Christy Esmahan: The Laptev Virus

Rhonda shook her head. “Sarah, I understand how difficult this is, but I have unequivocal instructions that we are to immediately cease all research and send in the notes today.”

“But, what if the deaths of the mice are significant?” insisted Sarah. “What if it has to do with the Toxo infection? I mean, we don’t know anything about this, but what if there’s a similar reaction in humans who are infected? It could be really serious.”

Rhonda looked at her skeptically. “Now we know that’s not the case because such a huge portion of our society is infected with Toxo. We know it’s at least 30% of humans, some studies indicate that it could be as high as 50%,” she said, repeating the statistics that Emile had cited in the meeting a few days ago. “So clearly having Toxo does not make people more violent.”

Sarah still felt that the new problem was too important to ignore. “But don’t you think we should at least perform a few more tests to see why this happened with the mice?”

“No. I really don’t think so, Sarah. Tell you what, I’ll call the new man, Peter-something, this morning and let him know the results, and if he changes his mind, and wants the lab to follow up, I’ll let you know. Okay? But I honestly doubt it.”

Sarah nodded. There was nothing left to say. She returned to her lab feeling numb. It didn’t really make sense that her work, and that of her team, could be jerked around so much like that. She felt almost violated. Sure, she and her team had not spent countless months on the work—it had really only been about a month, slightly less than Rhonda had originally promised. But they had made so many discoveries and so much progress. She really detested having to give up now.

She phoned Tally and asked her to gather everyone for a meeting and did not look forward to the hurt and disappointment she knew would emanate from each of their faces when she told them the news.

After her meeting with her researchers, Sarah walked over to John’s lab. She walked slowly, using her cane occasionally. A cool front had come through the night before, and the humidity had broken, so the air was warm, bright and pleasant instead of overly humid and stiflingly hot. As she walked, Sarah looked around at the green grass and mounds of flowers growing convivially around the stone corner signs. Ahead of her, two dark brown grackles, their beady eyes shining, cawed harshly.

“Maybe you’re reading too much into it,” said John, once she had explained the situation.

“I don’t know. I just can’t help feeling betrayed, in a way. And I am still apprehensive about what happened to the mice.”

“But they’ll make you turn in all your notes, right?”

Sarah nodded. “Worse than that. I got a call from Rhonda right after my meeting with her, saying that Riesigoil had hired a team of ‘data experts’ to come in, capture all of our notes and erase the files. All at our convenience, of course, as long as it was today. She said they were doing it this way to ‘save us valuable time and energy.’ It’s pretty obvious that they don’t trust us.”

“I’m surprised they aren’t going to try to erase your memory too!”

Sarah chuckled. “Don’t give them any ideas, John!” she said and gave him a hug. “They have already reminded us of the non-disclosure agreements we signed when we began the research.”

“So, back to HIV now?” he asked.

Sarah nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not in the mood to go back to it like I was before. But I guess that with time we’ll all get back into it. At least there are no companies waiting to stop that research. And you’ll continue looking at the Toxo effects on your mice behavior?”

John smiled. “Of course! And we’ll probably need your expert advice from time to time.”

“All right,” she said, her shoulders hunched as if the weight of the morning were a heavy burden she was trying to bear. “Thanks for the pep talk. I’d better head back over.”

As she walked slowly back, Sarah once again replayed the events of the last few weeks in her mind. They had been assigned a nearly impossible task of trying to learn something about a hitherto unknown supersized virus. They had made loads of progress in figuring out its mode of transmission and had come up with a plausible theory about its history in the region. They had also found another infection which seemed to provide a measure of protection against it, and then had been summarily told to stop all work.

It didn’t seem fair. Perhaps Rhonda was trying to make her life difficult so that she would resign? Well, that wasn’t going to happen. She thought back to her work with HIV, and suddenly she remembered Emile’s words about the relative insignificance of Laptev-HFV when compared to the havoc wreaked by AIDS. If it were destroying small villages in some remote third world country, we wouldn’t even be looking at taking on this project. And no one would be asking us to drop AIDS research, when HIV affects so many thousands of people, just to take on this tiny outbreak in the Arctic.

He was right. Their research on AIDS was consequential. She would return to it proudly and inspire her team to do the same. The difference would be that now they had more money at their disposal, they could work for a longer period of time and she could be more directly involved. It wasn’t such a bad thing after all, she thought, and with a lighter heart, she returned to the IDI.

Stan Sundback was checking his e-mails, even though it was almost 2:00 am and he really should have been asleep by now. It was a nervous, reflexive habit. Ever since he had authorized the re-opening of the drilling sites in the Arctic, he had been extra attentive, always half-fearing the worst.

It hadn’t helped that Angela had resigned as soon as she found out about the site being re-opened without her approval. That had been another scandal, losing her. She had been strident as she accused him of being “irreverent with the lives of others” by agreeing to open up the drilling areas without further tests. Her words had stung him all the more since they mirrored his own doubts, but, he reminded himself, the job of a CEO was not supposed to be a bed of roses.

Three weeks had passed and everything seemed to be perfectly fine. It was true that they had taken extra precautions and only people who were Laptev HFV resistant had been allowed to work on the drilling sites. Finding Laptev resistant workers had turned out to be quite easy in the end: a simple blood test showed whether anyone had the little “cat critters” as he called them—that infection that came from owning cats and somehow provided immunity to Laptev. He didn’t understand the science, but then again, he didn’t need to. His job, as the shareholders frequently reminded him, was to make sure that the company made money. Ever since Angela had learned from the researchers at the university that there was a way to ensure that the workers would be protected, things had gone smoothly for Riesigoil. With any luck they would have an active well started before the weather turned colder in September.

Stan yawned and placed his cell phone on his bedside table, then went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He was concerned, to be quite honest, because Dennis had told him today that Glassuroil had just closed down its Arctic drilling stations because there had been “incidents” as of late. The intelligence reports had not mentioned what the nature of these “incidents” was, but he was attempting to convince himself that they were due to the thawing conditions in the Arctic. Maybe the melting permafrost had made it difficult to sustain the scaffolding above the well? Certainly the melting permafrost had caused havoc as the unpaved roads were now disappearing at an alarming rate. Stan had seen that this was a problem in many areas inside the Arctic circle, especially places like Alaska where the frozen roads had served for decades.