Antarctica

<--Previous Chapter|Next Chapter-->

Chapter Seven

Veronica looked at the report from the Board of Directors and nodded to herself. She had prepared herself for the worst, but it seemed that the Board was optimistic so far with the results from the science team. In less than a year, they had already passed far ahead of the progress the Sheffield lab had managed in over two years. In fact, the Antarctica lab has already exceeded its initial expectations.

That was a good thing and a bad thing. It meant the Board was going to increase their funding and add some more staff, but it also meant their expectations for the coming year would be twice as high. Veronica took it in stride. If the Board of Directors wanted better results, then the team would give them all they wanted and more. Veronica doubted the Board’s expectations were higher than her own expectations anyway.

They had only been back for three days, and already they were deep into the new lines of research. When they had reopened the lab, Veronica had been extremely pleased to see how the team had jumped back into the work with a renewed sense of energy. It seemed that the long winter break had done everyone good.

She eased herself out of her chair and slowly walked out of her office. Moving down the hall with one hand unconsciously resting on her stomach, she felt like she was waddling more than walking. She was eight months pregnant now, and even with another month before the due date, she felt like she was ready to give birth at any moment. She didn’t seem possible that she could get much bigger. Her pregnancy came with all the common troubles: she had trouble sleeping, her legs and hips ached, and she was constantly nervous about bumping into things or tripping and falling. The plane ride back to Antarctica had been a torture, and she was already dreading the return flight in a month.

But according to her doctors, the pregnancy was proceeding normally and there were no signs of any complications. The babies appeared to be perfectly healthy.

Babies, plural. Alexander had just about jumped for joy when he learned she was having twins, although Veronica’s own reaction was more muted. Having twins meant possibly a more difficult labor, and additional risks of complications during the birth. It also might result in a longer recovery time, and every day she spent at home recovering was a day she wasn’t in the lab directing their work. She planned to spend no more than a month before returning to the lab, but at this point she really didn’t know when she would be able to come back, which privately infuriated her.

Despite those few uncertainties and annoyances, things were progressing relatively smoothly. They had installed a radio system at the house for Veronica to use, and set up two radio sets in the lab. Aubrey had agreed to radio conversations twice a day – at noon and at the end of the work day – but he didn’t see the need for updates more often than that. Veronica had to compromise on that point, since she wanted to be updated more often, every hour if possible. She understood that every minute Aubrey spent talking to her on the radio was a minute not spent working in the lab, but she still felt the need to be in almost constant communication with the team. Aubrey and Clancy both promised her that if anything unexpected happened, she would be notified immediately, and she made Alexander and Jack Shaw both swear to keep her updated as well.

All she could do was write up a detailed research schedule and give the team leaders specific instructions on what experiments to focus on in her absence. She had to remind herself that both Aubrey and Clancy were brilliant, capable scientists who knew almost as much about the Progenitor as she did, and they could be trusted to keep the lab running for a few weeks without her. Still, she wondered if it was possible to set up a microphone system in the lab so she could simply listen in to everything that was going on while she was away, but she knew Alexander would resist the idea, and it would probably take too long to install anyway.

In the main lab room, Gerald Clancy and his team were in the final stages of a series of DNA sequence analyses of various infected animals. Once complete, they would be able to compare the DNA of the different hosts with the Progenitor, to see if there was any correlation between changes in the DNA and side effects of infection. Also, in time, the research would reveal if different strains of the Progenitor existed. Veronica strongly believed that was the case, but so far they had not been able to confirm it.

She checked on their progress and made a note of any changes she might suggest, and then continued making her rounds.

Roger Cartwright was in one of the observation rooms, checking on the status of a capuchin monkey that had been infected half an hour before. It was part of their first series of tests involving primates, and they hoped it might shed some light on how the virus reacted in humans. Eventually, Veronica planned to perform tests on chimpanzees and other higher primates, but the lab currently did not have the capacity for experiments on larger animals like that.

“Looks promising,” Cartwright said, handing her a clipboard with some test results. “So far it’s following the same timeline as a human being, give or take a minute.”

“That’s interesting,” Veronica murmured, scanning the paper. “Capuchins aren’t even that closely related to humans. How many specimens do we have?”

“Six,” Cartwright said.

She handed the clipboard back to him. “Okay. I’m headed over to building two. Don’t start the next series until I get back.”

Going outside was even more of a hassle than it had been before. It wasn’t so easy for her to simply sit down and put on a pair of boots. Instead, she bought a special pair that she could slip her feet into while she was still standing, although she took care to hold onto the wall to keep her balance. They had to purchase an extra-large coat for her to wear as well, and she bundled up very carefully before going out. If Alexander had been around, she would have asked him for help, but he was busy overseeing some of the construction with Shaw.

Veronica walked slowly across the snow and ice, watching some of the construction vehicles. They were currently laying electric cables and pipes to connect the second lab building with the Progenitor vault. In another couple of weeks, they planned to complete the new section to connect the buildings together, which is something Veronica thought they should have done in the first place. Shaw, as always, was overly cautious when it came to dealing with the Progenitor, and had insisted that it be contained in its own facility at the beginning. Now that the science team was fully at work, it was time to join the buildings together into one full complex.

She entered building two and gratefully removed her heavy coat. After her journey across the ice, she needed to sit down for a few minutes. She managed to kick off her boots and slide her feet into some slippers conveniently placed on the floor for her.

Aubrey met her in the hallway. “Good, I’m glad you’re here. I was going to call. We’ve found something very interesting.”

“Tell me,” Veronica said.

Aubrey walked with her back into the central lab area, explaining as they walked. “We’re testing with the new chemical processor and synthesizer, running it through its paces. Vanessa is already a prodigy with it. We ran some infected blood samples through the system and got some really interesting results.”

Most of their more-advanced equipment was located in the second lab building, and Veronica had gradually been moving some of the research there, but it required them to go back and forth between the two labs more often than she liked. At the moment, the lab was occupied only by Aubrey and Vanessa Montanari, who was seated near one of the chemical analyzers with a smile on her face.

“Doctor Ashford, this device is amazing,” she said. “They have one in Paris but I was not given access to it.”

“Show me what you’ve found,” Veronica said. Aubrey, as if reading her mind, pulled up a chair for her so she could sit down.

Montanari turned in her seat and pointed at the computer screen. “You can see here. Those columns show the chemical make-up of our sample. We put it through a centrifuge to separate it. Each column here is one layer of the blood sample. Plasma, white blood cells, red blood cells. You can see how they differ.”

Chemistry was not Veronica’s strongest subject. She viewed it as a discipline that ran parallel to but distinct from biology, and while equally important to their research, was very different in its applications and its methods. Personally, she did not find chemical analysis all that interesting, and sometimes it went quite over her head. Vanessa Montanari was a chemist and a brilliant one, which is why Veronica had been so excited to have her join the team.

“I see that they’re different,” she said. “But what’s the significance?”

“We can isolate this section,” Montanari said, typing a few commands on the console. The screen switched to a more detailed list of chemical compounds with long names. “This is the white blood cell layer. We thought it would be a good place to start.”

White blood cells were the main component of the human immune system. During the early research on the Progenitor back in England, they had studied infected white blood cells intently, hoping to determine if the body produced anything like antibodies against the virus, but none were ever found. The virus simply killed the host too quickly for it to create effective antibodies. After that, their research shifted to other aspects of the virus. Veronica didn’t think anyone had studied white blood cells since, although like so many other subjects, it was on their list of things to study more in the future.

Montanari typed a few more commands, the keys clicking loudly. “Okay, here and here,” she said, pointing at the screen. “These are some of the proteins within the cell. Nucleotides, phosphoinositides, triphosphatases. We can further divide up the chemical compositions into even more narrow categories. It’s amazing what this machine can do.”

Veronica could not help but smile a little at Montanari’s enthusiasm. “Please, get to the point, Vanessa.”

Montanari nodded and scrolled down the list of proteins on the screen. She selected one of them and clicked to another screen, which showed a crude diagram of the protein’s structural chemical formula and its full chemical name. Veronica glanced at the name but it didn’t look familiar.

“This,” Montanari said, looking at her, “is something new.”

Veronica blinked for a moment and then said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean this is an unknown protein. This does not belong here, in a white blood cell or anywhere else. We have no record of it.”

“Are you …” Veronica felt her pulse jump a few beats. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“We checked and double-checked,” Aubrey said from behind her. “I was going to call you. We need to analyze some other samples and see it if shows up there too.”

“And if it does?”

“Compare it to non-infected blood.”

Veronica sat back and cleared her throat. “What could cause the development of a new protein? I know we can synthesize them, I’ve never heard of new proteins just showing up on their own.”

Aubrey said smoothly, “If the virus initiates some kind of new biological mechanism ...”

“Here we are again with biological mechanisms,” Veronica muttered, shaking her head. “Okay, you can isolate this, correct?”

Montanari nodded, “Yes, of course.”

Veronica looked back at Aubrey. “What do you recommend?”

“Check the other samples. If this protein is present, we follow up on it. We can synthesize some samples of the protein to work with. We should also check the other samples for additional new proteins as well, to see if there’s any more surprises.”

Veronica didn’t know what this discovery meant. It might mean nothing at all. It was terribly easy to let small discoveries overwhelm your emotions and convince yourself that you’ve solved the mystery, but Veronica was not going to get her hopes up just yet. Some random new protein showing up in a blood sample was hardly something worth celebrating, but it was still very unexpected.

Perhaps this little protein had some part to play in the Progenitor’s healing function. What might happen if they injected it into a living tissue sample?

“Maurice,” she said, “can you go and find my husband? He’s outside somewhere working with Jack. I think he should see this before we start changing our schedule around.”

“Of course,” Aubrey said, and hurried off.

Montanari was looking at her expectantly with a hopeful expression.

“Excellent work, Vanessa,” she said. “How about you go ahead and load one of the other samples. Let’s see what we find out.”

A quick fifteen minutes later, Aubrey returned with Alexander. His face was red from being outside, and he rubbed his hands together. “Okay, what do we have here? Maurice says you’ve discovered something new to show me?”

Montanari went through their information one more time, explaining the existence of the new protein, with a few comments from Veronica and Aubrey. Once she was done, Alexander nodded eagerly and said to no one in particular, “This is the kind of thing we’ve been looking for.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Alexander,” Veronica warned.

“I’m not,” he said, holding up a hand. “This could very well mean nothing at all. I know that. But detecting and studying these kinds of cellular changes is exactly the sort of research we’ve been working towards since the beginning. Even if this specific protein is meaningless, I think we should definitely be putting more effort into this line of research.”

“Yes,” Veronica admitted, “I agree with that.”

Alexander looked at the screen. “Is this still from the first sample?”

Montanari answered, “No, we just finished the scan of the second sample.”

“And?”

She clicked to the appropriate screen, showing the names of the proteins. All four of them leaned in to look at the screen. The new protein was listed right along the others, exactly like in the first sample.

Alexander smiled and pumped his fist in a little celebratory gesture. “So it’s in both samples. That’s wonderful. And you can create it, is that right? Create a pure sample of this new protein?”

Montanari nodded. “Yes, now that we know its structure, we can synthesize it.”

“We should still check the other samples, just to make sure,” Aubrey suggested.

“Indeed,” Alexander said. “But I think we’ll find it in all the samples. Call it a hunch if you will. But I want you to start studying it as soon as is practical. Put a small team together, Maurice. Bring in one or two others, whoever you think is best.”

Aubrey glanced at Veronica, but she merely nodded. She was prepared to let Alexander make the decisions in this matter, it was the reason she had Aubrey go and get him in the first place. She knew he would be excited at the discovery, however minor it was. And she had to admit to herself that she had an ulterior motive as well. The discovery of a new cellular protein was the kind of thing the Board of Directors would like to see.

A few minutes later, after Aubrey had left, she managed to pulled Alexander away from the chemical analyzer to let Montanari continue her work.

“It’s probably nothing, you know,” she reminded him.

He gave her a smile, the kind of beaming smile he always had when he was thinking ten steps ahead of everyone else. “Even if it’s nothing, it can still be helpful for your research. Perhaps it’s just one tiny little clue that can steer us in the right direction. But it’s new and it’s interesting. I presume you don’t have any serious problems with pursuing this line of study?”

“No, not really. I’m just trying to think how we can make the best use of it. I don’t want it to overshadow the other work we’re doing. It’s just one more thing for me to worry about while I’m home recovering.”

“But you’re excited about it, I can tell.”

She let herself smile a bit. “As you said, it’s new and interesting.”

“The first discovery of many,” Alexander said intensely. “I feel like it’s finally coming together. All our hard work is finally starting to show some results. Your team is doing excellent work, you know. It’s just like we planned. Now that we have enough people –”

“We still don’t have enough people,” Veronica said.

“I know, I know. But we finally have a fully trained team all focused on the same goal. I knew that once we had a strong team in place, and finally began more in-depth study, it was only a matter of time before we cracked the Progenitor.”

Veronica placed her hand on his arm. “Like I said, dear, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“I can’t help it,” Alexander said. “I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe this new protein we found won’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but the discovery itself is monumental for what we’re trying to achieve here. It’s real progress, it’s a step forward. And I just know that it’s just the first of many to come.”

Her husband’s charisma and enthusiasm could be contagious, but Veronica had learned to shield herself somewhat from his boundless energy, and she forced herself to remain calm and levelheaded. “We’ll know more in a few days,” she said reasonably. “Until then, let’s keep our expectations a bit more grounded, okay?”

Alexander put her hands in his and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, although he usually refrained from displays of affection when they were at work. “You know my expectations have never been grounded in my entire life,” he chuckled. “I’ve always aimed for the moon. And we’re going to get there, I just know it. I agree that this is just one small discovery, but mark my words, we’re going to build on this one, and then we’ll build on the discoveries after it. And we’ll keep going until we’ve finally succeeded in our goal. I see great things in our future, darling. Great things, indeed. This is just the beginning.”

<--Previous Chapter|Next Chapter-->