“Sure. Uh, provided you can either sit upwind or don’t mind the smell.”
Something in his smile sent a tickle through her. “Oh, I think I can endure. You have a nice scent.”
“Liar.” She walked at his side, glancing at him. “So, for five years no one has broken out of here?”
“Nancy Hartlee. And look where that got her.”
“What about McEwan?”
“What about him? He’s one of them. He can come and go as he pleases.”
“How does he motivate you? I mean, you and the rest, you could just sit down and say ‘Up yours’ and refuse to lift a finger. Go on strike, if you will.”
He gave her a sympathetic glance. “Have you ever heard the name Albert Speer?”
“Who?”
“Nazi general. He was the genius who kept Hitler’s war machine running through the last years of the war. A brilliant man, actually. While the Allies bombed German industry into rubble, he decentralized it, moved it underground, and kept a couple of million slave laborers producing munitions and aircraft.” He smiled sadly. “McEwan is that sort. Bloody fucking brilliant.”
“You could sabotage things.”
He gave her a thoughtful look. “What if you were given a choice? That you could work and produce, or be the subject of ebola research?”
“No shit?”
“Speer had bad guys in uniforms walking up and down the factory floors. If his workers failed to meet their quota, they were shot in the head. On the ZoeGen there are other means, just as persuasive, at McEwan’s disposal.” Brian smiled sourly. “Nowadays there are few of us left. The recently nabbed people, like Mike Harris and the rest, are at the facility in Yemen. If we don’t take the buyout, who knows what will happen to us. There are two schools of thought on the matter. One is that after they pay us a bloody small fortune and we sign their nondisclosure agreement, they really will let us go. The second is that it will be cheaper to simply give us a sedative and sink our weighted bodies into the Rockall Trough.”
“The where?”
“A really deep hole in the middle of the Atlantic.”
“Oh.”
He held the door to the cafeteria for her. “But, moving on to more delightful conversation, tell me about yourself. How on earth did you get here?”
Christal nodded at some of the now-familiar Arab technicians who sat at the end of one of the tables, drinking coffee. “I was researching Genesis Athena for my employer. Apparently I got too close. That and I caught the Sheik’s eye at a New York film premiere. But we’ve talked about that already. I’d rather hear about what you’re doing.” She walked over and took a tray and silverware. As they went through the line, selecting items, she said, “I mean, I’ve come to understand the why of it. Billions of dollars can be made. Where there’s money, there’s a way. But, like, why kidnap you people? Why not just hire you?”
He piled mashed potatoes on his plate. “Because of the legalities. Oh, I don’t just mean the work itself, but, well, take Nancy’s nanoscalpel. The University of California at Davis had filed on the patent. By stealing Nancy, Genesis Athena got all the information on how to build one of their own. They now hold the patent on a machine far in advance of the UC Davis device. Nancy’s technology, coupled with Gregor’s work on maintaining cytoplasm integrity in the oocyte, gave them the technique. I had a patent pending on my procedure for introducing nuclear DNA from dead cells into living ones. Mitch Harvey had isolated and perfected the procedure for isolating and introducing spermatozoic phospholipase C into—”
“Huh?” She gave him an askance look as they carried their trays to a table. “Talk English, all right?”
He grinned as he sat. “It’s been years since I’ve had to describe things to the uninitiated, so stop me if I get too technical.”
“Count on it.”
He made a sphere with his hands. “Think of a cell as a complex functioning organism, which, in a sense, it is. It has a skin that surrounds it and the equivalency of organs—called organelles—functioning inside it. At the heart is the nucleus—the center, where the DNA is. That’s like the central computer. The cell itself is filled with cytoplasm, the nutrient-rich fluid in which the organelles float … No, that’s a bad analogy. Let’s say it’s a gel in which the organelles are both suspended and interconnected—a chemical mix that has a great deal to do with the health and well-being of the cell itself.”
“Right, I remember most of this from my biology class. But why was floating such a bad analogy?”
“Because in the beginning we didn’t have any idea how important or intricate the cytoplasmic structure was when we were sucking nuclear DNA out of one cell and squirting it into another. It would be like sucking your heart out with a giant vacuum cleaner and blowing it into another person’s chest. Think you’d survive the surgery?”
“God, no!”
“Right. You want to know why it took thousands of attempts to create Dolly way back in the nineties? It’s because we didn’t understand that we had to carefully extract the DNA without altering the delicate balance between the cytoplasm and organelles.”
“You know, for years I’ve been losing sleep over that very question,” she told him dryly.
He managed a grin. “It turns out that a cell is a lot like a factory. Raw materials go in; finished products and wastes come out. When we were sucking the nucleus out with a micropipette, it was like tearing the head office out with bulldozers. We were ruining the assembly lines, spilling product and goods here and there, pushing the machinery this way and that, and tearing great gaping holes in the factory wall. McEwan—bushranger that he is—was the first to figure out how critical the systemic organization and structure of the cytoplasm and organelles was. Nancy Hartlee, way across the world in California, devised her nanoscalpel, which allowed us to make an incision in the plasma membrane, the vitelline space, and the zona pellucida.”
At her look of incomprehension, he added, “Those are the structures that make up the cellular wall of an oocyte—a human egg cell. Prior to that, we were literally crashing our way through, damaging the cell in the process.”
“Okay, I get the picture. By cutting you kept the shock to the egg cell down, right?”
“Right. Go back to the vacuum-cleaner heart surgery we talked about. You want to traumatize the patient as little as possible. Cells, like animals, are tough and resistant, but they can only deal with so much trauma.”
“You’ve covered McEwan and Hartlee. What was your contribution?” She thought his accent was musical and exotic.
He cut a piece of steak, saying, “I was the team leader on the first successful re-creation of an extinct species. You remember the Tasmanian wolves?”
“Yes! And the research leader disappeared. That was you?”
He made a mock bow. “At your service. Granted, we were still using the old shotgun approach, but we’d discovered that light and temperature affected cellular reproduction.”
“Huh?”
He studied her over a forked broccoli. “Where does conception take place?”
“Well, as I understand it, in the fallopian tubes between the ovaries and uterus.”
“Right, and tell me, Christal Anaya, how many fluorescent lights do you have in your fallopian tubes?”
“None of your business.”
“Do you keep them at room temperature, or do you set your reproductive thermostat to body normal?”
“That depends on the man I’m with. For some, I keep it ice cold.”
“And the others?”
“That’s on a need-to-know basis, and as of now, you don’t need to know.” To change the subject, she said, “Okay, I get it. It’s warm and dark inside.”
“Brilliant! You’ve just hit on my part of the miracle. You see, cells are alive. They react to stimuli. My team proved that exposure to light changed a cell’s function. Caused it to react differently.”
He took a moment to eat his broccoli. Oddly disturbed by the
recent sexual banter, Christal studied him. Despite his current circumstance, some internal spirit buoyed him. He looked fit, and she couldn’t help but notice the kindness behind his pale blue eyes.
“The thing you must understand,” he began, “is that cells have complicated metabolisms. Just like the organs in your body, each organelle in a cell serves a particular function. The DNA is something like the brain and blueprint. It carries the instructions for operation. Surrounding it is the endoplasmic reticulum—the factory floor, if you will—where the cell builds proteins and synthesizes lipids, uh, the fats. The plasma membrane is the skin. Structures called mitochondria produce the energy, while the ribosomes manufacture various proteins the cell is tasked to make. Golgi bodies process and sort lipids as well as synthesize polysaccharides—a sort of structural sugar molecule.”
“I didn’t realize it was that complicated.”
“Believe me, we’re just scratching the surface of the structural components. We haven’t even started with the intricate and delicate system of intracellular chemistry. It was there that my team made their contribution in the cloning of the Tasmanian wolves.”
“I should have known.”
“Don’t be an irritant, Christal. It ill behooves a woman of your beauty and grace.”
She was trying to decide how to respond when he continued with, “Light, you see, is energy. Plants, after all, live off it. While animal cells don’t have chloroplasts—the organelles that handle photosynthesis in plant cells—why should we have been surprised that bright laboratory light, especially fluorescent light that pulses, affected discrete functions in the organelles?”
“So, you did it in the dark?”
“Right.” He shrugged. “Couple that with McEwan’s work, Nancy’s nanoscalpel, and Harvey’s PLCs—”
“Whoa! PLCs?”
“Phospholipase C. The small-case ‘s’ stands for spermatozoa. If you’ll recall, the last time I mentioned that, I got a similar perplexed look from you. You should look that way more often. It gives you a vulnerable quality that balances the normal man-killer fire in your eyes.”
She started at the tone; that light jest masked deeper things. She remembered the look in his eyes that day when he’d first walked into her cabin: awe mixed with appreciation. So, what did she think about that? “Why don’t you get back to this prophylactic CS.”
“Phospholipase, not prophylactic. Though in a sense you might say they are related. The latter can be obtained in a little packet from a men’s room wall dispenser while—all things coming to their natural conclusion—the former eventually ends up inside that selfsame latex.”
He was playing with her, a twinkle in his eyes. Her confusion over the subject and her reaction to him just egged him on. To cover her fluster, she used a professional voice to ask, “Are you trying to make a point?”
“About PLCs? Yes. It’s an enzyme, Christal. Mike Harris discovered that a very specific form of PLC is found only in spermatozoa.”
“And why is that important?”
“Because it liberates calcium in the egg cell.”
“I knew that. Imagine eggs without calcium: the shells would be rubbery, and you couldn’t crack them on a frying pan.”
He ignored her. “In the simplest terms, PLCs tells the oocyte that it has been fertilized. It’s a catalyst, a biological switch, one that releases a rush of calcium, which in turn tells a zygote—a fertilized egg—that it can start turning itself into an embryo.”
He sipped at his coffee. “In the old days, we used electricity, and guess what? We didn’t always get the result we wanted. Cells didn’t like the electrical charge any more than you like putting your finger in a light socket. Harris’ PLCs provided us with nature’s much kinder and gentler key to boot the system.”
“So, what you’ve been telling me is that you’ve managed to fix most of the problems that caused clones to fail?”
“Welcome to Genesis Athena.”
“Put this into perspective. Where are you compared to other labs?”
“Christal, we’re light-years ahead. I’ve only given you a thumbnail sketch. Some of the applications are so technical you’d be lost by the descriptions of the chemistry alone. And then there’s another whole universe in epigenetics.”
“Epigenetics?”
“The nonprotein coding in DNA. We used to call it ‘junk’ DNA. Wait, let’s go back. DNA codes for the production of different proteins, right?”
“Right.”
“But if all the genes in your body worked twenty-four/seven making all the proteins coded for in your DNA, there wouldn’t be a difference between your liver and your big toe, would there?”
“I guess not.”
“Each cell in your body carries your entire genetic code, be it an epithelial cheek cell, or a liver cell. So, what tells those cells how to be different? What to make? How much to make? And when to stop making it?”
“You wouldn’t have brought up junk DNA unless it was there.”
“Right. All those bits of old viral DNA, fossil genes, and apparent coding nonsense interact with signals from the cytoplasm to amplify or mute individual gene expression. This is done by something called methylation, literally tagging sections of DNA with methyl molecules that act as on-off switches. When something tampers with methylation in the noncoding DNA, the system goes haywire. It’s the root of most cancers and all developmental and metabolic problems. We had to map and control the epigenetics before we could produce reliable clones.”
“How does making a clone flip the wrong switches?”
“Individual cells react to trauma just like organisms do. In the early days when we removed or inserted nuclear DNA, the cell’s cytoplasm and organelles were traumatized. They sent enzyme signals to the nucleus that popped methyl off entire gene sequences as the cell sought to repair itself. Think of thousands of switches being thrown randomly, lights going on and off, systems powering up and shutting down. We had to catalog the methyl tags before we could understand what we were doing to the oocyte.”
“How many of these methyl tags have you found?”
“Over ten million. And with them, we are closing in on the cure for most cancers. That alone will make the Sheik the richest man on earth.”
“So, what’s your success rate with clones?”
“Close to one hundred percent.”
“Come on, conception doesn’t even come close to that when it’s left to nature.”
All traces of humor left his face when he told her, “Nature is random, full of error and chance. With our control of epigenetics we are slowly and surely removing those variables from the system.”
“You’re telling me that you can control the human genome?”
“Genesis Athena is about control, Christal. And don’t you ever forget it.”
41
The woman had called from the Hilton lobby. She would be knocking on the hotel room door within minutes.
Sheela took a deep breath, nerving herself, falling into her character. She was Jennifer Weaver, thirty-two, daughter of a domineering but mostly absent and very dead father and an overindulgent mother who had overdosed herself with sleeping pills when Jennifer was twelve. She knew this role, had played it so well years before that it had catapulted her into fame and fortune.
She had chosen a suite at the New York Hilton for her visit. The room had a view of the facing buildings on Fifty-fourth Street, and by craning her neck she could just see traffic clogging Avenue of the Americas. She would have preferred the Plaza, or the Four Seasons, but even disguised, she feared that someone would recognize her. No, better to play it safe here, where she’d never stayed before.
The rapping at the door was professionally brief. Sheela stepped across, opened the door, and looked uncertainly at the woman who stood there. She wore a neat gray wool suit with a midlength skirt, white conservative blouse, and coat tailored to her full figure. She might have been forty, with a round face and brown hair tastefully curled.
Black pumps shod her feet, and a large leather case hung from her left hand.
“Jennifer?” the woman asked hopefully.
“Yes?” Sheela smiled uneasily, barely meeting the woman’s eyes.
“Hello, I’m Mary Abernathy with Genesis Athena. May I come in?” Her smile was warm and reassuring, perfectly matching the friendliness in her eyes. She stepped forward, offering her hand.
Sheela gave it a limp shake before retreating to the small couch. Abernathy took the chair that made up one corner of the triangle created by the TV, chair, and couch. “Let me begin by telling you a little about myself. I’m a registered nurse working with Genesis Athena. I’m here to do a preinterview to get an idea about your general health, take a few samples for tests, and determine what we need to do to make you happy. I’m also here to answer any questions that you have; so please, don’t hesitate, no matter how personal. Everything that happens here today is completely and totally confidential.”
Jennifer Weaver nodded, smiled shyly, and fidgeted with her hands. “Okay.”
“All right, first, let’s get some baseline information.” Nurse Abernathy reached into her leather case and withdrew a clipboard. “Most of the information has already been provided by your law firm. You’re thirty-two, single, and living alone in Los Angeles, correct?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you taking any drugs? Anything? From aspirin to LSD—we have to know.”
“No. I’ve got aspirin and antihistamines in my purse. But I’m not on any prescription.”
“No marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, anything like that?”
“No.” She shrugged. “Not recently. I mean in the last year or so. I’m clean. You’d find it in the blood test if I lied.”
“Have you ever been pregnant before?”
Jennifer Weaver hesitated.
“It’s all right,” Abernathy confided, leaning forward over her clipboard, knowing eyes on Jennifer’s. “By the time I was your age, I’d had a ‘situation’ myself.”
“Yeah,” Jennifer admitted, eyes downcast. “Once when I was fifteen, and again when I was nineteen.”
The Athena Factor Page 41