papers for Augustine on the spread of SHEVA in Africa. He had lain awake for an hour, wondering what the world was going to be like in the next six months. When he finally drifted off into sleep, he was awakened it seemed moments later by the buzzing of his cell phone. He sat up in the queen-size bed that had once belonged to his parents, wondered for a moment where he was, decided quickly he was not in the Cape Town Hilton, and switched on the light. Morning was already glowing through the window shutters. He managed to pull the phone out of his coat pocket in the closet by the fourth ring and answered it.

  “Is this Dr. Chris Dicken?”

  “Christopher. Yeah.” He looked at his watch. It was eight fifteen. He had managed to sleep a mere two hours, and he was sure he felt worse than if he had had no sleep at all.

  “My name is Mitch Rafelson.”

  This time, Dicken remembered the name and its association. “Really?” he said. “Where are you, Mr. Rafelson?”

  “Seattle.”

  “Then it’s even earlier where you are. I need to get back to sleep.”

  “Wait, please,” Mitch said. “I’m sorry if I woke you up. Did you get my message?”

  “I got a message,” Dicken said.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Listen, if you are Mitch Rafelson, the Mitch Rafelson, I need to talk to you . . . about as much as . . .” He tried to come up with a witty comparison, but his mind wouldn’t work. “I don’t need to talk with you.”

  “Point made . . . but please listen anyway. You’ve been tracking SHEVA all over the world, right?”

  “Yeah,” Dicken said. He yawned. “I get very little sleep thinking about it.”

  “Me, too,” Mitch said. “Your bodies in the Caucasus tested positive for SHEVA. My mummies . . . in the Alps . . . the mummies at Innsbruck test positive for SHEVA.”

  Dicken pressed the phone closer to his ear. “How do you know that?”

  “I have the lab reports from the University of Washington. I need to show what I know to you and to whoever else is open-minded about this.”

  “Nobody is open-minded about this,” Dicken said. “Who gave you my number?”

  “Dr. Wendell Packer.”

  “Do I know Packer?”

  “You work with a friend of his. Renée Sondak.”

  Dicken scratched at a front tooth with a fingernail. Thought very seriously about hanging up. His cell phone was digitally scrambled, but somebody could decode the conversation if they had a mind to. This made him flash hot with anger. Things were out of control. Everyone had lost perspective and it was not going to get better if he just played along.

  “I’m pretty lonely,” Mitch said into the silence. “I need someone to tell me I’m not completely nuts.”

  “Yeah,” Dicken said. “I know what that’s like.” Then, screwing up his face and stamping his foot on the floor, knowing this was going to give him far more trouble than any windmill he had ever tilted at before, he said, “Tell me more, Mitch.”

  43

  San Diego, California

  March 28

  The title of the international conference, arranged in black plastic letters on the convention center billboard, gave Dicken a brief thrill—brief and very necessary. Nothing much had thrilled him in the good old way of work satisfaction in the past couple of months, but the name of the conference was easily sufficient.

  CONTROLLING THE EN-VIRON-MENT:

  NEW TECHNIQUES TOWARD THE CONQUEST OF VIRAL ILLNESS

  The sign was not overly optimistic or off base. In a few more years, the world might not need Christopher Dicken to chase down viruses.

  The problem they all faced was that in disease time, a few years could be very long indeed.

  Dicken walked just outside the shadow of the center’s concrete overhang, near the main entrance, reveling in the bright sun on the sidewalk. He had not experienced this kind of heat since Cape Town, and it gave him a furnace boost of energy. Atlanta was finally warming, but the cold gripping the East had kept snow on the streets in Baltimore and Bethesda.

  Mark Augustine was in town already, staying at the U.S. Grant, away from the majority of the five thousand predicted attendees, most of whom were filling the hotels along the waterfront. Dicken had picked up his convention package—a thick spiral-bound program book with a companion DVD-ROM disk—just this morning to get an early glimpse at the schedule.

  Marge Cross would deliver a keynote address tomorrow morning. Dicken would sit on five panels, two of them dealing with SHEVA. Kaye Lang would be on one panel with Dicken, and on seven others beside, and she would deliver a talk before the plenary session of the World Retrovirus Eradication Research Group, held in conjunction with this conference.

  The press was already hailing Americol’s ribozyme vaccine as a major breakthrough. It looked good in a petri dish—very good indeed—but the human trials had not yet begun. Augustine was under considerable pressure from Shawbeck, and Shawbeck was under considerable pressure from the administration, and they were all using a very long spoon to sup with Cross.

  Dicken could smell eight different kinds of disaster in the winds.

  He had not heard from Mitch Rafelson for several days, but suspected the anthropologist was already in town. They had not yet met, but the conspiracy was on. Kaye had agreed to join them for a talk this evening or tomorrow, depending on when Cross’s people would let her loose from a round of public relations interviews.

  They would have to find a place away from prying eyes. Dicken suspected the best place would be right in the middle of everything, and to that end, he carried a second bag with a blank convention badge—“Guest of CDC”—and program book.

  Kaye walked through the crowded suite, eyes darting nervously from face to face. She felt like a spy in a bad movie, trying to hide her true emotions, certainly her opinions—though she, herself, hardly knew what to think now. She had spent much of the afternoon in Marge Cross’s suite—rather, her entire floor—upstairs, meeting with men and women representing wholly owned subsidiaries, professors from UCSD, the mayor of San Diego.

  Marge had taken her aside and promised even more impressive VIPs near the end of the conference. “Keep bright and shiny,” Cross had told her. “Don’t let the conference wear you down.”

  Kaye felt like a doll on display. She did not like the sensation.

  She took the elevator to the ground floor at five-thirty and boarded a charter bus to the opener. The event was being held at the San Diego Zoo, hosted by Americol.

  As she stepped down from the bus in front of the zoo, she breathed in a scent of jasmine and the soil-rich wetness of evening sprinklers. The line at the entrance booth was busy; she queued up at a side gate and showed the guard her invitation.

  Four women dressed in black carried signs and marched solemnly in front of the zoo entrance. Kaye saw them just before she was allowed in; one of their signs read OUR BODIES, OUR DESTINY: SAVE OUR CHILDREN.

  Inside, the warm twilight felt magical. She had not had anything like a vacation in over a year, the last time with Saul. Everything since had been work and grief, sometimes both together.

  A zoo guide took charge of a group of Americol’s guests and gave them a brief tour. Kaye spent a few seconds watching the pink flamingos in their wading pool. She admired four centenarian sulfur-crested cockatoos, including the zoo’s current mascot, Ramesses, who regarded the departing crowds of day visitors with sleepy indifference. The guide then showed them to a side pavilion and court surrounded by palm trees.

&n
bsp; A mediocre band played forties’ favorites under the pavilion as men and women carried food on paper plates and found tables.

  Kaye stopped by a buffet table laden with fruit and vegetables, picked up a generous helping of cheese, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower, and pickled mushrooms, then ordered a glass of white wine from the no-host bar.

  As she was taking money from her purse to pay for the wine, she spotted Christopher Dicken out of the corner of her eye. He had in tow a tall, rugged-looking man dressed in a denim jacket and faded gray jeans and carrying a scuffed leather satchel under his arm. Kaye took a deep breath, fumbled her change back into her purse, and turned in time to meet Dicken’s stealthy glance. In return, she gave him a surreptitious tilt of her head.

  Kaye could not help giggling as Dicken pulled aside a canvas and they strolled casually away from the closed court. The zoo was nearly empty. “I feel so sneaky,” she said. She still carried her glass of wine, but had managed to ditch the plate of vegetables. “What in the world do we think we’re doing?”

  There was little conviction in Mitch’s smile. She found his eyes disconcerting—at once boyish and sad. Dicken, shorter and plumper, seemed more immediate and accessible, so Kaye focused on him. He carried a gift-shop bag and with a flourish pulled from it a folding map of the world’s largest zoo.

  “We may be here to save the human race,” Dicken said. “Subterfuge is justified.”

  “Damn,” Kaye said. “I’d hoped it was something more sensible. I wonder if anyone’s listening?”

  Dicken swept his hand toward the low arches of the Spanish-style reptile house as if waving a magic wand. Only a few straggling tourists remained on the zoo grounds. “All clear,” he said.

  “I’m serious, Christopher,” Kaye said.

  “If the FBI is bugging men in Hawaiian shirts or Komodo dragons, then we’re goners. This is the best I can do.”

  Loud shrieks from howler monkeys greeted the last of the daylight. Mitch led them on down a concrete path through a tropical rain forest. Footlights illuminated the pathway and misters sprayed the air over their heads. The charm of the setting held them all for the moment, and no one was willing to break the spell.

  To Kaye, Mitch seemed all legs and arms, the kind of man who did not fit indoors. His silence bothered her. He turned, regarded her with his steady green eyes. Kaye noticed his shoes: hiking boots, the thick-treaded soles well-worn.

  She smiled awkwardly and Mitch returned her smile.

  “I’m out of my league,” he said. “If anybody’s going to start our conversation, it should be you, Ms. Lang.”

  “But you’re the man with the revelation,” Dicken said.

  “How much time do we have?” Mitch asked.

  “I’m free for the rest of the evening,” Kaye said. “Marge wants us in tow by eight tomorrow morning. There’s going to be an Americol breakfast.”

  They descended an escalator into a canyon and paused by a cage occupied by two Scottish wildcats. The domestic-looking brindled felines paced back and forth, grumbling softly in the dusk.

  “I’m the odd man out here,” Mitch said. “I know very little microbiology, barely enough to get along. I stumbled onto something wonderful, and it almost ruined my life. I’m disreputable, known to be eccentric, a two-time loser in the science game. If you were smart, you wouldn’t even be seen with me.”

  “Remarkably candid,” Dicken said. He raised his hand. “Next. I’ve chased diseases over half the Earth. I have a feel for how they spread, what they do, how they work. From almost the very beginning, I suspected I was tracking something new. Up until just recently, I’ve tried to lead a double life, tried to believe two contradictory things at once, and I can’t do it anymore.”

  Kaye finished her glass of wine with one gulp. “We sound like we’re working through a twelve-step program,” she said. “All right. My turn. I’m an insecure female research scientist who wants to be kept out of all the dirty little details, so I cling to anybody who’ll give me a place to work and protect me . . . and now it’s time to be independent and make my own decisions. Time to grow up.”

  “Hallelujah,” Mitch said.

  “Go, sister,” Dicken said.

  She looked up, ready to be angry, but they were both smiling in just the right way, and for the first time in many months—since the last good time with Saul—she felt she was among friends.

  Dicken reached into the shopping bag and produced a bottle of merlot. “Zoo security could bust us,” he said, “but this is the least of our sins. Some of what needs to be said may only be said if we’re properly drunk.”

  “I gather you two have shared ideas already,” Mitch said to Kaye as Dicken poured the wine. “I’ve tried to read everything I could just to get ready for this, but I’m still way behind.”

  “I don’t know where to begin,” Kaye said. Now that they were more relaxed, the way Mitch Rafelson looked at her—direct, honest, assessing her without being obvious about it—stirred something she had thought almost dead.

  “Begin with where you two met,” Mitch said.

  “Georgia,” Kaye said.

  “The birthplace of wine,” Dicken added.

  “We visited a mass grave,” Kaye said. “Though not together. Pregnant women and their husbands.”

  “Killing the children,” Mitch said, his eyes suddenly losing their focus. “Why?”

  They sat at a plastic table near a closed refreshment stand, deep in the shadows of a canyon. Brown and red roosters pecked through the bushes beside the asphalt road and beige concrete walkways. A big cat coughed and snarled in its cage and the sound echoed eerily.

  Mitch pulled a file folder from his small leather satchel and laid the papers neatly on the plastic table. “This is where it all comes together.” He laid his hand on two papers on the right. “These are analyses made at the University of Washington. Wendell Packer gave me permission to show them to you. If somebody blabs, however, we could all be in deep Zoo-doo.”

  “Analyses of what?” Kaye asked.

  “The genetics of the Innsbruck mummies. Two sets of tissue results from two different labs at the University of Washington. I gave tissue samples of the two adults to Wendell Packer. Innsbruck, as it turned out, sent a set of samples of all three mummies to Maria Konig in the same department. Wendell was able to make comparisons.”

  “What did they find?” Kaye asked.

  “That the three bodies were really a family. Mother, father, daughter. I knew that already—I saw them all together in the cave in the Alps.”

  Kaye frowned in puzzlement. “I remember the story. You went to the cave at the request of two friends . . . Disturbed the site . . . And the woman with you took the infant in her backpack?”

  Mitch looked away, jaw muscles tight. “I can tell you what actually happened,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” Kaye said, suddenly wary.

  “Just to straighten things out,” Mitch insisted. “We need to trust each other if we’re going to continue.”

  “Then tell me more,” Kaye said.

  Mitch went through the whole story in brief. “It was a mess,” he concluded.

  Dicken watched them both intently, arms folded.

  Kaye used the pause to look through the analyses spread on the plastic table top, making sure the papers did not get stained by leftover catsup. She studied the results of carbon 14 dating, the comparisons of genetic markers, and finally, Packer’s successful search for SHEVA.

  “Packer says SHEVA hasn’t changed much in fifteen thousand years,” Mitch said. “He finds that astonishing, if they’re junk DNA.”

  “They’re hardly junk,” Kaye said. “The genes have been conserved for as much as thirty million years. They’re constantly refreshed, tested, conserved . . . Locked up in tight-packed chromatin, protected by insulators . . . They have to be.”

  “If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell you both what I think,” Mitch said, with a touch of boldness and shyness Kaye fo
und both puzzling and appealing.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “This was an example of subspeciation,” he said. “Not extreme. A nudge to a new variety. A modern-type infant born to late-stage Neandertals.”

  “More like us,” Kaye said.

  “Right. There was a reporter named Oliver Merton in Washington state a few weeks ago. He’s investigating the mummies. He told me about fights breaking out at the University of Innsbruck—” Mitch looked up and saw Kaye’s surprise.

  “Oliver Merton?” she asked, frowning. “Working for Nature?”

  “For the Economist, at the time,” Mitch said.

  Kaye turned to Dicken. “The same one?”

  “Yeah,” Dicken said. “He does science journalism, some political reporting. Has one or two books published.” He explained to Mitch. “Merton started a big ruckus at a press conference in Baltimore. He’s dug pretty deeply into Americol’s relationship with the CDC and the SHEVA matter.”

  “Maybe it’s two different stories,” Mitch said.

  “It would have to be, wouldn’t it?” Kaye asked, looking between the two men. “We’re the only ones who have made a connection, aren’t we?”

  “I wouldn’t be at all sure,” Dicken said. “Go on, Mitch. Let’s agree that there is a connection before we get fired up about interlopers. What were they arguing about in Innsbruck?”

  “Merton says they’ve connected the infant to the adult mummies—which Packer confirms.”

  “It’s ironic,” Dicken said. “The UN sent some of the samples from Gordi to Konig’s lab.”

  “The anthropologists at Innsbruck are pretty conservative,” Mitch said. “To actually come across the first direct evidence of human speciation . . .” He shook his head in sympathy. “I’d be scared if I were them. The paradigm doesn’t just shift—it snaps in two. No gradualism, no modern Darwinian synthesis.”

  “We don’t need to be so radical,” Dicken said. “First of all, there’s been a lot of talk about punctuations in the fossil record—millions of years of steady state, then sudden change.”