Resurrection

THREE

Institute of Molecular Sciences

Edinburgh, Scotland

October 1997

The door of lab 512 opened and a tall, distinguished figure walked in. He ignored the people working there and crossed to floor to open an office door on the far side. Finding no one inside, he turned and said to no one in particular, ‘No Doctor Malloy.’

‘Give the man a coconut,’ whispered one of the men present to a younger colleague working beside him.

‘Did you say something, Mr Ferguson?’ asked the tall man.

‘I simply agreed with your observation, Professor Hutton’ replied the man who’d made the comment. Both men held eye contact for a moment, the tall man barely disguising his dislike, the older man seemingly inscrutable in the time-honoured tradition of dumb insolence.

‘Are you expecting him in today?’

‘He didn’t say he wasn’t going to be in,’ replied a young, studious looking man, wearing a black tee shirt with the name of a pop group emblazoned across it His white lab coat hung open.

‘I think he was pretty upset after yesterday’s vaccine trial results,’ added a young red haired woman in her early twenties. ‘Coming on top of Ali’s death, I think it was the final straw.’

‘We all have to accept set-backs in our research. It’s part of the job,’ said the tall man. He looked around at the work benches in the lab and muttered, ‘Ye gods, look at the state of this place. You people should take a leaf out of Dr Pearson’s book next door. His staff keep the lab spotless; you won’t find any clutter lying around there.’

‘Not so much as an idea,’ muttered Ferguson.

The tall man’s nostrils flared in patrician anger and he took a deep breath but he said nothing to the offender. ‘Tell Dr Malloy I’d like a word when he comes in.’

As the door closed, the young man in the Tee shirt said to Ferguson, ‘You’re pushing your luck with him.’

‘He’s all front and no substance,’ replied the older man. ’

‘Peter’s right, George’ said the girl. ‘You are pushing your luck. He really doesn’t like this lab.’

‘He can’t do much more to me,’ said the older man. ‘If Steve doesn’t get a new grant I’m out on my arse anyway come Christmas. Herr Direktor has fingered me for early retirement.’

‘There must be a good chance Steve’ll get the grant.’

‘Really? Let’s face it. Yesterday’s trial result isn’t exactly going to help it along.’

No one argued.

‘It’s still a bad idea to get up Hutton’s nose. He could still screw up your pension deal.’

‘I guess. But it’s my only pleasure,’ said the older man with a grin.

‘He is a bit of a pompous prick,’ said Peter Moore, the graduate student wearing the black tee shirt.

‘University’s full of them.’ added Sandra Macandrew, the red haired girl, also a PhD student. ‘Something we have to live with.’

‘And something the British do so well,’ added Pierre LeGrice, visiting post-doctoral research fellow from the Institut Pasteur in Paris. ‘If you look the part and wear the right tie you can go far in this country.’

‘Maybe it’s because the university’s an “equal opportunity employer”,’ suggested Ferguson, the senior technician with the group. ‘Being a brainless balloon is no impediment.’

The door opened and a man wearing dark glasses and black clothes came in. ‘Christ, my head’s got a brass band playing in it,’ he complained by way of greeting.

‘Herr Direktor was looking for you,’ said Ferguson. ‘Didn’t look too happy but we still managed to make him less happy by the time he left.’

‘You haven’t been baiting him again, have you?’ asked the newcomer with a look of resigned exasperation.

‘He gave us a lecture on lab tidiness, said we should learn from the Pearson lab next door.’

‘That’ll be the day,’ snorted Steven Malloy, the group leader. ‘But he does have a point. Maybe just a wee tidy up guys?’

‘Okay, we’ll do that while you see the man.’

‘I need some coffee first.’

‘And an aspirin?’ asked Sandra Macandrew.

‘You’re an angel,’ said Malloy waiting until the girl fetched a couple of aspirins from her handbag and handed them to him.’

‘Right, I’ll nip down to the machine and grab me a mouthful of caffeine before seeing Hutton.’

‘Come back with your shield or on it,’ smiled Peter Moore.

‘And whatever he says, don’t deck him. Peter and I would like to get our PhDs,’ added Sandra.

‘And then you can deck him,’ added Peter.

Steven Malloy walked down one flight of stairs and along the corridor to the staff common room. In the lull between morning coffee and lunch time it was empty. There was some coffee left in the Cona flask so he felt the outside; it was cold. He put some coins in the vending machine and selected black, extra strength.

Taking the plastic cup in both hands, he walked over to the window and put the cup down on the ledge while he unwrapped the aspirins from their foil and palmed them into his mouth. He washed them down with the coffee, wincing a little as he almost burned his throat. Two more gulps and he threw the cup in the bin and started out for the director’s office.

The director’s secretary, Hyacinth Chisholm, immaculate as ever in a mauve two-piece suit and smelling of expensive perfume looked him up and down as he entered. She saw a man of medium height, in his mid thirties, dressed in a black polo neck sweater and black corduroy trousers. His glasses sat at an angle thanks to one ear being slightly higher than the other and his nose was crooked. He had a mass of black curly hair that belied his years. She thought he looked like a mop standing the wrong way up.

‘Good Morning Dr Malloy,’ she said, affecting a look at her wrist watch to check that it still was morning.

‘Morning Hyacinth. He wanted to see me.’

‘I’ll see if the professor’s free.’

‘Hyacinth pressed a button on her intercom and said with affected formality, ‘Dr Malloy is here, Professor.’

There was a pause during which Hyacinth remained glued to her intercom as if frozen in a moment in time. It was as if she were about to have some momentous truth revealed to her. When it came, it was, ‘Ask him to come in, would you.’

‘Ah, Steven, I thought it was about time we had a chat. I was looking for you earlier. You weren’t in.’

‘I had rather a lot to drink last night after hearing the trial results. I had a bit of a lie in this morning.’

Professor Paul Hutton, director of the Institute of Molecular Sciences, winced at Malloy’s explanation. He said, ‘It must have been a bitter disappointment to you and your team.’

‘We’ve been working a hundred hours a week on that project for the last eighteen months and we really thought we had it this time, it was going to be the first effective vaccine against AIDS and suddenly it all turns to dust when the animal trial results come out. No protection at all. Absolutely zilch. It was all for nothing and I’ve no idea why.’

‘Perhaps if you had consulted more with your colleagues during the development period, aired your difficulties more, interacted with your colleagues, things might have turned out differently. Group meetings, seminars, that sort of thing are so useful in dealing with problems.’

‘Sure. It would have taken us thirty six months instead of eighteen to get nowhere,’ replied Malloy.

‘Interaction is an essential part of scientific life,’ snapped Hutton.

‘Some people interact so much they do fuck-all else,’ said Malloy. ‘They just spend their days “interacting”.’

Hutton lost his cool. He leaned forward in his seat. ‘Let me tell you, Doctor, I am getting very tired of the attitude of you and your research group in this establishment. Your lack of respect for rules and regulations. You continually fail to deal with paperwork; you don’t make reports when requested. We practically never see any of you at seminars and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you attend a staff meeting at all.’

‘If I did all that there wouldn’t be any time left for research.’

‘Other groups seem to manage and still carry out research programmes.’ Dr Pearson … ‘

‘Dots other people’s ‘T’s and crosses other people’s ‘I’s. I don’t call that research.’

‘His work is well respected … ’

‘Among other scientists who do exactly the same thing. Find a rut and sit in it, make like-minded friends and scratch each other’s backs. You review my grant application favourably and I’ll do the same for you. Yugh!’

‘This is outrageous! I don’t know why I don’t just …’

‘Three papers in Nature last year and grants totalling?300,000 of which the institute skims forty percent off the top as “overheads” before we even start. That’s why you just don’t …’ exclaimed Malloy equally angrily.

Hutton looked away to the side, deliberately taking time to compose himself. He seemed to be biting his tongue. When he finally looked back at Malloy he said in controlled fashion, ‘I appreciate you have been under a lot of strain recently, Steven. Ali’s suicide must have been a great shock and now the trial results on your vaccine suggesting it might be less effective than we’d hoped …’

‘The word you’re searching for is, useless.’

‘Be that as it may, we sometimes have to accept set-backs. Learn from our mistakes. Pick ourselves up.’

Malloy had to consciously stop himself turning the interview into a musical. “And start all over again”. He kept quiet.

‘I suggest we forget our little altercation, put our differences behind us and start afresh. I would be the last one to insist on robotic behaviour among the staff but we must have some standards or we’d have anarchy.’

‘I appreciate that,’ said Malloy quietly.

‘Good. Perhaps you could take a look at some of your paperwork backload, especially the staff appraisals. They’re long overdue.’

‘They used to say that life was what happened to you while you were planning for the future, now it’s what happens to you while you’re filling in forms.’

I can sympathise to a certain extent but the institute insists that every member of staff be interviewed by his immediate superior at least once a year and an accurate record kept of performance to date, achievements, plans for the future etc. It’s modern practice.’

‘Modern doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good,’ grumbled Malloy. ‘What happens to these appraisals anyway. Where do you send them?’

Hutton moved in his chair. ‘Actually, we don’t.’

‘You don’t send them anywhere?’

‘They remain here on file.’

‘You file them?’

‘It’s useful to have accurate progress records of everyone on the staff.’

Malloy wanted to scream out, But is it necessary?’ but he didn’t. In the interests of harmony, even pretend harmony, he kept his mouth shut.

‘I’d also like you to have a word with that technician of yours, Ferguson. He’s not been attending mandatory safety courses on the handling of infectious material.’

‘George Ferguson has been handling infectious material for thirty years,’ pointed out Malloy. ‘He was handling typhoid and tuberculosis in an open lab while I was still playing with my train set.’

‘That’s beside the point.’

Malloy bit his tongue again but Hutton caught the look on his face. ‘The rules don’t differentiate. All technical staff are required to attend refresher courses. Frankly I don’t understand why you took him on in the first place. he’s a constant thorn in the side of the admin staff.’

‘I took him on because he’s been moved around from pillar to post ever since his hospital closed; I needed a good technician. The trust turned down the technical post on the grant application I put in but funded the rest of it. It was like giving me a car but saying I could only have three wheels on it.’

‘I’m sure they had their reasons.’

‘It’s just that they’re not obvious to anyone but themselves. Anyway, George has had a lot of experience. He may not be the most diplomatic of people but I don’t need a diplomat. I need someone who can handle viruses.’

Let’s agree to disagree on the merits of Mr Ferguson,’ said Hutton. ‘What I really wanted to talk to you about this morning was the use of fragments of the smallpox virus. You use them I understand.’

‘Sure, we’ve been trying to understand some of the tricks that virus performs to get round the human immune system. It’s a pretty fascinating bug.’

‘Well, I’ve been officially informed that there is now a complete ban on the supply and movement of these fragments until further notice.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Malloy. ‘But I was just about to request the fragments carrying the DNA upstream from the region we’ve been working on. We suspect the control region we were looking for had been cut through during the fragmentation.’

Hutton shrugged and said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s a joint WHO/UN recommendation that the government has endorsed with immediate effect.’

‘Shit, but why?’

‘No explanation but they also want us to audit and declare all the fragments we’re holding. Sounds like someone has been doing something they shouldn’t.’

‘Joining up the fragments, you mean? God, you’d have to be a pork pie short of a picnic to do that to any great extent. Mind you …’

‘Yes?’

‘In some ways I can sympathise with the people who’d like the complete virus to work on. The trouble we’ve been experiencing is largely down to working with fragments rather than the complete genome. They thought in the beginning it would be just as good but it’s not. Lots of important genes have been cut through when they cut the DNA into fragments. So anyone interested in finding out how the whole thing operates might be tempted to try a bit of reassembly. It may be stupid and against the rules but it’s understandable.’

‘It may not be being done for reasons of scientific curiosity,’ said Hutton.

Malloy looked at him questioningly then it dawned on him what Hutton meant. ‘God, you can’t be serious. Someone trying to reconstruct live smallpox virus? They’d have to be out of their tree.’

Hutton shrugged his agreement. ‘Be that as it may, can you let me have a list of the fragments you’re currently holding?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ve also had a letter from Ali Hammadi’s parents.’

Malloy’s face clouded over. ‘Oh yes,’ he said quietly.

‘They’d like to endow a PhD studentship in his honour. Some kind of lasting memorial. Your thoughts?’

‘I still find it hard to believe Ali’s dead. He was a good student, easy going, easy to get on with. Everyone liked him. His work was going exceptionally well and then suddenly in the space of a few short weeks his whole demeanour changed. He turned into a morose recluse who wouldn’t speak to anyone and then he took his own life. I just don’t understand it.’

‘We’ll have to assume it was some kind of mental aberration. Clinical depression can strike at anyone at any time and for no discernible reason to the outsider.’

‘And bright people are more susceptible, yes I know all the get-outs. I’ve been using them for the past few weeks but I still feel guilty. I should have realised how serious his condition was. I just kept thinking it was something he would snap out of if we gave him time. Girl trouble or something like that.’

‘Not your fault. Graduate students are adults. We can’t baby-sit them. Now, about the studentship?’

‘Okay by me. I think it’s a nice idea.’

‘Good. I’ll tell them we’re delighted and have admin start the paperwork. The Ali Hammadi Research Fellowship in Molecular Science. Has a nice ring to it.’

Malloy returned to his lab and told the others what had been said, starting with the government ban on smallpox fragments.

‘But that’s crazy,’ protested Le Grice. ‘If we can’t try out the upstream region we can’t find out what’s wrong with our system. It’s going to put a complete stop to our research.’

‘Well, shit happens and it’s been that kind of a month really,’ sighed Malloy, sounding both tired and world-weary.’

‘But why?’ persisted Le Grice. ‘Why are they doing this?’

Malloy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Hutton hasn’t been told but you know how careful the powers that be are about smallpox. There must have been some kind of scare somewhere.’

‘Probably some kid got a bad dose of chickenpox in Outer Mongolia and the WHO got diarrhoea. Don’t these people realise what they’re doing when they suddenly come out with crazy bans like this?’ retorted Le Grice angrily.

‘Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and suppose that they do in this case and that they might have good reasons for introducing the ban,’ said Malloy.

‘Look, if we can’t get the fragments we need from the official sources any more why don’t I phone around. Maybe the Beatson in Glasgow has them or the guys in Manchester.’

Malloy shook his head. ‘The ban is on all fragment movement, not just from official sources.’

‘Sure but if they don’t know …’

Malloy’s look was enough to make Le Grice change his mind about what he was going to say.

‘I know it’s tough on all of us but we’re going to play by the rules on this one. Apart from anything else there are certain factions within this institute that would not be adverse to seeing us get into really deep shit and deliberately flouting a WHO/UN ruling is as deep as it comes.

‘Any idea how long the ban is going to last?’ asked Sandra Macandrew.

‘None.’

‘This could screw up our PhD work,’ said Sandra looking at Peter.

‘You don’t have to achieve success to get your degrees. You just have to show that you’ve carried out your research programme in a controlled and methodical scientific manner. Demonstrate that you thought things through and acted accordingly. The work you did on the first vaccine will probably be enough.’

‘But it’s not the same, is it?’

‘No. A successful vaccine would be have been nicer,’ conceded Malloy.

Le Grice gave a snort at the understatement.

‘So what do we do in the meantime?’

‘We get the smallpox DNA sequence out from the database again and study it. See if we can figure out what’s going on in the region we’re interested in without actually working with it.’

‘Not for the first time,’ said Le Grice.

‘I know we’ve done it before,’ said Malloy, coldness creeping into his voice as his patience wore thin. ‘But we’re going to do it again. All right’

‘Sure.’

‘In the meantime, George, we have to submit an audit of what smallpox fragments we hold at the moment. Maybe you could run a check on that?

‘Will do.’

‘There’s one other thing. Ali’s parents want to set up some kind of memorial thing for him. They’re thinking of endowing a studentship.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Sandra. The others smiled and nodded, unsure of what to say.

‘It’s nice to know they don’t blame us,’ said Malloy quietly.

‘It’s about time you stopped blaming yourself,’ said Sandra. ‘All of us are to blame and none of us are to blame. We’ll probably never know why he did it because he didn’t tell us what was wrong and it wasn’t for the want of asking. We all liked him. We all cared about him. He just wouldn’t open up to us.’

‘Not even after a couple of pints,’ said Peter.

‘Ali drank beer?’ asked Malloy.

‘George introduced him to McEwans 80 shilling ale.’

‘He was a willing student,’ said Ferguson. ‘He enjoyed it. Ali was a bright bloke. He figured out that Allah probably wouldn’t hold it against him.’

‘How often did you two go drinking?’ asked Malloy.

‘Don’t read too much into it,’ laughed Ferguson. ‘Ali wasn’t an alcoholic and he didn’t get depressed. That isn’t why he topped himself. We had an occasional couple of pints at the union on a Friday night, that’s all.’

‘But he never loosened up enough to tell you what was wrong?’

‘Fraid not.’