Читать книгу Darwin’s Radio - Greg Bear - Страница 16

Kaye heard footsteps up the stairs, sat up in bed and pulled her hair from her eyes, then forked her fingers through her hair 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 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, Mädchen.’

‘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 asked.

‘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 this?’

‘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 thumb and forefinger on her hands 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 pre-clinical tests mandated by our caseworker at the FDA,’ 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 and vervets, effective against resistant strains of three nasty pathogens. We’re so far ahead of Merck and Aventis they can’t even spit at our butts.’

Bacteriocins were chemicals produced by bacteria that could kill other bacteria. They were a promising new weapon in a rapidly weakening arsenal of antibiotics.

Kaye listened happily. He had not yet told her the news he had promised; he was building to that moment in his own way, taking his own sweet time. Kaye knew the drill and did not give him the satisfaction of appearing eager.

‘If that wasn’t enough,’ he continued, his eyes bright, ‘Mkebe says we’re close to finding a way to bind pili and block plasmid transfer, lactone exchange, gum up the whole command and control and communication network in Staphylococcus aureus. We’ll attack the little buggers from three different directions at once. Boom!’ He pulled back his eloquent hands and wrapped his arms around himself like a satisfied little boy. Then his mood changed.

‘Now,’ Saul said, and his face went suddenly blank. ‘Give it to me straight about Lado and Eliava.’

Kaye stared at him for a moment with an intensity that almost crossed her eyes. Then she glanced down and said, ‘I think they’ve decided to go with someone else.’

‘Mr Bristol Myers Squibb,’ Saul said, and lifted a rolling and waving hand in dismissal. ‘Fossil corporate architecture versus young new blood. They are so wrong.’ He gazed across the yard at the sound, squinted at a few sailboats dodging small whitecaps in the light morning breezes. Then he finished his orange juice and smacked his lips dramatically. He fairly wriggled in the chair, leaned forward, fixed her with his deep gray eyes, and clasped her hands in his.

This is it, Kaye thought.

‘They will regret it. In the next few months we are going to be so busy. The CDC just broke the news this morning. They have confirmed the existence of the first viable Human Endogenous Retrovirus. They’ve shown that it can be transmitted laterally between individuals. They call it Scattered Human Endogenous retroVirus Activation SHERVA. They dropped the R in retro for dramatic effect. That makes it SHEVA. Good name for a virus, don’t you think?’

Kaye searched his face. ‘No joke?’ she asked, voice unsteady. ‘It’s confirmed?’

Saul grinned and held up his arms like Moses. ‘Absolutely. Science marches on to the promised land.’

‘What is it? How big is it?’

‘It’s a retrovirus, a true monster, eight-two kilobases, thirty genes. Its gag and pol components are on chromosome fourteen, and its env is on chromosome seventeen. The CDC says it may be a mild pathogen, and humans show little or no resistance, so it’s been buried for a very long time.’

He placed his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. ‘You predicted it, Kaye. You described the genes. Your prime candidate, a broken HERV-DL3, is the one they’re targeting, and they are using your name. They’ve cited your papers.’

‘Wow,’ Kaye said, her face going pale. She leaned over her plate, the blood pounding in her head.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, feeling dizzy.

‘Let’s enjoy our privacy while we can,’ Saul said triumphantly. ‘Every science reporter is going to be calling. I give them about two minutes to go through their Rolodexes and search MedLine. You’ll be on TV, CNN, Good Morning America.’

Kaye simply could not wrap belief around this turn of events. ‘What kind of illness does it cause?’ she managed to ask.

‘Nobody seems clear on that.’

Kaye’s mind buzzed with possibilities. If she called Lado at the institute, told Tamara and Zamphyra – they might change their minds, go with EcoBacter. Saul would stay good Saul, happy and productive.

‘My god, we’re hot shit,’ Kaye said, still feeling a little woozy. She lifted her fingers, la di da.

‘You’re the one who’s hot, my dear. It’s your work, and it ain’t shit.’

The phone rang in the kitchen.

‘That’ll be the Swedish Academy,’ Saul said, nodding sagely. He held up the medallion and Kaye took a bite out of it.

‘Bull!’ she said happily, and went to answer it.