Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  It was Geraldine’s idea to come down to Washington and Stoddart’s to move from Blair House to a suite at the Georgetown Four Seasons and the first night they ordered room service to avoid any interruption. He’d also ordered French champagne and she said: ‘How did you know there might be something to celebrate?’

  ‘I’m hoping.’

  Geraldine visibly breathed in, composing herself. ‘I’ve crystallized an enzyme, in culture. I’m as sure as I can be it’s from uncoded ribonucleic acid, RNA, and its protein is almost homologous to an already encoded protein, dyskerin. And dyskerin has been cloned from mutated cells in people suffering Dyskeratosis Congenita, one of the known premature ageing illnesses that we’ve already talked about but until now has only affected children. I don’t know – perhaps we never will – but maybe modern Dyskeratosis Congenita is a rare but weaker mutation of the much more virulent disease we’ve got now, suddenly activating a host RNA which over thousands of years most humans developed a natural immunity against, like the children in the caves. It’s been dormant until whatever the chemical is, in these mites and worms, woke it up.’

  ‘So Raisa was wrong?’ said Stoddart.

  Geraldine smiled, shaking her head. ‘She always was. As Sergei says, she’s mentally ill. She threw science out the window to make her theory fit, which it doesn’t. Like one of our theories was wrong. The nothofagus isn’t poisonous, as such. It becomes so through a chemical reaction when it absorbs the discharge – the excreta, if you like, although it’s not quite that – of the blood-sucking, infection-bearing ticks that colonized it. The worms we recovered from the Antarctic and Arctic waters – the ticks’ parent pupae – expel the same discharge under stimulation, as getting into the digestive enzymes of a predator’s gut would stimulate them.’

  ‘Like a skunk?’ suggested Stoddart.

  ‘Good analogy,’ accepted Geraldine. ‘Skunks stink but don’t kill. Our mites and pupae do. Next step, our falling-apart chromosomes in the dividing cells. Telomeres, which are supposed to hold chromosomes together, contain a catalyst called telomerase reverse transcriptase. That catalyst is mutated in all our victims, prehistoric and new. And there are RNA in telomeres.’

  ‘So your new guy could be invading, causing the telomeres to shorten and finally give way?’

  ‘Maybe,’ conceded Geraldine, cautiously. ‘Maybe it’s not a direct invasion but a roll-on: there’s a lot of cells being hit far too quickly. There’s a group of gene-produced proteins called cytokines, which are important components of the human body’s immunology. There’s a group of non-coding DNA which activate these genes. In all our victims – except the cave children – those genes have been skewed into a mutation: sometimes knocked out …’

  ‘You’re beginning to lose me,’ warned Stoddart.

  ‘The scientific thinking is that cytokine genes evolved to protect children – and from childhood into adulthood – from intestinal parasites when there wasn’t such a thing as hygiene …’

  ‘Something else thousands of years old?’ connected Stoddart.

  ‘Right!’ agreed Geraldine. ‘And it’s in the gut that we’re finding the enzyme from our untraced RNA. Which throws up another commonality. Virtually all the new victims suffer respiratory problems: colds, influenza, even pneumonia. All those conditions produce mucus and cytokines are rather like an inoculated antibody. They “give” the victim a mucus to encourage the victim to cough and expel the virus or the parasites.’

  ‘I’m seeing another chain,’ encouraged Stoddart.

  ‘So are we,’ said Geraldine. ‘We have to assume the Antarctic and Arctic victims were classically and directly infected by tick bites. But that the more widespread pandemic is coming through the food chain and bird droppings …’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ stopped Stoddart, remembering his Fort Detrick isolation and the revolving, paperless toilet. ‘Detrick was analyzing from the beginning and there’s nothing in anything I’ve read – and I’ve read everything – of anything being found in the faeces or urine of the people I brought back. How come we’re only finding it in birds and animals?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t fully understand why some of the things I’m describing are happening,’ admitted Geraldine. ‘It’s only in the faeces of some birds and some animals. You want a hopeful question – how about it not transmitting through human body waste because there’s some residual immunity that other animals and birds don’t have: resistance that causes it to die, with its victims?’

  ‘I’ve a better question,’ challenged Stoddart. ‘How are you going to send your RNA back to sleep again?’

  ‘I don’t know that, either,’ confessed Geraldine. ‘We might be able to, if we found the host cell, but we’re a long way from that at the moment. All I’m talking about – hopefully talking about – is something like the zidovudine treatment that prevents the human immunodefiency virus, HIV, developing into full-blown acquired immune deficiency, AIDS.’

  ‘You’ve got a cocktail already?’

  ‘We’re experimenting with synthesized cytokine and glutathione. And synthesizing a pseudo dyskerin and trying protein inhibitors,’ said Geraldine. ‘The aim is to stimulate the natural immunity: redefine the body’s cytokine to revert to its original, necessary function and bring all the other antibodies along with it. If it – or a variation – works it’ll hold the disease, like AZT holds AIDS. Give us the breathing space to find the host cells and reprogramme or destroy the rogue ribonucleic acid.’

  ‘It could take a long time, moving on from laboratory animals to humans, couldn’t it?’ demanded Stoddart, objectively.

  Geraldine hesitated. ‘Everything has been passed on to the Moscow institute where Raisa Orlov is dying. They are doing whatever they can to save her.’

  ‘Let’s hope they do,’ said Stoddart. Politicospeak was so easy.

  ‘We all hope that,’ said Geraldine.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Just days, for an indication.’

  ‘That would be something to celebrate,’ said Stoddart, topping up her champagne.

  ‘At the moment it’s premature. So here’s to your new job.’

  ‘That’s not what the champagne’s to celebrate.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I’ve missed you like hell.’

  Geraldine hesitated. ‘I’ve missed you like hell, too.’

  ‘I’ve decided it’s love.’

  ‘I thought we were going to give ourselves some living together time to make our minds up about that?’

  ‘I don’t need a trial. I’m asking you to marry me.’

  Geraldine gazed into her glass. ‘Want to hear a secret?’

  It wouldn’t affect how he felt, whatever it was. ‘If you want to tell me.’

  ‘No one’s ever asked me before. Didn’t seem to occur to anyone.’ Did he love her enough to know about the abortion? Not yet. Not now.

  ‘What’s the answer, now someone has?

  ‘Yes,’ she said, coming up from her glass. ‘I want very much to marry you. And I’m glad it was you who finally asked. But there are things to do first.’

  That night Stoddart finally called Patricia’s brother, John, in San Antonio. Stoddart told him that his sister had been incredibly brave and wanted him to know she loved him. He’d been with her when she’d died and there hadn’t been any pain. He left the Fort Derrick number for the man to call, if he thought there was anything he could do.

  The president staged Stoddart’s televised acceptance ceremony in the Rose Garden, with Amanda O’Connell in obvious attendance and Paul Spencer visibly more in the forefront than Richard Morgan. This creation of an entirely new department of government was, Partington insisted, unquestionably the most important of his administration, which was why Stoddart’s official title would be that of Secretary. In advance of congressional approval there was to be interim executive funding for the emergency measures proposed in New York to be immediately implemented. The United States’ navy and coast
guard were being mobilised for initial clear-up operations and the ultimate budget to be presented to Congress would provide for whatever other precautions were adopted. A federal reserve fund was also being created upon which individual states could call. In Secretary Stoddart the United States of America, indeed the world, had a man of unparalleled commitment and integrity – one of the first men to warn of the catastrophe that had occurred – which was shortly to be proved by the environmental conference under his chairmanship.

  To a nervous shifting from the man and those around him Stoddart repeated his Lincoln Room promises. He found no personal satisfaction in the vindication of his predictions. Instead he looked to the future and to proving wrong those different sceptics, those who believed it was already too late to reverse global warming.

  Partington led the way back into the Oval Office, hurrying to the barricades of his special desk. It was a dangerous strategy, doing it here, but the integrity hypocrisy had to be put on record. Once it was, Stoddart would be bound in, knowing why he had to conform like everyone else. And it would be Spencer’s voice, not his, Partington reassured himself: he could always claim he’d had no foreknowledge.

  The rehearsal before the ceremony had been for the anguished Richard Morgan to escort everyone directly away, leaving only Stoddart and Spencer with the president.

  Partington said: ‘Quite a speech out there, Jack. You’re turning out to be a natural born politician.’

  ‘I guess I’m going to have to be, from now on.’

  ‘From now on you’ve got to be a member of a team. You’re not going to have any difficulty with that, are you, Jack?’

  Patiently awaiting his cue, Spencer heard, You’re under my control now, you son of a bitch, and you better realize it.

  Message time, Stoddart recognized. ‘I hope not, Mr President.’

  ‘It’s got to go beyond hope,’ said Partington. ‘You talked a lot out there about commitment. That’s what I want, too. People committed to me get my commitment in return. Total loyalty, both ways.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll learn,’ said Stoddart, sure that he wouldn’t because he never had. How long would it take to get to the real point?

  ‘You started the right way,’ said Spencer, responding at last. ‘And we’re in there for you, all the way.’

  Stoddart looked blankly at the man. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘That business at the very beginning: things said against you. People losing their minds. Understandable in the circumstances. Maybe not to a lot of people, though. But like I said, we’re in there for you. No need to worry.’

  The dying James Olsen and the lawyer demands, identified Stoddart finally. His first test at politics, he supposed. ‘I have been concerned about that.’

  Spencer smiled, confidently. ‘Don’t be. You any idea how much paperwork’s been generated by all this?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘Easy for things to get mislaid among a mass of material like that.’

  They thought he had an embarrassment he’d want buried! A test beyond politics, he accepted. And he’d passed it already by the precautions he’d taken. ‘I read something in the Post a few days back about James Olsen’s wife,’ prompted Stoddart, aware of the immediate look between Spencer and the president.

  ‘White House counsel …’ started Spencer, but Partington hurriedly smothered him, furious at the need to speak.

  ‘I’m not sure what we’re talking about here. Maybe you and Paul need to discuss it somewhere else. Over-running my diary, as usual. Just wanted to say welcome, that’s all.’

  understood Spencer, rising.Get out!

  Stoddart made the same interpretation, remaining in his seat. There’s no problem, if what Olsen wrote has gone missing. I took a copy the Olsen lawyers can have. Government counsel, too, of course.’

  ‘What’ll they do?’ asked Geraldine, when they spoke later that evening.

  ‘Settle out of court,’ said Stoddart. ‘No alternative. They destroyed it, I didn’t.’

  ‘Would a settlement include your personal liability?’

  ‘If it’s legally thought I have any. I’m officially part of the government now.’

  ‘For how long, after this?’

  ‘Until I decide, not them.’

  At the end of that week the news from Moscow was that Raisa Orlov’s condition had stabilized, the respiratory infection was lessening and the organ degeneration appeared to have been halted.

  The World Health Organization recorded more than three million volunteers within the initial two days of the halting drugs cocktail being announced.

  Thirty-Eight

  Although it was convened under the auspices of the United Nations, Henry Partington officially opened the environmental conference but left New York directly afterwards, refusing to be overshadowed by Stoddart’s presence as chairman. Every country, with the exception of China and the Arab block of the southern and eastern Mediterranean, accepted in advance and without argument the emission reduction targets proposed by the conference executive, which gave Stoddart twenty-three per cent more than he’d expected to achieve initially, and China’s internationally pressured compliance during the debate, along with that of Algeria and Egypt, brought the figure up to twenty-nine, with the pledge from every country to ratify the agreement nationally within three months. Despite the equally unanimous agreement of a permanent UN monitoring group, Stoddart pragmatically assessed the global avoidance or failure at twenty-five per cent, which still put him ahead of what he’d hoped to have had agreed. Just as pragmatically he knew that couldn’t be met within the first year, but it would provide the base figure from which to negotiate further reductions at the second – again internationally agreed – global gathering at the end of that first twelve months. Other internationally concluded charters included a total ban on ice-bore sampling at both Poles, including Greenland, Siberia and Canada’s North-West Territory, and total co-operation in pesticide treatment of newly exposed tundra in all those areas. With the recognition of the scale – and possibly continuing need – of such undertakings, it was agreed that as well as national and international environmental agencies, designated divisions of all three military branches of each participating country should be mobilized.

  Geraldine Rothman authored the scientific paper on the blocking cocktail and a separate, detailed account of the continuing search for the causative gene to stimulate the genome research globally, but at the first approach from Nobel committee emissaries from Stockholm made it clear she would not consider and certainly would not accept any individual recognition. She later regretted giving in to Peter Reynell’s insistence that she be in the public gallery at the House of Commons for his inaugural premiership appearance, not aware when she did so that he would publicly identify her there and talk as if she had been the scientist solely responsible for the limited but seemingly effective breakthrough. Later, in Downing Street, Reynell offered her the choice of three safe parliamentary seats and the immediate appointment as science minister and dismissed as an obstacle the fact that she’d never voted for his party in her life. He left the offer open even though she said she didn’t plan to remain in England, without explaining why. At that time she’d already refused professorial chairs of genetics at universities in Cambridge, Tokyo, Montreal and Sydney but asked two – one in New York, the other in Baltimore – for time to consider while she and Stoddart finalized their plans. She spent a lot of time personally at Cambridge with the group with whom she’d liaised from Washington, reviewing the scientific search for the mutated RNA gene.

  Lord Ranleigh correctly predicted that the first challenge to Peter Reynell’s overwhelming mandate would be to the policy reversal on genetically modified crops – which met with similar opposition throughout most of the European Union – and urged Reynell to limit the change until other countries, particularly America, established that one danger wasn’t being exchanged for another. Reynell instead held a yes-or-no referendum and got a 78 per cent approval v
ote, which he personally flew to New York to announce at one of the final sessions of the environmental conference. He went from there to Washington for Amanda O’Connell’s induction as Secretary of State. They agreed that personally everything had ended very well. Neither suggested luck had been involved, because neither considered it had. Nor was there any mawkishness about things abruptly seeming different and it didn’t occur to either to talk about missing one another, because neither expected to. She said she looked forward to seeing him when he was in Washington and he said he looked forward to seeing her when she was in London. They didn’t exchange parting gifts or momentoes, although he did, as promised, give her all his direct line numbers.

  Raisa Ivanova Orlov’s mental condition was diagnosed as senile dementia, which it strictly wasn’t, and although the self-induced ageing was arrested, the osteoporosis and arthritis was severe enough to cripple her permanently and she needed twice-daily treatment for glaucoma. She didn’t for a long time recognize Gregori Lyalin, who sat alone by the institute bedside, praying silently for her. He did so with his eyes closed, his head bent, and so her sudden awareness startled him.

  ‘I was right, wasn’t I? Cured myself!’

  ‘You’re alive,’ said Lyalin. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I’m being nominated, you know. For the Nobel.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard.’

  ‘Couldn’t cheat me this time.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m going …’ she started, but the curtain began to descend. ‘… I want …’ she tried again but disappeared into her mental blackness and Lyalin quietly got up and left. He decided against visiting her again. He didn’t need to be in her presence to pray for her.

  Geraldine had been irregular since the abortion but she’d never missed an entire month before, and it was five weeks before she counted to be sure and even then she wasn’t certain, because so much had been happening – the weekend commuting to Washington after a seventy-hour, so far fruitless, week in genetics laboratories – to account for the miss. She finally did her own urine test and spent a night of mixed thoughts before deciding it was wonderful and convincing herself that Stoddart would think so too. They’d used his Fairfax apartment to house hunt at their leisure and narrowed the selection to three, her favourite at Rockville because she’d decided upon the Baltimore offer. The vendors had children, the youngest a girl of three, and there was already a nursery. They looked at it for a second time the weekend of her confirming pregnancy test and on their way back to Washington she asked if he didn’t think it was too far out of DC for his job and Stoddart said he didn’t mind which of the three they took, as long as she was happy.