Greg Bear Darwin 01 Darwin's Radio

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little romance. You know, tiny invaders from inside our own bodies, gee, isn't
it fascinating, we don't know what they can do. That sort of thing. Doel and
Davison in California can outline their discovery and do that for us. They've
been working hard enough. They certainly deserve some glory." Augustine again
lifted the glass of whiskey and twirled the ice and water with a quiet tinkle.
"Did Dr. Mahy say when they can get your samples analyzed?"
"No," Dicken said.
Augustine smiled sympathetically. "You would rather have followed them to
Atlanta."
"I'd rather have flown them there myself and done the work," Dicken said.
"I'm going to Washington Thursday," Augustine said. "I'm backing up the
surgeon general before Congress. NIH could be there. We aren't bringing in the
secretary of HHS yet. I want you with me. I'll tell Francis and Jon to put out
their press release tomorrow morning. It's been ready for a week."
Dicken admired this with a private, slightly ironic smile. HHS-Health and
Human Services-was the huge branch of government that oversaw the NIH, the
National Institutes of Health, and the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. "A well-oiled machine," he said.
Augustine took this as a compliment. "We've still got our heads shoved up our
asses. We've riled Congress with our stance on tobacco and firearms. The
bastards in Washington have decided we're a big fat target. They cut our
funding by a third to help pay for a new tax cut. Now a big one comes and it's
not out of Africa or the rain forest. It has nothing to do with our little
rape of Mother Nature. It's a fluke, and it comes from inside our own blessed
little bodies." Augustine's smile turned wolfish. "It makes my hair prickle,
Christopher. This is a godsend. We have to present this with timing, with
drama. If we don't do this right, there's a real danger no one in Washington
will pay attention until we lose an entire generation of babies."
Dicken wondered how he could contribute to this runaway train. There had to be
some way he could promote his field-work, all those years tracking boojums.
"I've been thinking about a mutation angle," he said, his mouth dry. He laid
out the stories of mutated babies he had heard in Ukraine and outlined some of
his theory of radiation-induced release of HERV
Augustine narrowed his eyelids and shook his head. "We know about birth
defects from Chernobyl. No news in that," he murmured. "But there's no
radiation here. It doesn't gel, Christopher." He opened the room's window and
the noise of traffic ten floors below grew. Breeze puffed the inner white
curtains.
Dicken persisted, trying to salvage his argument, at the same time aware that
his evidence was woefully inadequate. "There's a strong possibility that
Herod's does more than cause miscarriages. It seems to pop up in comparatively
isolated populations. It's been active at least since the 1960s. The political
response has often been extreme. Nobody would wipe out a village or kill
dozens of mothers and fathers and their unborn children, just because of a
local run of miscarriages."
Augustine shrugged. "Much too vague," he said, staring down at the street
below.
"Enough for an investigation," Dicken suggested.
Augustine frowned. "We're talking empty wombs, Christopher," he said calmly.
"We have to play from a big scary idea, not rumors and science fiction."
10
Long Island, New York
Kaye heard footsteps up the stairs, sat up in bed and pulled her hair from her
eyes in time to see Saul. He stalked on tiptoes into the bedroom, along the
carpet runner, carrying a small package wrapped in red foil and tied with a
ribbon, and a bouquet of roses and baby's breath.
"Damn," he said, seeing she was awake. He held the roses to one side with a
flourish and bent over the bed to kiss her. His lips opened and were so
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slightly moist without being aggressive. That was his signal that her needs
came first but he was interested, very. "Welcome home. I have missed you,
Madchen"
"Thank you. It's good to be here."
Saul sat on the side of the bed, staring at the roses. "I am in a good mood.
My lady is home." He smiled broadly and lay beside her, swinging his legs up
and resting his stocking feet on the bed. Kaye could smell the roses, intense
and sweet, almost too much this early in the morning. He presented her with
the gift. "For my brilliant friend."
Kaye sat up as Saul plumped her pillow into a backrest. Seeing Saul in fine
form had its old effect on her: hope and joy at being home and a little closer
to something centered. She hugged him awkwardly around the shoulders, nuzzling
his neck.
"Ah," he said. "Now open the box."
She raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips, and pulled on the ribbon. "What have
I done to deserve this?" she said.
"You have never really understood how valuable and wonderful you are," Saul
said. "Maybe it's just that I love you. Maybe it's a special occasion just
that you're back. Or...maybe we're celebrating something else."
"What?"
"Open it."
She realized with growing intensity that she had been away for weeks. She
pulled off the red foil and kissed his hand slowly, eyes fixed on his face.
Then she looked down at the box.
Inside was a large medallion bearing the familiar bust of a famous munitions
manufacturer. It was a Nobel prize-made of chocolate.
Kaye laughed out loud. "Where...did you get thisl"
"Stan loaned me his and I made a cast," Saul said.
"And you're not going to tell me what's going on?" Kaye asked, fingering his
thigh.
"Not for a little while," Saul said. He put the roses down and removed his
sweater and she began unbuttoning his shirt.
The curtains were still drawn and the room had not yet received its ration of
morning sun. They lay on the bed with sheets and blankets and comforter rucked
all around them. Kaye saw mountains in the rumples and stalked her fingers
over a flowered peak. Saul arched his back with little cartilaginous pops and
swallowed a few great gulps of air. "I'm out of shape," he said. "I'm becoming
a desk jockey. I need to bench-press a few more test benches."
Kaye held out her thumb and forefinger and spaced them an inch apart, then
raised and lowered them rhythmically. "Test tube exercises," she said.
"Right brain, left brain," Saul rejoined, grabbing his temples and shifting
his head from side to side. "You've got three weeks' worth of Internet jokes
to catch up on."
"Poor me," Kaye said.
"Breakfast!" Saul shouted, and swung his legs out of bed. "Downstairs, fresh,
waiting to be reheated."
Kaye followed him in her dressing gown. Saul is back, she tried to convince
herself. My good Saul is back.
He had stopped by the local grocery to pick up ham-and-cheese stuffed
croissants. He arranged their plates between cups of coffee and orange juice
on the little table on the back porch. The sun was bright, the air was clean
after the squall and warming nicely. It was going to be a lovely day.
For Kaye, with every hour of good Saul, the lure of the mountains faded like a
girlish hope. She did not need to get away. Saul chattered about what had been
happening at EcoBacter, about his trip to California and Utah and then
Philadelphia to confer with their client and partner labs. "We have four more
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preclinical tests mandated by our caseworker at the PDA," he said
sardonically. "But at least we've shown them we can put antagonistic bacteria
together in resource competition and force them to make chemical weapons.
We've demonstrated we can isolate the bacteriocins, purify them, produce them
in neutralized form in bulk-then activate them. Safe in rats, safe in hamsters [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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