World without Cats (22 page)

Bronkowski stepped up to a device that reminded Noah of a monocular microscope. With his left eye, Bronkowski peered into the lens. The scanner emitted a three-note chord. The director put his other eye to the ocular—another chord, several notes higher. “You guys don’t take chances,” Noah remarked.

“Yes,” said Angelo, “each entry portal has one or more identification criteria. The one outside was the magnetic card. This one’s retina and fingerprint.” As he said that, a green light flashed on the scanner, and Bronkowski placed his hands flat over two windows. Noah saw a light go on inside the machine.

In a moment, a second green light came on. They passed through another door, headed down a hall, and turned a corner to encounter a second air lock. Here were additional requirements, the main one being voice recognition. Bronkowski articulated, “Warren Bronkowski. The trees of Atlanta bloom in the spring.”

Noah glanced at Angelo, a questioning look on his face.

“That’s today’s password. This step employs both voice recognition and a password. Each day, the password is changed. Yesterday, it was, ‘There’s no business like show business.’”

A dull rumble emanated from the powerful air-conditioning system. The entire building was constructed so that all airflow was directed inward and was HEPA-filtered at each level to remove bacteria, viruses, and even large molecules. The whole setup seemed to Noah like a huge, concrete maze. After the group had moved through two more airlock chambers, they arrived at an observation room containing several closed-circuit television monitors. Each monitor displayed a different laboratory; only one showed activity.

Noah, who had often seen diagrams of hot labs but had never viewed one in person, observed a row of Class-III biological safety cabinets in one of them. These were larger and more substantial-looking than those with which Noah was familiar. Each cabinet was outfitted with sturdy gloves that extended into the box. At one end of the line of glove boxes he observed a large autoclave mounted in the wall, while a door to another one was visible at the other end of the lab. All exposed surfaces were either enameled or stainless steel, giving the BSL-4 lab a hard, cold, bright appearance. At the top of the video image, Noah noticed a complex system of ducts and pipes crisscrossing the ceiling within. Some of the ducts extended down to the safety cabinets.

Two people were at work in the lab, but Noah was hard-pressed to determine the gender of either. Each wore a one-piece protective blue suit with gloves and a helmet. Flexible, yellow air hoses hung down from the ceiling and were attached to the helmets. Noah thought the workers looked more like astronauts than lab technicians. He could see from the forehead of one that he or she was dark-skinned. That person happened to look up and nod to the camera. Noah sensed that the person was smiling at him, though the mask concealed the mouth.

“Who is that?” he asked.

“Ah, that’s Nicky Brown,” Bronkowski replied. “He’s the technician who’s going to do your procedures.”

Noah turned abruptly to face Bronkowski. “What? What procedures?”

“Why, the experiments you came here for. The isolation of FHF RNA, the synthesis of cDNA, and so on.”

Noah replied, “I’ll do my own work, if you don’t mind.” A knot formed in his gut. Noah trusted only one technician, Alicia Diaz. The reason was simple—he had trained her himself.

“But, Dr. Chamberlin,” said Bronkowski, “we can’t let an untrained person use the BSL-4 lab. Each of our …”

Noah felt helpless and deeply angry. “What do you think I am, a hack?”

Angelo remained silent.

“As I was saying,” continued Bronkowski, the warmth gone from his voice, “each of our technicians goes through months of training in the proper safety procedures for the hot lab. Nicky has years of experience in recombinant DNA technology as well.”

At that moment, Nicky Brown pointed to the airlock door and gestured with his forefinger.

“Looks like he’s coming out now,” observed Bronkowski. “It’ll take him about fifteen minutes.”

“I suppose he has to take off that space suit and put on civilian clothes,” Noah remarked.

“Yes,” said Bronkowski, “but first he has to pass through a Lysol shower. Then, after he rinses off the Lysol and removes the space suit, he takes a regular body shower. It’s all quite time-consuming, but necessary.”

Back in Bronkowski’s office, Noah continued to voice objections to a technician doing the lab work. “I’ll have to train him from scratch; that could take weeks.”

“I doubt that,” Bronkowski countered. “Perhaps a day or two. Believe me, you are underestimating him. You’ll see.” The men were silent a moment, each appraising the other. The chief rubbed his brow and said, “You know Noah, you really are naive. I am surprised you even entertained the thought that you would be allowed to work inside a level-four lab without training. You know, don’t you, that even experienced technicians have occasionally allowed dangerous viruses to escape hot labs?”

Noah raised his eyebrows. “That’s right,” said Bronkowski. “In 1978, for example, foot-and-mouth virus got out of the BSL-4 lab at the Plum Island Agricultural Station and infected a herd of cattle on the island. It could have spread from there to Long Island and then to the whole Eastern Seaboard. Fortunately, it didn’t. As it is, they had to slaughter all the cattle on Plum Island to prevent any spread of the virus. We don’t know how that virus escaped the lab, but you must understand that I am obliged to enforce the regulations here.”

“But FHF is already all over the country. All over the world, in fact. What’s the point of trying to keep it contained?”

Angelo responded, “I can answer that. You and Nicky will be performing genetic manipulations on the viral genome. You’ll be cloning and copying into cDNA. It is possible during these manipulations that you could change the virus in such a way that it might expand its host range. That would be scandaloose.”

Bronkowski nodded. “That’s it in a nutshell. You know, Dr. Chamberlin, we’re fortunate to be starting on this project at all.”

“Why’s that,” asked Noah.

“Two days ago, I received an emergency call from the head of the OMB. He told me not to start any new projects. The budget crisis is worsening, and even previously approved research is being halted. I managed to convince the guy that saving a species warranted breaking a rule.”

“Oh, I hadn’t heard this. But …” Noah tried to think of an argument that would allow him to work in the BSL-4 lab, but he could not. At last, the intercom buzzed, and the secretary reported that Nickerson Brown was at the door.

Bronkowski made the introductions. Noah rose and shook the hand of the technician, but said nothing. He was distracted by the man’s appearance. From one earlobe hung a small golden earring. His hair fell in dreadlocks that, to Noah, seemed unkempt. The fellow was lean and appeared taller than he actually was. He wore a loose-fitting, starchy-white shirt, which contrasted sharply with his shiny ebony skin. He was smiling, his eyes more so than his mouth.

“Pleased to meet you, mon,” said Nicky Brown with a noticeable Caribbean lilt.

“Nicky is from Kingston,” said Angelo. “He’s been in this country about ten years now. He has a BS from the University of Florida and a master’s from CUNY Stony Brook.”

Noah nodded. “How do you do?” he said, his voice strained. Nickerson Brown’s smile vanished.

Angelo had invited Noah to stay with him and Dorothy. Noah could see at once that she was a very happy woman. He couldn’t help but recall her melancholy when he’d met her shortly after she’d lost all her cats. The harpsichord, moved across the country at no little expense, occupied a corner of the living room of the white clapboard house. A large, brick fireplace faced the instrument at the opposite end of the room.

“How long have you lived here?” asked Noah as they sat down to eat.

“Not quite a month,” answered Dorothy. “We haven’t even finished unpacking.”

“So I see,” Noah said, eyeing several unopened cartons at the side of the dining room. “Did the harpsichord make the trip okay?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Dorothy, “but the humidity here makes it go out of tune too often, even with air conditioning. I have to tune it almost every day.”

“Absolut,” replied Angelo. “Bach tuned his every day. So if Bach could do it, you can too.”

Dorothy pursed her lips and gave Angelo a mock look of irritation. She turned to Noah. “How is Vera?”

“Oh just fine. By the way, she asked me to tell you that the family that bought your home has two small dogs. She’s been out to the house once. They have fixed it up some, knocked out the wall between the dining room and the living room.”

Dorothy became quiet, distracted. A tear formed at the corner of her eye.

Later, after Dorothy, at Angelo’s request, played several melodies from Handel’s
Water Music
, Noah and Angelo sat in the living room, sipping cognac. Following a long silence, during which each man sat, absorbed in his own thoughts, Angelo regarded Noah and said, “You know, Aaron, Nicky Brown is one of the most competent and respected CDC technicians.”

Noah frowned. “I just need time to accept that I’m not allowed to carry out my own lab work.”

Angelo nodded. “I understand.”

The following day, in the patio of the center, Noah met with Nickerson Brown to go over the RNA extraction procedures. They sat at a picnic table under a huge magnolia, a table that soon was carpeted with notebooks, papers, tablet computers, and large thick leaves that occasionally dropped from the branches above. Noah described his methods for isolation of FHF RNA and learned that Brown had considerable experience with such operations. Noah realized early on that he’d underestimated the guy. He saw that Brown behaved coolly toward him, but that did not compromise the tech’s professionalism. Both men became absorbed in the work and were oblivious to the passage of time. Eventually, Noah felt hungry and glanced at his watch.

“Whoa! I had no idea it was so late. You interested in breaking for lunch?”

“Sure, mon. Angelo plans to meet us in the cafeteria.”

“So how’s it going?” asked Angelo as he tucked a paper napkin, bib fashion, into his shirt.

“Okay, okay,” Nicky responded, looking Noah straight in the eye. “Don’ you agree, Dr. Chamberlin?”

“Yes, I do. We made a good start this morning and should be able to start the work tomorrow, right, Mr. Brown?”

“Yah, it look to be so.” He took a sip from his orange soda. He furrowed his brow. “I am curious about something. Why don’t you just use killed virus for an immunizing agent?”

“Actually,” said Noah, “that has been tried several times here at the CDC. It doesn’t seem to work. And so far, no one has succeeded in attenuating the virus so that a live vaccine can be developed. Our only hope is to use viral envelope proteins as the immunizing agent.”

“At the rate the cats are dying off, we better work pretty damn fast,” Nicky offered. “My sister, she write from Kingston that there are no more cats on de whole Jamaica island. They’re all gone.”

“Scandaloose,” Angelo declared. “I didn’t know that. I guess there must be some places like that where the entire cat population has disappeared.”

Nicky said, “She say people are using dogs as rat-catchers. They pay good money for trained dogs. The best ones are Manchester Terriers; we call them black-and-tans in Jamaica. Actually, I don’t care much for cats. But it would be a damn shame if the whole species became extinct.”

Angelo finished consuming a chicken wing, wiped his mouth, and remarked, “I do not like cats either, but I agree with you. He crumpled his napkin. “I must get back to work. There’s been an outbreak of encephalitis in Omaha, and I may have to go there for a few days. Good luck with your vaccine.”

After lunch, Noah and Nicky Brown went over the procedures for the work to be carried out during the first week.

“There’s one thing that’s been bothering me,” Noah said. “In order to identify the bacterial cells containing the cloned envelope genes, we’ll need some anti-envelope antibody. Yet that’s the very antibody we hope to make antigens for—a Catch-22 situation if there ever was one. Perhaps there is some anti-FHF antibody left from the attempts to immunize cats with whole virus. Could you check into that?”

“Sure thing. Angelo might know if we have some.”

After an hour, during which he interrupted Brown frequently with questions, Noah asked, “Are you sure you have all the necessary reagents and enough of the phage?”

“Absolut, mon. Absolut.”

Noah laughed at Brown’s parody of Angelo and then, after a brief silence, “Look, I … I owe you an apology. Yesterday I guess I was rather unsociable. I …”

“I did notice that you were. It’s cool, mon,” he said softly, without spite. “We don’t need to speak of it further.” Without warning, Nicky got up and declared, “I would like to start to work in de lab tomorrow mornin’ at eight thirty sharp. Can you be in the observation room by then?” He walked away without waiting for an answer, leaving Noah alone with his thoughts.

Noah gathered his papers and sauntered over to the administration building, where he was fingerprinted, retina-scanned, and given a plastic admittance card for the hot-lab building. He was given a sheet of instructions on the precise steps to gain access to the observation chamber he’d been taken to earlier.

The next morning, Noah arrived early and entered. He made his way to the observation room, using the information sheet he’d been given the day before. The password for the day was “Go west, young man, go west.” By the time he arrived in the chamber, Nickerson Brown and another technician were already at work inside the hot lab.

“Good mornin’, Dr. Chamberlin,” said Nicky without a hint of unfriendliness. The voice came through a speaker located above the monitors.

“Oh, good morning,” Noah answered. “Can you hear me okay?” Noah couldn’t see a microphone.

“Perfectly, mon. Let’s get started.” He walked over to one of the Class-III safety cabinets and stuck his arms into the stout but flexible gloves within. The walls of the cabinet were of transparent plastic, and Noah could see reasonably well into the interior.