Ellery
Ellery awoke with a start.
The sound came again from downstairs.
Slipping out of bed, she tiptoed down the stairs, and stood quietly in the dark, listening. Someone tapped at the French doors, light and quick. A memory stirred. That was Dane's old signal! She had heard it often when he and Vickie were children. She moved quickly to the doors.
"Dane?" she whispered.
"Yes."
She unlocked the door and he entered with a swirl of fog.
"What's wrong?" Her glance flew to the sideboard clock. "My good heavens—it's three o'clock in the morning!"
"Sorry, Ellery. I had to be sure that I wasn't seen."
"Those two parked in front? By two o'clock, they're usually nowhere to be found. Guess they think I'm too old to get up once I'm down for the night." She chuckled. "Most of the time, they're right."
"How long before they return?"
"Another couple of hours."
"Good. I'll be long gone before then. My plane leaves at five."
"Plane?" Her hand went to her chest. "You're leaving?"
"Munoz has scheduled another engineering project—a new research center."
"How long will you be gone?"
"I don't know. A couple of years I suspect. It all depends on the labor pool."
"They're setting up another lab?"
He shook his head. "They're moving the Foundation to Brazil. Munoz says it's for safety reasons. Something about a seaway being opened and this entire area washing away. I find that hard to believe, but he claims to have a full report that guarantees such a catastrophe's going to happen. I think there's more than safety involved, but I can't figure out what."
Matthew's environmental report! she thought.
She remembered his tirade, his anger at the committee members for not listening. No wonder the committee refused to listen, goading her son into such anger. That projection was for Munoz all along. It was never meant to be discussed. Then she remembered something else. That's when I lost it, Matthew had said. I proceeded to tell Gorban . . .
The stocky image of Dewitt Halloran, the environmental Committee Chairman and Munoz's pocket Senator, flashed into her mind. He would have checked her son's statements, would have known Matthew's words were absolutely correct. That's how Munoz found out about the memory.
". . . nearly killed her."
Ellery brought her wandering attention back to Dane. "Start again. I missed some of that." She listened intently as Dane described the fight, described the flashing creature in its sand container and Munoz's later proposals.
"Then there's Sefura."
"Bianca's sister?" Her face paled.
He nodded, his face glum. "I think I'm in love with her, Ellery. You'd like her, too. She's bright and witty and gentle. Sometimes a little too stubborn. Sometimes a little too—bouncy as you would call it." He looked up. "Like Vickie, I guess."
A lot like Vickie, Ellery thought. She said, "Does this girl return your affection?"
Again he nodded. "The problem is, she thinks she owes her life to Bianca. In her mind, Doctor Raborman is perfect, incapable of wrongdoing. Even when it's right in front of her eyes. She still insists that the injections George Kayman received were a mistake. She refuses to accept the fact that he's not human anymore, that he's a danger to her."
"He may not be, Dane. His hate is for Bianca, not Sefura. She has been his nurse and companion for many years. Even vicious animals remember love and affection, will fight to the death to protect the one who gave it to them."
Ellery hesitated then said, "Bianca. She doesn't know about our relationship, does she?" She could feel the flush creeping up her neck at his look. "Sorry, Dane. I know better."
"No need to apologize. I've been tempted. Many times. You were right to ask." He glanced at his watch. "I don't have much time left. The main reason I woke you so early was not only to let you know about Brazil, but to also tell you that Bianca's working on a vaccine to block the BH gene."
"Oh, my God. How long?"
"I don't know. A while, I suspect. Late yesterday afternoon, Sef was concentrating on a book while I put the finishing touches on that lab monstrosity's new quarters. When I asked her what she was studying, she said it was a project she'd been working on for His Holiness in-between organizing her sister's notes on a new vaccine. One that would block the Dakotan gene."
He dug in his pocket, removed a piece of paper. "Later, I found this in Bianca's shredder basket, all wadded up. I figured if she wanted it destroyed, it might be important."
Her gaze dropped to the folded sheet of paper he held in his hand; he thrust it forward.
"Thank you," Ellery said, taking the proffered sheet.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. "I have to go. Take care." He slipped back out into the dense fog.
Ellery slumped against the door. Would this relentless pursuit never end? The killing, the sterilizing—was it not enough to satisfy the woman?
She knew it wasn't.
If she would save the gene, she knew what she had to do.
She climbed the stairs with leaden steps, her mind in turmoil. The sick churning in her stomach threatened to overpower her repeated swallowing. Could she do this? Could she enter deep into that micro-world of life and twist its beauty into shapes foreign, into theories and formulas and deadness? Could she do what Papa Victor did? She looked down at the paper clutched in her hand. Her eyes filled with tears. If only Dane hadn't brought her this she could have stayed in her safe little world where the likes of Bianca Raborman did not exist and the name Dakota held honor.
Ah, but she does exist, her mind chided, and sooner or later, she will destroy the Dakotan gift. Unless . . .
"I won't let that happen," she muttered. No matter how deep she had to go, how much she had to twist, the gene would survive.
Sitting at her console, Ellery fed the cryptic numbers on Bianca's paper into the machine. Because there weren't many, it was obvious that this was only a fragment of the entire equation, but it might give her a clue to the path the scientist was taking. Bianca has grown overconfident, she thought. Slipping into old habits. Knowing everything in the basket would be sent to the furnace, she just tossed this away, too careless to run it through the shredder.
She sat back. There were many ways Bianca could send a destroyer, but she would have to first find what she sought to attack. If the geneticist had located the BH gene, a hunt-and-destroy code should be found in these formulas. Otherwise, perhaps a clue would surface that would point to where in the genome she was searching.
"Decipher and project all probabilities," Ellery said.
The machine whirred, the screen filled with formulas labeled in consecutive order. They strongly suggested that Bianca was sifting. She quickly scanned the first set, then the second—M13, tincture of gold, dATP, cysteine and others. DNA probes or keys to gene location? This was not going to be easy.
The human genome had three billion code letters. That number could increase considerably if some of the spacer regions actually played the role of creative governor as Doctor Yang postulated in his report to the National Genetics Institute. The thought made her head spin.
Ellery frowned with concentration. Somewhere in those billions of code letters was an amino acid sequence for the protein encoded by the BH gene; with that sequence, she could prepare a linker, an oligonucleotide to locate the gene. But where and what was the protein? So far, with all of her chromosome walking, she had found no footprints to follow.
She focused her attention back on the formulas displayed on her screen. Forty seven probabilities, each going in a different direction. Which one was Raborman's? There was no way to tell for sure. What if she fed her own information into Bianca's and started from there? Huh-uh, she thought. Won't work. The number of resultant paths could take years to untangle and she didn't have that kind of time.
An image of the old willow tree in her garden on Concentration Point came to the forefront of her mind—and Charles Lakeland explaining how he kept the beauty. "Every year, you start at the center of the tree and work outward," he'd said. "If new growth doesn't fit what you got up here," he tapped a finger to temple, "get rid of it. No matter how pretty it looks. Don't compromise—it'll only slow you down. One day, you look at your tree and what do you see? Only beauty, Ellery. Perfect in every way." She remembered the warmth of the sun on that day and the quiet contentment on Charles's face as he gazed at the willow.
Okay, she thought. Let's plant a tree. We'll start with the trunk. My information will go there. Her lips formed into a half smile. You're a spindly little tree, but you will grow.
In the corner of her mind, a familiar song began to play: Beware ye sailors in the night when a siren sings her song of delight. With it a different memory, a forgotten memory. Not the laboratory or Papa's face. A child's voice: "What does it mean, Papa? The words."
Grandfather's voice answering, "It means be careful, Ellery. Sometimes we want something so badly, we only hear the singer. We never see the rocks of destruction until we've run aground."
Ellery closed her eyes. "Oh, Papa," she whispered. "I forgot. I forgot." Warnings had been there, right from the beginning, but she had ignored them, had only heard the singer, and look where it had brought her.
Her thoughts flashed to George Kayman and the singular beast he had become. Bianca's mind worked in twisted ways. She would have to be careful that the formulas she followed did not carry another creature within them. Her mind conjured up an image of many George Kaymans buried deep within the vector probe Bianca was developing. A vaccine and a nightmare rolled into one Dakotan injection. Shaking the picture from her mind, Ellery strode into her laboratory and closed the door. One abomination on this earth was enough. She would be vigilant.
Ellery bent to her microscope. Her body tingled with anticipation as her mind focused on the bits of life she saw there. Her face glowed with a strange and frightening light. She hummed softly as she worked.
An old sea chantey.
Her favorite song.