“Wait just a second!” Daniel growled. His face, already red, got redder still, and his voice, which had started out low, began to rise progressively. “We’re not starting the debate again about whether or not we’re going to treat Butler. That’s been decided. Our current conversation is about logistics from this point on, period!”
“Okay, okay!” Stephanie said. She reached out and put a hand on his arm. “Calm down! Fine! We’ll stay here and hope things work out for the best.”
Daniel took a few deep breaths before saying, “I also think we should make it a point to stay together.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t think it was an accident the muscleman assaulted me when I happened to be alone. Your brother obviously doesn’t want you hurt; otherwise, we both would have been slapped around, or at a minimum, I still would have borne the brunt, but you would have had to witness it. I think the man waited until I was by myself; ergo, I believe our staying together at all times away from our room would provide a certain amount of safety.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Stephanie mumbled equivocally. Her mind was a jumble. On the one hand, she was relieved that Daniel wasn’t making a negative reference to their relationship when he mentioned staying together, while on the other hand, it was still hard for her to admit to herself that her brother could have had anything to do with the violence Daniel had experienced.
“Can you get me some more ice?” Daniel asked. “What I’ve got is just about melted.”
“Of course,” Stephanie said. She was relieved to have something to do. She took the soggy towel and exchanged it for a fresh one in the bathroom. Then she revisited the ice bucket on the bar. When she handed the fresh ice pack to Daniel, the phone on the side table suddenly sprang to life. For a few moments, its repetitive jangle inundated the otherwise silent room. Neither Daniel nor Stephanie moved. Both stared at the phone.
“Now, who the hell could that be?” Daniel questioned, after the fourth ring. He positioned the ice pack on his eye.
“Not very many people know we are here,” Stephanie said. “Should I answer it?”
“I suppose,” Daniel said. “If it is your mother or brother, remember what I said earlier.”
“What if it’s the person who attacked you?”
“That’s highly unlikely. Answer it, but be nonchalant! If it is the thug, just hang up. Don’t try to engage him in any conversation.”
Stephanie went to the phone, picked it up, and tried to say hello normally while looking back at Daniel. Daniel watched her eyebrows raise slightly as she listened. After a few moments, Daniel mouthed, “Who is it?” Stephanie held up her hand and motioned for him to wait. Finally, she said, “Wonderful! And thank you.” Then she listened again. Absently, she twirled the phone cord with her finger. After a pause, she said, “That’s very nice of you, but it’s not possible tonight. In fact, it’s not possible any night.” She then said goodbye in a clipped tone and replaced the receiver. She returned her eyes to Daniel’s but for a moment didn’t speak.
“Well? Who was it?” Daniel demanded. His curiosity was getting the best of him.
“It was Spencer Wingate.” Stephanie shook her head in amazement.
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to let us know that he located our FedEx package, and he’s arranged to have it delivered first thing in the morning.”
“Hooray for small favors. That means we can start creating Butler’s treatment cells. But that was a rather long conversation for such a short message. What else did he want?”
Stephanie gave a mirthless laugh. “He wanted to know if I would come to his house in Lyford Cay Marina for dinner. Strangely enough, he made it clear that the invitation was just for me and not for us as a couple. I can’t believe it. It was like he was trying to hustle me.”
“Well, let’s look on the bright side; at least he has good taste.”
“I’m not amused,” Stephanie countered.
“I can see that,” Daniel said. “But let’s keep the big picture in mind.”
eighteen
11:30 A.M., Monday, March 11, 2002
Occasionally, Daniel had to give credit where credit was due. There was no doubt in his mind that Stephanie was far better at cellular manipulation than he, and that reality was underlined by what he was presently watching through the eyepieces of a double-headed dissecting stereomicroscope. He and Stephanie had placed the instrument on the corner of their lab bench at the Wingate Clinic to allow Daniel to watch while Stephanie worked. Stephanie was about to begin the process of nuclear transfer, otherwise known as therapeutic cloning, by extracting the nucleus of a mature oocyte whose DNA had been stained with a fluorescent dye. She already had the human egg cell fixated by suction with a blunt-tipped holding pipette.
“You make this look so easy,” Daniel remarked.
“It is,” Stephanie responded, as she guided a second pipette into the microscopic field with a micromanipulator. In contrast to the holding pipette, this pipette’s hollow end was as sharp as the finest needle, and the pipette itself was only twenty-five-millionths of a meter in diameter.
“Maybe it’s easy for you, but it’s not for me.”
“The trick is not to rush things. Everything has to be slow and even, and not jerky.”
True to her word, the sharp pipette moved smoothly yet decisively toward the fixated oocyte to push against the cell’s outer layer without penetrating it.
“This is the part I invariably screw up,” Daniel said. “Half the time, I go clear through the cell and out the other side.”
“Maybe because you are too eager, and therefore, a bit heavy-handed,” Stephanie suggested. “Once the cell is adequately indented, it just takes a slight tap with the index finger on the top of the micromanipulator.”
“You don’t use the micromanipulator itself to do the puncture?”
“Never.”
Stephanie carried out the maneuver with her index finger, and within the microscopic field, the pipette was seen to enter cleanly the cytoplasm of the hapless egg cell.
“Well, you live and learn,” Daniel said. “It proves I’m just a rank amateur in this arena.”
Stephanie pulled away from her eyepieces to glance at Daniel. It wasn’t like him to be self-deprecating. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is busywork, which you’ve always had skilled technicians to do. I learned how to do it when I was a graduate-student grunt.”
“I suppose,” Daniel said without looking up.
Stephanie shrugged and directed her eyes back into the microscope. “Now I use the micromanipulator to approach the fluorescing DNA,” she said. The tip of the pipette approached its target, and when Stephanie applied a tiny amount of suction, the DNA disappeared up into the pipette’s lumen as if the pipette were a miniature vacuum cleaner.
“I’m not good at this part either,” Daniel said. “I think I suck up too much cytoplasm.”
“It’s important to get just the DNA,” Stephanie said.
“Every time I watch this technique, I’m even more amazed that it works,” Daniel commented. “My mental image of the submicroscopic internal structure of a living cell is akin to a miniature glass house. How can it be that we can tear out the nucleus by its roots, essentially throw in another nucleus from an adult differentiated cell, and have the whole thing work? It boggles the imagination.”
“Not only work, but cause the adult nucleus we toss in to become young again.”
“That too,” Daniel agreed. “I tell you, the process of nuclear transfer truly defies belief.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Stephanie said. “For me, the improbability of it working is evidence of God’s involvement in the process, which rattles my agnosticism even more than what we learned about the Shroud of Turin.” While she spoke, she guided a third pipette into the microscopic field. This pipette had within its lumen a single fibroblast cell from Ashley Butler’s fibroblast culture: a cell whose ancestral nucleus Daniel had painstakingly manipulated, first with HTSR, to replace those genes responsible for the senator’s Parkinson’s disease with those derived from the shroud’s blood, and second, with an added gene at Stephanie’s suggestion for a special surface antigen. This fibroblast’s nuclear DNA was going to replace the DNA Stephanie had removed from the egg cell.