The Messiah Code (10 page)

He could already see the brown envelope on Bob's desk and had to quell the sudden impulse to run and grab it.

Bob saw him and smiled. In one fluid movement he seemed to simultaneously put down the slide, pick up the brown envelope, and stand up. "Looking for this?"

Back in the animal laboratory, Carter found himself searching Nora's face for any more clues, now that she'd had more time to look over the data. If the results were clear-cut, then the disk wasn't necessary. If all the mice had the same number of large tumors, then the experiment had obviously failed, and if half the mice were completely clear of tumors then it had almost certainly worked. But Nora's owlish face gave nothing away.

Bob knitted his eyebrows in a mock frown, saying, "The

nominations for best picture are..." before ripping the envelope open and handing her the disk.

Nora gave her California boss a weary smile, inserted the disk in her computer, and ran the software program. The spreadsheet immediately began importing the information. Tom could see the blank slots in the right-hand column filling up with "yes" or "no" to denote whether each particular mouse had received the retrovirus treatment.

Come on, he thought, let there be a difference between the groups. But before Tom could even finish his silent plea the screen shifted to conclusions, and Nora's disappointed voice told him the worst.

"There's nothing between them," said the lab technician abruptly. "Nothing statistically significant anyway."

"Shit!" He couldn't believe it. The results were even worse than he'd feared. The gene therapy had had no effect at all.

"What went wrong?" asked Nora.

Tom frowned and crossed his arms, drumming the fingers of his right hand on his left arm. "Perhaps the virus didn't get to the tumor cells? Perhaps the blood-brain barrier stopped it?"

"But the virus was modified to get around that," said Bob, his voice unusually flat.

"Yeah, well, perhaps it didn't work. Or the virus may have got to its target, but the genes either didn't express themselves properly in the cells, or didn't produce enough proteins to make a difference. Either way we'll have to analyze the tumor cells to be sure. But the bottom line is that this time the bastard hasn't worked."

The door opened to his right, and Jasmine walked in. Her usually sunny face was pensive.

She said, "Tom, can I have a word? It's pretty important."

What she wanted to say was obviously not for general broadcast, so he excused himself to Bob and Nora and followed Jasmine out into the small corridor.

"Sorry," said Jasmine, "but I've got some bad news."

He had to laugh. "Great! Well, you've come to the right place. Let's see if your bad news can beat ours."

"I caught someone trying to get into IGOR."

Tom groaned. This was all he needed. "Did they get in?"

"No, but I think they know what it contains--in principle."

"Who was it? Do you know where they came from?"

Jasmine shook her head. "Nope. That's the weird thing. It wasn't one of the key Triad regions. The signal didn't come from either Europe, the Far East, or the United States."

"You sure?"

"Positive."

"Can you find out any more?"

"Not really, no. I've told Jack but he can't understand it either. All the big insurance companies and rival bio-tech companies that might want to sniff around our databases are in the Triad. It doesn't make sense."

Tom rubbed his temples. He didn't even want to think of the implications of this data getting into the hands of insurance companies, or the press, or..."How about the authorities?"

Jasmine shook her head. "No. This was three hours ago. If it was them, then they'd already be breathing down our necks."

"So who do you think it
might
be?"

"Don't know. Might just be a lone hacker fooling around. But it doesn't feel like that. I got the distinct impression that whoever it was knew exactly what they were looking for. Anyway, I've battened down the hatches, and I'll keep a closer watch on it."

"What happens if they try again?"

"They won't get in. That isn't the issue. The issue is whatever else they might do now they know what we have. Anyway, there is some good news. The Gene Genie software is looking great."

Tom smiled at that. "Excellent. Well done. The moment you're happy it's glitch-free let Karen Tanner at the Bureau know."

"What about your bad news? The experiment didn't work out?"

He led Jasmine back to the animal lab and gestured to Nora's laptop. "Have a look for yourself."

Nora made way as Jasmine moved to the screen.

"It bombed," said Bob Cooke.

Tom watched silently, as Jasmine scrolled down the screen, studying the base data.

"What's this?" she said suddenly, pointing to a zero in the tumor count column.

He bent to take a closer look.

Nora peered at where Jasmine's fingertip met the screen. "Mouse C370 had no mets. It was completely clear." The lab technician sounded puzzled.

"Is that significant?" asked Jasmine.

Bob Cooke shrugged. "Perhaps the original cancer cells didn't take."

Nora's frown deepened further. "No, I remember C370, because it definitely had metastases, but they were necrotic." She looked at Jasmine. "Dead."

"A fluke?" asked Bob, turning to Tom.

"Some fluke," said Jasmine, pointing at the "No" in the righthand column. "This mouse was in the control group. It only received a syringe of saltwater. Yet it managed to cure itself."

Nora flashed Tom a quizzical look. "Spontaneous remission?"

A flicker of excitement cut through Tom's gloom. He'd never experienced complete spontaneous remission firsthand before, either in the laboratory or on the ward. It was extremely rare, well documented but rare. No one understood or had ever satisfactorily explained how for no apparent reason some people's immune system suddenly decided to rid itself of cancer. Medical literature abounded with these untreated cures, but no medical explanation.

He turned to Bob Cooke. "Did you by any chance take a DNA reading before the experiment?"

"'Fraid not. It's not part of the protocol. Why do you ask?"

Tom wasn't exactly sure, but he felt an idea begin to form in his head. "Perhaps we can find a clue why this particular mouse got well. If we could compare its precan

cer cells with its cancer cells and its 'cured' postcancer cells we might be able to identify the sequence of genetic code that was responsible for the natural remission. So far we've spent all our time trying to impose a theoretical 'test tube' solution. Why don't we instead look at the rare solution that already exists in nature, and try to replicate it?" He looked for feedback from the team and could see Bob and Nora nodding thoughtfully.

Jasmine looked at Tom for a moment, a small frown creasing her smooth forehead. "But how can you be sure the answer's even scientific?"

"What else could explain it? Faith? Mind over matter? Come on, Jazz."

"Why not?" said Jasmine. "Many unexplained cures are attributed to faith. When I was a kid, the only holiday my parents ever took to Europe was to Lourdes with my sick aunt Angela."

Nora nodded. "I took my mom to Lourdes two years ago. She felt a lot better for a time."

"So did my aunt," said Jasmine. "Some of the most famous and comprehensively documented cures happened there." Jasmine began counting cases off on her fingers. "There was a Rose Martin in April 1947, who had complete remission of uterine cancer. There was Vittorio Michelli in 1962, whose thigh tumor vanished over days after bathing in the holy water. And Klaus Kunst, who drank the water in '66 and cured his kidney cancer."

Tom smiled. Only Jazz could have a mind like a computer and still allow the existence of God. "I thought Baptists didn't believe in all that Lourdes stuff. I thought that was for Catholics."

"No way. When you need a miracle, you go where the action is."

"Well one thing's for sure," interrupted Bob, pointing at the zero tumor count on the screen. "If it was faith, then mouse C370 must have been one helluva believer."

They all laughed at this, but the idea growing in Tom's head wouldn't go away. "All I'm saying is that something must have changed in that mouse's genetic makeup. And whether you want to call it science, nature, or something

else, it must be worth trying to understand how we could replicate it." He paused and looked each of them in the eye. "Just bear with me for a second, okay? We're all pretty sure we know
how
this spontaneous remission works, but we don't know why. Basically, cancer cells are the body's own cells turned traitor, so the immune system leaves them alone. But what happens in spontaneous remission is that for some reason the body's immune system suddenly recognizes that these cancer cells don't belong to it--that they are foreign and non-self. The immune system then nukes the tumors and they melt away. Right?"

He waited while the others, including Jasmine, shrugged their agreement.

"Now, for this to occur, something has to happen to the genetic code of those bad cells, to alert the antibodies of the immune system that they are foreign. That's basically what we were trying to do in this experiment. We tried to use an engineered retrovirus to change the tumor cells' DNA in such a way as to attract the attention of the body's immune system."

"So?"

"So what if there was a
natural
retrovirus that killed tumors?"

"What!" exclaimed Bob.

Tom put up his hands to calm him down. "Look, a retrovirus works by invading a body cell and then changing the DNA to its own. That's how it reproduces and that's why it's so dangerous. It scrambles our natural genetic code and spreads through the body. Look at how effective HIV is at doing this. Now imagine if there was an extremely rare retrovirus that didn't scramble DNA, but reassembled it.
Repaired
it?"

"One that occurred in nature?" asked Nora, her eyes wide behind her owlish glasses.

"Yes. One that could insert a gene that killed off cancer cells, or repaired damaged cells. Think about it. Many genes repair DNA; we know that. And many genes instruct cells to die; we know that too. So if the right genes were inserted into the right cells, order could be restored."

"Is that possible?" asked Jasmine quietly. "Could a
naturally
occurring retrovirus do that?"

Bob shrugged. "I guess so. It's just that no one's ever asked if
positive
retroviruses could exist in nature before. But that means diddly squat. Look at microorganisms. We always saw fungi and bacteria as harmful stuff to control and protect ourselves from because they could infect us. Then Fleming discovered penicillin, which is from a natural mold that
countered
infection, killed off gangrene and syphilis, and saved countless lives."

"Precisely," said Tom. "And all I'm saying is, let's check it out."

"I agree, Tom. But how?" asked Nora.

Tom paused, as he tried to think through the best approach. Then to his surprise Jasmine answered the question for him.

"We'd need to use DAN to analyze the DNA of someone who'd experienced spontaneous remission," she said. "We could run a check on the subject's genetic material taken before they had cancer, during their cancer, and then after remission. See what happened to their DNA over time." Tom could see an excited gleam in Jazz's eye, as if she'd suddenly remembered something. The computer scientist walked to the PC in the far corner of the room; unlike Nora's stand-alone laptop this was on-line, plugged into the Internet. "But you say these subjects are rare," Jasmine said as if talking to herself.

"Yeah, and we'd need a
live
patient," prompted Tom, watching Jasmine turn on the computer and enter the Global Medical News bulletin board on the world wide web.

"I'm sure I saw something on the Medical Watch service a couple of days ago. I was browsing and saw a name I recognized." Jasmine turned to Carter. "Jean Luc Petit?"

Tom nodded. Jean Luc Petit, the French cancer specialist, had visited GENIUS on more than one occasion to see the first Genescopes in action, and to check out the ward. "Yeah, I know him well. He's a good man. Runs an oncology department in Paris. What about him?"

Jasmine used her mouse to select an icon on screen. "Well, he'd put something out on the 'Interesting Facts' bulletin board of Medical Watch."

Tom was intrigued. "He's got someone on his ward who's experienced spontaneous remission? A
live
patient?"

Jasmine clicked another icon and pressed two more keys. The screen changed, showing a page of French text. "Here it is. I knew I'd seen it."

Tom bent forward, grateful for his months of exchange study at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. But what he read was so surprising he decided to check it with the English translation that appeared at the bottom of the screen.

"Well?" demanded Bob behind him. "Has this French doc got one on his ward?"

"No. Dr. Jean Luc Petit hasn't got one," said Jasmine, her elfin features creased into an enormous grin. "He's got
two
."

Bob and Nora both stared at Jasmine in disbelief.

"Finding one's pretty amazing," said Bob, pushing both hands through his blond hair, "but the odds of two, especially on the same ward..." He trailed off at a loss for words.

"They couldn't have caught the cure from someone and passed it on to each other, could they?" asked Nora.

Tom shrugged, too stunned to speak for a moment, still trying to absorb the possible implications. "Jazz," he managed eventually, "can you answer one more question for me, before you log off?"

Jasmine's grin broadened even further as her fingers tapped on the keys. "Let me guess, Tom," she said, as the screen changed, bringing up the Air France booking service. "You want to know the next flight to Paris?"