Before we can do anything with Diamond versus Chakrabarty, though, we have to get a more detailed biochemical picture of George.'
Sarah pulled up to the security gate at the MCB campus.
'We're just going in to drop some things off, Joe,' she lied. 'We'll be out in half an hour. Probably less.'
Finding parking within the enclosed campus was never any great problem. But getting past the security guard often demanded inspired guile and panache. This morning Sarah had both. She found an empty slot directly behind the Thayer Building.
'Welcome to the Medical Center of Boston, Dr. Mulholland,' she said.
On the far side of the campus, workmen were setting up barriers around the antiquated, decaying Chilton Building.
'Is that the building they're going to blow up?' Rosa asked.
'Blow down, from what I understand,' Sarah said. 'An implosion. Next Saturday. The hospital press release said that the expert doing the demolition is the best in the world. He claims there won't be so much as a brick outside of the barriers.'
'Should be quite a show,' Mulholland said.
'Almost everything that happens around here is quite a show. Glenn Paris, the president of the hospital who's providing your computer today, is the one primarily responsible for that atmosphere. This time he's actually having grandstands put up. He's also raising money by raffling off the chance to be the one who actually presses the button. I bought five chances myself.'
'Sounds exciting,' Rosa said. 'Well, if I'm still around here, perhaps I'll join you.'
By noon they were getting close to identifying the man-made recombinant DNA virus that Ken Mulholland had named George. With the exception of a five-minute break to stretch and plod to the men's room, the virologist had not moved from in front of the screen. Seated to his right, equally immersed in the evolving puzzle, Rosa Suarez determined various probabilities with a calculator and took notes on a yellow legal pad. Sarah, feeling at times like a fifth wheel, came and went, seeing her patients in the clinic, and trying to do some reading for an article she was writing. She returned to the small office each time with coffee or Coke and Danish-always politely refused by Rosa and inevitably wolfed down by Mulholland, who seldom took his eyes off the screen to see what he was eating.
He was younger than Rosa by two decades or so, but it was clear the two of them delighted in working with one another. Three hundred IQ points between them, Sarah estimated. Probably more. She felt a spark of anger at those who had the audacity, arrogance, and self-serving immorality to have tampered with their BART investigation results.
'Okay,' Mulholland said, still transfixed on the screen, 'this is the next sequence. A-T, A-T, C-G, A-T.'
A-T: adenine and thymine; C-G: cytosine and guanine. The paired deoxyribose bases that were the building blocks of life. From medical school courses, Sarah knew the rudiments of DNA structure, function, and replication. But these two, working with Mulholland's biochemist in Atlanta, were operating in the stratosphere of the subject. At the Atlanta end of the modem connection, the chemist-a woman named Molly-had used specific enzymes to chop the viral DNA into small segments. Those segments had been identified and now were being sequenced by computer to re-create the complex, three-dimensional, DNA double helix that was, in essence, the virus. Mulholland and Rosa were pausing with each new set of data to extend the model they were building on the screen, and to compare it to an extensive library of knowns.
Sarah watched Ken Mulholland down a pastrami sandwich as he recited the latest sequence of phosphates and deoxyribose units to Rosa.
That's all she wrote, Ken. What you have is what George is. I'm finished
… and famished. Good Luck. Molly
The message appeared on the screen, and was followed by a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon in which two geeky scientists, peering intently into their microscopes, were themselves beneath someone's huge microscope lens. Rosa took a turn at the keyboard, running the final piece of structural information against the library of known viruses. In just a few minutes she shook her head.
'Not here,' she said.
Rubbing his eyes, Mulholland swung his chair around to Sarah.
'George is some sort of adenovirus, but he's had parts added,' he said.
'He's bioengineered,' Rosa said. 'No es de Dios. Not of God. The questions now to be answered are: By whom? and Does George have anything to do with DIC?'
'Diamond versus-' Sarah was going to attempt the other name in the case, but Mulholland spared her the effort.
'Chakrabarty,' he said. 'Rosa, do you want to explain?'
'No, no. You go ahead, please.'
'She's too modest,' Mulholland said. 'Okay. D. versus C. is the landmark case for patenting new life forms. Ananda Chakrabarty was a microbiologist working for General Electric. Back in the early seventies, he genetically altered the naturally occurring bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The resultant bioengineered germ could digest a number of the hydrocarbons found in crude oil, breaking chemical bonds, and in effect turning a disastrous slick into fish food. The discovery was potentially worth hundreds of millions. But the U.S. patent office refused to allow him to patent the beastie. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision, saying in effect that there was no difference between building a better mousetrap and building a better mutant.'
'How does that help us now?' Sarah asked.
'Well, it might not help us at all,' Mulholland responded. 'But then again, it might. That's where Rosa, here, came in. With bioengineering companies popping up from sea to shining sea like corks, the possibility of an outbreak of disease caused by a new life form seemed more than possible. The Andromeda Strain in the novel was from outer space. In truth, we no longer have to go nearly that far for trouble. So Rosa made a deal with the U.S. patent office to share their data with us. Whenever a new life form is patented, we get a description.'
'By law,' Rosa explained, 'the patent description must be detailed enough so that the life form could be identified and reproduced by an expert in the field. Now a majority of genetic engineering firms cooperate with us directly by submitting descriptions of their new microbes, and often even their work in progress, for inclusion in our data banks.'
'Amazing,' Sarah said. 'So now you can tap into your data banks in Atlanta and see if you can come up with a match. Do you have that many new life forms on file?'
'You don't want to know how many,' Mulholland said.
'Do you want to take a break before you start that process?' Sarah asked. 'We should allow at least an hour to get you back to the airport.'
'In that case, I'll have lunch on the plane,' the virologist said. 'Or have I already had it? No matter. This part shouldn't take too long, thanks to the miracle of how much money we convinced Uncle Sam to spend on our mainframe. Rosa, why don't you do the honors?'
'Seria mi placer,' Rosa replied. 'What we'll do, Sarah, is start with the largest commonality, in this case the type of virus initially used.' She typed.
Adenovirus onto the screen and entered it. 'Then we work our way down. If we get a no match at any point, the game is over. The truth is, the computer could probably do the whole process itself, but I like the adventure.'
'She likes the adventure,' Mulholland echoed reverently.
Piece by piece, Rosa entered George's DNA sequence and asked the Atlanta mainframe to search for a match. Sarah was astounded at how many recombinant viruses there were. And the field of genetic engineering is only in its infancy! Rapidly, though, the number of matches to their virus got smaller and smaller.
'Okay,' Rosa said. 'This next piece of data should separate the man from the boys.'
She entered another of George's sequences, and a second or so later.
No Match appeared on the screen.
'Damn,' Rosa whispered.
The word was barely spoken when the screen flashed another message:
Typo suspected — Check for data entry error or repeat inquiry
'We'll have to find that programmer and give her a raise,' Mulholland said.
