Mirrors (31 page)

“Yes.”

“But the venom causes muscle breakdown, not bleeding,” I said.

He lifted a hand. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We have other matters to discuss first.”

He set the display down and checked his watch.

“Twenty-nine minutes before XK59 enters a water supply unless you answer my questions correctly,” he said. “And I’ll accept only one answer for each because I don’t want any guessing.”

“Very well,” I replied, “the first question was, Which of the two bacteria,
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
or
Aeromonas hydrophila
, played the main role in the poisonings?”

“Your answer?”

“
Aeromonas hydrophila
.”

“Why do you say that?”

I told him about the results of the guinea pig studies, adding: “You coerced Chandrapur to insert the XK59 gene into
Aeromonas
.”

“It wasn’t coercion! That was a menial task. I would have done it myself had I not been busy with other matters.”

“He sought citizenship! You took advantage of him!”

“To the contrary. He needed money and I made it possible for him to earn it by mass-producing XK59.” He eyed me intently. “Do you know where the XK59 gene resides?”

“That wasn’t one of your questions.”

“It is now; answer it.”

I glanced at my watch—11:36.

“It’s a question that intrigued me,” I said, “because I couldn’t find the gene in the bark. As a result, I concluded it resided in the pulp and that XK59 seeped from there into the bark.”

“Do you still believe that?”

“No, not since I learned the spider’s venom is almost pure XK59. I now believe the gene resides in the spider’s venom-producing cells.”

“But that says nothing about how the bark acquired XK59.”

“I think it leaches into the bark from venom-soaked prey. Which leads me to ask
you
a question: Were the webs in Madagascar located on the trunk close to the ground?”

“Yes, but why do you ask?”

“Because, I envision the spider attacking its prey and then pulling it onto the web to tear it apart. With the bleeding that ensues, venom infiltrates the web and bark. All of this takes place near the ground, leaving the rodent’s bones and pelt as remnants. I suspect your colleague had the misfortune of falling onto bark that contained XK59 from a recent kill. It made him bleed to death.”

“Alright,” he said, “since you’re willing to entertain additional questions, let’s address another one: How did the XK59 gene come to reside in the spider’s venom gland?”

A time check: 11:40 p.m.

“No additional questions!” I said. “I’m sticking to our deal!”

From a pocket, he extracted a plastic vial of the sort used to dispense prescription medication and removed a bead similar to the ones that filled the cylinder he and Chandrapur had installed at the water plant.

“Thousands of these are waiting to enter a water supply in another part of the country,” he said calmly. “Tell me how the spider acquired the XK59 gene.”

We locked eyes.

“From a virus.”

“Which one?”

“One related to Ebola,” I replied.

A poker face from Grainger.

“You’re obsessed with Ebola, aren’t you?” I asked. “You littered Kosta’s copy of
Theogony
with clues to the virus.”

“Clues?”

“Yellow stickies referencing ‘VP.’ Four of Ebola’s seven genes are designated with those letters.”

“Name them.”

“
VP24
,
VP30
,
VP35
, and
VP40
.”

“Go on.”

“You used algebra to derive the missives from
Theogony
, first dividing the total number of nucleotides in Ebola virus—18,959—by the number of lines in
Theogony
—1,026—to yield 18.5. You then divided select start and stop points for Ebola genes by 18.5 to identify specific lines within the text of
Theogony
for your missives. The math worked perfectly for Ebola but not for Marburg.”

“Sixteen minutes …” he said.

My mind raced. “And then there were the photos you left in my house of the spider’s poison gland. The one showing dots budding from the epithelial cells into the venom sac had to be viruses—a variant of Ebola, I’m guessing.”

I stopped short, uneasy with what I had said.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I find it untenable that there could be such a thing as an ‘Ebola variant,’ not to mention that it should reside in a
spider
.”

My doubts seemed to energize him. “What if there really is an Ebola variant that differs from Ebola virus as the world knows it?”

“One that produces XK59? Impossible!”

“Nothing’s impossible with genetic re-assortment.”

“Are you saying you engineered Ebola as well?”

“Fourteen minutes,” he observed. “Shall we discuss this further?”

“After I answer your final question!”

“No, let’s keep the train of thought.” He lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “It’s quite simple, really. Nature substituted a gene for
XK59
in place of
GP
to yield the Madagascar variant of Ebola virus.”

“How could that have happened?”

“You must consider the extreme environment Madagascar faced eons ago. After the island formed by splitting from Africa, volcanoes erupted for millennia, spewing lava, ash, and gas. Madagascar became a cauldron and in the hellish heat, life forms evolved. My guess is that Ebola virus underwent sequential mutations in
GP
to transform to a gene that encoded XK59.”

Another long pull on the cigarette before he asked: “Did your colleagues run tests for the presence of Ebola genes at the envenomation sites on Zot’s body?”

“No because his wife aborted the autopsy to have the body cremated.”

“But the pathologists could have preserved tissue from the bite sites!”

“Time ran short, allowing them to acquire enough tissue only to test for the presence of the protein, XK59.”

He shook his head. “A shame because they would have found all of Ebola’s genes there except for
GP
; in its place would have been the gene for XK59.”

“If an Ebola variant exists in the spider, how did you avoid becoming infected?”

He grinned. “I can talk about this all night, but eleven minutes remain.”

“Explain how you avoided becoming infected!” I demanded.

“I didn’t allow the spiders to bite me.”

“But with all the work you did on them, how did you avoid inhaling the virus or pricking your skin with contaminated instruments?”

“I took great care after seeing the photo I shared with you—the electron micrograph showing what appeared to be viruses budding from the venom-producing cells. On higher magnification, those dots became multi-shaped tubular viruses suggestive of Ebola. For that reason, I set up a lab of my own to handle such a virus.”

“That would have been prohibitively expensive!” I said.

“I got help.”

“From whom?”

“That’s not the issue right now,” he replied. His shoulders slumped. “As it turns out, I don’t think all the precautions I took were necessary because I’m convinced this Ebola variant doesn’t infect humans since it lacks the
GP
gene, one thought to play a key role in initiating infection.”

“But you don’t know that for sure.”

“True,” he agreed, “which is why it will be critical to study the variant in the future. I predict such studies will show the
XK59
gene doesn’t have the ability of
GP
to promote infection of mammalian cells. As such, the importance of the variant is its ability to produce XK59, not its potential to infect persons. If that’s true, the virus may very well be classified in a group distinct from Ebola.”

“But why would the virus take up residence in a spider?”

“Because of a mutually beneficial coexistence. In return for providing nutrients and shelter for the virus, the spider benefits by producing XK59 in its venom which wards off predators such as birds, lizards, shrews, and meerkats.”

“But there’s no evidence that Ebola resides in invertebrates. Bats have been shown to harbor the virus, but not arthropods!”

“Evolution leads to new bed fellows.”

Grainger reached into the box and lifted an alarm clock with French roses on its face and a pair of bells atop it. In addition to having a prominent minute-hand, it displayed a large second-hand embedded in circular form.

“I set its alarm for midnight,” he said, placing it on the stage.

It showed six minutes remained before day’s end.

“And so, the second question,” he said. “It’s time to answer it.”

I looked at the hundreds of reflections coming from the mirrors about us. It was as if a sea of people filled the amphitheater, only they took their identity from Grainger or me. When I turned my head, so did they; when Grainger moved, the sea followed suit. We were two in a multitude of mirror images.

With arms extended, I turned in a circle. “The answer resides in reflections, no different from those about us and the ones produced by the plates on the spider’s cephalothorax.”

“Ah, yes, the plates!” he beamed. “How glorious they are.”

He stepped directly before me to engage my eyes. “It’s not unusual for spiders to have distinctive marks on the cephalothorax; consider the brown recluse with its violin-shaped pattern or the black widow with its red hourglass.”

He walked to an electrical control box at a corner of the stage. A push of a button triggered a brief buzzing sound before the mirrors about us began moving in circles, alternate rows traveling in opposite directions. The crowd, it seemed, had grown restless.

“Keep talking!” he shouted above the din. “Four minutes, thirty seconds …”

Through a parched throat, I raised my voice. “Proteins assume three-dimensional conformations that are required for them to perform their functions. If they lose their conformation, they lose their function.”

Raising an arm, I asked, “Which hand is this?”

“The left one,” he replied.

I approached an oval mirror framed by dark-stained wood that stood on the stage. Placing the same hand before the mirror, I asked: “Now which does it appear to be?”

“The right one.”

“Yes,” I said, “mirror images.”

He pointed to the clock. “Three minutes, fifty seconds …”

“If you put a left hand into a right-hand glove, would it fit?” I asked.

“Not properly.”

“And that applies to XK59. It’s fascinating that, in nature, while amino acids exist in mirror-image forms, proteins are built exclusively from amino acids with a leftward orientation—referred to as
levo-
or
l-
. Similarly, DNA and RNA exclusively contain nucleic acids with a rightward—
dextro-
or
d-
—orientation. In contrast, proteins, DNA, and RNA do not exist in mirror-image forms. Except, that is, XK59, which is unique in its ability to take on mirror forms—a leftward and a rightward form. A most phenomenal protein!”

“Less than three minutes!” Grainger bellowed.

“After discovering XK59, I analyzed its spatial orientation and learned it took only one form—a leftward form. But yesterday, in thinking about your second question, I asked the lab at the UNIT to determine the orientation of XK59 recovered from the victims and compare it to XK59 obtained directly from the spider’s venom gland.”

“What did you find?”

“They were mirror images.”

I looked up as the sound of a helicopter became audible, its rotors whirring louder by the moment.

“Ignore it!” Grainger called. “Two minutes, twenty-seven seconds.”

He pulled a pair of white gloves from his pocket and, donning them, lifted a pistol from the box, a different weapon from the one still wedged at his hip. Pointing the gun at me, he strolled backwards until he reached a large mirror beside the entryway to the tunnel I had traversed. Tiptoeing, he placed a cell phone on the mirror with its screen displaying the bright red digits of a stopwatch counting down to midnight.

“Two minutes, fifteen seconds,” he confirmed.

Heart racing, I continued: “XK59 in the shrimp,
Electric Jolt
, and victims took on an exclusively leftward orientation whereas XK59 in the spider’s venom assumed a rightward XK59 orientation.”

About us, canvas swayed and lights gyrated from the approaching helicopter. Within moments, the roar tamed to a hum of idling rotors.

“You haven’t answered the second question!” Grainger warned, nodding at the phone atop the mirror. “Two minutes left!”

My chest heaved. “In the spider’s venom gland, XK59 maintains its rightward orientation but once the protein leaves the gland, it converts to its mirror image, leftward XK59.”

Grainger lunged at me and, grasping me by the waist, spun me around. Before I could resist, I felt the gun stab my back.

“Do as I say!” he commanded. “If you disobey, time will expire and the phone will transmit the pre-set command to release hundreds of thousands of XK59 beads into a water supply.”

“So let me finish the answer!” I cried.

“No, first extend your arms at waist-level!”

I did.

Pressing himself into my back, he wrapped his arms around mine and inserted the pistol into my hands with his gloved counterparts. “Place your finger on the trigger!”

After I did, he slipped his index finger around mine in a fashion that allowed him to fire the weapon at will. His Rolex glimmered in the light.

“You can see the time remaining on my watch,” he said. “One minute, forty seconds.”

“Let me talk!” I pleaded.

“Have you fired a gun?”

“Only bee-bees,” I replied.

“Okay, so I’ll help you. You’re going to shoot something.”

He aimed at a mirror in a row halfway up the amphitheater. “Pull,” he said. When I hesitated, he pressed my finger and a mirror exploded. “That’s what’s happened to my life,” he explained. “It shattered.”

“From what?”

“Demands.”

“Whose demands?”

He shifted our aim to another mirror. “Shoot!”

This time, I pulled the trigger, causing shards to fly.