Powers, Richard - Orfeo

Life at the smallest levels, its pointless overabundance, the sheer profligacy of its chemical signaling: he had no wilder an art to witness, before he died. As he worked, a line from a letter that Mahler once sent to his faithless Alma hummed in his head: We are brought back to ourselves by solitude, and from ourselves to God is only a step . .

He went to bed late and woke soon after falling asleep. Fortunately, he needed little sleep anymore. When the sun came up the next morning, it was almost as if nothing at all had happened in the night.

Once, I’d hoped to make thousands of runaway pieces. They failed to run away. This one did. It’s all around you now, in the billions.

Two men in navy two-button suits, one of them holding a leatherette portfolio, appeared at the front door a little past eleven o’clock, the morning after the improvised funeral. They looked like counterfeit Jehovah’s Witnesses. Electioneering was still months away, and the pair were too well dressed for fund-raising. Someone must have been telling lies about Peter Els . The line occurred to Els and broke across his lips. He was still grinning when he opened the door on the overdressed duo.

They handed him business cards: Coldberg and Mendoza, with the Joint Security Task Force. Coldberg rubbed the fingernails of his right hand with his thumb. Mendoza had a tiny smear of egg yolk in the crook of his lips.

Mendoza said, We’ve received a police report about bacterial cultures in the house.

I see. Els waited for the question.

Coldberg fiddled with his ear, searching for some miniature audio hardware that had been swiped while he wasn’t looking.

Is that accurate? Mendoza asked.

Yes , Els said. That’s accurate . Lots of bacterial cultures in the house.

Can we come in? Coldberg asked.

Els tipped his head sideways. It’s a hobbyist lab. I’m not stealing anyone’s patents.

The agent asked again. Els stepped aside and watched two pairs of Blüchers cross the transom.

At the sight of the back room, Mendoza stopped. What’s all this gear for?

Els’s turn to be nonplussed. You don’t know?

We’re not scientists, Mr. Els. You’re the expert, it seems.

Els showed them the PCR machine. He tried to explain how it worked — the cycles of denaturing and annealing — but the agents lost interest.

Coldberg pointed. That’s your centrifuge?

I made it from a salad spinner. And I modified the rice cooker to distill water.

And that over there, with the wires?

That’s for gel electrophoresis. It’s. . it tells you how big your molecules are.

Your molecules?

Your snippets of DNA. What have you.

You work with DNA?

The question was so artless it made Els laugh. It’s everywhere, these days.

What’s behind the door?

Before Els could object, the two agents stepped into his clean room and contaminated his homemade laminar flow hood.

Coldberg waved a thick black pen around the room. Where’d you get all this? His voice had a note of admiration.

Els told him. There was nothing — nothing at all — that a person couldn’t get from some obliging five-star vendor.

How much did this set you back?

Less than you think. It’s amazing what you can get for nothing, in auctions. All those bankrupt biotech start-ups. . Penn State was dumping a bunch of perfectly good scopes just because they were a few years old. I picked up a three-thousand-dollar cell incubator for two hundred and ninety bucks on eBay. The low-temperature freezer was my biggest-ticket item, believe it or not. Everything together cost less than five thousand dollars.

Five thousand?

Els shrugged. That’s one Mediterranean cruise. Or one big-screen television, five years ago. Of course, the reagents can add up, depending on where you get them.

The word had a bad effect on Mendoza. Els regretted using it. But he’d broken no laws. No serious ones, anyway.

What reagents do you work with? Mendoza asked.

Els listed a few. Coldberg drew a pad from his portfolio and addressed the tip of his pen. What kind of bacteria are you stocking?

These days? Serratia marcescens . It’s a motile, short-rod anaerobe.

Coldberg asked for spelling. Mendoza ran his finger across the top of a twenty-four-well microplate sitting on the table.

Is it a pathogen? Coldberg asked.

Els stood still and composed himself. No offense, but this stuff is all over your bathroom. The grout in your shower. The water line in your toilet tank. .

You don’t know my wife, Mendoza said.

Coldberg glared at his partner, then at Els. Is it harmful to humans?

Everything was harmful to humans.

It can give you infections, yes. Urinary tract. Conjunctivitis. But you’d have to work hard to hurt yourself with it. They used it in school labs, back when I was a kid. The Army sprayed it on San Francisco.

When was this?

I don’t know. Fifty years ago?

You’re not the Army, Coldberg said. And Els realized that he might be in trouble.

Coldberg waved the pen again, as if it were a laser pointer. What exactly are you doing with all this?

The question that should have been asked some time earlier hung in the air. Els waved toward the pipettes on a wall rack he’d made from kitchen clamps. Learning about cell biology. It’s a hobby. It’s a whole lot like cooking, to tell you the truth.

You’re not a biologist?

Els shook his head.

But you’re manipulating the DNA of a toxic organism?

I. . If you want to describe it that way.

Why?

There were scores of good reasons, and not a single one would be credible to this pair. In the year of Els’s birth, no one had even known what a gene was made of. Now people were designing them. For most of his life, Els had ignored the greatest achievement of his age, the art form of the free-for-all future that he wouldn’t live to see. Now he wanted a little glimpse. Billions of complex chemical factories in a thimble: the thought gave him the cold chill that music once did. The lab made him feel that he wasn’t yet dead, that it wasn’t too late to learn what life was really about.

He said nothing. Coldberg picked up a petri dish. Where’d you learn how to manipulate microorganisms?

You know, genetics is not all that hard. It’s a whole lot easier than learning Arabic.

A grace note passed between the agents. Coldberg’s scribbling stopped.

Where’d you learn Arabic?

I don’t know Arabic, Els said. It was a figure of. .

Then what’s that?

Coldberg pointed to a framed manuscript page hanging on the wall in the dining room: half domes with smaller half domes tucked in line underneath them, like the scalloped arches of a Sinan mosque. Each niche was emblazoned in flowing Arabic.

Els pressed his right temple with two fingers. That’s a sixteenth-century Ottoman manuscript showing an old system of musical notation.

Coldberg took out his phone and began snapping pictures.

Mendoza asked, You called Emergency Services last night?

Els nodded.

Your dog died? The police told you to call Animal Control?

Els shut his eyes.

Animal Control has no record of any call from you.

God , Els said. You think I nerve-gassed my dog?

Where’s the body? Mendozza asked.