could have cut and pasted any sequence they liked into the software, and it would have happily purred away and spat out the necessary primers and probes.
They were testing his blood for the Sao Paulo gene.
Prabir felt a surge of panic—
Prabir was allowed to join Grant and a dozen of the expeditioners, who were eating lunch under an awning. Cole and Carpenter were with them, but the businessmen seemed to have left with the fishing boat. A soldier sitting on a fuel drum in the corner looked on listlessly; compared to burning Muslim villagers out of their homes in Aru, this could hardly be a stimulating tour of duty.
Prabir approached Seli Ojany, who was standing with a small group of people beside a crate covered in plates of sandwiches. He caught her eye and whispered, ‘Do you know where my sister is?’
Ojany put a finger to her lips, then pretended she’d been wiping off breadcrumbs. It occurred to Prabir belatedly that half the expedition could have been out in the field when the Lord’s Army arrived, and some of them would have had the opportunity to see what was happening and stay away. It wasn’t an entirely comforting thought; Madhusree would probably have been safer in the camp than in the jungle, unless there was some brutality going on here that he’d yet to observe.
Prabir glanced at the soldier, but he didn’t seem to be paying them much attention. ‘So what’s brought the Inquisition here?’ he asked. ‘Are there really that many animals turning up in West Papua?’
Ojany gestured at a colleague beside her. ‘Mayumi heard the story closer to first-hand.’
‘Not animals in West Papua,’ Mayumi said, ‘but there were some fishermen who went to Suresh Island.’ Prabir did his best to accept this casual use of his parents’ name; it seemed Madhusree had put them on the map forever, pinning their memories to the spot. ‘They came back to Kai and ran amok in their own village; most of them were captured, but one of them escaped and ended up on Aru. That seems to be why the LA got interested.’
‘What do you mean “ran amok”? What exactly did they do?’ Prabir was hoping for some solid evidence at last to write this off as the result of a psychotropic plant toxin.
Mayumi shrugged. ‘The Kai islanders who were here earlier wouldn’t tell me. And the LA aren’t exactly forthcoming either.’
Deborah, one of Madhusree’s friends whom Prabir had met earlier, responded impatiently, ‘Forget what the Lord’s Army think: we
Ojany said, ‘But what if that increases selection pressure for a version that can cross into marine species?’
‘If Furtado is right—’ Mayumi began, at which point almost everyone in earshot groaned. ‘
Deborah glanced at her watch and predicted, ‘In less than twenty-four hours, we’ll be able to stop worrying about Furtado.’ Prabir looked at her enquiringly; she explained, ‘The Lausanne team have gone ahead and started the synthetic chromosome test themselves. The verdict will be out by about noon tomorrow, our time.’
Cole, who’d been hovering at the edge of the group, interjected urbanely, ‘All this fear of “contagion” would be put swiftly to rest if you took the trouble to consult my seminal text on ambivalence towards the natural world, M/
Prabir had been watching Carpenter while Cole spoke; there’d been an encouragingly troubled expression building on his face. Some of the biologists followed Prabir’s gaze, until everyone in the group was looking at the student, waiting for his response.
Carpenter began tentatively, ‘If this gene
Prabir detected movement in the corner of his vision; he turned to see the medical officer and two junior soldiers approaching.
The medical officer addressed him. ‘Come with me, please.’
‘Why?’ Prabir looked around for support. ‘You’ve taken a blood sample, what more do you want?’
‘This is for your own protection,’ the man insisted blandly.
‘
The medical officer said, ‘You’re infected. You’re going into quarantine.’
14
Prabir had expected to be placed under guard in a tent at the edge of the camp, or perhaps imprisoned in a cage built from rough-hewn branches tied together with rattan—the kind of thing they always seemed to be able to construct at short notice in movies, whenever someone on a tropical island needed to be restrained. What the Lord’s Army did instead was trash the control console of Grant’s boat, dispose of all the pigeons, butterflies and blood samples in a bonfire on the beach, steal Grant’s rifle and tranquilliser gun, and lock Prabir in the cabin. They posted one sentry on deck and another on the beach.
Prabir sat in the captain’s chair in front of the ruined console, swinging the seat slowly back and forth. The ancient PCR machine might have malfunctioned. Or it might have amplified nothing but a fragment of plant DNA that had entered his bloodstream through a scratch from a barbed-wire shrub. A foreign cell in the process of being taken apart by his immune system wouldn’t even have been replicating, let alone creating germ cells through meiosis—the prerequisite for the Sao Paulo gene to be expressed. Whatever the powers of SPP in the right context, an inert copy of its gene was just another piece of junk to be scavenged, broken down and recycled.
The gene
What did it do when it succeeded? Headed for the place where germ cells were made, carrying an endonuclease to incorporate itself into the genome. What was the worst possible scenario, then? His sperm would all carry the Sao Paulo gene, their DNA would be rewritten by the protein. But if there was any risk of transmission through sex, he could always learn to use condoms—and if he ever wanted a genetic child, that could be done almost as easily with another cell type in place of sperm. If it was warranted, he could even have new testes grown