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that might not exist.
At 10 a.m. he stopped the program to run the graphic representation of the
thing taking shape in the nutrient tank. The glowing phosphor dots of the high
resolution monitor did a good job on the complex code structure of the genome.
He did not hear the door open and someone enter the room.
A gasp of surprise made him turn around. Dr Mace Pilleau was staring at the
screen in astonishment.
'What in the name of God have you got there, Leon?'
'Good morning, Mace. I thought you might answer that. But it looks to me as if
our trojan can convert standard Kronos nutrient into a fully-fledged, living
DNA.'
For a few moments Dr Pilleau was too shocked to speak. He sat in the chair
beside Leon without taking his eyes off the screen. 'Is there more?'
For an answer Leon scrolled the screen image the entire length of the complex
and convoluted structure. 'And that's a low resolution image, Mace". If you
want maximum resolution, it will take several hours to map. Even with this
computer.'
'Amazing,' Dr Pilleau breathed. 'Truly amazing. Could there be a fault with
the software?'
Leon sighed. 'The simulation is based on tried and proven routines, Mace".'
'Then what's the density?'
'I've reached a 60 per cent conversion of the nutrient and it's still going
up. I'm running at ten times real time, but even that's slowing down now. It's
using a lot of processing power just extracting this.'
'Sixty per cent!' Dr Pilleau echoed.
'That's right.'
In the years he had known him, Leon had never seen the scientist look so
horrified. He had half-risen from the chair, his face deathly white. 'It's not
possible!' he whispered. 'Total conversion of the nutrient fluid into DNA! Oh
God! Beverley's belt! Why didn't I think of that!'
Before Leon could reply, the scientist fled from the room, moving at a speed
that belied his age. Leon followed him to his laboratory and found him
positioning a Laine Runner belt under his electron microscope so that the
substrate window of the belt's Kronos chip's nutrient fluid chamber was under
the viewing head. His gnarled fingers shook noticeably as he adjusted the
instrument's settings.
'What's the matter, Mace?'
'Beverley's belt!' the scientist wailed. 'I didn't think! I simply
did not think. How could I be so stupid? So incredibly blind and stupid! All
the time we were peering into the Kronos's memory area to see what the trojan
was doing, and not looking to see what was happening to the nutrient!' His
words were a rush, a disjointed, virtually incoherent mumble.
He went on bewailing his shortsightedness while waiting for the microscope to
reach working temperature. The screen flickered into life. Leon helped with
the fine adjustments because the elder scientist's hands were trembling. The
image sharpened. Both men saw the cluster of DNA molecules. Dr Pilleau gave a
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gasp of horror. 'Leon, this is terrible.'
'But that's nothing like the density I'm getting on the simulation,' Leon
pointed out. 'That's only one Kronos. I don't suppose it's much above .01 per
cent.'
The scientist's fingers fumbled with a pocket magnifying glass. He peered
closely at the belt's sensor pad. 'Carl's right, the barbs are damaged. A
large impurity has been forced through the hypodermic! Oh God, this is
terrible. Terrible!'
'Look, Mace\ I'm not a microbiologist, so what the hell's the matter?'
'I need to think.' Dr Pilleau collapsed into a chair and covered his face.
After a few moments his hands stopped trembling. He took them away from his
face and stared at Leon. 'When laboratory technicians first started handling
pure DNA of even simple organisms back in the 1970s, it was found to be the
most dangerous carcinogenic substance known to man. People were dying very
quickly of the most horrible skin cancer. It's not a problem today because
there are strict precautions in labs that handle the stuff.'
Leon was badly shaken. 'The DNA of simple organisms?' he queried.
Dr Pilleau nodded. "The more complex the DNA's genome, the more dangerous it
is. A millilitre of human DNA coming into contact with your skin would give
you a lethal dose. I dread to think what a millilitre of that DNA could do.'
Leon swore softly. 'You mean . . . Beverley . . . She used to test that belt
... Oh Christ! It's even named after her!'
Dr Pilleau's face was haggard. 'As the concentration in the
belt is so low now . . . Perhaps it was lower when she was wearing it? Perhaps
she did not receive a fatal dose ..."
'And perhaps that is too much to hope for,' muttered Leon. 'So do we tell
her?'
An hour later Leon finished reading the reports that Dr Pilleau had called up
from the World Health Organization's database. The WHO had done a good job on
collating data on the carcinogenic properties of separated DNA and making it
readily available. The findings were all there: from John Hopkin University;
from university hospitals all over the world; from the laboratories of the
major drug companies. There were reports on accidents involving laboratory
technicians during the early days of DNA research and more reports on causes
of death of the same technicians. Some documents were couched in a blanket fog
of technical terms; some spelt out their message in clear, unequivocal terms.
But in all cases the message, and the paradox in that message, was the same:
DNA, the basic building block of life itself, was a killer.
65
BALI, INDONESIA
It took much of Beverley's indomitable will not to allow the pain in her side
to interfere with her concentration. She watched the glowing digits on the
Dinkum's echo-sounder intently. Suddenly the digits changed to zeros.
'Toby! There's no more reading!'
Toby and Jumo stopped packing gear into the underwater scooter's nose cone and
joined Beverley at the Dinkum's helm. Toby switched the echo-sounder to high
range but the zeros remained the same. He looked at the blazing lights of the
Eldorado about two miles distant. 'We're too far out, Bev,' he said, switching
the echo-sounder back to normal range. 'Take her in a bit.'
'Why isn't there a reading?'
'I think we are over the Java Trench,' Jumo explained. 'One
of the deepest ocean trenches in the world. You only would get a reading on
the sonargraph if it could read depths of about five kilometres.'
Beverley was astonished. 'What? But we're so close to the shore!'
'Bali is volcanic, it rises straight off the floor of the ocean,' said Jumo
seriously.
'Take her in closer, Beverley,' Toby suggested. 'We haven't got three miles of
anchor line.'
Beverley pushed the Morse throttle lever forward and turned the Dinkum towards
the Eldorado while Toby and Jumo finished cramming supplies into the scooter's
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nose cone.
The young Japanese was always willing and eager to please. He seemed delighted
to be united with Beverley and Toby in their common fight. The advantage of
having him along was that he had memorized the layout of the Eldorado from
plans he had bribed out of the shipyard who had carried out the conversion. It
was about the only planning he had carried out.
The night was eerily calm. The moon shone from a clear sky on the oil-black [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]