Dead End

Twenty-One

Parnell managed to finish all there was to read by two a.m. on the Monday without finding a direction from either the English or American flu discoveries, to pursue his unit’s particular search. There was always the possibility, he told himself, that someone else in the pharmacogenomics section had spotted something he’d missed – it was at least a slender straw at which to clutch. He was at McLean by seven, determined to be the first there, although still without an explanation for the experiment Beverley had caught him conducting on the Saturday, trying to convince himself that, as head of the department, he didn’t necessarily have to provide one. He’d expected Beverley to press him further during dinner but she hadn’t, not in fact referring to it once, which he didn’t fully understand. Most of the time the talk had been light, although they’d obviously discussed the influenza project, but not in any depth, Parnell warning that neither of them at that stage had completed their reading, creating the need to avoid one misguiding the other with half-formed or ill-formed impressions. And although there’d been no indication of it, Parnell tried to overcome any difficulty Beverley might have by openly referring to Rebecca. That had been the moment he’d expected Beverley to challenge him about that morning’s experiment. They hadn’t talked at all about her ex-husband. He’d enjoyed the evening – positively, physically, relaxing. Beverley chose the restaurant, in a part of midtown he hadn’t been to before, and met him there. It was traditional home-town American cooking, which dictated portions sufficient to relieve an African famine, even though he tried to order minimally. He decided the only thing missing from the rib-eye steak were hooves and tail. As he had anticipated, Beverley initially led the conversation, but gave way to him as the evening progressed, and by its end he’d realized, surprised, that he was dominating the exchanges and Beverley appeared content to let him, not once trying for the last word. He refused her demand that they split the bill, which she accepted without continuing argument, and they’d parted quite comfortably outside the restaurant, without any awkwardness about nightcaps at another bar or either’s apartment. In the cab on his way back to Washington Circle, Parnell found himself wondering what possibly could have gone wrong between Beverley and her husband. That reflection prompted the half thought that he’d found the first evening with Beverley easier than he had with Rebecca, but that was where he’d halted it, as a half thought not to be completed. It left him feeling guilty, which was worsened throughout the following day by his failure to pick up something from the San Diego or London research. Richard Parnell wasn’t a man upon whom the rarity of professional disappointment rested easily.

None of the mice he’d injected with the French-suggested drug modifications showed any obvious ill effects after the forty-eighty-hour period, and he was halfway through extracting blood comparisons when Beverley Jackson arrived.

She said at once: ‘We going to learn all today?’

‘You finished the flu-identification papers?’ avoided Parnell.

‘Almost.’

‘I didn’t get a lead.’

‘I haven’t either, not yet.’

‘Let’s hope you do before you finish. Or one of the others might come up with something.’

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she said.

‘No,’ Parnell agreed, turning back to his sampling.

He was conscious of other arrivals behind him but didn’t respond to them until he had the tests from all the experimental mice on to slides. He turned back into the main laboratory unsurprised to find himself the focus of everyone’s attention. He said: ‘This has nothing to do with what we’re looking for. It’s something I set up over the weekend. Anyone come up with anything, anything at all, from what you’ve read so far?’

There were various head-shakes. Deke Pulbrow said: ‘Not a godamned thing.’

Sean Sato said: ‘It’s great research but there’s nothing here that’s going to help us.’ . ‘I haven’t found anything either,’ conceded Parnell, again. ‘Let’s talk about it when we’re all through.’ He’d tell them as much of the truth as he felt able, Parnell finally determined. Not about his suspicion that Rebecca’s death was somehow connected with the French material, but that he had become curious at the apparent secrecy in which it had been chemically tested, and had decided to put it through the most basic of genetic programmes without interfering in any way at all with what they were concentrating upon.

Parnell worked with total concentration, able as he always had been to isolate himself from all or any surrounding distraction, bow-backed over his microscope to contrast his before-and-after slides, anxious for a variation he didn’t find. Reluctant to accept yet another disappointment – at the same time objectively warning himself that there should not be any change after Russell Benn and Dwight Newton’s medical clearances – he repeated every examination under stronger magnification. And once more found nothing.

With growing, unwelcome resignation, Parnell eventually turned to his own before-and-after blood specimens, starting at the lower magnification, and for the briefest of seconds not fully absorbing what he was seeing. Parnell was too consummate a professional to accept a single illustration. Patiently, although with increasing satisfaction, he checked every single treated and untreated slide, one against the other, and obtained the same result in every case. It was only when he pushed his stool away from his bench, stretching against the aching tension in his back and shoulders, that Parnell became properly aware of how tightly and how long he had been hunched over his microscope. It was a fleeting discomfort, virtually at once compensated by a surge of excitement. Which, in turn, was tempered by further inherent professionalism. He had positive findings from a lot of separate, uncontaminated tests. Which in his own opinion was unequivocal. But which, by the standards of research – and certainly the challenge he would have to face – was insufficient. There had to be separate, independent experiments, with no prior, alerting indication of what the expected result might be. And he needed to duplicate everything himself – on himself – against the remote possibility that this initial analysis had inadvertently been contaminated to produce a faulty result.

Only Ted Lapidus was still reading when Parnell emerged into the main laboratory, surprised to find it was already noon. The rest of the unit looked up at him in solemn expectation. He said: ‘Any bright, shining pathways?’

There was a further series of head-shaking. Mark Easton said: ‘In the words of the prophet, back to the drawing board.’

‘I want everything temporarily suspended, at least for the rest of today,’ announced Parnell. ‘I’m asking all of you to conduct blind blood-sampling, using your own blood, involving something Dubette is making available on a limited market.’

‘What are we looking for?’ asked Lapidus, coming up from his final paper.

‘Blind tests, like I said,’ refused Parnell. ‘No prior indication. I don’t want us challenged on this.’

‘We’re bypassing phase-one animal assessment?’ queried Battey.

‘Yes,’ acknowledged Parnell.

‘Why the mystery?’ demanded Beverley.

‘There isn’t one. I want independent, corroborative findings, that’s all.’ Or was it all, he asked himself.

Parnell refined – and extended – the confirming experiments, testing upon the altered Dubette medicines before individually duplicating the experiments by separately adding liulou-sine, beneuflous and rifofludine. Having already established the research once, Parnell completed the repetition ahead of everyone else. He withdrew briefly to his side office, to avoid the appearance of hovering over them, but used the vantage point to watch them at work. Once again he was impressed at how quickly – and expertly – they had unquestioningly adjusted to his limited briefing.

Beverley was the first to finish of the rest of the group. As Parnell came out into the main laboratory, she said: ‘I expected to sweat blood, not give it!’

‘This is a one-off situation,’ said Parnell.

‘I hope it is,’ said Lapidus. ‘I’ve never gone along with this scientist-test-yourself mumbo-jumbo.’

‘Neither have I,’ assured Parnell. ‘As I said, it’s a one-off.’

‘When do we know what it’s all about?’

He didn’t know, Parnell acknowledged. The mutation on his own initial self-experiment had shown after forty-eight hours, but it could have occurred far quicker than that. He should have monitored it during the Saturday, and most certainly have checked on the Sunday. Not having a time sequence risked his first findings being dismissed as flawed research. ‘Let’s give it an hour.’

‘What were you doing when we arrived?’ pressed Sato.

‘I’ve duplicated everything, for a comparison.’

‘You expect us to do that too?’ demanded Battey.

‘No,’ assured Parnell. ‘If your findings match mine – and my second tests corroborate – that’ll be enough.’ Should he set up a meeting with Dwight Newton in advance? There was every reason to move as quickly as possible if his findings were confirmed and the French subsidiary were already in production. But his findings weren’t yet confirmed. And until they were he couldn’t risk setting off alarm bells and challenging a company vice president and the director of chemical research.

There was another familiar hiatus throughout the unit. Sean Sato and Deke Pulbrow returned to their earlier contrasting of chicken and human DNA strings. Parnell told Kathy Richardson how he wanted the San Diego and London research filed, and dictated letters to both institutions congratulating them upon their exploratory work but regretting it hadn’t led them anywhere.

Parnell adhered strictly to his hourly check. There was no mutation on any of his carefully prepared petrie dishes. One by one, unasked, the rest of the unit ran their own checks on their own experiments. There was no response from anyone.

Impatiently Lapidus said: ‘I really don’t see why we can’t be told what we’re looking for!’

Neither did he now, conceded Parnell. It was overly cautious, imposing blind comparisons as he had: he deservedly risked the ridicule of the rest of the unit – whose respect he believed he’d had until now – if his cultures were inconclusive. ‘You’ll see it soon enough.’

‘How long do you want us to stay here?’ questioned Sean Sato. ‘I’m not complaining but I actually have something fixed for tonight I need to rearrange if this is going to go on.’

He needed at least one independent observer, accepted Parnell. ‘Let’s give it another hour. We’ll decide what to do in another hour.’ He sounded weak, ineffectual, he realized. He hadn’t thought it through, prepared properly.

Beverley said: ‘I’m not doing anything – in no hurry to get away.’

‘Neither am I,’ said Peter Battey. He led the afternoon coffee break. Parnell declined. So did Beverley.

When the two of them were alone Beverley said: ‘This is looking a little strange.’

‘It’s looking fucking ridiculous!’ corrected Parnell.

‘That’s what I meant.’

‘I didn’t want to influence anyone, as I didn’t want us to influence each other on Saturday when we were halfway through reading the flu research.’

‘You can’t influence a genetic reaction by telling someone in advance what it might possibly be! It’ll either happen or it won’t. And if it doesn’t, you’re not going to look good.’

‘I’ve already realized that.’

‘You ought to talk to people more.’

‘Maybe I should.’

Everyone was back fifteen minutes before the next scheduled culture-dish examination. Again Parnell was the first, the focus of every eye. He was even aware of Kathy Richardson watching from her separate office.

It was a warm, positively physical feeling, deep within him, as if he’d ingested something – a quick-reacting drug, even, which was an analogy that irritated him, although only for a passing second, because there was no irritation or disappointment at what he was looking at through the microscope lens. The mutation wasn’t as extensive as it had been when he’d first looked that morning – so far only three out of a total of fifteen of the newly prepared petrie dishes – but it was sufficient confirmation to substantiate his every fear. And there was every reason to be frightened, he realized, still bent over his apparatus but no longer concentrating solely on what was happening on the slide in front of him. He couldn’t remember an experiment – either one he’d conducted himself or one he’d read about, in any scientific research paper – in which a mutation occurred as quickly as this appeared to be doing.

He turned to face them, all personal satisfaction – euphoria even – gone, his attitude and mind coldly analytical. ‘I didn’t do this right, asking you to work as I did. I’m sorry. If it ever arises again, which I hope it doesn’t, it’ll be different. Give your cultures a little longer than the hour we decided upon. I’m going to analyse mine later, but particularly try to isolate if any of the three drugs that have been introduced appear to be causing the greatest damage.’

‘What sort of damage?’ asked Pulbrow.

‘France may be producing a range of Dubette-brand medicines that are going to kill people,’ declared Parnell, already on his way to the door.

As he walked further into the Spider’s Web, Parnell tried to calculate the fall-out from what he was about to do – what he had no alternative but to do – but very quickly gave up. There could only be one consideration, the ethical, diagnostic requirement; any personal repercussions were secondary, less than secondary even. Dubette should actually be eternally grateful, although he doubted that they would be; he certainly doubted if Dwight Newton and Russell Benn would be. Parnell hesitated at the door into the chemical research division, wondering whether to alert Benn first, but hurried on. The alarm, however it was sounded, had to come with the authority of Newton. To discuss it first, explain it first, to Benn would be a waste of time, and from the speed of the mutation Parnell didn’t believe there was any time whatsoever to waste. Any production of the new products had to be stopped immediately, any distribution not just halted but withdrawn, every single last bottle or pill, no matter how difficult to trace. And if that distribution were in Africa, that was going to be very difficult indeed to find.

There were still three women in Newton’s outer secretariat, all of whom looked up in surprise as Parnell burst in.

‘What…?’ trailed Newton’s personal assistant.

‘I need to see Dwight.’

The woman shook her head. ‘He’s chairing an audit meeting. And I know he wants to get away early.’

‘Tell him…!’ began Parnell but stopped, abruptly guessing there would be a damage-limitation operation. Less urgently he said: ‘Tell him that something extremely important has come up. Something that can’t wait until tomorrow: something he’s got to hear about and act upon tonight. I’ll be waiting in my office. Will you tell him that?’

‘What on earth is it?’ asked the woman.

‘Very important, like I just told you.’

Parnell did stop at Russell Benn’s unit on his way back. The research director was in his side office, notebook calculations and reference books side by side on the cluttered desk before him. Benn said: ‘You’re whipping up quite a wind, the speed you’re moving around.’

‘Hope you’re not planning to leave early tonight,’ said Parnell.

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ demanded the man.

‘I’ve told Dwight I need to see him right away. Now! You need to be included.’

‘In what?’ frowned Benn.

‘Stopping Dubette killing people,’ declared Parnell, shortly.

‘ What!’ exclaimed Benn.

Parnell nodded at the shelves of textbooks behind the other man. ‘Look up hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyl transferase. And get a message through to Dwight that you want to be there when he and I speak.’

Everyone had completed their initial analysis by the time Parnell got back to his own department. Lapidus said: ‘How did you know?’

‘I didn’t,’ admitted Parnell.

‘What’s causing it to happen?’ asked Beverley.

‘I don’t know that, either. I just know it is happening, that in humans, at this rate of mutation, it’s potentially fatal. And that it’s got to be withdrawn.’

‘You mean it’s already in production?’ said Pulbrow.

‘I think it might be.’

‘Why? How?’ said Beverley.

‘I guess it comes down to money,’ said Parnell.