regular twenty-eight-day menstrual cycle.'
'Supposedly these are monkeys. But they have a thirty-seven-day menstrual cycle. At least chimps do. Humans have a twenty-eight-day cycle. When they identified the monkeys by I.D. number, they would begin with 'MA' for macaque. I think 'HO' is Homo sapien. I think it was a revealing slip of the pen. They're so into their research they occasionally drop the fig leaf.'
'Why are they cloning people?'
''Believe me, I'm trying to figure it out. But you can't speed-read this stuff.
'There's another reason I think they're cloning people. In another section is a summary of the experimental vaccine and the AVCD-4 antivirus for another viral disease. I'm not sure what it was. But I'm suspicious that it was RA-4TVM, which I believe is a mutation of the vector virus. Which is a puzzle because it was supposed to be a harmless vector for delivering genes and there would be no reason to develop a vaccine and antivirus to attack it. It says here:
' 'HO 1212 and HO 0814 infants who did not receive the vaccine had a spike in plasma antigenemia two weeks after injection with RA-4TVM. After four weeks, high levels of the virus were present in T-4 cells, with only 1,000 to 10,000 PBMCs needed to recover culture. The nonvaccinated infants then received the vaccine and antivirus, with the result that after sixty days we could not recover any of the challenge virus from ten to the sixth PBMCs, in HO 1212 clones. To achieve the same result in HO 0814 clones took 150 days.' '
'Just tell me what it means,' she said.
''Well, I think it means that they took cloned humans and used them to test a remedy for this RA-4TVM. Anyway, it worked. When they injected these infants with RA-4TVM, they were all cured by the combination of the vaccine and the antivirus. But one set of clones had much better genetic immunity and was cured much more quickly. Another reason I think it was humans is because when they are experimenting on monkeys they use SRA- 4TV, or SRA-4TVM, which, I think, is a version of RA-4TV that infects primates. Here the reference is to RA- 4TVM.'
'I'll take your word for it.' Even though they had talked about it, seeing it in print obviously shocked her. 'God. That seems really far-fetched. You're telling me they cloned babies and then gave them some disease and then cured them?''
'I'm just suggesting. I didn't say it happened.'
'If they cloned babies and thereafter infected them with a disease, that would explain why they so desperately want these volumes back.'
'Right.'
''But what is this disease? Is it like a common virus?''
'I doubt it. The notes indicate it was an African virus that started out harmless. Then they made a vector and it looks like from the research that it became a problem.'
Before he could continue, she cut him off. 'Look, I've got the gist and I'm never going to master the details. It's a given that if you can fix genes, you can cure most disease, right?''
'Yeah. Most pharmaceutical companies study genetics so they can develop drugs to interact with the proteins to affect disease processes that actually get their start in defective genes.'
'Genes can be defective at birth or they can get defective because some kid swallows lead paint or the like. Right?' she asked.
'Right.'
'You can be born with genetic weaknesses or something in the environment can cause a mutation. It's why people buy organically grown vegetables.'
'Right again.'
'You're telling me that Tillman's guys are trying to work at the beginning of the chain reaction instead of the end. Instead of trying to fix the screwed-up proteins or the run-amok cells, they're trying to fix the DNA that started it all. To fix DNA they make harmless viral vectors out of disease viruses to be used as carriers for the repair genes.'
'That's it.'
'See, I've been listening.'
'So with all their great ability-the computer and the God Model-what would possess them to begin experimenting on people?'
'You've got to have empirical proof. It would have a lot of advantages for everybody except the poor clones that served as guinea pigs. Getting human genes into mice and then experimenting on the mice is really tough and slow. Many so-called cures work on mice but not on people. When your data comes directly from people you don't have those problems. That's kind of an obvious answer. But there may be a much subtler answer. It may be that cloning people and deliberately changing just a few genes in the process enabled them to create these computer models. Ultimately, you'd forget the human experimentation and just use the computer, once your model was good enough.'
'So when you were far enough along, you'd tell the world that the whole thing was just a computer exercise,' she said.
''Yeah and show them a bunch of empirical work with mice and monkeys.'
'The link to the Tilok surrogate mothers is obvious, isn't it? If someone were cloning people, they would need human mothers, wouldn't they?'
'That would be far easier than trying to grow an embryo in a lab tank.'
'So if someone worked at it, they could take an adult person and make an exact copy. Like they've done with animals.'
He shrugged. 'It would be spooky if they did.'
'This all still doesn't quite explain why they had a planeload of diseases.'
'True. Let me keep reading.'
She lay next to him, her head on a pile of clothing, soaking up the warmth of his huge frame. He tried to push from his mind the feelings generated by this closeness. He could not recall ever wanting a woman this badly. Ignoring it would require some effort.
After she had dozed for what seemed like minutes, she propped herself on her elbow. He gave a furtive sideward glance and smiled. She was reading the text. This section of the volume was describing a means of analyzing gene function using DNA chips. When he next glanced over, he saw that she had fallen fast asleep again. The image of her face took hold of him, bringing about a peculiar concentration. It was as if he were trying to discover her essence in the pleasing lines of her face. Maybe it was infatuation. Feeling strangely reenergized, he went back to his study.
Day faded into night. They alternately ate, slept, talked, and argued. Kier read. Finally, he crawled out of the hut, dressing in the falling snow, exhilarated by the frosty air.
Taking a pinch of snow, he crawled partway into the hut and sprinkled it on her forehead. She twitched her nose. Watching her, he broke into a large grin. It felt as if his cheeks would crack. He sprinkled some more, this time across her partially exposed breasts.
'Kier, what are you doing?' She awakened, pulling her blanket around. Then she smiled. 'Gentleman don't peep.'
'Who was peeping?'
'You do have a certain boyish charm, even when you're lying.'
She shoved him out of the hut and began dressing. As he looked around at the beauty of the winter mountain he realized that, aside from all the violence and the chase, he was happy in this place, even in the dead of winter. Snow covered the good and the bad, until the thaw when it would all come out. New life. Decaying remains. Everything. Jessie needed a spring.
Something was hidden, something was troubling her. With the decay might come something new and good. He wondered if he would be around to see it. At first glance, she seemed a difficult person. Hostile, cynical, irritable. Some vestige of a sense of humor remained.
But this was not the essence of Jessie. It was what he sensed but couldn't completely define that attracted him the most, her passions and her willingness to throw herself headlong into life. For him it was like looking at someone through bottle glass. Very little was plain, but one could see shadows, glimpses of what might be.
