Genocide of One: A Thriller (32 page)

“GIFT’s basic methodology is no different from existing drug development software,”
Jeong-hoon explained, sounding very much the researcher. “As you can see, the receptor’s
shape is already determined. The next step is to identify the chemicals that will
bind perfectly with this pocket.”

“And that will be the drug.”

“Correct. There are two types of methods we can choose from to decide the chemical
structure of the drug. There’s de novo—designing the structure from scratch—or there’s
virtual screening, choosing a highly active structure from existing chemical compounds.”

“Which do you think is better?”

“Let’s go with de novo. The structure of the compound it comes up with may be really
complex, but because that’s not my field I’ll let you decide.”

“Okay.”

As they did before, they connected the laptop to the Internet, and Jeong-hoon sat
down in front of it. “What’s really amazing about this software is that you just indicate
what results you want and it does the rest.”

“It’s totally automatic?”

“Yeah,” Jeong-hoon said happily. “Let’s set the drug activation strength at one hundred
percent.”

Jeong-hoon checked that section of the dialogue box and switched from the mouse to
the keyboard. As his fingers flew across the keyboard the screen changed at blinding
speed to a ribbon model of the receptor, then to an atomic coordinates chart filled
with letters and numbers.

“If we indicate the spot where the binding will most easily happen, then GIFT will
do the rest of the calculations,” Jeong-hoon explained. “Okay: now make us a cure!”
he said, and punched
ENTER
.

REMAINING TIME: 01:41:13
the screen said.

“An hour and forty minutes? This
is
amazing!”

Jeong-hoon was overjoyed. Kento envied him for being so ecstatic. If only I could
enjoy research this much, he thought, how different my life would be. Jeong-hoon’s
beaming face reminded him of his father’s mysterious smile when he’d told him that
research was the one thing he could never give up. But what had his father found so
engrossing? It never seemed to Kento that his life as a researcher was all that fulfilling.

“Are you hungry?” Jeong-hoon asked.

“Yeah, I am. You want to grab a bite?”

They went out to a nearby ramen shop. As they walked down the dark street Kento kept
a sharp eye out but didn’t see any sign of the police.

They sat down in the restaurant and ordered a meal. The restaurant stayed open late,
so after they finished they were able to linger and discuss their next steps. If GIFT
were able to successfully design the drug, that would be the first step. Then they’d
have to actually synthesize it, do experiments linking it with the receptor, and perform
simple pharmacological drug trials using the mice.

“I don’t think the reagents we have in the apartment will be enough,” Kento said.
“We need to figure out how we can get hold of some.”

“Won’t reagent suppliers sell them to us?”

“They don’t take orders from individuals.”

“Let me go to the university and see what I can do. I’ll contact some friends in other
labs and see if they can help.”

“Great. But even if we’re able to synthesize it successfully, how do we handle the
rest of the work? We need to culture cells and test them on mice.”

“I don’t have any clinical background, either, so we’ll just have to study up and
do our best. I’ll go see Doi and find out from him.”

Kento mentally pictured Doi, who’d introduced him to Jeong-hoon. He was a laid-back,
casual sort of guy, but very focused when it came to his research. He should be able
to help out.

They still had some time before the results were in, and Kento decided to ask a question
he’d been pondering for some time. “When I’m with you, Jeong-hoon, I don’t feel uncomfortable
at all. But don’t you find a lot of differences between Koreans and Japanese?”

“Hmm,” Jeong-hoon said, his head tilted to one side as he gave it some thought.

“Say whatever you want. I don’t mind.”

“Well, to give you one example,” Jeong-hoon said, turning to Kento. “There’s a special
emotion that only the Koreans have found a word for. A kind of unusual feeling that
Americans, Chinese, and Japanese don’t understand. In Korean we call it
jeong
.”

“
Jeong
?”

“Right. It’s written with the Chinese character and pronounced
jo
in Japanese, which means ‘feeling.’”

“Then Japanese have it, too, since we use the same word.”

“No; it’s very different from what
jo
means in Japanese. It’s hard to explain.”

Kento was curious. “Could you try?”

“Well, I guess it’s like a force that connects one person with another. When we have
something to do with a person we’re connected through
jeong
, whether or not we like that person.”

“Is it like intimacy or benevolence?”

“It’s not something as elegant as that.
Jeong
can be annoying sometimes. Because you can be connected by
jeong
with someone no matter how much you dislike him. In other words, we can’t completely
reject that person. That’s what most Korean movies and TV dramas are about—
jeong
.”

“Really?” Kento had seen a few Korean films but had never noticed that. It was surprising
that people can watch the same movie and see completely different things.

“
Jeong
is also the connection between people and things.… Does this help?”

Kento tried to understand
jeong
on an emotional level, but no feelings rose from deep within him. “No. I’m afraid
I don’t get it.”

“See?” Jeong-hoon said with a laugh. “Only someone who understands
jeong
can understand the meaning of the word. If you don’t know what a word is pointing
to, you can’t understand the word.”

Just like scientific vocabulary, Kento mused. A person who doesn’t understand it never
gets it, no matter how much you explain it to him. It lies at the limits of what that
person can understand. “It seems like the distance between people in Korea is closer
than it is in Japan.”

“I guess so.”

Was the sort of gentle atmosphere he always felt around Jeong-hoon a result of
jeong
?
Kento wondered.

Jeong-hoon glanced at his watch. “GIFT should be finished with its calculations soon.”

As Kento got to his feet a thought struck him: someday I want to be a person who understands
jeong
.

They paid their bill, left the restaurant, and—again taking care not to be followed—returned
to the haunted house–like apartment building.

On the table in the small room, the screen of the white laptop glowed faintly. Kento
switched on the light in the room, and he and Jeong-hoon peered at the screen. What
leaped out at them was four letters:

“None?”
Jeong-hoon exclaimed. “What does that mean—none?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“That’s strange. Hold on a second.”

Jeong-hoon focused, laserlike, on the laptop. He fiddled with it for a while, and
a chemical formula appeared on the screen. It was a simple structure consisting of
a core nucleus surrounded by a benzene ring, multiple other rings, and appendant functional
groups. GIFT had given a result, but the receptor was only 3 percent activated. This
structure wouldn’t cure the disease.

“Is it telling us to retool it to optimize it?” Kento asked.

“No. If that were the case, then I don’t understand why it would say ‘none.’ Doing
it de novo should produce a little bit better answer than that.” Jeong-hoon considered
the situation. “Let’s forget de novo and do virtual screening.”

As before, he inputted instructions into GIFT and hit
ENTER
. This time it indicated nine hours and twenty minutes until the calculations were
complete.

“Normally calculations like this would take months,” Jeong-hoon said with a laugh.
“In the morning, when the results are in, you’ll call me?”

“Will do.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow night.”

Kento glanced at his watch. It was already near 11:00 p.m. Jeong-hoon had his own
work to do, and he felt bad for keeping him so late. “Thanks for everything, Jeong-hoon.”

“I’m doing it because I enjoy it,” the Korean prodigy said, his face lighting up in
an affable smile. “See you soon,” he said, and left the little lab.

As the roar of Jeong-hoon’s motorcycle faded away, the apartment suddenly felt empty
and lonely. Kento realized again how fortunate he was to have someone to help him.
Not that he could depend solely on Jeong-hoon. He had a lot of work to do, and braced
himself for the tasks ahead. He sat at his desk until near dawn, poring over specialized
texts, then slid into his sleeping bag for a few short hours of rest.

In the morning, he felt as if he had dreamed, but about what he couldn’t recall. He
had set the alarm on his watch, and it rang him awake when GIFT’s calculations were
over.

Eight o’clock.

With the blackout curtains closed, the room was as dark as it had been when he fell
asleep. Kento crawled out of his sleeping bag, switched on the light, and went over
to the computer. What sort of response would GIFT provide? He said a prayer that it
would come up with a structure with a high activation. He turned to the LED display.

Four letters lit up the screen.

When Esimo, Akili,
and Nigel Pierce left the hunting camp, the Mbuti seemed devastated, as if it were
the end of the world. Young and old, men and women, their faces grief-stricken, broke
down in tears as they said good-bye.

At first Yeager looked at them with sympathy, but the clamor went on so long that
he grew impatient to set off.

On the first day of their march through the jungle, Pierce explained the circumstances
behind the Mbuti reluctance to say good-bye. In order not to be attacked in a Pentagon-led
raid, they had decided to disperse to other bands. In other words, Esimo and the others
leaving was the signal for them all to scatter. They were also afraid for Akili, going
through the jungle at such a tender age. For the Pygmies, a race of hunters, the jungle
was filled with danger, and their children were strictly forbidden to go off into
it.

The mercenaries assumed a diamond-shaped battle formation, with Akili and Pierce in
the middle. In the front were Esimo, their guide, and Mick, on point.

In addition to food and clothes, Pierce had stuffed his backpack full of a couple
of laptops, solar electric panels, and a number of satellite phones. Garrett figured
these were to make sure they maintained a line of communication outside Africa. Even
if Echelon intercepted a call and the phone company cut the line, they could switch
to another phone and restore communications. Besides all this heavy equipment, Pierce
had a cloth slung diagonally across his shoulder in which he carried Akili, and all
this weight tended to make the thin anthropologist lag behind.

Akili showed no sadness at leaving the others and just gazed around at his surroundings
as they marched through the jungle. The expression in his eyes was so strange that
to Yeager it looked like he was planning some scheme or other.

Yeager was also bothered by the way Esimo acted. He was an excellent guide, confidently
striding through the thick jungle, but occasionally he would deliberately fold a leaf
in two and place it on the ground so that it formed an arrowlike mark. If an enemy
force took after them in this direction the leaves would be perfect signals, showing
the way. Also, when they took a break Esimo would lie on the ground near his son and
smoke marijuana.

“They have their own way of doing things,” Pierce told Yeager. “Leaf markers like
that are found all over the jungle. The marijuana they smoke heightens their sense
of hearing when they hunt. Unlike us, though, they don’t get high.”

“There’s something else,” Yeager said, pointing to the coals that Esimo kept wrapped
in a large leaf. When the foliage above them was sparse they risked being spotted
by the infrared sensor on the satellite, but Pierce insisted on letting him carry
the coals and wouldn’t back down. It’s a necessity, he explained.

“Couldn’t we just give him a lighter?” Yeager said, but Pierce wouldn’t listen.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We can track the satellite.”

Yeager thought his stubborn attitude odd, but he went along. Esimo’s timid yet friendly
smile kept him from taking a hard line.

The first day they covered thirty kilometers before nightfall. On his two-hour sentry
shift Yeager watched Akili as he slept, deeply snuggled up next to his father. When
his eyes were closed it lessened some of the strangeness of his appearance.

Still, Yeager found it odd how each person reacted differently to Akili. Akili had
developed mysterious intellectual powers but had yet to acquire what you might call
a full-fledged personality. Like a human infant, he was a blank slate, not yet good
or bad. Did this mean, then, that the totally opposite impressions Meyers and Mick
had of him reflected Meyers’s and Mick’s own mental states? This supposition sprang
from Yeager’s experiences in the military. When the Special Forces were deployed overseas
and came into contact with people who had a different skin color and language, it
was the soldiers with an inferiority complex who looked down on the locals the most.
A similar psychological process might be at work when it came to their views on Akili.

As he gazed at Akili’s defenseless sleeping face, Yeager remembered how he felt when
he was first blessed with a precious child. More than anything he wanted him to grow
up to be an honest and decent person. Akili might be a different race from humans,
but he was born with intelligence and a developing personality, and Yeager hoped he
would grow up the same way—with a strong, decent spirit. But if he had the same childish
combativeness that lurked inside Yeager himself—after all, lethal weapons were all
it took to make him feel almighty—then Mick could be right: Akili could turn out to
be very dangerous indeed. Akili was born from a human being, so it was entirely possible
he could turn out that way.

Dawn came, and they began the second day of their march. They took a short break every
hour, and Yeager used the time to learn a little more about the Pygmies.

“Do Pygmies ever go to war?” he asked.

“No, they don’t,” Pierce promptly answered. “As far as I know the only thing close
to war was the internal strife that took place about fifty years ago. A conflict started
within a band, and they ended up splitting into two groups.”

“In other words they’re natural pacifists?”

“They’re much wiser than we are. The Pygmies know that fighting among people will
endanger the group. So when there’s somebody who doesn’t fit into the group, or when,
say, there are quarrels between a couple, they move the people involved to another
band, and the friction disappears.”

“Don’t they fight over sources of food?”

“No; it never happens,” Pierce said flatly. “Each band has clearly defined territory,
and the group shares equally in whatever they kill. This is different from what we
would call Communism. It’s based on a superior wisdom. First, the hunter who brought
down the game has the right of ownership. But he portions out shares to the other
hunters with him and those who stayed behind in the camp. This complicated distribution
system means that the meat goes equally to all. It satisfies the covetousness of the
person who distinguished himself without allowing him to monopolize the wealth.”

Pierce clearly admired the Pygmies’ way of life. “You seem to really be taken by them,”
Yeager said.

“I am. By the way, the word
Mbuti
—the name Esimo and the others use for themselves—means ‘human being.’” In the gloom
of the jungle, as they rested for a few moments, this was the first time the bearded
anthropologist had spoken in a friendly tone. “Yeager,” he went on, “have you heard
of a company called Pierce Shipping?”

“Yes.”

“I’m the heir to that firm.”

Yeager was taken aback. Pierce—almost malnourished by his primitive lifestyle, dressed
in ragged clothes—hardly looked like the scion of a distinguished family. “You must
be rich, then.”

“I’m lucky enough to have the research funds I need,” said Pierce modestly.

“Why didn’t you take over the business?”

“When I was young I planned to. Anthropology was just a hobby. But I realized I wasn’t
cut out to run a huge corporation. That sort of world is just too corrupt.” A look
of disgust and defeat crossed Pierce’s features. “Money attracts the worst sort of
people. Bankers and people from investment firms only want to shake hands with somebody
who’s made a fortune. And lawyers—they’re leeches who suck out wealth instead of blood.
They all want to rob other people of their riches. I couldn’t stand the sight of them
anymore, so I went back to the research I love. Research on people who—to me, at least—are
the finest people in the world.”

Garrett had started listening in on their conversation, and he glanced at his watch.
“Sorry to interrupt, but we’d better get going.”

Yeager got to his feet. “You should have been born a Pygmy,” he said, with a hint
of sarcasm. “Instead of the heir to a huge corporation.”

Pierce smiled thinly and gave an unexpected response. “No. I don’t think so. I’m no
silly tree hugger. I use computers, and when I get sick I seek the most advanced treatment.
I can’t separate myself from almighty science. It’s ridiculous to think that primitive
society is a utopia forgotten by modern man. I can’t live forever in a world where
you can die from appendicitis.” His eyes shone with a mix of feelings, somewhere between
sadness and admiration. “The Pygmies have survived in this harsh environment for tens
of thousands of years. They evolved physically and cooperate and share the food they
need each day. Pretty amazing, wouldn’t you say?”

“It is,” Yeager agreed. He prayed that the blood of Akili’s peace-loving ancestors
still flowed through him.

About ten minutes into their march the trees abruptly ended, and their field of vision
opened up. In front of them, below a narrow dirt bank, lay the brownish Ituri River.
The river was one hundred meters wide, the water in it high and pulsing downstream.
On the opposite bank, too, a wall of trees came down nearly to the river. The Ituri
was like a thick blood vessel threading its way through the jungle.

Esimo pointed at something on the shore, timidly calling the mercenaries’ attention
to it. It was a dugout canoe carved out of a large tree, with a couple of oars, casually
lying there on the bank.

Yeager was once again amazed at Esimo’s abilities. Without a map or compass he’d led
them right to the spot where the canoe was. Yeager, former Special Forces, had no
clue how he’d navigated through the jungle, which was bereft of any landmarks.

“Two things to be careful of here,” Pierce told the men. “First, the crocodiles in
the river. They’ve eaten several locals here, so watch out. Second, once we’re on
the other side, we’ll come out near farming villages. There may be armed insurgents
nearby.”

Yeager and the others had been battle-ready ever since they left the Kanga band camp.
“Right. Let’s cross,” Yeager said.

The canoe could only hold four people and their equipment, so it took two trips to
get them all across. Once on the other side they walked for about ten kilometers,
at which point the vegetation was clearly different from before. They could see cultivated
land through the trees and knew they were nearing a farm village near the road.

Yeager called a halt and checked their position on the map. Villages were spread every
few kilometers along the unpaved road, and the village before them was Amanbere. Small
houses with dirt walls lined both sides of the road. They had sixty kilometers left,
as the crow flies, to their goal, the town of Komanda.

“Do you know what the satellite’s doing?” Yeager asked.

Pierce pulled a small laptop out of his waist pack and checked. “It’ll be over us
in forty minutes.”

“Let’s cross over the road between villages so no one notices us.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer to wait until night?”

“It’s not even noon yet. We can’t wait that long.”

They quickly worked out a route and, still in diamond-shaped battle formation, started
again through the forest.

But just as they were detouring behind Amanbere, Esimo, a startled expression on his
face, turned to look back at Pierce. Mick, beside Esimo, looked at him suspiciously,
then faced forward again, himself taken aback. Mick signaled a halt and pointed to
his ear, signaling that he heard something.

Yeager listened carefully. From where the road stretched off to the north he caught
the faint sound of drums.

Pierce focused on the sound for a time. “Damn,” he said in a soft voice. “A militia’s
headed this way.”

“How do you know?”

“Those are talking drums of the Bila people. They communicate using drum sounds to
stand in for the inflections of speech. They can transmit pretty complex information.”

“Does it say how big the militia is?”

“No, it doesn’t, but they’re a bloodthirsty group. They’ve massacred other tribes.
Normally they’d be operating in the north.”

The mercenaries exchanged glances.

“Are they after us?” Mick asked.

“That would be my guess,” Garrett said, and nodded.

They heard shrill yells from the Amanbere village. The talking drums’ message had
been received. From far off they watched as people ran out of their houses, spoke
to each other, and ran about in panicked confusion.

Yeager put down his backpack and put his headset on. “Hide Esimo and Akili in the
woods,” he ordered Pierce. “Have them lie facedown.”

Akili clearly understood what was happening. He clung to his father’s waist and looked
at him with frightened eyes.

“Can’t we run away?” Pierce asked.

“We’ll check to see when the militia’s passed,” Yeager said. “This is safer than running
around at random,” he added, trying to reassure him.

Pierce nodded tensely and escorted the Pygmy father and son behind a large tree. Meyers
stayed behind to guard them, while Yeager, Mick, and Garrett flicked the safeties
off on their rifles and headed toward the edge of the forest. Beyond where the underbrush
thinned out was an expanse of cultivated land, and two hundred meters beyond that
was a row of houses. Through his military binoculars Yeager could see people running
back toward the village from elsewhere and the terrified looks on their faces.

Run away! Yeager said to himself. If you don’t hurry you’ll all get killed!

Just then there was a burst of upbeat music totally out of place in the tense scene.
Loud music, a mix of African folk music and rock. Yeager followed the music north
with his binoculars and saw three pickup trucks, trailing dust and loaded with Africans,
barrel into the village. A heavy-caliber machine gun was mounted on the bed of the
lead truck. The jostling crowd of militia in the trucks were dressed in mismatched
field uniforms they had probably plundered.

“Forty-three men,” Garrett reported.

Mick continued. “One heavy-caliber machine gun, three light machine guns, plenty of
AKs, some pistols, hatchets, axes, and spears.”