“Whatcha got?” asked Alex. He sat next to Richard and looked closely at what was on the screen. “Looks like a paper on cellular transport.”
Before Richard could continue, they heard Doug coming down the stairs. “Oscar, were you able to retrieve the pictures that Alex and Emily took?” he asked.
“Man, they were busy!” answered Oscar. “There must be three-hundred of ‘em here. Would you like them printed out?”
“No. Put them in a single file and, Alex, you sort through them and come up with a catalog of what we’ve got.”
“I can get the connection history and see what sites Todd has been into recently,” said Oscar. “Whatever hasn’t been erased, we can trace.”
“Good. Anybody seen Emily this afternoon?”
“I’m coming.” Emily stuck her head in the stairwell. “I’ve made us a light snack from some stuff I got while I was out and about. Anybody hungry?” She made her way down the stairs, carrying a tray of sandwiches. “There’s chips and pop upstairs if anyone’s interested.”
Alex looked up at her in some surprise. “Whoa! What’s happened to the Emily I’ve gotten to know? This seems a bit, I don’t know, domestic.”
Emily smiled. “I decided if I wanted to eat anything other than pizza and beer, I’d have to make it myself. I am the only dollop of estrogen in this sea of testosterone.”
“Alex,” insisted Richard, “look at this stuff. It’s incredible. They’ve sequenced the genome coding for the glycoprotein that allows a virus access to a human somatic cell! With this, you could design a virus that could insert the DNA of your choice. They’re close to being able to do gene therapy on living organisms!”
Emily gave Richard a curious look. “I don’t know much about Buddhism, Richard, and I’m curious. Is there a conflict between science and Buddhism like that between Christianity and science? You seem really taken with this.”
Richard paused and looked up at Emily. “Buddhism is all about enlightenment – seeing the world as it is. Science is about modeling one’s experience of the universe. Neither one claims ‘truth.’ To Buddhism, truth is an idea, reality is something else. In science, one doesn’t deal with truth, it deals with models of truth. Science tries to model patterns of experience, in a limited way, in order to try to predict future experiences.”
“But what if science says one thing and Buddhism another? Like fundamentalism and evolution.”
“I think Buddhism doesn't dictate what the world is like as much as it gives you guidelines about how to get to the point where you can see it as it is. There are Buddhist cosmologies, but that's not the point of Buddhism as I see it and it wouldn't matter so much if they were proven to be wrong. They're just ideas.”
Doug leaned over and looked at one of the computer screens.
“Yeah, but -” said Emily.
“I’m not enlightened, so I’m really not qualified to answer your question. But I do think it’s an interesting one. There’s nothing wrong with getting excited about scientific ideas. One should appreciate and feel the wonder in all experiences of life. Be they ideas, emotions, pain, joy – all experience is magic. The trick is to not attribute more to things than they deserve. Ideas are only ideas, pain is only pain, feelings are just feelings. None are ultimate reality, they’re merely our reactions to reality.”
“I’m not sure I really follow what you mean…” Emily sat down in a chair next to Alex. Her head was tilted to one side and she seemed to be genuinely interested, just somewhat confused. Alex sat next to her, quietly thinking over what Richard was saying and Oscar was intent on his computer screen. Doug stood, crossed his arms and looked at the three of them. He seemed to be getting a little impatient.
“It’s like the images on a movie screen. The images are patterns of light bouncing off a piece of cloth. You’re not really watching Indiana Jones escape from that huge stone ball rolling down a cave. The significance we place on the images is not real, the reality is the light being scattered off the screen. The significance we give to ideas, thoughts, emotions is not real either. Reality is something else.”
“Something like what?” asked Alex.
“I don’t know, I’m not enlightened. And if I did know, I couldn’t tell you because language only communicates concepts, and reality isn’t a concept. In our confused state, we live life in a universe built of concepts – ideas. True reality is something you experience directly, not something you understand intellectually through ideas or concepts. But,” Richard paused for a moment, sighing. “Having said all that, I have to admit I do probably get more carried away with some experiences than others. My feelings for scientific ideas are somewhat distracting…” He looked at Emily and smiled broadly. “They do have a lustful flavor to them.”
“At some time in the future,” Emily said, “when things are a bit more calm and quiet, I’d like to learn more.”
“It would be my pleasure,” said Richard.
“Alright, people,” said Doug. “This is all very interesting, but we have a lot to do and time is getting short. For now, Richard, rather than read papers in detail, why don’t you catalog what’s there. Then we can see what we’ve got and decide what we should read in detail. We have to maintain our focus here. We’re not trying to understand cutting-edge science, we’re trying to figure out what those people out there are trying to do.”
Richard nodded. “You’re right, of course,” he said.
“How’s our equipment working, Oscar?” asked Doug.
“Great!” he answered. “At least, so far as I can tell. We won’t know about some of the bugs until Todd gets back. But, man, these nanotube devices are really cool! You can make a battery or a radio that looks like a piece of paper and can be passed off as an inspection sticker! And we haven’t even scratched the surface of what can be done with the technology.”
“You’re not being a very good Buddhist about this, Oscar,” said Alex.
“Alex,” said Oscar. “I know you’re from the Boston area, but, the name is Oscarrr, not Oscah. It ends in an ‘r’.”
“Okay, Oscarrr.”
. . .
Alex poked his head out the back door. He really needed to take a break. The enemy seemed to be at bay for the moment and his focus was fading. They were spending sixteen hour days, trying to sort through all the data and it was wearing on him. Looking around over the back fence, he half-feared to see men with guns pointed in his direction. All he saw were small lawns and nearby houses whose windows were obscured by drawn curtains. Emily sat in a chair on the deck just outside. She was lounging with her feet up on the wood railing. Her shoes were off. “Mind if I join you?” he asked.
Emily turned around and looked at him without getting up. “No, of course not.” She turned back, facing north toward the back of the yard. The sun was just about to set over her left shoulder. “It’s a beautiful time of day.”
Alex settled into the chair next to her and added his feet to the rail. Putting his hands behind his head and resting them on the back of the chair, he gazed up at the blue sky and the puffs of white cloud that skittered by on a soft breeze. There was a longing to be up there, dancing in the sky. “What a beautiful day to go flying.”
Emily looked where his gaze led. “What’s it like up there? I mean, to do aerobatics, to do all those loops and rolls? Is it scary?”
“No, not at all. You’re under the illusion everything’s under your exquisite control. The planes are designed to be extremely responsive. It feels like the plane is doing exactly what you’re telling it to do.” He paused. “You wheel and soar, climb and dive, roll and spin… It’s very much like a dance, only in three dimensions. The plane becomes a part of your body. You’re not flying a machine, you are whirling and whooshing, wheeling and turning.”
“Still sounds a bit scary to me.”
“Maybe the thought of doing it is scary, but doing it is, I don't know, spiritually enlivening. An aerobatic pilot, named Alan Cassidy, defined two types of flight
, ‘applied flight’ and ‘pure flight.’ Applied flight is flight done for another reason. To get somewhere, to haul freight, to sight-see. The actual flying is secondary to the main reason for getting up into the air. Pure flight has no other agenda than to enjoy, to celebrate the act of flying itself. Aerobatic flight is the purest of the pure. Oh, we compete with one another. But competition isn't the reason we fly aerobatics, aerobatics is the reason for the competitions. They're big parties - a bunch of pilots get together to share in the pleasure of flying. It's the most fun you can have with your clothes on.” He paused and turned toward Emily. “Sorry, I guess I’m having some withdrawal symptoms.”
“You have to take me up with you sometime.”
“I’d love to. I like to share the things I’m passionate about. I count myself lucky having something in life I can get so much joy out of. Many people have nothing like it.”
For a few moments, they sat and stared silently into the distance, each lost in their own thoughts.
“Are we safe out here?” asked Alex. “We’re in the back yard, but we can still be seen.”
“I think it’s more important to project an image of normalcy so we don’t raise anybody’s suspicions. What could be more normal than sitting out on the back porch, watching the sun set on a beautiful summer evening?”
“It is beautiful, isn’t it.”
“But I am feeling a little guilty, taking time out to smell the roses. There’s so much we need to do… So how are things going in the basement?” asked Emily.
Alex let out a sigh and his focus returned to the here and now. “Not as well as I hoped. But I guess nothing’s that simple. There’s a lot of data we’ve mined, but nothing that helps put more definition to what’s going on. Even without the private journal Richard was hoping for, I do get a feeling about what Todd’s like. But there seems to be a discontinuity, a chasm, separating what I feel the man is all about and the overwhelming evidence that there's something sinister going on.”
“How so?”
“He’s extremely intellectually gifted and an incredible researcher. He’s world renowned and at the top of his field. He’s sacrificed everything else to the building of his career. If there’s anything else to his life, he keeps it well hidden. He was married once, but that didn’t last long. No kids, no pets, no hobbies. As far as I can tell, no vacations that aren’t working vacations.”
“He sounds kind of cold. I certainly didn’t get any warm and fuzzy feelings being in his apartment.”
“Highly focused, I think I'd put it. It’s not that he doesn’t care about others, it’s more like he’s sacrificed having a family, an avocation like aerobatics, some joy in his life, so he’ll have more time and energy to reduce the amount of suffering in the world caused by disease. There are rewards – he’s accumulated more acclaim and recognition in his field than anyone I’ve ever heard of. He must feel a sense of power and control over his life that few of us ever realize. But his efforts seem genuinely to be oriented toward trying to make the human condition less painful. If it weren’t for the fact I know he’s not only involved with, but probably leading, a group of unscrupulous people that think nothing of trying to kill others to retrieve a vial that by all indications contains some devilish fluid, he’d be a hero. I just don’t get it.”
“Was there anything in that letter you found from Srivastava?”
“No. That was a dry hole too. It was written about two years ago and was a query to Todd, asking if he would be interested in a joint venture. Srivastava was aware of the research Todd was doing in defining the factors making the 1918 flu so virulent and was looking for some help in research on a deadly simian virus he located in the wild. Apparently, up until that time, there was no link between the two labs. There has to be some connection with the vial, but I can only guess what that might be.”
“Is there any more information we can get from what we’ve got?”
“We need to check with Richard and Oscar, I mean ‘Oscarrr’, but I don’t think there’s enough.” He paused, reached out a hand, and grabbed Emily’s where she rested it on the arm of her chair. Sighing deeply, his gaze shifted back to the horizon. “Do we have to talk shop?”
“No,” she said with a note of contentment to her voice.
Alex put his head back and felt the warm embrace of the day’s dying light, the cool breeze, the sound of buzzing insects and distant street traffic and the smell of freshly mown lawn mixed with the aroma of someone’s barbecue. Emily’s close proximity felt pretty damn good too.
. . .
“Richard, come back to the table. Leave the dishes for later,” Doug called into the kitchen. Alex could hear the clattering of plates. Earlier, Oscar, at Emily's suggestion, brought home a meatloaf meal with all the trimmings from Boston Market. They enjoyed the food and afterward, Richard bussed the table. “We need to assess where we are and what our next step is. Do you have anything interesting for us, Richard?”
Richard rejoined them. “Nothing new. Most of what I’ve dug up is interesting science, but in the past few years, it’s all been in the area of transmembrane cellular transport and the virulence factors of known diseases. From the papers I've read, both on the web and in his personal files, I think we can make a good guess, though maybe not a complete one, of what’s in the vial, but there’s no information about what they plan doing with it. You should also keep in mind the papers we can review are probably at least a year old and don’t represent the most recent research. It takes that long to get into publication. I think it’s interesting that Todd doesn’t have any notes or papers in process at his apartment. He must do very little work there.”
“Alex?” asked Doug.
“All the paper Todd has in his apartment is old stuff.” This was getting very frustrating. “It’s more like he uses the place as a storage bin or a library than a work place. He must do most of his work somewhere else. The only thing of interest is the file on 'The Survivors.' It has a mission statement that says the group was formed to fund research promising to change those afflicted with fatal diseases from the status of ‘victim’ to that of ‘survivor.’ I don’t know… It smells like smoke screen to me. But that’s all hunch on my part. There are no names, no balance sheets, no references to accounts or banks. All I could find were descriptions of the research the group funded, all of which is at least two years old. There must be much more information somewhere else. Maybe in his Harvard office?”
“Oscar, what have your devices discovered for us?”
“Disappointingly little,” said Oscar. “Don’t get me wrong. Everything is working really well. We can listen in on whatever goes on in Todd’s apartment. The problem is, not much goes on there. He doesn’t entertain; he doesn’t do any business on the phone; he does very little on the computer in the den. It seems he only eats and sleeps there, and he doesn’t even do that every day.”
“Have you learned anything useful?”
“Not yet, but we do have access to his computer and whatever’s on it. We can record all the key strokes he makes on its keyboard. We can get usernames and passwords he uses to get onto websites. The problem is, he hasn’t done any of that yet. If he's been on any interesting websites in the past, he's erased them from the history log. We continue to listen in, hoping something will happen, but I have to agree with Alex. We know he does a lot of work, it just seems to be very little, if any, is done at home.”
“Well, I guess it was a little bit of wishful thinking that we could get anything meaningful from Todd at home,” said Doug. “Investigations usually do start out slow. This is the part of the game where we sniff around, looking for places to sniff. We shouldn’t feel disappointed we haven’t hit gold yet. With this in mind, Emily and I have been reconnoitering Harvard to see if we might get access there. Emily, what have you got?”
“Todd has an office on the third floor of the Armenise Building at the Harvard Medical School,” said Emily. “It would be difficult to sneak in like we did at To
dd’s apartment, but it shouldn’t be too hard to just walk in and do what we need to do. It’s a university and there're hundreds of people milling around. A little diversion and a few moments of concentrated effort and we should be able to get into Todd’s office. It’ll take some planning, though. I’ve managed to acquire a badge that should allow us to gain access to the building. Its owner is out of town and shouldn’t miss it for a week or so. Here’s a map of Todd’s office and lab.” Emily spread a piece of paper onto the table. They all bent over it as Emily described what she had drawn there.
Doug looked up at Oscar. “Oscar, what kind of toys have you got that would be useful?”
Oscar smiled broadly. “Oh, I have some really great stuff. State-of-the-art stuff. Let me show you.”
“Oscar, what would we do without you?” asked Alex.
Chapter Fifteen
Alex and Emily climbed the solid stone steps leading to the Armenise Building. Walking through large plate glass doors, they passed into the main foyer and paused before a directory hung on the marbled wall to their left. It didn’t take them long to find what they were looking for: “Griffin Todd, PhD, Department of Virology, Room 314.”
Alex turned to meet Emily’s gaze. He took a deep breath. “Here we go,” he said. They moved off to their right toward the elevators they could see a short distance down the hall. Alex felt a little guilty; Richard could just as well have been there. But Richard was the only one who knew where the vial was and, Alex suspected, although Richard badly wanted to get out of the house for a while, his heart really wasn't into B & E. At any rate, Richard raised no complaint when it was decided it would be Alex that would go with Doug and Emily.
The building had a familiar feel to it. He had never been in the building, nor any other building in The Harvard Medical School campus. But still, it felt comfortable, like a well-worn pair of old blue jeans. It wasn’t as if there was anything distinctive about the tile floors, or the paneled ceiling bearing florescent lighting, or the walls painted in pastel colors that reminded him of other places he’d been. Neither was it the people who strode purposefully down the halls around them. It was more that everything behaved in a way he understood. It felt like a medical school.
The Devil's Vial Page 15