Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

“We’re green,” de Vaca said.

“Then let’s go.”

What happened next always seemed like magic to Carson. The huge machine began to generate X-rays, shooting them at the speed of light down the vacuum inside the column. When the high-energy X- rays struck the protein molecules, they would be diffracted by the crystal lattice structures. The scattered beams would be digitally recorded with an array of CCD chips and sent, as an image, to the computer screen.

Carson watched as a blurred image appeared on the screen, bands of dark and light. “Focus, please,” he said.

Using an optical mouse, de Vaca manipulated a series of diffraction gratings inside the column, which tuned and focused the X-rays onto the specimen at the bottom. Slowly, the blurred image came into focus: a complicated series of dark and light circles, reminding Carson of the surface of a pond stippled with rain.

“Great,” he said softly. “Easy does it.”

The X-ray diffraction machine took just the right touch, Carson knew, and de Vaca had that touch.

“That’s as sharp as it gets,” she said. “Ready for film and data feed.”

“I want sixteen angles, please,” Carson said.

De Vaca typed in the commands, and the CCD chips captured the diffraction pattern from sixteen separate angles.

“Series complete,” she said.

“Let’s feed this into the central computer.”

The machine’s computer began loading the diffraction data into the GeneDyne net, where it was sent across a dedicated land line at 110,000 bits per second to the GeneDyne supercomputer in Boston. All Mount Dragon jobs had high priority, and the supercomputer immediately began translating the X-ray diffraction pattern into a three-dimensional model of the X-FLU molecule. For over a minute, those working late in the GeneDyne home office noticed a perceptible slowdown while several trillion floating-point operations were performed and fed back to Mount Dragon, where the image was reassembled on the diffraction machine’s workstation.

An image appeared on the workstation screen: a breathtakingly complex cluster of vibrantly colored spheres, glowing in rainbows of rich purples, reds, oranges, and yellows: the protein molecule that made up the viral coat of X-FLU.

“There it is,” Carson said, peering at the image over de Vaca’s shoulder.

“The cause of such terrible suffering and death,” came de Vaca’s voice in his headset. “And look how beautiful it is.”

Carson continued gazing at the image for a moment, mesmerized. Then he straightened up. “Let’s purify the second test tube with the GEF filtration process. It’s almost decontam time, we have to vacate the Tank for an hour or two anyway. Then we’ll come back, take another look at it, and see if the molecule has changed.”

“Lots of luck,” de Vaca grumbled. “But I’m too tired to object. Let’s go.”

By the time the second filtered X-FLU molecule crystallized on the computer screen, dawn was breaking over the desert floor fifty feet above their heads. Once again Carson marveled at the beauty of the molecule: how surreal it was, and how deadly.

“Let’s compare the two molecules side by side,” he said.

De Vaca split the screen into two windows and called up the image of the unaltered X-FLU molecule from the computer’s memory, displaying it side by side with the filtered molecule.

“They look the same to me,” she said.

“Rotate them both ninety degrees along the X axis.”

“No difference,” de Vaca said.

“Ninety degrees along the Y axis.”

They watched as the images rotated on the computer screen. Suddenly, the silence turned electric.

“ Madre de Dios ,” breathed de Vaca.

“Look how one of the tertiary folds of the filtered molecule has uncoiled!” said Carson excitedly. “The weak sulfur bonds along the entire side have become unstuck.”

“Same molecule, same chemical composition, different shape,” said de Vaca. “You were right.”

“What’s that?” Carson asked, looking at her with a grin.

“Okay, cabrón . You win this one.”

“And it’s the shape of a protein molecule that makes all the difference.” Carson stepped away from the diffraction machine. “Now we know why X-FLU keeps mutating back to its deadly form. The last thing we always do before the in vivo test is to purify the solution using the GEF process. And it’s the GEF process itself that causes the mutation.”

“Burt’s original filtration technique was to blame,” de Vaca answered. “He was doomed from the beginning.”

Carson nodded. “Yet nobody, least of all Burt, thought the process itself could be flawed. It’s been used before without any problems. And here we’ve been banging our heads against the wrong door all this time. The gene splicing, everything else, was fine to begin with. It’s like sifting through the wreckage of a plane crash to determine the cause of an accident, when in reality the problem was faulty directions from the control tower.”

He leaned wearily against a cabinet. The full significance of the discovery began to sink in, like a flame in his gut. “Hot damn, Susana,” he breathed. “After all this time, we’ve solved it at last! All we need to do is change the filtration process. It may take some time to correct, but we know the real culprit now. X-FLU is as good as manufactured.” He could almost picture the expression on Scopes’s face.

De Vaca was silent.

“You agree, don’t you?” Carson prompted.

“Yes,” said de Vaca.

“So what’s the problem? Why the long face?”

She looked at him for a long moment. “We know the flaw in the filtration process causes mutations in the X-FLU protein coat. What I want to know is, what the hell does it do to PurBlood?”

Carson stared back at her, not comprehending. “Susana, who cares?”

“What do you mean, who cares?” de Vaca said, flaring up. “PurBlood could be dangerous as hell!”

“It’s not the same thing at all,” Carson replied. “We don’t know that the filtration flaw would affect anything other than the X-FLU molecule. And besides, the kind of purity necessary for X-FLU doesn’t necessarily apply to hemoglobin.”

“Easy for you to say, cabrón . You’re not putting the stuff into your veins.”

Carson fought to keep his temper. This woman was attempting to spoil the greatest triumph of his life. “Susana, think a moment. Burt tested it on himself, and he survived. It’s been in phased FDA testing now for months. If anybody had become sick, we’d have heard of it. Teece would have known. And, believe me, the FDA would have yanked it.”

“Nobody getting sick? So tell me, where’s Burt now? In a fucking hospital, that’s where he is!”

“His nervous breakdown came months after he tested himself with PurBlood.”

“There still might be a connection. Maybe it breaks down in the body, or something.” She looked at him defiantly. “I want to know what the GEF process does to PurBlood.”

Carson sighed deeply. “Look. It’s seven-thirty in the morning. We’ve just made one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of GeneDyne. And I’m dead on my feet. I’m going to report this to Singer. Then I’m going to take a shower, and get some well-deserved rest.”

“Go ahead and get your gold star,” de Vaca snapped. “I’m going to stay here and finish what we started.”

She switched off the machine, disconnected the air hose from her suit valve with an angry yank, then turned and marched out of the compartment. As he watched her go, Carson heard other voices on the intercom, people announcing their arrival in the lab. The workday was beginning. He wearily pushed himself away from the cabinet. God, he was tired. De Vaca could tinker with PurBlood as much as she liked. He was going to spread the good news.