‘Remember you’re talking to a layman.’
‘Yes, Mr President. What I mean is, whoever obtained this construction is using a novel imaging technique.’ The Colonel’s finger traversed the screen. ‘It’s two hundred angstroms end to end, and wonderfully detailed. They must have access to some heavy CPU time.’
‘Okay.’
‘Now sir, here they’ve isolated a protein from an immature white cell. Happens it’s the target of this virus. The virus gets on to that, screws up the immune response, you get an overproduction of cells, which is bad news.’
Another image replaced the sponge, this one made up of hundreds of tiny, multi-coloured balls joined by short sticks, the whole making an irregular, elongated hollow structure. It spun slowly.
‘I’m more familiar with this type of imaging. I recognise it as something called the VP1 protein.’ The Colonel pointed to a long, deep valley. ‘And there’s what we call the canyon. Dozens of research groups have been trying to find a receptor for it.’
Bull was patient. ‘Colonel, if I could have it in simple language?’
‘Sorry, Mr President. But now see what followed on the disk.’
The big protein stayed on screen, but another set of balls-and-sticks appeared, much smaller and simpler. Someone with a sense of drama had made this new image drift into view, approaching the protein like a little space ship returning to the mother station. It orbited the protein, hovered over the deep valley, distorted and stretched as it descended and clicked into place like a piece from a three-dimensional jigsaw, filling the canyon smoothly.
Now the dramatist sent in a flotilla of little ball-and-stick space ships. They swirled and orbited the mother ship and, one at a time, landed in other valleys, again filling them neatly.
The mother ship then tumbled, displaying its filled canyons. Bull glanced behind him. The CIA Director and the Science Adviser were absorbed in the image. Hazel was looking numbed.
‘Colonel?’
The soldier came back to the present. ‘My first instinct was to say that this is some sort of hoax. I mean, here we have fourteen hits, fourteen conformers to prevent receptor attachments, where one is a medical revolution.’
Bull was still being patient. ‘Colonel Rocco, what does all this gobbledygook mean?’
‘It means you can interrupt the lytic cycle — the virion can’t enter a human cell.’
‘Try harder, Soldier.’
‘Mr President, the material on this disk is describing the molecular basis for curing adult leukaemia. These are small molecules, as you see, so we wouldn’t have to worry about stomach enzymes. Meaning no injection, just swallow a pill. It might even be preventative. An anti-cancer pill, taken with your cornflakes every morning along with your vitamins.’
‘Colonel, what I need to know is this. What can you say about the state of advancement of this technology?’
‘Sir, it’s the stuff of fantasy. It puts our chemotherapy in the Stone Age. It must come from some protein targeting procedure a hundred years in the future, maybe more. We have a hundred doctoral scientists at Fort Detrick and we pride ourselves on being state of the art. We’re one of only two places in the States working at biosafety level four on account of we routinely deal with some mighty hazardous pathogens, and we’re pretty clued up on what’s going on elsewhere. But this — it’s way beyond anything we’ve encountered. I haven’t been told the source of this disk, but I surely wonder who has got this far.’
‘Are you saying this is a cure for leukaemia?’
‘Not yet. From genomics to commercial drug takes ten years and a lot of mice. But it’s giving us the molecular basis. GlaxoSmithKline, Wellcome, all the pharmaceutical giants would kill for this.’
‘Thank you, Colonel. This disk and any copies of it are to be erased. And that includes erasing its contents from your mind.’
The soldier looked blankly at the President as if he hadn’t heard correctly.
‘That will be all, Colonel.’
‘Forgive me, Mr President, but the disk contains more than that, a lot more. Some of it we already know, most of it’s new like the gene locations for polygenic diseases, and some of it’s beyond anything we’ve even thought about, like…’
The President stood up and walked to the window. The Colonel was still talking.
In his morning walk, Bull had noted that cloud had already covered the cottages higher up the mountain. He guessed that come the morning he’d have to take a motorcade down to Thurmont to catch the helicopter. He’d give Logie a ride.
The President envied Logie. He envied his certainties. But a distance had grown between them; their life paths had diverged to the point where they were scarcely within hailing distance of each other.
‘… seem to be maps for the flow of energy and biological information through the human body, and—’
‘Colonel Rocco.’
The soldier stopped in mid-flow.
Bull was still looking out of the window. He spoke quietly. ‘Kill it.’
This time the Colonel didn’t flinch. ‘Yes, sir.’
Somewhere out there, aliens reaching out to us.
Somewhere in Europe, fugitives with their message.
And hard decisions to be reached.
45
Brandy and Cigars
Now the cloud was enveloping Camp David like a white blanket, muffling sounds and creating a sharp, penetrating air. And it isolated the place, giving the guests in the cottages scattered around the mountain slope a feeling of intimacy, of sharing a village.
In Aspen, three men wore dinner suits round a table. Hazel was sitting, glamorous like an aging film star, in a long black cocktail dress. She wore a Mexican silver necklace and matching silver earrings which swung with every move of her head. Bull loosened his bow tie and swilled an amber-coloured brandy in a glass the size of a small goldfish bowl. He looked around at his guests.
Hazel Baxendale, my Scientific Adviser. A turbulent priest, highly capable, a wonderful technocrat. She’d been devastatingly right about the ET signal. She’ll be pushing me to go for the new knowledge, to reach out to the aliens. But her background is academic, she’s only ever worked with people like herself. She knows nothing about the range, scope and depths of wickedness on the planet, and thinks of the ET as saviours of mankind, like something out of a Spielberg movie.
Logie Harris, my spiritual mentor and old pal, all the way back to ’Nam. He’s slowing down, and falling victim to a sort of dogmatism: he’s turning into a man who’s often wrong, but never in doubt. But he’s still my moral compass in an immoral world, and the only individual round the table who shares my religious convictions. And the only man in America who knows about that little incident, long ago, with Miss Saigon.
Al Sullivan, the Director of the CIA. Now DCIs come and go with alarming speed but Al’s been in the job for five years and brilliantly supervised the transition from remote satellite sensing to work in the field. Good old reliable Al. He won’t have much to say about the issues, but if the defence of the country calls for sordid action in the dark alleys of the world, Al will be there with the knife.
Hazel Baxendale sat directly across from the President. From her end of the table she saw decisions which would affect the lives of billions and set humanity on an irrevocable course, being made over brandy and cigars. She wondered if Bull liked to see himself as another Churchill. Logie Harris, of course, was the big problem. He was a throwback to a darker age, a man who thought all problems could be solved by reference to revealed wisdom. He had a pernicious influence over Bull. Somehow she was going to have to lever the President away from him. She didn’t know how. But it would be criminal beyond belief to turn down the invitation to a better future for humanity, doubly so if it was rejected because of this theocratic bigot.