The Darwin Variant

by Kenneth Johnson

  “You gave her CPR all the way from there to here!?”

  “Me and the Bee Gees.”

  Lauren pulled herself up onto the truck. “The Bee Gees?”

  I nodded, keeping up the compressions while gasping, “Pump, pump, pump, pump, ‘Stay-ing A-live.’ The per-fect, rhy-thm, per-fect song.”

  Lauren pulled a syringe from her EM kit, tapping it to disperse the air bubbles. “Jesus, honey, you really are out to save the world!” She injected the comatose child’s bone-thin arm, calling the dose, “One mil of epi.” Then she shouted toward the open front of our field hospital, “Where’s the damned O2?!”

  “Coming, Mum!” replied Kindur, a small native man who hurried from the tent toward us. I loved Kindur. His name meant “big and strong,” but like so many of his chronically undernourished people, he was anything but. He more than made up for it, however, with his extreme dedication and hospitality. When I’d arrived three weeks earlier, he and his wife, Jasima, along with their preteens, Mayura and Dheeraj, had taken me into their very modest home and under their wing. Like most Bangladeshis their clothing was an eclectic mix of Western Hemisphere and East Indian styles with many hand-me-down T-shirts, patched jeans, and colorful saris that had been lovingly maintained. Two of our local assistants followed right behind Kindur with a stretcher.

  “Let’s bag her,” Lauren directed Kindur, and he handed up a fresh oxygen mask to her. Lauren clapped it over Aniha’s narrow little face and began pumping the bag that forced O2 into the girl’s chest, saying, “Y’know, Susan, I was already up to my ears and then had to cover for you not being here.”

  I’d expected that and kept up my CPR. “Sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone off on your own like that . . . Again.”

  Okay, okay. I heard her the first time and knew she was right, but if I hadn’t gone, this poor little kid would have died already. And I feared that she had anyway. I laid my ear on her little bony chest, whispering urgently, “Come on, Aniha.”

  “Let me try,” Lauren said briskly as she slid into position opposite me, and Kindur took over pumping the O2 bag. Lauren expertly assumed the CPR, asking with tired annoyance, “Why the hell didn’t she get inoculated when we were up there?”

  “Her father’d kept her back.” I slumped momentarily against the hot metal inside the truck, trying to catch my breath. “He wanted to make sure boys in the area got treated first.”

  “Even if his daughter died,” Lauren grumbled. “Sometimes I hate people.”

  Lauren continued the compressions as I leaned down closer to the fragile girl’s narrow, dusty face, pressing my index and middle fingers on her carotid artery. “Still no pulse. Shit. Come on, Aniha. Please!”

  The child suddenly shivered. “Oops. I think she heard you, Susan,” Lauren said, easing up on the compressions as I monitored the throbbing artery.

  “Feels steady . . . About sixty.”

  Lauren smiled, said lightly, “Guess she just needed the master’s touch.” I glanced at her as she gave me her patented wink, implying that she was just kidding. But I knew better. Lauren was always pleased whenever her personal involvement did the trick. Aniha coughed and gasped in a deep breath. I looked down at her as her dusty eyelids flickered open.

  Aniha Banerjee, 7. . .

  I am most clearly remembering that moment of awakening. It was bright, very bright, but most cloudy, hard to see. First I was thinking I had died and passed into the next world. Slowly I could better see a face close to mine that I had never seen before. I thought I must be looking at a goddess. Her face was most beautiful. Sunlight sparkled in her red hair. It seemed like magic light. Her eyes were the color of the blue sky. She touched my cheek gently, and her voice was most soft when she whispered, “Easy, Aniha, easy.”

  And then, most sweetly, she laughed. And I saw her eyes have tears come into them. I knew then that I was to be alive.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  Aniha gazed into my eyes. Then smiled slightly. Seeing her revive made me laugh again spontaneously. I sniffed and wiped away my happy tears. Lauren condescended to gift me with her acerbic smile and a headshake for my stubborn tenacity. I was just proud that we’d saved Aniha.

  An ancient FIAT that had once been red sputtered into the compound. It had followed behind us. Aniha’s mother jumped out. Seeing her daughter alive, she was overwhelmed. She shouted praises to the gods. Kindur and the assistants eased the little girl onto the stretcher. I gave Aniha a final squeeze of encouragement as Lauren instructed Kindur to get her on a Lactated Ringer’s drip; we’d sort out later what other meds she might need. Aniha’s mother grasped my hand and pressed it to her bowed forehead with utmost gratitude. The best reward for any doctor.

  Lauren hopped off the back of the old truck as I painfully unbent my own knees that were on fire with cramps.

  Lauren helped me get my feet to the ground. “You realize she’ll have to name her first daughter after us.”

  “Not bad,” I smiled. “Susan Lauren Banerjee.”

  Lauren cocked an eyebrow. “Well, I was thinking more like, Lauren Susan.” We exchanged smiles and a genteel high-five as we walked through the dust toward the brown military tents of the Doctors Without Borders field hospital. Lauren continued, “Been checking the stats. Looks like we’ve broken the back of this cholera.”

  “I hope so. God, I must’ve inoculated a thousand kids yesterday.”

  “Eight hundred thirty-two, actually. I did nine hundred and eighty.”

  I glanced wryly at my trim superior. “But who’s counting, huh?”

  “You’re closing in on me, kid.”

  “What can I say? You’re a great role model. But a tough act to follow.”

  Lauren smiled, as though she appreciated the compliment. And its accuracy.

  At our home base, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Dr. Lauren Fletcher was the preeminent research scientist. Dr. Ernest Levering was the actual head of the CDC, but was more administrator than scientist. Within the medical and scientific communities, Lauren was regarded as the top of the CDC pyramid. She rarely went into the field, but did so occasionally to keep her own skills honed. And keep her subordinates like me on our toes.

  During our time together in Bangladesh, I’d picked up more details about Lauren’s history. She was born the third child of five in a pious lower-middle-class family, but when she was sixteen, her revered older brother died of typhoid fever, and her religious beliefs evaporated. They were replaced by a burning anger. Lauren developed a fierce determination to fight back: she was driven to medicine not so much by a desire to save the lives of patients as she was by a desire to conquer diseases. She felt proud that she hadn’t wasted a moment in her life, but achieved an intense focus while still a teenager and had never wavered. Her single-mindedness made her something of a loner and supported her ambition to ascend to the top of the medical profession.

  With her excelling intellect Lauren had graduated first in her class at Columbia premed then at Harvard Medical. Even during residency she had done pioneering epidemiological research that led to substantial breakthroughs and caught the attention of many prominent physicians. She was courted by the CDC, and after joining it, her efficient, no-nonsense field research made her particularly effective. She moved swiftly up through the ranks. When a tuberculosis outbreak threatened Chicago in 2004, Lauren headed the team that contained it, and her face was soon familiar to millions watching TV network news as the CDC’s on-the-scene spokesperson.

  Thereafter Lauren became the go-to expert whenever the media had a question regarding medicine and particularly her specialty, viral disease. Her ability to explain complex concepts clearly and succinctly, plus her elegant attractiveness, made Dr. Lauren Fletcher a much sought-after interviewee. She also handled press conferences and mass conference calls to alert the media about outbreaks. Though she often dismissed such appearances as inconsequential, I sensed that Lauren privately enjoyed the limelight
, even cultivated it with the same great care and political manipulation she brought to her scientific career. Like others who worked closest to Dr. Fletcher and who recognized this thread of egoism weaving through all her efforts, I accepted it as common and permissible among those with Lauren’s obvious talents, knowledge, and skill at handling people. During epidemiological emergencies she was masterful at guiding officials and the public through dangerous, even lethal, situations.

  I learned firsthand that Dr. Fletcher did not suffer fools, myself sometimes included. She was also very open about the fact that both of her brief marriages had ended in divorce. Lauren joked that she couldn’t blame her exes’ departures, saying she was just too opinionated for anyone to live with on a full-time basis.

  At fifty-three Lauren was at the top of her game and her profession. But at the same time she always kept a close eye on young upstarts rising beneath her. A couple of our colleagues had quietly told me that Lauren recognized in me a talent approaching her own. I was flattered, but doubted Lauren thought that. I did recognize, however, that sincere personal warmth and empathy never seemed to be among Lauren’s strong suits or qualities she prized. There were numerous times when she needled me about being “too touchy-feely”—as she put it—to become the ideal physician-scientist I might have were I more reserved, clinical, and objective. Also, like many shrewd and successful people, Lauren never took anyone at face value, but rather she expected others to be equally as sly as she could be to achieve her ends.

  As we followed the others into the triage tent in the Bangladesh emergency camp that morning, Kindur waved his lean hand urgently to get our attention. “Dr. Lauren, Dr. Susan, look, look!” He was pointing to an antiquated, thick first-generation flat-screen TV sitting precariously on some medicine crates. Kindur’s expression was greatly agitated.

  On the screen, CNN International was showing views of Palomar Observatory, orbital charts, and then a live press conference room crammed with international reporters and camera crews. We caught a CNN reporter midsentence saying, “And increasing speculation across the internet about some astronomical discovery that’s been made in the last two or three days, but NASA, JPL, and others have remained closedmouthed, noting only that they have been reviewing and carefully examining all pertinent information. Moments ago WikiLeaks posted that a source characterized as ‘unofficial but informed’ said that ‘if confirmed it would likely not be good news.’”

  Lauren and I traded a glance as the reporter continued. “The White House has only said that the administration will have no comment until the exact situation has been verified and announced here at NASA. I’m speaking to you from the assembly room at NASA headquarters on E Street in Washington, DC. Reporters began gathering here some twenty-two hours ago. Several times we’ve been told to expect an announcement shortly, but it’s now just past midnight eastern time and so far . . .” The reporter paused when there came the sound of activity in the background that caused him to turn and continue, “And now . . . someone is entering and—”

  A woman about my age was being ushered into the crowded room along with several officials who guided her toward the small platform in front. They all had ID badges hanging around their necks. The reporter said, “I believe that the dark-haired woman entering may be Dr. Concetta Cordaro, the young astronomer who is rumored to have made the discovery. She’s being shepherded by several NASA personnel.”

  A bespectacled gray-haired gentleman in a white shirt with sleeves rolled up stepped onto the platform and up to the cluster of microphones on the podium. Watching the old TV in Bangladesh, I noted his expression was somber. “Thanks for your patience. If we could all just . . .” The shuffling and movement of the gathering settled. “Yes . . . Thank you very much. I’m Robert LaPorta, an associate administrator here at NASA. One of our respected colleagues, Dr. Concetta Cordaro,”—he nodded in the direction of the dark-haired young woman, and there was a flutter of clicking camera shutters and strobe flashes—“working under the auspices of her alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was doing spectrographic research at the Palomar Mountain observatory three days ago when she unexpectedly made a startling discovery.” LaPorta paused. For a moment it seemed that he was unclear about how exactly to continue. Finally he said, “I think it’s best to let Dr. Cordaro explain . . .” He looked again in her direction, and the camera panned to focus on her close-up. She looked like someone facing her own execution.

  Concetta Cordaro. . .

  The room was a blur. I hadn’t had more than a few minutes of sleep in three days. Now the heat from the TV lights and the humid mass of people crowded into the room was suffocating. I felt like I was sleepwalking through a nightmare.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  Lauren said, “My God, she looks blitzed.” Kindur and our other Bangladeshi aides who were gathered beside us nodded agreement as we watched the staticky image carefully. The close-up of the young astronomer revealed dark circles beneath her eyes. She appeared completely bedraggled; her dark brown hair was clumped back into a loose bun. She had that sleep-deprived look I knew very well, I’d seen it in the mirror myself when I’d been surviving solely on double-shot caffeine injections. Her veneer seemed paper thin. I empathized with her, having faced my share of press conferences where I’d been completely strung out and exhausted yet had to deliver terrible news about deadly viral outbreaks. I read from Dr. Cordaro’s expression that whatever information she was about to reveal was dire.

  She set her laptop on the podium, looked down at the screen, then took a breath, trying to control her nerves. “First let me say that I am deeply indebted to all my learned colleagues here at NASA, at MIT, JPL, Cambridge, the Applied Physics Lab of Johns Hopkins, and the many other universities with whom we’ve been in touch. I’m also grateful to the dozens of my fellow astronomers and astrophysicists across America and around the world who have spent the last seventy-two hours in constant communication and teleconferencing with us. Their combined, exhaustive, and extraordinary efforts in checking and rechecking my initial computations have confirmed my initial calculations are—”

  “Calculations about what?” an impatient reporter shouted.

  Dr. Cordaro remained collected. “Avery’s Comet is about ten kilometers in diameter, roughly the size of Mount Everest. Like other comets it’s composed of rock or iron and ice. It’s been tracked by astronomers for over four hundred years, and its orbital dynamics and trajectory are extremely well documented.”

  “But now the bad news?” Lauren muttered grimly. I glanced over and saw her dark eyes riveted on the screen. When I looked back at the TV, Concetta Cordaro was taking a breath.

  “I was doing a spectrographic analysis of DF Tau, a binary star system in the constellation Taurus, the bull, which is on the ecliptic. That’s the center of a band we call the zodiac where the sun, moon, planets, and most comets are always seen to move. Though Avery’s Comet had no bearing on my research, I knew that it would pass through my field of view, and it did. Let me illustrate this for you.”

  She tapped her laptop, and an image appeared on the large video screen behind her. It was a photo in which a dozen stars of varying brightness appeared against the blackness of space. “These are stars in the middle of Taurus. The brightest is DF Tau, the binary I’m studying. It’s four hundred fifty-seven light-years from Earth.” A small yellow box appeared on the screen labeling it. “And this smudge above it is a foreground object which is very much closer. It is Comet Avery.”

  Courtesy Concetta Cordaro, PhD, MIT; Uday Shankar & Justin Atchison, JHUAPL

  With a click she attached a pointer arrow to the smudge. “In this shot, it is at a distance of forty-one million miles. It’s moving at a speed of roughly thirty-four kilometers per second, or about seventy-six thousand miles per hour. This is the first of three photos taken one night apart, beginning six days ago. Now here’s the second photo.”

  Courtesy Concetta Cordaro, PhD, MIT; Uday Shankar & Jus
tin Atchison, JHUAPL

  It appeared as she continued, “You can see all the dots of light are in the same place except one. The comet.” She clicked back and forth between the photos, and the comet “smudge” jumped slightly from one position to another. “And now here is the third photo taken twenty-four hours later, showing the comet’s progress.”

  Courtesy Concetta Cordaro, PhD, MIT; Uday Shankar & Justin Atchison, JHUAPL

  “Cut to the chase, honey,” Lauren said, sniffing with characteristic impatience.

  Concetta continued, “Now this image is an overlay of all three dots connected by the line that represents current trajectory.” The new image appeared.

  “And finally, here is a broken line that shows what Avery’s normal trajectory should be.” The new line was somewhat above the first one.

  Courtesy Concetta Cordaro, PhD, MIT; Uday Shankar & Justin Atchison, JHUAPL

  “As you can see there is a slight, but clearly noticeable, discrepancy. Apparently on the comet’s last outward journey, somewhere far beyond our planetary system, it must have encountered some large gravitational mass. Or it might have had an actual collision with an asteroid or some kind of debris that altered the comet’s elliptical orbit very slightly. But that small variation has been amplified by the trillions of miles the comet travels. Calculations made in conjunction with all my colleagues are now indicating that . . .” Concetta paused, clearly feeling an enormous weight and knowing the apparent impact of what she was about to say. She drew a breath. “. . . that Comet Avery is now on a course that will bring it very close to Earth.”

  We heard shouts from multiple reporters of, “What’s ‘close’? How close!?”

  “It could be perilously close.” Then she added quickly, “But let me emphasize that at this distance, we cannot be conclusive. We’ve had barely seventy-two hours. There will be outgassing that will change the comet’s mass as it approaches the sun, and there still may be subtle gravitational variations that may improve the situation, improve the odds. But—”