Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

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.”

Cross and Dicken sat opposite each other at the broad table in a small executive conference room in the Matcher 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.”

“Do you know that the largest gene turned on by SHEVA, the polyprotein 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.