“Thanks for keeping me up to date, Mike. Just let me know if you need anything from my office.”
“Sure will. Thanks again.” Evidently Mike was busy and didn’t have time to chat much longer.
Thankful that he didn’t have to continue the uncomfortable conversation, Rusty reached for the Rolaids again and then leaned back in his chair. Jim had been right. He needed to have complete information and a possible solution before he spoke to President James. Rusty was also right that he needed to get away, get some rest and try to see things more clearly.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and punched the speed dial number 3.
“This is Gerald,” the voice answered.
“Hey, Gerald. Rusty Whitman, how’s everything?”
“Not too bad, Rusty Whitman, how are things on your end?”
“Well…” he began. “I have to say that I'm a little shook up since our last call, but I'm trying to get some perspective on it all.”
“That’s a pretty tall order in this case.”
It was nice to hear the voice of someone who was equally in the loop. In a lot of ways, Gerald reminded him of his grandfather. He was much too young, but his easy manner and simple wisdom took Rusty back to something he’d missed for a very long time; simplicity.
“It is indeed,” Rusty agreed with a sigh. “Say, do you think that you could make arrangements for me to meet the private researcher? I think if I could see things a little bit more in perspective and have a conversation about the probability and whatnot; it might help me get a better handle on what I’m going to tell the President.”
“I don’t know the researcher myself, but if you’re interested in meeting him, I can probably make the arrangements. When do you want to make your visit?”
“Three or four days, if possible.”
“Alright. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Gerald?”
“Yes?”
“In the meantime, do you mind if I take you up on that fishing adventure that you offered?”
“Sure. It’s been weighing heavy on me to get back out to Red Bank Creek, too. Come on down.”
“Is tomorrow too soon?” Rusty asked.
“If I’m going, I’m leaving the house before dawn,” Gerald said gruffly. He sounded exactly like Rusty’s grandfather.
“I’ll be there,” Rusty replied.
22
South Carolina
Mid-winter 2020
Clemson’s Forensic Genetics Lab
Spending several days fishing with Gerald had eased the acid in his stomach a great deal. Gerald was the kind of man that didn’t feel forced to have a conversation and could sit alongside a person for hours without feeling the need to speak. Along with the quiet company of the older man, the peace of the flowing creek allowed much of Rusty’s tension to drain away as well. After four days, however, it was time to get back to work.
“Alright, Rusty, here we are,” Gerald announced as they pulled up in front of the building housing the science labs on the Clemson campus and got out of Gerald’s pickup. They could have taken Rusty’s black SUV, but it simply screamed “Official Government” and Rusty was hoping to keep his visit very low profile.
Dr. Greene was pacing in the hallway, having been alerted by Gerald earlier that morning about their arrival. “Good morning, Mr. Davies.” His nervous smile matched his pacing as he extended his hand toward Gerald.
“Good morning, Dr. Greene,” Gerald replied. “This is Rusty Whitman.”
“Good morning, Dr. Greene.” Rusty was only slightly less nervous than Dr. Greene. He was facing the possibility of an enormous, worldwide disaster of which he was a major contributor and hoping that the researcher he was about to meet would have some answers to help him escape his guilt.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” Dr. Greene replied. “Okay, well then, follow me. I’ll introduce you to our top PhD candidate now.”
The two men followed Dr. Greene down the hall and into a lab that had a small sign to the left of the door. “Genetics Research Lab, Authorized Personnel Only.” The lab was a bit more modern than the ones that Rusty used when he was in college, but it still had the basic look and feel of a typical science lab. Across the room, he could see a dark haired young woman bent over a microscope. The group moved in her direction.
“I‘d like to introduce you to Mr. Davies and Mr. Rusty Whitman.”
Hannah looked up at her visitors with a beaming smile. It nearly knocked Rusty to the floor. The dark hair, the penetrating blue eyes and the facial features. She was the exact image of her mother. “Catherine?” he breathed involuntarily.
“No, I’m Hannah,” she replied. “Catherine is my mother. Do you know her?”
“Oh, uh, I apologize. You reminded me of someone else.” Rusty was backtracking as quickly as he could. He couldn’t afford to embarrass himself, but he was nearly certain that he was looking at the daughter that he had never known.
There was a brief pause while she seemed to search his soul and then satisfied, Hannah continued on. “Anyway, Mr. Whitman, Mr. Davies, it’s good to meet you both. I am told that the two of you are responsible for providing the means and funding for the project that I’m working on. I must thank you for that, though I’m sorry that the results were so terrifying.
The irresponsibility of some people pisses me off. Sorry, Mr. Whitman, I suppose I’m not supposed to curse in front of America’s Food Czar, but the terminator gene is absolutely horrible, and by horrible, I mean evil. If the devil himself had wanted to design something to wipe mankind off of the face of the earth, he couldn’t have come up with anything better. Not that wiping mankind off of the face of the earth would be anything new for the devil, that’s sort of what he’s been doing….”
“Hannah, please,” Dr. Greene interrupted. “I apologize gentlemen. Although Hannah is a top notch researcher, she has a tendency to get caught on rabbit trails.”
“Not a problem,” Rusty replied. In spite of the inner struggle that was ripping through him, he found the way that she wandered off track to be quite charming. Was she really his daughter? She said that her mother’s name was Catherine. He hadn’t seen Catherine in, geez, how long had it been? He remembered hearing that she had given birth to a girl, but he had distanced himself from that chapter in his life and until the moment that he looked into Hannah’s eyes, he had completely set it aside.
“Are you okay, Mr. Whitman?” she asked. “You look pale. Not that I guess that I would know what your normal skin tone would be since I just met you, but you seem to be a little bit distracted. Is something bothering you?”
Rusty had to scramble quickly to recover. “Actually, Miss…”
“Withers, but you can call me Hannah.”
“And you can call me Rusty.” The name matched, too. He was certain that he was looking at his daughter.
“Are you sure, Mr. Whitman? Are people like me supposed to be calling the President’s Food Czar by their first name?”
“Tell you what,” he was recovering his usual, charming manner. She had that effect on him. “If you help me get out of the mess that I’m in, you can call me anything you want.” Including Daddy, he thought, but didn’t say.
“I’ll tell you what,” Hannah replied, broadening a smile that seemed to have already reached its limits as she extended her hand to shake on the deal they were about to make. “I’ll help you fix this and then you can help me take the people responsible for the terminator gene and staple their tongue to the ceiling.”
“Deal!” he chuckled, shaking her hand vigorously. He put on a bold face, though inside, he was suddenly beginning to realize that he had missed being a part of the life of someone very special. Because he had been so self-centered and hungry for fame and fortune, he had turned his back on someone who had needed him. He couldn’t help but feel, however, that he was the one who actually had lost out.
As Hannah went through the parts of the report that she had already put in
her report, he couldn’t help but sit back and admire her. She was sharp and professional, but there was still something of a little girl present in her. There was no hiding the fact that she was a bit eccentric in the way she dressed and some of the items scattered around the room in the form of decor that weren’t typically a part of a research lab.
“Hannah!” Dr. Greene’s rather sharp warning awakened him from the trance that he had suddenly found himself in while she spoke. He hadn’t even realized that she had gone off on another rabbit trail until he heard the Doctor’s voice cut in.
“I’m sorry, Rusty,” she said.
“Quite alright,” he replied. “You’re excited about your work and all of the discoveries you’ve made.”
“So, anyway, where was I going? Oh yeah. So I started the milk study because I wanted to see if the terminator gene went into the next generation. The short answer is yes. The long answer, you’re not going to like very well.” the smile left her face and she became very serious.
“Go ahead and hit me with it.” He suddenly remembered that he was the Food Czar appointed by the most powerful man in the free world. He had responsibilities to take care of that went beyond daydreaming over what might have been with his daughter. Her grave tone had brought him back to the reality of the situation.
“Without some definitive evidence, I can’t state this unequivocally, but I believe that sterility is not only being passed on to chicken eggs, but is being passed through the milk of any mammalian who has the terminator gene in their system. Knowing that they have the gene is not exactly difficult to determine, since, like chickens, those animals also tend to have gray/green skin. It’s actually kind of gross when you see it and it isn’t like normal skin. It’s really smooth. Like glass or plastic smooth. The skin has the absence of follicles, which you see when you get goose bumps. Hey, did you know that Spanish speaking people actually call it chicken skin? They say ‘piel de gallina’...”
“So, Hannah,” Rusty cut in. “Are you telling me that any fowl or mammal that has been eating the GM/Hybrid corn in sterile?” If it was that widespread, then he had an enormous problem.
“It’s extremely probable,” Hannah replied gravely. She watched his face as he processed the information that he had just been given. His head dropped forward and he was staring intently at his shoes. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m working on a way to reverse the process.”
Rusty looked up at her. That was the news that he was hoping to hear, a way out. “There’s a way to reverse it?”
“There isn’t yet, but I’m very close.”
“Tell me about it.” He moved in closer, ignoring Gerald and Dr. Greene. His entire focus was on learning the solution to his problem.
“You know how people can hack into your computer and corrupt your files with a virus, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, this is kind of like that, only we’re hacking into the genetic code of a living organism and we’re doing it to fix things rather than to corrupt them. You with me so far?”
“I’m with you.”
“It hasn’t worked exactly the way that I want it to yet. I’m still working out the bugs. Oh, that’s funny. I’m working out the bugs of my bugs. You get it?”
“Yes, Hannah, I get it,” he chuckled nervously. Dr. Greene cleared his throat behind Rusty. It was another of his signals to Hannah that she needed to get back on track.
“I’ve been experimenting with it on a cellular level, so far. If it’s going to work, it’s going to work there first. If I can get the virus to specifically attack the cellular components of the terminator gene without destroying the other cellular components, then we’ll have a winner.”
“How quickly would it be able to be made available?”
“Wow! You’re a little bit pushy, Rusty. I don’t even have it working yet and you want a timeline?”
“Hannah. Do you understand how devastating the sterilization of the world’s food sources is?” His tone was a little bit rougher than he had intended it to be. He was a drowning man grasping at anything that came near him. In this case, it was the hope of his daughter’s research. Like a drowning man, he was likely to pull her under with him.
“Yes, Rusty, I do.” There was a hurt look in her eyes. “Why do you think that I'm working on this so hard? You’re not the only one who sees how evil this thing is. I’m doing the best I can, so back off a little.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m a little bit over anxious. “Duly chastised, he attempted to smooth things over. Smoothing things over and apologizing hadn’t been something that he had been practicing a great deal lately. As the President’s Food Czar, there was a tendency to continue to push forward, not being concerned with whose toes you stepped on along the way. His daughter was teaching him a few lessons in humility. Not only had her research pointed out the flaw of simply believing what others were telling you, but it was also teaching him that his position hadn’t made him God. He couldn’t will things into existence after all.
“Look, Rusty, I understand the position that you’re in. It’s like whenever I used to spill a glass of milk when I was little. You have to get a rag or a mop and clean up the mess; being upset, being on edge and screaming about what has happened won’t fix the problem.”
Wow! I just got a huge dose of reality with that one. He was discovering that his daughter had grown up to be a great deal like himself. She wasn’t afraid to face a challenge head on. How many other people would have the confidence to face down the President’s Food Czar with such blunt honesty?
“You know what, Hannah, you’re right. Regardless of how long this takes, we have to clean up the mess, rather than rant about it.” It was easy for him to say that while he was standing there talking to her. The real test would come when he had to face the man who wanted some answers, President James. “However, the President is going to want some answers. What do I tell him, Hanna?”
He hoped that his desperation wasn’t too obvious, but he felt like he was begging her to save him. In many ways, that was precisely what he was doing. Oh how the roles were reversed. As the father, he should be encouraging her and providing answers for her. He’d missed out on that side of it; maybe it served him right to be in over his head and forced to eat humble pie.
“You’ll just have to tell him that I am very close. I think I will have a workable virus on the cellular level in the next day or two, but it will have to be tested on chickens before we know that it works. I mean, monkeying with viral reconstruction might make them sick without knowing for sure that we’ve reversed the problem.”
“How long would testing take?”
“Well, the animal with the shortest gestation period is the opossum, they have their babies 13 to 15 days after being fertilized. I have wondered why they needed the ‘O’ haven’t you? The opossum won’t help in this case, because it would be better to test on animals that already have the terminator gene in their DNA rather than injecting it for testing purposes and then inserting the virus.
“Right, Hannah,” Dr. Greene cut in. “A chicken egg takes about 21 days of incubation to hatch.”
“But we don’t know exactly how long it will take for the virus to reverse the effects of the terminator gene either. Viruses have incubation periods as well.”
“Short answer,” Rusty said. “Your best estimate. Just so I’ll have something for my report.”
“Two, maybe three months at the least, but it could take much longer. There are a ton of factors that will be at work in this case. I mean if it worked on the cellular level right now, I would still need to run the live tests several times before we knew for sure that we had reversed the process.”
“Two months then?” He didn’t have two months.
“If everything goes perfectly and if it actually works on a cellular level. It could be weeks before I discovered the right way for the virus to work. I’m close, but I’ve been close to things before and each little tweak made the time d
rag on.” She could tell that her answer wasn’t helping Rusty to relax. She placed her hand on his shoulder. “Look, I know you’re under pressure. I’m sorry about that, but these things take time. Rome wasn't built in a day. Besides, you can always get them to take the terminator gene out of the corn. That would probably be much quicker. It won’t reverse the process that has already started, but it might prevent other animals from becoming sterile.”
“If there are any left.” The fact that he had been very good at his job suddenly weighed very heavy on him. Pulling GM/Hybrid corn off the shelf would cause questions and questions would lead to an uproar that would be heard worldwide. Besides the problem wasn’t only with corn, but the other seeds that Walsanto was rolling out as well. He should have told Michael Lawson to hold off on the release of the other seeds. He was only getting himself in deeper and deeper.
Suddenly, he wanted to get away. He wanted to be far away from the research lab, the problem, all of it. But where could he run to? Where could he hide? “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there,” He muttered under his breath.
“Psalm 139,” Hannah said.
“Huh?” He hadn’t realized that he’d spoken aloud.
“What you quoted was from Psalm 139.”
“You heard that?”
“Yeah. I have acute hearing. Not a cute earring, though these are pretty cute. From Monty Python. You remember, right?”
“Hannah,” Dr. Greene cut in again. “I think you’ve sufficiently briefed Mr. Whitman. We do appreciate your time.”
“Yes, Hannah. Thank you so much.” He had suddenly snapped back to reality. When he touched her hand and looked into her eyes, he wondered if he should let her know who he was. He hadn’t realized what he had missed. He’d cheated himself and his life having not been a part of the life of the precious young lady standing before him. No. Now is not the right time. “I’ll tell you what, though. Let’s keep in direct contact and keep me posted. Just on my cell phone. Keep what you’re doing secret for now, but there is no need in working back through channels. You can give your reports directly to me.”
The Rise of Walsanto (Genetic Apocalypse Book 3) Page 13