Genocide of One: A Thriller (41 page)

“I’m not denying that people also have a good side. But good deeds are seen as virtuous
precisely because they run counter to human nature. If these were biologically normal
acts, we wouldn’t praise them. The only way people can show how good their country
is is by not killing people from other countries. But human beings today can’t even
do that.”

Rubens knew his debate skills might not be enough to refute Heisman’s deep-seated
distrust of humans. Heisman might even be hoping that his report would come true,
that mankind would be wiped out.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t cooperate with the Pentagon’s operation. If a new type of
human being has appeared, I see it as cause for celebration. Modern men are pitiful
beings that have spent most of the last two hundred thousand years killing each other.
This situation, in which humans can only coexist by threatening each other with weapons
of mass destruction, shows the limits of human morality. It’s time we hand over the
planet to the next generation of beings.”

“But Professor…” Without intending to, Rubens sounded like he was pleading. He was
driven into a corner, and he knew he had to appeal to Heisman’s intellect. “There’s
another reason besides the one I gave you for my visit today. Can I have a little
more of your time?”

“Ask what you want, but my mind is made up.”

“There’s going to be an official announcement tonight, but Vice President Chamberlain
was assassinated earlier today.”

Heisman must have been surprised by this news, but his only reaction was a raised
eyebrow.

Rubens explained the details about the hijacking of the unmanned drone and how Nous
and his companions were held up in the Congo. “What I’m going to tell you now is highly
classified, so please keep it secret. The NSA tracked the hacking of the air force
computer network and soon identified where the signal came from. The Predator was
hijacked by—”

“Islamic fundamentalists?”

“No. It was the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The cyberattack was led by the Fourth
Bureau of its General Staff Department.”

Heisman’s eyes lost focus.

“But only those involved in Operation Nemesis know who was really behind it. Nous.
The problem is there’s no proof. The American government believes it was cyberterrorism
executed by China. If it comes to a military confrontation between the United States
and China, all of Asia—the so-called arc of instability—will get involved, along with
Russia, Europe, the Arab countries, and Israel. It could actually lead to another
world war.”

“But in that case…” Heisman began, and then fell silent, staring at Rubens.

“That’s correct. The one who could launch the first nuclear strike is the president
of the United States.”

Silence descended on the stacks. Rubens cursed the fragility of human peace. Why,
he thought, do we have to live in constant fear of humans killing each other? This
anxiety has never let up, from the time when human beings first appeared to the present,
an unbroken chain of two hundred thousand long years. The sole enemy human beings
have is their own species—other humans. “At this rate item three in the Heisman Report
might take place. Even if it’s limited use of nuclear weapons, once the first one
explodes it’s just a question of time before mankind’s extinct.”

Heisman was silent for a while, then looked up. “All right,” he said. “I’ll answer
your questions. Ask anything you want.”

Rubens thanked him and plunged ahead. “What chance of success does Operation Nemesis
have?”

“Zero. We have no chance of winning against an evolved intelligence.”

“If that’s true, then what’s our best strategy?”

“Find out Nous’s intentions.”

“His intentions? But is that even possible? According to your report he possesses
mental qualities that are incomprehensible to us.”

“No; Nous completely grasps our cognitive abilities. And he’s giving us a problem
we can solve. He’s communicating with us.”

Looking back on all that had transpired, Rubens saw how true this was. Nous could
figure out everything they’d been thinking.

“We have no chance of winning, so we have to understand Nous’s intentions and choose
the best way of losing. Do that and we should be able to avoid complete ruin. When
it comes to deciding how best to lose, we have only two choices.”

Rubens put his hands to his forehead, racking his brain. For the first time in his
life he was mentally outclassed. “Just a minute. What do you mean?”

“You still don’t get it? He didn’t kill the vice president out of anger. Through the
drone incident he was telling us the strategy he’s adopting.”

“Nous’s strategy?”

“Right. Think of the power relationship between us and Nous. For humans beings, who
is it whose wisdom we’re no match for?”

Only one answer came to Rubens. “God.”

“Correct. The power relationship between humans and superhumans is the same as that
between people and God. Because the opponent strikes back with a power that exceeds
that of human intellect. Nous chose God’s strategy. First he tried to cooperate with
humans. If humans reject his overtures, then he retaliates in force. But if they then
try to cooperate, he immediately returns to cooperation himself. And he doesn’t have
a desire for revenge. Doesn’t the God of the Bible use the same strategy to win over
humans?”

Rubens was astounded. Nous’s strategy, which Heisman had seen through, was very similar
to that of the prisoner’s dilemma and the tit-for-tat strategy discovered in computer
simulations. “So God is subtle but not malicious?”

Heisman gave a faint laugh but then frowned. “Because we chose attack as our first
move, our opponent opposed us. If we continue to attack, we’ll suffer even worse counterattacks.
All that awaits us is our annihilation. If we say we want to cooperate, though, we’ll
be forgiven. The control-and-submission relationship doesn’t change at all. We have
no chance of winning, and the only thing we can do is prostrate ourselves before him.”

“So your conclusion is that we should stop Operation Nemesis right away.”

“Exactly. Do that and Nous will immediately halt his counterattacks. Somehow he’ll
get rid of the threat of nuclear war. He has to protect the environment of the earth,
otherwise he won’t be able to secure his own habitat.”

For the first time Rubens noticed a riddle he had missed as well as its answer. If
Nous had the ability to hijack a Predator, then why did he attack the vice president
instead of manipulating the ones flying above the Congo?

“At the present stage, if Nous is liquidated then the danger of a nuclear war remains.”

“Correct. That was his purpose in killing Chamberlain and making it look like the
Chinese did it. In order for us to survive as a species, we’ve been driven to a point
where we have to protect Nous’s life.”

How many times now, Rubens wondered, have I been shocked by the intelligence of this
three-year-old?

“If we push Nous into a corner even more, the situation will get even worse. Next
he might assassinate some Chinese leader and make it look like the United States was
behind it. But it’s a mistake to blame him from an ethical standpoint. Humans, too,
would fight back if attacked by chimpanzees. Without any moral qualms. It’s the same
thing.”

An ape shot by a human’s hunting rifle, Rubens mused, would probably die without ever
understanding what had happened to it.

“So the only thing we can do is protect Nous. That’s all I can teach you. Is that
enough?”

“Yes. Thank you so much for all your advice,” Rubens said, thoroughly chagrined now
by the decision he’d made to eliminate Nous. “It’s been very helpful.”

Heisman held out his hand. “Give me the book. They’ll think it suspicious if I don’t
sign it.”

Thankful for his consideration, Rubens held out a copy of
An Outline of the History of Science,
along with a pen. As Heisman reached out to take them his left sleeve moved up on
his arm, and Rubens almost cried out at what he saw. Heisman had a faded tattoo on
the inside of his left arm. A single letter followed by four numbers: A1712. An inmate
identification number given to those who had been in Auschwitz.

Six million people had been murdered by the Nazis just because they were Jewish. Rubens
calculated backwards and figured that Heisman must have been a teenager at the time
of the Holocaust. He wondered what had happened to his family and recalled that there
was not a single old photo in the row of photos in the living room.

At the time of the Cold War Heisman had joined an American government advisory body,
but he had been a rebellious scientist, arguing against the use of war. He was the
greatest intellect of his generation, someone who had taught Rubens the true fascination
and appeal of science. Rubens stole a furtive glance at Heisman’s hand as he signed
the book, imagining that hand back then, smaller, doing forced labor from morning
until night as his friends and family were, one after another, murdered. Did this
hand remember the last time he touched his mother?

A sudden surge of gratitude welled up in Rubens’s heart—gratitude toward this old
man who had fought against a cruel fate and had survived, and gratitude toward the
life he had protected to the end. Rubens wanted to tell this curt, misanthropic Jewish
scientist how much he respected him and how much affection he had for him.

“Here you are.”

Heisman handed back the book and looked up at Rubens with a wondering look on his
face. Rubens was blinking back tears. Heisman glanced at his left arm and seemed to
guess what Rubens was feeling. He flipped the underlined, well-worn pages of the book.
“You really seemed to have liked my book,” he said. “Thank you for that.”

“No—thank
you
. Your work will continue to influence later generations.”

Heisman nodded, the stern look now gone, and he spoke calmly, as if speaking to a
friend. “The six and a half billion people on the earth right now will, in about a
hundred years, all be dead. So why do they have to keep killing each other?”

“Maybe because there are so many people who don’t hide their true character.”

Heisman smiled. “Don’t just study history. All it does is glorify massacres done by
stupid people obsessed with power, transforming them into heroic tales.”

“True.”

“There’s one more thing I’d like to add about your operation.”

“Please.”

“You’re overlooking one very critical problem.”

Rubens frowned at the unexpected comment. Were there still other problems?

“But you can just let this point be. It’s not going to have that much of an effect
on anything. Consider this a kind of quiz. Try to find the answer while you’re working.”

Rubens racked his brain, going back over the details of the operation, but nothing
came to mind. “Can you give me a hint?”

“Why is Nous trying to find a cure for an intractable disease?”

Rubens had referred to this when he was explaining the situation to Heisman. In his
view Nous had two objectives: to get Yeager, whose son suffered from the disease,
on his side, and to use the children with the disease as hostages to ensure Kento
Koga’s safety. “Is there a hidden aim other than what I discussed?”

“There is. From Nous’s perspective, developing this special drug was the most rational
solution of all.”

“Solution? Are you saying that he’s given us other puzzles that need to be solved?”

Heisman nodded and smiled significantly. “As you’ve monitored the operation, haven’t
you thought something was not right? Hasn’t there been some small question that’s
tugged at you, unconsciously?”

Now that he mentioned it, Rubens was sure there had been. But like a dream from a
few days before, this question lay below the conscious level and wouldn’t come into
focus.

Heisman gazed at Rubens, his look a mix of innocence and spitefulness. The face of
a professor who’s just assigned his student a knotty problem to solve. “Let this be
your homework. Here’s one more hint: you’re underestimating your enemy’s intellect.
Be very,
very
cautious.”

GIFT’s countdown was
down to seconds now.

“Fifty-nine seconds,” Jeong-hoon announced. They would soon know the structure of
the drug.

As he stared at the laptop screen, Kento felt secretly frightened. If GIFT displayed
NONE
, then he wouldn’t be able to save those sick children. But if it did show an answer,
the task of developing the new drug would switch from Jeong-hoon, who’d taken the
lead up until now, to him. And Kento had no confidence at all that he’d be able to
pull it off.

Thirty seconds to go. Kento intentionally started taking shallow breaths. Taking in
only half the amount of oxygen as he normally did, he soon found himself nearly suffocating.
This was the pain of alveolar hypoventilation. The children with PAECS were forced
by this suffering into a hopeless battle, for years. Kento pictured Maika Kobayashi
and tried to summon back his sense of mission as a pharmacologist. He had to control
this deadly disease and save her.

“Ten seconds.”

Jeong-hoon’s voice pulled him back to GIFT.

“Five seconds, four, three, two, one,” they counted down together, and when it reached
zero they were glued to the display.

A new window filled the screen. “There it is!” Jeong-hoon yelled.

The display showed a list of compounds. The answer GIFT had come up with far exceeded
their expectations. There were twenty candidates that should be 100 percent active.
The list included each drug’s pharmacokinetics, and when they clicked on this there
were detailed predicted values on absorption, discharge, and toxicity, as well as
a list of existing drugs whose simultaneous use was contraindicated.

“I feel like I’m dreaming,” Jeong-hoon said. He clung to the computer screen, excitedly
poring over the possible candidates. Once he’d gone through them, he said, “I think
any of them would pass as a drug, but there’s one thing I’m concerned about. This,
for instance.”

Jeong-hoon called up one of the candidates and pointed at a heading that said
METABOLISM
. “This medicine acts differently depending on the person. It looks like the effectiveness
of the drug depends on differences in the genes that produce metabolic enzymes. For
certain people this drug is completely metabolized in the liver, and not enough of
it reaches the lungs.”

“In other words, it can only be used for people with a set base sequence.”

“Right. And there are all sorts of other issues, like certain drugs that produce renal
toxicity in some patients.”

Since they didn’t know the base sequence of either Justin Yeager or Maika Kobayashi,
these drugs were dangerous. “Isn’t there a drug that will work for everyone?”

“There are eight types in the list that I think should be safe. If you click here
the structures will appear, so could you run through them and check whether they can
be synthesized?”

“On it.”

It was Kento’s turn finally. He drew a deep breath, took Jeong-hoon’s place in the
chair, and faced the software that surpassed human intelligence. When he clicked the
consecutive numbers on the list, two structural formulas appeared: one was for an
allosteric effector that could change the shape of the receptor, and the other was
for an agonist that would bind the mutant ligand binding site. Elements such as carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen were bonded to each other in a hexagonal cyclic structure
with a sort of zigzag of pendent functional groups. These were the structures of each
drug.

Kento stared at the structures and mentally tried to perform a retrosynthetic analysis.
To synthesize the drug that GIFT had shown them, he would have to use reagents to
transform existing compounds in a step-by-step fashion into the final product, the
target drug. Retrosynthesis involved devising a synthetic pathway from the starting
material to the final drug, but in reverse. By doing this he could estimate which
reagents and conditions were necessary and in what order.

Kento began by eliminating the candidate materials that had asymmetry. He did this
because these might produce, in addition to the structure he was aiming at, mirror-image
isomers. In the process of synthesizing, avoiding “Looking-glass milk” was very time-consuming.
Next he looked for parts where simple reactions such as amidation, oxidation, and
reduction might easily take place. He examined each reaction’s yield, looking to see
if, for example, there was reduction of ketone or whether there were hydrocarbons
with halogen or heteroatoms attached. He consulted the reference books he’d bought,
but there were still too many things that were unclear.

“I don’t have enough information,” Kento said. “If I could use the university computers
I could access their databases.”

“Do you mean this?” Jeong-hoon promptly asked, and called up the database function
from GIFT’s menu. The screen changed, and the exact chemical information site Kento
was hoping for appeared.

“What do we do about an ID and password?”

“You can log in as is. GIFT is apparently illegally accessing the site.”

Kento was beyond worrying about minor details. Using this site he could get data on
one hundred million compounds and could search for more than twenty million known
organic chemical reactions.

He quickly went to the editing software that allowed him to write chemical structure
formulas and entered the reactions that he envisioned. But all of them were off, and
he didn’t arrive at a synthetic pathway that he could feel confident about. As this
struggle continued, anxiety built up. Maybe this really was beyond someone like him,
a second-year MA student. But he only had sixteen days left to create two types of
drugs. Delay was unacceptable.

He decided to leave the candidates that didn’t look promising for later and go through
the remaining materials in order. But one by one, he gave up hope. Tormented by a
feeling of impotence, he arrived at the final candidate. Lamenting his lack of knowledge,
Kento opened up the eighth structure formula.

The agonist that appeared on the screen was a long, thin structure with two benzene
rings and one heterocyclic compound, plus sulfur, nitrogen, and amino groups bonded
to it. The three cyclic structures would probably form a functional group that would
bind specifically to mutant GPR769. Although the allosteric drug used together with
it was of a different composition and structure, it was also made up of three cyclic
compounds.

As soon as Kento saw the combination of these two, his eyes were riveted to the screen.
He had little to base it on, but his gut told him he would be able to synthesize this.
Formulas sprang up one after another in his mind, and he wrote each down in his notebook
and checked its reactions one by one.

An hour later he looked up. “I think it will work,” he said. Though some vague areas
still remained in the synthetic pathway, both types of drugs could be created from
the starting material in about seven reactions. The remaining issue would be the amount
of time it would take to synthesize them. But Kento was hopeful they could make it
in time.

“So it’s the eighth one?” Jeong-hoon said cheerfully. “That’s the best one, too, in
terms of predicted pharmacokinetic values. Its bioavailability is ninety-eight percent.”

Jeong-hoon looked like a real researcher now as he began a brisk and detailed explanation.
As Kento listened to information about the blood concentration half-life, among other
things, he pictured the finished drug. They wouldn’t administer it intravenously but
orally. Ten milligrams once per day; five milligrams for infants. And the medicine
would take effect within thirty minutes of being ingested.

“What about toxicity?”

“Extremely low. It’s not carcinogenic or teratogenic, either, and long-term toxicity
is safer than that of aspirin. However, besides mutant GPR769, this drug will also
bind with twelve other receptors that are similar in shape.”

The drug’s side effects, then, would be that it would act on other proteins besides
the target.

“But there will be a very low percentage of activation. GIFT has concluded that the
drug is safe.”

“So there are hardly any side effects?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

It all seemed so ideal. But could he really trust this? Kento felt apprehensive.

“What should we do?” Jeong-hoon asked. “You want to go with the eighth candidate?”

In his hesitation Kento recalled the words of Professor Sonoda. The professor had
developed numerous new drugs and had often commented to his students between classes
that “With a drug where all goes well in development, it’s as though the god of medicine
had preordained that everything will work out.”

Kento decided to follow his professor’s rule of thumb and believe in divine intervention.
This god was ordering them as pharmacologists to save all the people in the world
suffering from the disease.

“Let’s go with it.”

“Great,” Jeong-hoon said, nodding vigorously. “I was just thinking: Shouldn’t we pick
a name for the drug?”

“You’re right.” Kento looked at the structural formula and inclined his head. If they
followed the usual naming protocols the name of the compound would be ridiculously
long. “How about calling the agonist GIFT 1 and the allosteric GIFT 2?”

“I like it,” Jeong-hoon said, and smiled. “It’ll be a gift to children.”

Because they were concurrently synthesizing two kinds of drugs they needed not only
more reagents but also more lab equipment. They would wait until morning, and then
he and Jeong-hoon would split up to procure what they needed.

Jeong-hoon had done his part wonderfully, and he looked exhausted. “Do you mind if
I get some sleep?” he asked.

Kento glanced at his watch and saw it was 3:00 a.m. already. “Sure.”

Jeong-hoon lay down under their table-cum-lab-bench, using his backpack as a pillow
and his leather jacket as a blanket.

Kento took off his glasses and rubbed his oily face with his sleeve. Suddenly he looked
at the small black laptop. Since yesterday there had been no messages from the Congo.

How was Jonathan Yeager? he wondered.

The small black laptop had become Kento’s portal to an unreal world. These past few
days he’d been buying the newspaper, checking the international section, but there
were no reports on a war in the Congo. If there really was mass fighting there, why
was the Japanese media ignoring it? As long as the press didn’t report on events on
the other side of the world, it was as if nothing at all was happening. He felt like
he no longer understood what was happening in the world he lived in.

Kento prayed that Jonathan Yeager had survived. It would be too tragic if Justin Yeager
conquered his disease only to find his father dead.

Yeager opened his eyes in the darkness. Someone was whispering his name. He sat up
on the tarp and had trouble remembering whom that voice belonged to. The accumulated
exhaustion had not just dulled his body but his mind as well.

“Wake up.”

Awake now, Yeager remembered the events of the last twenty-four hours. It had been
a whole day and night since the threat of the Predators had vanished. They’d crossed
the Ibina River, and Yeager and the others had headed south through the jungle. Pierce
had given no explanation for why the armed unmanned surveillance aircraft had left
the skies over the Congo, and the mercenaries hadn’t pushed him to explain. Their
concern was a more imminent threat. The Lord’s Resistance Army, the LRA, which occupied
the wildlife preserve to the south, had started advancing north, as if to cut off
their route.

It was 2:30 a.m. Yeager confirmed with Meyers, on sentry duty, that everything was
okay, then asked Pierce what he had found out.

“Take a look at this.”

On the ground in this dark primeval forest, the small laptop emitted a faint glow.
Next to it, Akili was curled up, fast asleep. As Meyers had said, Akili looked like
a kitten when he was asleep. Careful not to wake him, Yeager moved around so he could
view the display.

“We’ve finally acquired images from the surveillance satellite. This image is from
fifteen minutes ago.”

Yeager stared at the screen and was jolted wide awake. The satellite imagery had captured
numerous heat sources, which indicated people. And the numbers looked to be in the
tens of thousands.

“These aren’t all the enemy. The ones spread out to the northeast are local villagers.
With armed forces pressing down on them from the north and south, they’ve become refugees.”

“So they’re trying to escape into the jungle?”

“Looks like it,” Pierce said, and pointed at the screen. “The enemy that was chasing
us is more than thirty kilometers away to the north. We’ve basically shaken them off.
The south is the problem. The LRA wants to wipe us out, and they’re coming up right
next to us.”

Pierce’s finger traced the north-south main road, and then a branch road heading to
the south. “They’re spread out more than ten kilometers.”

Yeager clicked his tongue in frustration. The enemy was a bigger force than he’d imagined.
And the site where they’d camped was inside the enemy formation. They were cut off
on two sides, the east and the south. Once morning came the enemy troops would be
back in the jungle in force.

“Why are they so intent on killing us?”

“They’ll get a huge amount of money. Plus they’ll get on America’s good side.”

“This sucks.”

“Not really. This is a chance for us.” Pierce’s tone was forceful. “The LRA is the
final barrier. If we can break through them, there’ll be no other armed groups to
deal with. We’ll be able to get out of the country.”

“But that won’t be easy.”

“No, but we’ll manage,” Pierce said. His finger moved on the satellite image, jumping
over the LRA forces that filled the road and pointing to the south. “There’s a town
called Butembo, forty kilometers south. I have a vehicle filled with supplies waiting
there. After we call the driver he should be up around here in less than thirty minutes.
If we can take the SUV, Uganda’s very close. We could get out of the Congo sometime
this morning.”