Executive orders - Tom Clancy [143]
They walked in the footsteps of a handful of giants. Lorenz had written a paper on Walter Reed and William Gorgas, the two Army doctors who had defeated Yellow fever with a combination of systematic investigation and ruthless application of what they had learned. But learning in this business came so slow and so dear.
Put up the other one, Kenny.
Yes, Doctor, the intercom replied. A moment later, a second image came up alongside the first.
Yep, Forster said. Looks pretty much the same.
That's from the nurse. Watch this. Lorenz hit the button on the phone. Okay, Kenny, now hit the computer. Before their eyes a computer image of both examples appeared. The computer rotated one to match the other, then overlaid them. They matched exactly.
At least it hasn't mutated.
Hasn't had much of a chance. Two patients. They've done a good job of isolating. Maybe we were lucky. The kid's parents have been tested. They seem to be clean, or so the telex says. Nothing else from his neighborhood. The WHO team is checking around the area. The usual, monkeys, bats, bugs. So far, nothing. Could just be an anomaly. It was as much a hope as a judgment.
I'm going to play with this one a little. I've ordered some monkeys. I want to grow this one, get it into some cells, and then, Ralph, I'm going to examine what it does on a minute-by-minute basis. Get the infected cells, and pull a sample out every minute, slice it down, burn it with UV, freeze it in liquid nitrogen, and put it under the scope. I want to look at how the virus RNA gets going. There's a sequencing issue here can't quite say what I'm thinking. The thought's kind of lurking out there on me. Damn. Gus opened his desk drawer, pulled out his pipe, and lit it with a kitchen match. It was his office, after all, and he did think better with a pipe in his mouth. In the field he said that the smoke kept the bugs away, and besides, he didn't inhale. Out of politeness, he cracked open the window.
The idea for which he had just received funding was more complicated than his brief expression, and both men knew it. The same experimental procedure would have to be repeated a thousand times or more to get a correct read on how the process took place, and that was just the baseline data. Every single sample would have to be examined and mapped. It could take years, but if Lorenz were right, at the end of it, for the first time, would be a blueprint of what a virus did, how its RNA chain affected a living cell. We're playing with a similar idea up in Baltimore.
Oh?
Part of the genome project. We're trying to read the complex interactions. The process-how this little bastard attacks the cells down at the molecular level. How Ebola replicates without a proper editing function in the genome. There's something to be learned there. But the complexity of the issue is a killer. We have to figure out the questions to ask before we can start looking for answers. And then we need a computer genius to tell a machine how to analyze it.
Lorenz's eyebrows went up. How far along are you?
Forster shrugged. Chalk on a blackboard.
Well, when I get my monkeys, I'll let you know what we develop here. If nothing else, the tissue samples ought to shed a little light.
THE FUNERAL WAS epic, with a ready cast of thousands, howling their loyalty to a dead man and concealing their real thoughts; you could almost feel them looking around and wondering what came next. There was the gun carriage, the soldiers with reversed rifles, the riderless horse, the marching soldiers, all captured off Iraqi TV by STORM TRACK and uplinked to Washington.
I wish we could see more faces, Vasco said quietly.
Yeah, the President agreed. Ryan didn't smile but wanted to. He'd never really stop being an intelligence officer. Jack was sure of that.