“I’m not messing with reproductive genes.”
“There’s some other kind?” Harrison sat forward abruptly, angry that Vergil would try to bullshit him.
“Introns. Strings that don’t code for protein structure.”
“What about them?”
“I’m only working in those areas. And…adding more non-reproductive genetic material.”
“That sounds like a contradiction in terms to me, Vergil. We have no proof introns don’t code for something.”
“Yes, but—”
“But—” Harrison held up his hand. “This is all quite irrelevant. Whatever else you were up to, the fact is, you were prepared to renege on your contract, go behind our backs to Bernard, and try to engage his support for a personal endeavor. True?”
Vergil said nothing.
“I assume you’re not a sophisticated fellow, Vergil. Not in the ways of the business world. Perhaps you didn’t realize the implications.”
Vergil swallowed hard. His face was still plum red. He could feel the blood thudding in his ears, the sick sensation of stress-caused dizziness. He sneezed twice.
“Well, I’ll lay the implications out for you. You are very close to getting your ass canned and sold for bully beef.”
Vergil raised his eyebrows reflexively.
“You’re important to the MABs project. If you weren’t, you would be out of here in a flash and I would personally make sure you never work in a private lab again. But Thornton and Rothwild and the others believe we might be able to redeem you. Yes, Vergil. Redeem you. Save you from yourself. I haven’t consulted with Yng on this. It won’t go any further—if you behave.”
He fixed Vergil with a stare from beneath lowered eyebrows. “Stop your extracurricular activities. We’ll keep your file here, but I want all non-MABs experiments terminated and all organisms that have been tampered with destroyed. I’ll personally inspect your lab in two hours. If this hasn’t been done, you’ll be fired. Two hours, Vergil. No exceptions no extensions.”
“Yessir.”
“That’s all.”
CHAPTER TWO
Vergil’s dismissal would not have unduly distressed his fellow employees. In his three years at Genetron, he had committed innumerable breaches of lab etiquette. He seldom washed lab glassware and twice had been accused of not wiping up spills of ethidium bromide—a strong mutagen—on lab counters. He was also not terribly cautious about radionucleides.
Most of the people he worked with made no show of humility. They were, after all, top young researchers in a very promising field; many expected to be wealthy and in charge of their own companies in a few years. Vergil didn’t fit any of their patterns, however. He worked quietly and intensively during the day, and then worked overtime at night. He was not sociable, though neither was he unfriendly; he simply ignored most people.
He shared a lab space with Hazel Overton, as meticulous and clean a researcher as could be imagined. Hazel would miss him least of all. Perhaps it was Hazel who had penetrated his file—she was no slouch on the computers and she might have gone looking for something to get him into trouble. But he had no evidence for that, and there was no sense being paranoid.
The lab was dark as Vergil entered. Hazel was performing a fluorescent scan on a gel electrophoresis matrix with a small UV lamp. Vergil switched on the light. She looked up and removed her goggles, prepared to be irritated.
“You’re late,” she said. “And your lab looks like an unmade bed. Vergil, it’s—”
“Kaput,” Vergil finished for her, throwing his smock across a stool.
“You left a bunch of test tubes on the counter in the share lab. I’m afraid they’re ruined.”
“Fuck ’em.”
Hazel’s eyes widened. “My, aren’t you in a mood.”
“I’ve been shut down. I have to dear out all my extracurricular work, give it up, or Harrison will issue my walking papers.”
“That’s rather even-handed of them,” Hazel said, returning to her scan. Harrison had shut down one of her own extracurricular projects the month before. “What did you do?”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather be alone.” Vergil glowered at her from across the counter. “You can finish that in the share lab.”
“I could, but—”
“If you don’t,” Vergil said darkly, “I’ll smear your little piece of agarose across the floor with my wingtips.”
Hazel glared at him for a moment and surmised he wasn’t kidding. She shut off the electrodes, picked up her equipment, and headed for the door. “My condolences,” she said.
“Sure.”
He had to have a plan. Scratching his stubbly chin, he tried to think of some way to cut his losses. He could sacrifice those parts of the experiment that were expendable—the
Hazel’s side of the lab was neat and tidy. His was a chaos of equipment and containers of chemicals. One of his few concessions to lab safety, a white absorbent mat to catch spills, hung half-off the black counter, one corner pinned by a jar of detergent.
Vergil stood before the white idea board, rubbing his stubbly beard, and stared at the cryptic messages he had scrawled there the day before.
Little engineers. Make the world’s tiniest machines. Better than MABs!
Little surgeons. War with tumors. Computers with hu-capac.
(Computers=“spec” tumor HA!) size of volvox.
Clearly the ravings of a madman, and Hazel would have paid them no attention. Or would she? It was common practice to scribble any wild idea or inspiration or joke on the boards and just be prepared to have it erased by the next hurried genius. Still…
The notes could have aroused the curiosity of someone as smart as Hazel. Especially since his work on the MABs had been delayed.
Obviously, he had not been circumspect.
MABs—Medically Applicable Biochips—were to be the first practical product of the biochip revolution, the incorporation of protein molecular circuitry with silicon electronics. Biochips had been an area of speculation in the literature for years, but Genetron hoped to have the first working samples available for FDA testing and approval within three months.
They faced intense competition. In what was coming to be known as Enzyme Valley—the biochip equivalent of Silicon Valley—at least six companies had set up facilities in and around La Jolla. Some had started out as pharmaceutical manufacturers hoping to cash in on the products of recombinant DNA research. Nudged out of that area by older and more experienced concerns, they had switched to biochip research. Genetron was the first firm established specifically with biochips in mind.
Vergil picked up an eraser and rubbed out the notes slowly. Throughout his life, things had always conspired to frustrate him. Often, he brought disaster on himself—he was honest enough to admit that. But not once had he ever been able to carry something through to completion. Not in his work, not in his private life.
He had never been good at gauging the consequences of his actions.
He removed four thick spiral-bound notebooks from his locked desk drawer and added them to the growing
