Kate Blackwood strode down the tube-like corridor of GenIntron's main research wing like fate in search of destiny. At her side a twisted man with cafe-au-lait skin urged his motorized wheelchair faster to match her pace. A shrill whine from the chair's motor, two octaves above normal, echoed off every surface of the shiny white ceramic-tiled corridor. Some said the three hundred yard-long hallway, lined with laboratories and segmented every one hundred feet by pneumatic airlock doors, reminded them of the inside of a subway train whose far end had been stretched to the breaking point. Others said it was like being digested inside some gigantic gut.
An observer at the far end would have seen a taller-than-average woman with short, radiantly black hair and a full but athletically toned body. Kate radiated power, and yet her body language would have told the observer she deferred to the painfully thin, misshapen man in the wheelchair. He was a wisp with thick glasses and a broad smile: Alvin Thomas, Stanford professor of molecular biology, founding chairman of the GenIntron board of directors, one of the world's most brilliant molecular geneticists, a stellar genius trapped in a dying body racked by amylotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease.
"Adam says he thinks there was something planned about today's riot," Kate said as they slowed to allow a set of pneumatic doors to sigh open. In an emergency, the airlocks could be automatically sealed against the smallest of pathogens -- viruses, prions, rogue genes hitchhiking inside normally harmless bacteria.
Thomas craned his head upward, aiming his thick glasses generally in her direction. His emaciated arms were crossed at the elbows in front of him. His left hand rested on the right armrest and covered the joy-stick that controlled the wheelchair's operation. His right hand rested in his lap and gripped a small trackball cabled to a powerful laptop computer bracketed to the chair's left armrest.
His right hand and a couple of neck muscles were all the voluntary movement that remained. This was the Nobel Prize laureate who was said to have visualized the entire molecular structure, atomic bonding and all, for GenIntron's first commercially successful drug: a treatment for Tay-Sach's disease.
Back then, when he and Kate had started the company, he had been a handsome, athletically talented young man who belied the myth of the sickly scientist. Today, he weighed less than one hundred pounds and wore adult diapers. The man Time magazine called "the most brilliant intellect since Einstein" depended upon a team of round-the-clock attendants for every bodily function. It was as if Thomas's body had forced all of its strength into his brain, consuming the physicalness of life to make the intellect burn that much brighter.
In the stillness of the corridor, Kate heard the faint hissing of the battery-powered ventilator that forced air in and out of the tracheotomy tube in Thomas' throat.
Smiling up at Kate, Alvin Thomas manipulated the trackball; instants later a metallic computer voice issued from the computer. "Perhaps he is right. He was ultimately right about the Mercedes."
Kate wheeled to glare at him. "Don't you start in on me, too."
He answered by raising the only eyebrow that still responded to his command.
"Sorry," she muttered. "You're right." She smiled. "I hate it when you're right."
They walked along in silence for a few moments, passing a constant line of thick greenish, blast-proof glass windows that led on to the laboratories. Most labs in this corridor had solid stainless steel doors, airlocks and "gray area" decontamination zones flanked by security keypads and retinal identification systems. These were biosafety level (BSL) 4 labs, reserved for what the GenIntron staff jokingly referred to as "our Andromeda Strains."
None of them truly thought it was a joke, for it was here that they created life. With the right enzymes and a snip of DNA from here, here and there, life could be created that a decade before could not have been imagined. They clipped genes from yeast, fungus, dogs, frogs, algae and people's next-door neighbors. All DNA was equal on the molecular level. This was democracy at the nano-level: one nucleic acid base, one vote.
"Adam thinks it's got something to do with the Japanese buyout," Kate continued as an airlock wheezed open and they resumed their pace. "Something about Daiwa Ichiban refusing to pay off gangsters. I think it's his imagination."
"Perhaps not. After speaking with him, I accessed a foreign newspaper database and found many mentions of such extortion by those the Japanese call Sokaiya, an offshoot of the Yakuza gangsters who specialize in taking protection money in exchange for not disrupting annual meetings or sabotaging corporate property. It turns out that those who refuse to pay are often attacked."
Thomas manipulated the computer trackball. The laptop computer was actually a portable Sun workstation, a very powerful computer most often used for engineering design and simulation. It operated Thomas's wheelchair, provided his voice, monitored his vital signs and, via a cellular modem, transmitted those vital signs to his physician every two hours. The cellular modem also allowed Thomas to tap into computer databases, use the Internet and participate in the cyberspace world where only intellect mattered. Thousands of people around the world "knew" him in cyberspace.
After several seconds, the file Thomas had retrieved appeared on the computer screen. "It says here that last year the Sumitomo corporation alone had twenty-two violent attacks on executives because they were going along with a government-sponsored reform campaign to stop the payoffs. One of their top people was killed." He paused. "Says here that one of the top officials of the Fuji Photo Film company was hacked to death with samurai swords."
Kate frowned at the grisly image.
"Did anybody ask Daiwa Ichiban how they stood on this?" Kate asked. "About the payoffs?"
"I suppose no one knew to ask the question; or perhaps it was one of the many questions that was not asked back then…because we didn't want to know the answer."
Kate raised her eyebrow at him then slowed to a stop at a lab. She glared disapprovingly at the placard attached to the right of the security keypad. Through the adjacent window she watched three moonsuited figures slowly manipulating lab equipment. A moment later, one of the figures recognized her and waved; Kate returned the greeting. The other two figures followed suit then returned to their work.
This lab, like most at GenIntron, was quiet, white, clean and filled with computers and robotically operated scientific apparatus all linked with a bank of massively parallel supercomputers that operated from within a vault-like, climate-controlled room set up on shock absorbers to insulate it against earthquakes.
The robotics and the high-security telecommunications link from GenIntron's supercomputers to Alvin Thomas's wheelchair workstation connected him to his lab and allowed him to conduct his experiments on those increasingly-frequent days when he was not well enough to visit his lab physically. It was, for him, a "virtual laboratory" that existed whenever and wherever he could log in.
She tapped the placard disapprovingly with her index finger. "This is what Rycroft is going to do more and more of." She turned toward Thomas. "How could they have made him president?"
There was a pause while Thomas worked the computer trackball. "There's no denying -- is there? -- that the vaccine work we've done for the Pentagon has been profitable?"
Without reading any of the placards on any of the labs, Thomas knew what experiments were being conducted, the names of the researchers, the formulae and structures for every probe and reagent and who was funding the project.
"No, Al," Kate said softly as she faced him. "No denying, but..."
"But what?" His fingers were surprisingly nimble on the trackball. "We were burning through every VISA card we had among us to make payroll and getting nowhere but deeper in debt. You know the defense contracts saved us." There was a pause as a tremor worked its way through Thomas's good hand.
Real-time conversation quickly sapped the energy from his withered muscles. Kate looked at him and waited patiently. Her gaze held no pity, only respect and a different kind of love than they'd known in the manic days when she'd been the hungry, ambitious graduate student and he'd been Stanford's rising star and best new hope for the Nobel.
After a moment, the tremor passed, and Thomas patiently selected his words, storing them for the computer to play back.
"There's no doubt the vaccine work saved the company and helped us reach profitability a full three years earlier than projected. We could never have gone public so soon without it."
Kate didn't reply immediately. Instead, she turned slowly back toward the lab and watched the Pentagon's will being done. "I wonder if it was worth it?"
The wheelchair ventilator sighed in the pause. Kate knew without looking that Thomas would be working the trackball.
"You've made millions," Thomas's computer voice said finally. "I have...all the founders have."
Shaking her head, Kate turned back to him. "Not that. Not the money. Something bigger than money."
"This might be?" Thomas replied.
"I don't know," she began uncertainly. "Everything was just fine, all above board in the months leading up to the buyout. I mean, we needed Kurata's money. After what the fucking bank did, we either sold out or went belly up. Everything seemed up and up back then, but now? It just seems like there's something going on we don't know about."
"Happens all the time," Thomas said and managed a wan grin.
"No. I mean look at how easily the Pentagon approved the sale of GenIntron to Daiwa Ichiban. "Look at all the national security work we do, yet the Army didn't say ten words when we asked them about selling it to a Japanese company."
"Odd how we didn't think about that when Tokutaro Kurata waved those billions of yen in our faces."
A charged pause hung between them as they teetered on the rim of a subject they had previously avoided discussing.
"Yeah, odd." Kate said darkly. "Money blinds. Let's not go into that...nothing we can do about that now," she said dismissively, trying to avoid one painful truth.
"You can give the money back," Thomas's computer droned, throwing the lie back at her.
She turned to him. "Be serious, Al. They'd lock us all up in the Rubber Ramada." She paused and looked at the battered Seiko on her wrist. "C'mon," she said, turning once again toward the administrative wing. "We're late."
She heard the wheelchair's motor whine into life as she began walking. "Besides, there's probably nothing wrong at all; maybe all the money is making me nervous. We don't really have anything to go on."
"Nothing to go on but your good instincts, Kate," Thomas said, refusing to let the issue die. "You've always had good instincts. Just look at your important management decisions. The numbers said one thing; your instincts said another. The only serious mistakes you've ever made were when you trusted numbers over your instincts."
Kate frowned, opened her mouth to argue, shut it again as she thought better of it. They walked silently through the next two sliding doorways. At the very end of the corridor, she saw GenIntron's head of security, Adam Gold, step through a solid set of double doors that led from the large auditorium/cafeteria in which the annual meeting was poised to start. He walked toward them, pointing to his wristwatch. Kate nodded and waved him off.
"Damn it all, Al" she said softly. "There's nothing to go on, nothing significant by itself. Just a bunch of little things that, when you arrange them into a conspiracy, most likely fit in the same category as UFO sightings and alien abductions."
"You know, we've all been thinking about this in the backs of our minds, but none of us wants to point out the serpents in the nice little gardens all those millions are going to buy; we wanted to be comfortable with the money and not ask a lot of questions."
"Yes, but why manufacture demons that might not exist," Kate countered. "That doesn't make any sense either."
Thomas worked furiously at the trackball. Kate recognized the signs of a lengthy speech to come and remained silent. Finally, Thomas clicked on the trackball's return button and the voice began.
"I do not believe the Army's acquiescence was a coincidence..."
"Could be incompetence, somebody asleep at the wheel," Kate said. "Wouldn't be the first time."
Thomas nodded with his eyes as his pre-recorded sentence droned on. "Just like I do not believe that it is a coincidence that Daiwa Ichiban paid more for GenIntron than the analysts thought it was worth..."
"To make sure we'd sell," Kate said. "They've made no secret that they're cash-fat and want biotech. Nothing sinister about that."
"...or that the White House conveniently created a job for you..."
"I'd like to think it had something to do with my brilliance and charm," she said facetiously, "rather than some plot to get me away from GenIntron."
"...or that they've made sure that none of the original founders are still on the board or that they've chosen that ambitious bastard Rycroft to replace you instead of MacVicar."
"Al, you know the Japanese have made no secret about how uncomfortable they are about women in upper management positions. You know how racist they are, even when it comes to Nobel prize winners. And when it comes to Will, well, he's just not the corporate yes-man they want. All that may be Neanderthal, but evil?" She shook her head. "I don't know."
Will MacVicar, GenIntron's executive -- and her right hand and arm -- had been Kate's choice to become the company's second president. The new Japanese owners, however, passed over the eminently qualified MacVicar, who had run most aspects of the company for the past two years, in favor of Edward Rycroft, head of research. Rycroft was a brilliant but moody researcher whose greatest strength, aside from his ability to alienate people, was his lust for the Nobel Prize. The power-hungry researcher had never made a secret of his near-pathological envy and resentment of Alvin Thomas's Nobel.
Rycroft had been a proponent of more and more Defense work. MacVicar, on the other hand, had opposed it, felt the work was too close to biological warfare research for comfort. "We cure people, Kate!" he had argued passionately. "We don't kill them!" While she had tended to agree with him -- and had supervised the contracts closely to make sure work didn't stray into forbidden areas -- she now feared she had been blinded by the money and the need for survival.
They reached the double doors that led to the large corporate auditorium. From beyond the meeting room doors came the rumble of hundreds of simultaneous conversations.
Adam Gold, a former colonel in the Israeli paratroops, stood dutifully by the door, joined by a platoon of assistants Kate knew were there to escort them, to make sure nothing else marred her swan song presentation and the investiture, or "coronation" as some Rycroft detractors called it. It had been a long morning for the former paratrooper. He still wore riot gear, scuffed, dirty and splattered with blood from the morning's confrontation. Although the streets had been cleared of the earlier riot, new crowds continually gathered, giving him and his security forces scant time to rest.
"Hello, Adam," she said warmly as Thomas's computer voice began again.
"I also don't think that it was coincidence that after years of saying no to us, First Merc suddenly came through with the millions right after Daiwa Ichiban's bank division bought them," Thomas said. "Even though your instincts told you to say no, the numbers said their credit terms were too good to refuse. If we had refused, we'd never have gotten into the cash flow crisis that made selling out to Daiwa Ichiban necessary for survival."
Shaking her head, Kate said, "But the Fed did raise rates. You can't blame that on First Merc. Rates go way up; shit happens. First Merc's people are shits just like all big banks, but I don't see that as part of some evil conspiracy; they just acted in character.
"Interest rates, Army incompetence..." Gold pushed on the door, opened it for them. "All this nonsense sounds like the ramblings of a bunch of JFK conspiracy freaks who find a suspicious pattern in a bowl of shredded wheat. If I carried this nonsense far enough, I'd start asking, 'What do they want with me?' and that's absurd."
"Is it?"
"Of course it is."
"Trust your instincts, Kate; you have a way of tapping something that goes beyond mere logic; trust it," Thomas said. "Trust yourself."
The meeting room buzzed with conversation,
but when Kate Blackwood and Alvin Thomas entered, it fell silent
for just a moment then erupted into thunderous applause.