by Peter Ponzo
Chapter 38
The flight to Atlanta was cramped and uncomfortable, the taxi driver rude and the weather miserable, but I checked into a very nice motel, showered and changed and was on my way to the Centre for Disease Control within an hour of arriving in the city. I decided to surprise Henderson rather than phone to get his permission to show up early. That might have been a mistake.
I expected the CDC to look like a factory, walls of concrete or brick, no windows. In fact it was a very classy building with lots of glass and shrubbery. However, there is a tiring rigmarole just to get past security. No surprise: the CDC held the world's deadliest viruses. I kept saying: "But Dr. Henderson is expecting me." Eventually I was in a polished hallway, my nametag ID firmly attached to my lapel, another tag attached to the small bag that I was carrying. They had wanted to examine the contents of the bag but I insisted that they be satisfied with their sonic scans, radioactive probes and X-rays. They insisted, so I opened the bag and explained, in great detail, its contents. The guard smiled and asked me to wait. I closed the bag.
I looked up to see a very good looking fellow striding in my direction, his hand extended.
"Good morning. I am Dr. Henderson. You are a day early."
I hate people who introduce themselves by prefixing their names with Dr., like some badge requiring a small genuflexion. These days just about anybody can earn a PhD. Means little. Piled High and Deep. I took his hand and shook it vigorously.
"Good morning. I am—" I began.
"Miss Fleetsmith."
"Dr. Fleetsmith," I said. "And I am a day early."
"Yes. Please follow me."
He turned and took off down a long hallway, turned right, then left, then right again. I followed like a puppy dog.
"Woof."
He stopped, turned and stared at me.
"Dr. Fleetsmith?"
"Are we there yet?" I whined. He actually smiled.
"I am terribly sorry if I seem a bit remote," he said. "This is a confusing case, a trying day."
"Tell me about it," I groaned. "Weeks of investigation with little—"
"Weeks?" he said. "Excellent! Then I expect you are much farther ahead than the CDC. Please come in."
He pushed open a swinging door and pointed to a large upholstered chair. He quickly went to his desk, sat and leaned forward, placing his elbows amid the papers and books. Holding up his chin with his fists as though he expected to be listening for hours, he said, "I'd like to hear your story of At-B, from the very beginning, with as much detail as possible."
"At-B?" I said, sitting with my small bag on my lap.
"Atlanta-Beta," he said without smiling. "The name of this new virus."
"Atlanta? Virus?"
"Miss Fleetsmith, please tell me your story and the extent of your research findings." He pushed a small tape recorder across his desk and punched a button. "I assume you will not object to my recording this."
"No, not at all. Well, let's see. It all started when we headed off to Brazil ..."
For about forty minutes I talked, uninterrupted. He stared at me continuously, his eyes a fierce blue, hair light brown, greying at the temples, thin, wiry, quite distinguished with a microscopic white mustache that outlined his upper lip. I spoke of the Chockli, the excess of males, the healing powers of the weed, the various manifestations: white fluff, smooth membrane, the cocoon. I spoke of my experiments with mice and the dog, Poo. I mentioned Hans von Oerschott's escape from the morgue and his recent appearance at my house. I left out any reference to Josey or Penney. When I finished I leaned back, crossed my legs and smiled.
"That's about it?" I said.
"Really? And what has your research shown? What is the mechanism that—"
"Like I said, that's it. Ain't no more. I'm in the dark as much as you are." I was hesitant to explain my theory of devolution, the revitalization of dormant genes. Somehow, sitting among the world's great minds, it sounded childish.
He stood up, punched the tape recorder STOP button and said, "Follow me."
Here we go again. I followed him out the door, down the hall, left then right then down a long hall. He stopped at a heavy red door, slipped a plastic card through a slot and the door slid open. The room was filled with a jillion dollars worth of equipment, only some of which I recognized. There were three people working at a long bench. They looked up, then went back to work. Henderson pointed to a corner of the room then lead the way.
"Sit," he said. I sat. He fiddled with a slide projector and a large screen was illuminated. I looked about at the others in the room. They were ignoring us.
Click, and a picture of several cells flashed on the screen, obviously taken with an electron microscope. That I recognized.
"A perfectly normal cell," Henderson said quietly.
Click. Flash. Another picture.
"Note the invasion of the cytoplasm by the Eumycota fungus," he said. "Actually, the single-cell spores of the fungus, somewhat smaller than a typical human cell … about 2 micrometres."
Remarkable! They already knew about Eumycota. I leaned forward and stared at the screen, hardly able to contain my excitement The cell wall had been penetrated by what looked like a whitish cloud which now filled the cytoplasm. The cell nucleus was clearly visible as well as the various cytoplasmic bodies.
Click. Flash.
"Note the deterioration of the mitochondrial DNA," Henderson droned.
I stared at the cell in the centre of the screen ... the cytoplasm was clean, no apparent mitochondrion, no ribosomes. It seemed empty. It should have been filled with—
Click. Flash.
"Now, the arrival of a virus."
In the new picture, all of the several cells on the screen had been invaded by the fungal spores; their cytoplasm filled with spores. But the centre cell, it now had what appeared to be a small dark spot located at the break in the cell wall. Was that—?
Click. Flash.
"Replication."
The centre cell was now filled with multiple copies of the black spot. If that was a virus, then it was wasting no time in reproducing. I wanted to ask a million questions, but Henderson droned on as though he were giving a lecture.
Click. Flash.
"Invasion of the nucleus."
The black spots had now migrated to the nucleus of the cell, some were inside.
"Are you saying that—?" I began.
Click. Flash.
"Genetic modification has now taken place."
The picture seemed much like the last one, except that there were far fewer black spots in the cell.
"Genetic modification?" I said.
Click. The screen went dark.
"Yes. The cell has been modified, it's DNA selectively modified with viral material. Not easy to see in the slides, but verified independently by my colleagues." He pointed to the door. "Follow me." And I followed him back to his office.
When we were seated he stared at me and said, "I am amazed that you have so little to offer in the way of explanation. You have admitted that several weeks have passed since your research began, yet you can provide no explanation—"
"Look, Henderson, if I had half the staff and equipment you have—"
"Dr. Henderson, if you please."
A time like this and he was concerned about this stupid prefix? He was one prize asshole.
"So what's your theory, Henderson?" I asked.
"We have no theory. What we know is that the fungus violates the integrity of the cell walls and inserts spores, and the mitochondrial DNA is eliminated by the fungus—more precisely, the spores— the subsequent invading virus, carried by the spores, replicates within the cytoplasm, this viral horde penetrates the nucleus, attaching itself to the chromosones, but selectively. Some strands of DNA are unaffected, some are coated by viral material to the extent that they present modified amino acid base pairs to the nuclear environment. Presumably this results in a modific
ation in cell evolution. Just what macroscopic changes occur in the individual, we can only guess. But Mr. Werner Oerschott was quite hairy and seemed to possess certain ape-like characteristics."
Henderson paused, gazed at his hands, pensively, as if he were in some pain. They couldn't have had more than five days to carry out their investigations, yet they had gained so much more information than I had. Remarkable. I felt like an idiot.
"That's fascinating," I said. "I mean, what you've accomplished in such a short time. I was sure it wasn't a virus, but it is. Remarkable."
"But Mr. Oerschott's body is now gone," he said slowly. "What we have left are a few batches of cells ... some fungal material ... slides ..."
He seemed quite dejected, closed his eyes.
"Is something wrong?" I asked. "Are you feeling okay?"
He straightened quickly, rose from his desk and walked around to my chair.
"Thank you for coming, Miss Fleetsmith. You are free to go."
He spoke as though I were a convict, released on bail. He was clearly shaken by the loss of Oerschott's body. He was an asshole, but he was one dedicated scientist.
"How did you lose the body? I mean, how did you—"
"Miss Fleetsmith ... uh, sorry, Dr. Fleetsmith. Please feel free to leave. There seems little need—"
"But you haven't asked me for my research notes," I said. He looked at my small bag.
"If you have told me everything—and I have recorded it on tape— then there is little you can contribute to our research. However, we would be glad to receive reports ... anything ... we have the police searching for Oerchott ... anything ..."
I stood. He returned to his desk and sat heavily. He seemed so dejected that I felt guilty keeping the existence of Josey from him. She was a walking, living example of the effect of At-B on human cells, yet I can imagine her being shipped to Atlanta in a box, laid out on a table, surrounded by scientists, probing ...
"Henderson, you look awful," I said. "Perhaps there is something else I can say, about the ... uh, affliction ... At-B."
He looked up.
"Hans von Oerschott had a secretary—" I began.
"Josephine Cowley, inflicted with At-B and now missing," he said quietly.
"Well, not exactly," I said.
"Excuse me?" he said, rising again from his desk.
"I may be able to locate Miss Cowley—just a hunch mind you, but I'll give it a try and let you know."
"Yes. Excellent. Please … do that." He seemed less than excited by the prospect.
He sat again. I guess it was time to leave. He didn't seem inclined to escort me to the door, so I turned and left. Halfway down the hall I stopped and returned to his office. He hadn't moved, so I walked to his desk and plunked down my bag. He looked up, his face a question.
"A good friend suggested that this material might assist in any investigation of At-B."
"What is it?" he asked.
"Ape shit," I said, then spun on my heel and left. Pure theatre—and I felt good about it.