Darwin’s Radio

‘Mr Bristol Myers Squibb,’ Saul said, and lifted a rolling and waving hand in dismissal. ‘Fossil corporate architecture versus young new blood. They are so wrong.’ He gazed across the yard at the sound, squinted at a few sailboats dodging small whitecaps in the light morning breezes. Then he finished his orange juice and smacked his lips dramatically. He fairly wriggled in the chair, leaned forward, fixed her with his deep gray eyes, and clasped her hands in his.

This is it, Kaye thought.

‘They will regret it. In the next few months we are going to be so busy. The CDC just broke the news this morning. They have confirmed the existence of the first viable Human Endogenous Retrovirus. They’ve shown that it can be transmitted laterally between individuals. They call it Scattered Human Endogenous retroVirus Activation SHERVA. They dropped the R in retro for dramatic effect. That makes it SHEVA. Good name for a virus, don’t you think?’

Kaye searched his face. ‘No joke?’ she asked, voice unsteady. ‘It’s confirmed?’

Saul grinned and held up his arms like Moses. ‘Absolutely. Science marches on to the promised land.’

‘What is it? How big is it?’

‘It’s a retrovirus, a true monster, eight-two kilobases, thirty genes. Its gag and pol components are on chromosome fourteen, and its env is on chromosome seventeen. The CDC says it may be a mild pathogen, and humans show little or no resistance, so it’s been buried for a very long time.’

He placed his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. ‘You predicted it, Kaye. You described the genes. Your prime candidate, a broken HERV-DL3, is the one they’re targeting, and they are using your name. They’ve cited your papers.’

‘Wow,’ Kaye said, her face going pale. She leaned over her plate, the blood pounding in her head.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, feeling dizzy.

‘Let’s enjoy our privacy while we can,’ Saul said triumphantly. ‘Every science reporter is going to be calling. I give them about two minutes to go through their Rolodexes and search MedLine. You’ll be on TV, CNN, Good Morning America.’

Kaye simply could not wrap belief around this turn of events. ‘What kind of illness does it cause?’ she managed to ask.

‘Nobody seems clear on that.’

Kaye’s mind buzzed with possibilities. If she called Lado at the institute, told Tamara and Zamphyra – they might change their minds, go with EcoBacter. Saul would stay good Saul, happy and productive.

‘My god, we’re hot shit,’ Kaye said, still feeling a little woozy. She lifted her fingers, la di da.

‘You’re the one who’s hot, my dear. It’s your work, and it ain’t shit.’

The phone rang in the kitchen.

‘That’ll be the Swedish Academy,’ Saul said, nodding sagely. He held up the medallion and Kaye took a bite out of it.

‘Bull!’ she said happily, and went to answer it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_88978780-a58e-5caa-ad61-dbf8bd8e2e1e)

The hospital gave Mitch a private room as a show of respect for his new-found notoriety. He was just as glad to get away from the mountaineers – but it hardly mattered how he felt or what he thought.

An almost total emotional numbness had stolen over him in the past two days. Seeing his picture on the television news, on the BBC and Sky World, and in the local papers, proved what he knew already; it was over. He was finished.

According to the Zurich press, he was the Sole Survivor of Body-Snatching Mountain Expedition. In Munich, he was Kidnapper of Ancient Ice Baby. In Innsbruck, he was called simply Scientist/Thief. All reported his preposterous story of Neanderthal mummies, helpfully relayed by the police in Innsbruck. All told of his stealing American Indian Bones in the Northwest United States.

He was widely described as an American crackpot, down on his luck, desperate to get publicity.

The Ice Baby had been transferred to the University of Innsbruck, where it was being studied by a team headed by Herr Doktor Professor Emiliano Luria. Luria himself was coming later in the afternoon to speak with Mitch about the find. So long as Mitch had information they needed, he was still in the loop – he was still a kind of scientist, investigator, anthropologist. He was more than just a thief.

When his usefulness was over, then would come the deeper, darker vacuum.

He stared blankly at the wall as an elderly woman volunteer pushed a wheeled cart into his room to deliver his lunch. She was a cheerful, dwarfish woman about five feet tall, in her seventies, with a wizened apple face, and she spoke in rapid German with a soft Viennese accent. Mitch couldn’t understand much of what she said. Tilde had always spoken either in English or in German with a distinct Berlin accent, closer to the German Mitch had studied in college.

He wished he had never met Mathilda Berger.

The elderly volunteer unfolded his napkin and tucked it into his gown. She pressed her lips together and leaned back to examine him. ‘Eat,’ she advised. She frowned and added, ‘One damned young American, nein? I do not care who you are. Eat or sickness comes.’

Mitch picked up the plastic fork, saluted her with it, and began to pick at the chicken and mashed potatoes on the plate. As the old woman left, she switched on the television mounted on the wall opposite his bed. ‘Too damned quiet,’ she said, and waved her hand back and forth in his direction, as if delivering a chiding long-distance slap to his face. Then she pushed the cart through the door.

The television was tuned to Sky News. First came a report on the final and years-delayed destruction of a large military satellite. Spectacular video from Sakhalin Island traced the object’s last flaming moments. Mitch stared at the telephoto images of the veering, sparkling fireball. Outdated, useless, down in flames.

He picked up the remote and was about to shut off the television once more when an inset of an attractive young woman with short dark hair, long bangs, large eyes, illustrated a story about an important biological discovery in the United States.

‘A human provirus, lurking like a stowaway in our DNA for millions of years, has been associated with a new strain of flu that commonly strikes only women,’ the announcer began. ‘Molecular biologist Dr Kaye Lang of Long Island, New York, has been credited with predicting this incredible invader from humanity’s past. Michael Hertz is on Long Island now.’

Hertz was formally sincere and respectful as he spoke with the young woman outside a large, fashionable green and white house. Lang seemed suspicious of the camera.

‘We’ve heard from the Centers for Disease Control, and now from the National Institutes of Health, that this new variety of flu has been positively identified in San Francisco and Chicago, and there’s been a pending identification in Los Angeles. Do you think this could be the flu epidemic the world has dreaded since 1918?’

Lang stared nervously at the camera. ‘First of all, it’s not really a flu. It’s not like any influenza virus, and for that matter, doesn’t resemble any virus associated with colds or flu … It isn’t like any of them. For one thing, it seems to cause symptoms only in women.’

‘Could you describe this new, or rather very old, virus for us?’ Hertz asked.

‘It’s large, about 80,000 kilobases, that is –’

‘More specifically, what kind of symptoms does it cause?’

‘It’s a retrovirus, a virus that reproduces by transcribing its RNA genetic material into DNA and then inserting it into the DNA of a host cell. Like HIV. It seems quite specific to humans –’

The reporter’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Is it as dangerous as the AIDS virus?’

‘I’ve heard nothing that tells me it’s dangerous. It’s been carried in our own DNA for millions of years; in that way, at least, it’s not at all like the HIV retrovirus.’

‘How can our women viewers know if they’ve caught this flu?’

‘The symptoms have been described by the CDC, and I don’t know anything more than what they’ve announced. Slight fever, sore throat, coughing.’

‘That could describe a hundred different viruses.’

‘Right,’ Lang said, and smiled. Mitch studied her face, her smile, with a sharp pang. ‘My advice is, stay tuned.’

‘Then what is so significant about this virus, if it doesn’t kill, and its symptoms are so slight?’

‘It’s the first HERV – human endogenous retrovirus – to become active, the first to escape from human chromosomes and be laterally transmitted.’

‘What does that mean, laterally transmitted?’