The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [44]
“Of course,” Lisa echoed. She knew as she said it that it wasn’t enough to maintain the change of subject if he wanted to go back to it, and he clearly did.
“What about Miller and Burdillon?” he asked. “How close were they?”
For a moment, she wondered if Smith were asking whether Morgan and Ed had ever been lovers, but that idea was too bizarre. “Certainly not enemies,” she said. “Perhaps not even rivals, although there’s bound to be an element of that within a department. Not close friends, though. If Morgan had a hot secret, I think he’d confide in Chan before he would in Ed Burdillon—and in me before he would in Chan.”
“What about vice versa?”
“You think it might have been something of Ed’s that Morgan was taking to Ahasuerus? No—he’d never do that, even if he didn’t like what Ed was proposing to do with it. He’s a man of principle.”
“That’s not quite what I meant,” Smith was quick to say. “Given that Miller is a man of principle, and trustworthy, might Burdillon have asked for his help on work that he’d been commissioned to do, if time were pressing?”
Lisa looked at Smith long and hard before replying. “What work might that be?” she asked finally.
“Urgent work,” Smith parried. “Might Burdillon have co-opted Miller, if the need were there and his expertise fit the bill?”
“Yes,” Lisa said, having considered the hypothetical question with all due seriousness. “If Ed were up against a deadline and needed help, he’d have asked Morgan first, Chan second—and I suppose he might have instructed both of them not to tell me about it. So what was Ed doing for the war effort that might have required urgent assistance?”
“I’m not a biologist,” Smith said defensively. “I don’t even know what the words mean, but have you ever heard of antibody packaging?”
“Yes,” Lisa admitted. “I have.”
“Did Miller ever mention it to you?”
“Only in a general way—long before the war that we aren’t supposed to call a war actually broke out. We always discussed ongoing developments, breaking news. I take it that we’re not just talking about the salvation of the banana republics?”
“What?” Smith was obviously telling the truth about not being a biologist. He probably didn’t even bother to read the science pages in the newspapers. The war effort really must be soaking up a lot of time and expertise, Lisa thought, if the Ministry has to put someone like Peter Grimmett Smith in charge of an investigation like this.
“One of the earliest applications of genetic modification was the production of so-called plantibodies and plantigens,” Lisa told the Ministry man. “Way back at the turn of the century, engineers began transplanting genes that produced antibodies and antigens into plants. A lot of the early experiments used tobacco and potatoes, because they were the best hosts for the mosaic viruses that were then the vectors of choice for ferrying DNA into plant cells. Attention soon switched to bananas because bananas are naturally packaged and eaten raw, so the fruit could be used as a carrier of antibody-cocktail oral vaccines. Genetically modified bananas helped wipe out most of the major tropical diseases between 2010