The Miracle Strain (25 page)

Holding up her toolbox, she turned to show the orange logo on the back of her overalls. In her deepest blue-collar voice she rasped, "Power company, sir. Been a few dangerous surges in this building and the one next door. Need to check your meter and wiring. Just a safety measure."

A pause. "Have you got any ID?"

This annoyed her. Why were people so suspicious? she thought. What reason did a fit, young ex-cop have for not trusting a power company employee? What could he possibly be scared of?

She reached into her overalls and pulled out a typed letter. "I got a letter from the boss. It's on company paper. That okay?" She pushed the letter under the door. "Or do you want my card?" She made a big show of opening her toolbox and scrabbling around inside. As though she'd put it in there somewhere and was trying to find it.

She made a few frustrated noises as she rummaged. But really she was waiting. And listening.

On the other side of the door she could hear the sound of the letter being unfolded. They guy was still there. He wasn't walking back into his apartment to make a call to the company. That was good.

"Goddamn!" she cussed. "I know it's here somewhere. Hell, if you like I can come back later, when I've found it."

A pause. She could almost hear the man's mind working, as she heard the crisp letter being refolded. The last thing this guy wanted was her coming back again. He wanted whatever it was she had to do over and done with.

Suddenly there was a scrabbling sound, as locks were clicked and chains pulled back. "Come in," said the man, opening the door and handing back the letter. He was frowning, still holding his cap. "How long do you think you'll be?"

"Five, ten minutes. I'll be as fast as I can." Maria closed the door behind her and followed him to a cupboard by the small kitchen.

The man stood with his back to her and opened the cupboard door. "The meter and stuff's in here. Help yourself."

"Thanks." Maria reached into her toolbox, and pulled out a plastic Kmart bag and her Glock semiautomatic, complete with silencer. Before the man could turn she flipped the plastic bag over his head, pressed the gun into his temple, and fired twice. Even with the bag there was the inevitable mess, but it was minimized. She bundled the man's body into the bathroom, placed him in the bathtub, and ran the cold water. With ice she could slow the body's decomposition for up to a week, and after that it wouldn't matter.

She turned to the man's discarded cap, wiped two flecks of blood off the black peak, and put it on. It fitted well. She was right, she thought with a smile. He was perfect.

Chapter Twenty.

Three nights later, GENIUS Headquarters

Boston

Like all societies, the cyberworld has its own subculture. Bored, computer-literate kids prowl the cyberstreets seeking kicks and recognition by trying to break into any system they can. These so-called cyberpunks cruise the electronic highway, joyriding from one net site to the next, trying to convince each other that they are the hottest net heads in cybertown. They all share the same dream: to perform some dangerous, heroic feat; to slay some electronic dragon and graduate from mere cyberpunk to cyberlord.

Few succeed. But there have been some true legends. No more so than the net head who broke into the Treasury's Federal Reserve database, the NASA Satellite guidance system, and the Russian Strategic Nuclear Missile command center, taking complete control of each one in turn. Fortunately, the net head was benign and on every occasion merely alerted the authorities to the breach and indicated how they could, and indeed should, improve security. Naturally these same authorities tried to trace the hacker and arrest him or her, but because the net head used a complex route, switching nodes and jumping from network to satellite links and back again, they lost their prey. But the cyberpunk community knew who'd done it. It was one of their own--the net head who went by the User ID of Razor Buzz.

That was twelve years ago. And after that the Razor Buzz tag virtually disappeared from the Internet, but the name lived on as one of the greats--a true cyberlord.

Tonight, however, Razor Buzz was again riding the information superhighway. The net head's alter ego required the tag's anonymity, and felt the need to feed off the reassurances of past triumphs that the name carried with it. Because tonight the woman, who had spent years becoming a highly respected member of the scientific community--a Nobel Prize winner no less--was again breaking the law.

Dr. Jasmine Washington took another sip of her diet Coke and bit into the slice of pizza, her eyes not moving from the twenty-inch screen in front of her. She had been working in her office on the ground floor of the GENIUS pyramid for fifteen hours now. For once she was glad Larry was out of town. She enjoyed the quiet of the night; it was when her mind worked best.

Apart from the blue glow of the screen, the sharp circle of light from the lamp beside her was the only illumination in the small, uncluttered office. Next door, in the all-white temperatureregulated room that formed the heart of the Information Technology Section, Big Mother emitted a gentle, almost soothing hum as a tiny part of its vastly powerful brain busied itself with collecting and collating each and every scan from all the Genescopes in operation around the globe. But apart from the quiet ticking of the clock on top of the screen there were no other sounds. It was past midnight and it seemed to Jasmine as if all the world, save her, was asleep.

She checked the notes beside her. The search of all IGOR historical files had been completed two days ago and no match found--although data was coming in every hour from new Genescope scans not yet captured on IGOR. But now she was looking elsewhere. She had already hacked into many of the easier DNA databases on her list, such as the hospitals and smaller insurance companies around the world. In every database she had inserted her compressed smart file, which contained just the genetic sequence of the Nazareth genes, to search for a topline match. And she had just finished some of the larger more difficult databases including the U. S., British, and French Military Personnel DNA repositories, all of which were protected by software alarms and Predator Version 2 tracing software. However, these barriers hadn't proved too difficult for a cyberlord, and she was pleased she had lost none of her hacking skills. But she was disappointed that after screening almost two hundred million individual genomes she still hadn't come close to a full match.

She stretched her arms above her head and stood up from her chair, then walked with stiff legs to the glass wall of the pyramid. Outside all was inky black, although she could just see the stars peppering the clear sky above, and the thin silver slice that was the moon. Ahead of her, across the darkness of the campus, came the dull glow of the main gatehouse. She knew there were two guards in there, watching over the place on their CCTV monitors. She had accessed the central video computer and fed a film loop into the camera that watched over her. Now any guard checking her work area would see an empty, static office instead of the GENIUS IT director accessing one illegal database after another.

She walked back to the computer and retook her seat. Seeing Christ's hologram had terrified her, making her feel she had somehow summoned up his spirit against his wishes, like some necromancer of old. She had searched her soul the whole night and the better part of the next day after the Nazareth genes had been found. She hadn't known what to do--whether to tell Tom she wanted out of Cana, or to carry on with what promised to be something miraculous. Eventually, after no small amount of good old-fashioned praying, she'd decided that if these genes could help cure Holly, and mankind in general, then she had to follow the project through. And it was up to her to find a match now. Tom and Holly depended on her.

She rechecked her notes on all the databases she intended to visit. She had listed them in ascending order of difficulty and risk. It made sense to try to find a match the safest way possible, and only to take risks when they were necessary.

After all, getting caught and convicted wouldn't help any of them. Even so, Jasmine knew that the richest pickings tended to lie with the larger, better protected databases. The most impressive of these was a Paris-based system she had nicknamed the "Black Hole" because although it was vast--containing many millions of genomes, it was also protected by the new Version 3 Predator system. This made it as secure as her own IGOR system, which she regarded as virtually impregnable. Anyone who went into the Black Hole without the proper authorization or the requisite skill would be sucked in, and not allowed to log off--then the Predator system would lock on to the hacker's signal and quickly trace it. Razor Buzz would have found it irresistible, but the older, more experienced Dr. Jasmine Washington was more mindful of the real risks. She would consider entering the Black Hole only when and if she had to.

She moved the cursor on the screen to the next system on her list. Everyone even remotely connected with genetics knew of the Human Genome Diversity Database. It contained the fruits of the controversial project of the same name. Set up in the early nineties as the brainchild of two geneticists, Luigi Luca CavalliSforza at Stanford University and Kenneth Kidd at Yale, the Human Genome Diversity Project was an offshoot of the Human Genome Project. Its intention was to capture and preserve the DNA and potentially rare genes of over five hundred ethnic communities in remote areas of the world. Many, such as the Hadza of Tanzania, the Yukaghir of Siberia, and the Onge of the Andaman Islands of India, were on the verge of extinction.

The controversy arose because Western science was seen to be valuing the DNA of these vanishing peoples more highly than the people themselves. There were many notorious cases of the West, particularly the U. S. government, trying to patent rare genes that promised to combat certain diseases. These attempts were quashed, but if they had been allowed to take their course then all the considerable profits would have gone to the U. S. government and the drug companies, not to the indigenous "owners" of the genes.

The Genescope had made it possible for the project lead ers to lay down guidelines ensuring that all individuals who gave samples were identified, so if any rare gene line was discovered it could be traced back to the original person, family, or community. That person, family, or community would then benefit from any bounty that might ensue. Once these shared genetic mining rights were agreed on, the project went ahead more smoothly and all the genomes were stored for reference on the Human Genome Diversity Database.

Jazz clicked on the icon and watched the front-end panel flash its request for her password. She recognized the basic architecture of the system immediately: an advanced Kibuki 2000 relational database with built-in security features. As with all things Japanese, Jazz was impressed by the design of the system. The series of gates protecting access to the database were tightly programmed, well thought through, and strewn with a number of cleverly placed software alarms.

But she wasn't fazed. Razor Buzz may not have been as active as in the past, but Dr. Jasmine Washington had been keeping up on developments--indeed shaping them. In her experience, well-designed Japanese systems always had one tragic flaw. The very beauty and clarity of their design tended to be their Achilles' heel.

Her hand instinctively reached across and took a slice of cold pizza, and as she chewed, she thought. When finished, she absentmindedly wiped her lips with the back of her hand, and started tapping on the keyboard. One by one she undid each invisible stitch of programming the original designer had used to sew up the database. Each time, as she disabled one security gate after another, her guesses were proven right. That was the problem with this system. It was too well designed. Too predictable.

In less than forty minutes, like the Razor Buzz of old, she was inside, browsing the database, importing a copy of the Nazareth genes file and searching for an exact match of the genetic sequences contained within it.

She reached for the diet Coke, preparing for a short wait. Even with her powerful 100 terahertz machine the search through a database this size could take some time.

But the "Match Found" message blinked almost instantly.

So fast that she was taken off balance, spilling her drink over her T-shirt and jeans.

"Jeez."

Her fleeting annoyance swiftly changed to excitement when she saw the screen change and a scanned photograph appear with a body of text beside it. The image looked like a mug shot: a man's dark face framed with long gray hair looking straight at her. She liked the face; it was strong and dignified, even noble. The man looked old, but in excellent condition: His torso was bare and the muscle definition firm. She scrolled halfway down the text beside the picture. He was a Wayuu Indian from Carisal in Colombia. His surname was Puyiana, but his first name was given only as Al. Her heart jumped when she read the lines near the bottom of the screen.

"Accredited with powers of healing," read the text.

Al was a medicine man. Jasmine read how Al Puyiana, unlike other healers in the area, didn't use his knowledge of local herbs and plants to tend the sick but used the "laying on of hands." The scientists who compiled the record claimed not to understand how he did this, but stated that there was " strong evidence" he possessed a " genuine gift."

On the top of the screen she saw option icons offering more information on the man. The one she paid most heed to was the "genetic data" icon, which would confirm the match with the Nazareth genes--genes which the scientists before her no doubt missed because of their different stop and start codons. She was about to click on the icon when she noticed there were two dates under Al's name, not just his birth date. The second was a little over three months ago.

She went back to the body copy and scrolled down to the bottom of the text.

"Oh, no," she whispered. She felt a twinge of real sadness for this man she'd just met. Al Puyiana, with the strong face and healing hands, had died three months ago at the ripe old age of ninety-two.

She checked the genetic sequence match again. It was perfect. The dead man had the three Nazareth genes hidden within his genome, each one identical to the sequence found in the Christ sample. She copied his file and gene scan and exported it to the backup disk next to her PC. Even in death he might offer up other secrets.

"Shit." To learn they'd missed him by three months just wasn't fair. She considered calling Tom to tell him what had happened, but dismissed that when she looked at the time again. Almost one-thirty in the morning. She knew he was staying late tonight, but doubted he was still here. Perhaps she should go home and get some sleep as well, but she felt too restless. She read the text on the Wayuu Indian from Carisal one more time. The words "accredited with powers of healing" seemed to project off the screen and taunt her.

With a deep sigh she double-checked that there were no more matches in the system, then methodically exited, ensuring she left no trace of her intrusion. Like all those times many years ago, she had once again stolen invisibly into a dark, seemingly impenetrable fortress and then crept back out, leaving the guards sleeping, unaware that their defenses had even been breached.

Perhaps it was frustration at having got so close that made her do what she did next. Or the fact that she was too revved up to sleep. Or possibly she was simply enjoying being the rebellious, antiestablishment Razor Buzz again. Whatever the reason, Dr. Jasmine Washington ignored the long list of DNA databases painstakingly compiled in order of ascending risk, and went straight to the final entry. It was time to see whether Razor Buzz really could still hack it. Whether the cyberlord could steal into the darkest fortress of them all--the Black Hole.