In the hall outside the travel office, Warren asked Jack what the woman meant.
“It takes up to a week for these shots to take effect,” Jack explained. “That is, except for the gamma globulin.”
“Are we taking a risk, then?” Warren asked.
“Life’s a risk,” Jack quipped. “Seriously, there’s some risk, but each day our immune systems will be better prepared. The main problem is the malaria, but I intend to take a hell of a lot of insect repellant.”
“So you’re not concerned?” Warren asked.
“Not enough to keep me home,” Jack said.
After leaving the hospital, they all went to a passport photo place and had snapshots taken. With those in hand, Laurie, Warren, and Natalie left to visit the Equatoguinean Embassy.
Jack caught a taxi and directed it to the University Hospital. Once there, he went directly up to Dr. Peter Malovar’s lab. As usual he found the aged pathologist bent over his microscope. Jack waited respectfully until the professor had finished studying his current slide.
“Ahhh, Dr. Stapleton,” Dr. Malovar said, catching sight of Jack. “I’m glad you came. Now, where is that slide of yours?”
Dr. Malovar’s lab was a dusty clutter of books, journals, and hundreds of slide trays. The wastebaskets were perennially overflowing. The professor steadfastly refused to allow anybody into his work space to clean lest they disturb his structured disorder.
With surprising speed, the professor located Jack’s slide on top of a veterinary pathology book. His nimble fingers picked it up and slipped it under the microscope’s objective.
“Dr. Osgood’s suggestion to have this reviewed by Dr. Hammersmith was crackerjack,” Dr. Malovar said as he focused. When he was satisfied, he sat back, picked up the book, and opened it to the page indicated by a clean microscope slide. He handed the book to Jack.
Jack looked at the page Dr. Malovar indicated. It was a photomicrograph of a section of liver. There was a granuloma similar to the one on Jack’s slide.
“It’s the same,” Dr. Malovar said. He motioned for Jack to compare by looking into the microscope.
Jack leaned forward and studied the slide. The images did seem identical.
“This is certainly one of the more interesting slides you have brought to me,” Dr. Malovar said. He pushed a lock of his wild, gray hair out of his eyes. “As you can read from the book, the offending organism is called hepatocystis.”
Jack straightened up from looking at his slide to glance back at the book. He’d never heard of hepatocystis.
“Is it rare?” Jack asked.
“In the New York City morgue I’d have to say yes,” Dr. Malovar said. “Extremely rare! You see it is only found in primates. And not only that, but it is only found in Old World primates, meaning primates found in Africa and Southeast Asia. It’s never been seen in the New World and never in humans.”
“Never?” Jack questioned.
“Put it this way,” Dr. Malovar said. “I’ve never seen it, and I’ve seen a lot of liver parasites. More important, Dr. Osgood has never seen it, and he has seen more liver parasites than I. With that kind of combined experience, I’d have to say it does not exist in humans. Of course, in the endemic areas, it might be a different story, but even there it would have to be rare. Otherwise we’d have seen a case or two.”
“I appreciate your help,” Jack said distractedly. He was already wrestling with the implications of this surprising bit of information. It was a much stronger suggestion that Franconi had had a xenotransplant than the mere fact that he’d gone to Africa.
“This would be an interesting case to present at our grand rounds,” Dr. Malovar said. “If you are interested, let me know.”
“Of course,” Jack said noncommittally. His mind was in a whirl.
Jack left the professor, took the hospital elevator down to the ground floor, and started toward the medical examiner’s office. Finding an Old World primate parasite in a liver sample was very telling evidence. But then there were the confusing results that Ted Lynch had gotten on the DNA analysis to contend with. And on top of that was the fact there was no inflammation in the liver with no immunosuppressant drugs. The only thing that was certain was that it all didn’t make sense.
Arriving back at the morgue, Jack went directly up to the DNA lab with the intention of grilling Ted in the hope that he could come up with some hypothesis to explain what was going on. The problem as Jack saw it was that Jack didn’t know enough about current DNA science to come up with an idea on his own. The field was changing too rapidly.
“Jesus, Stapleton, where the hell have you been!” Ted snapped the moment he saw Jack. “I’ve been calling all over creation and nobody’s seen you.”
“I’ve been out,” Jack said defensively. He thought for a second about explaining what was going on then changed his mind. Too much had happened in the previous twelve hours.
“Sit down!” Ted commanded.
Jack sat.
Ted searched around on his desktop until he located a particular sheet of developed film covered with hundreds of minute dark bands. He handed it to Jack.
“Ted, why do you do this to me?” Jack complained. “You know perfectly well I have no idea what I’m looking at with these things.”
Ted ignored Jack, while he searched for another similar piece of celluloid. He found it under a laboratory budget he was working on. He handed the second one to Jack.
“Hold them up to the light,” Ted said.
Jack did as he was told. He looked at the two sheets. Even he could tell they were different.
Ted pointed to the first sheet of celluloid. “This is a study of the region of the DNA that codes for ribosomal protein of a human being. I just picked a case at random to show you what it looks like.”
“It’s gorgeous,” Jack said.
“Let’s not be sarcastic,” Ted said.
“I’ll try,” Jack said.
“Now, this other one is a study of Franconi’s liver sample,” Ted said. “It’s the same region using the same enzymes as the first study. Can you see how different it is?”
“That’s the only thing I can see,” Jack said.
Ted snatched away the human study and tossed it aside. Then he pointed at the film Jack was still holding. “As I told you yesterday this information is on CD-ROM so I was able to let the computer make a match of the pattern. It came back that it was most consistent with a chimpanzee.”
“Not definitely a chimpanzee?” Jack asked. Nothing seemed to be definite about this case.
“No, but close,” Ted said. “Kind of like a cousin of a chimpanzee. Something like that.”
“Do chimps have cousins?” Jack asked.
“You got me,” Ted said with a shrug. “But I’ve been dying to give you this information. You have to admit it’s rather impressive.”
“So from your perspective it was a xenograft,” Jack said.
Ted shrugged again. “If you made me guess, I’d have to say yes. But taking the DQ alpha results into consideration, I don’t know what to say. Also I’ve taken it upon myself to run the DNA for the ABO blood groups. So far that’s coming up just like the DQ alpha. I think it’s going to be a perfect match for Franconi, which only confuses things farther. It’s a weird case.”
“Tell me about it!” Jack said. He then related to Ted the discovery of an Old World primate parasite.
Ted made an expression of confusion. “I’m glad this is your case and not mine,” he said.
Jack placed the sheet of celluloid on Ted’s desk. “If I’m lucky, I might have some answers in the next few days,” he said. “Tonight I’m off to Africa to visit the same country Franconi did.”
“Is the office sending you?” Ted asked with surprise.
“Nope,” Jack said. “I’m going on my own. Well, that’s not quite true. I mean, I’m paying for it, but Laurie is going, too.”
“My god, you are thorough,” Ted said.
“Dogged is probably a better word,” Jack said.