The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  “This is just too bad! Do you have any idea who’s behind it?”

  “That was going to be my question to you. PJ was working on something, something I think you know more about than me.”

  DiCanio’s eyes betrayed just a hint of astonishment, then, “You mean the peptide-binding experiments? With phoenix?”

  “Yes. How much do you know about it?”

  “Chaldexx paid for the supercomputer time. Pedro Juan wanted to see if he could find a small peptide sequence which would bind to his phoenix structure. That was just one approach.”

  “OK, I think PJ had some kind of breakthrough. He tried to tell me about it.”

  “Tell you how?”

  “At the airport, we met to exchange some bacterial expression clones that I’d been working on for him. I’d travelled with the samples VIP, so I guess I was a little nervous. So we’re there in this airport coffee shop, and PJ tried to tell me something, when this guy in a suit appears, leads him away. I was worried that it was customs, something to do with the bacterial samples. Well, I just got out of there. Some people followed me out of the airport, but I managed to shake them off. I think that PJ was trying to tell me something about the phoenix interaction.”

  DiCanio frowned. “Did he say that he’d found a good target molecule?”

  “He didn’t get that far. But he was obviously excited about something.”

  DiCanio was quiet, lost in thought.

  Jackson asked, “What do you know about a guy named Hans Runig?”

  At the mention of this name, DiCanio paled. “Jackson, please, tell me you aren’t involved with Hans Runig.”

  “I think he’s trying to get involved with me. I’ve received messages – he’s talked to me over the Internet. He claimed to be the one who killed PJ. He . . . he says he’s going to kill me.”

  Once again, he carefully avoided any mention of the website with the amino acid sequence in its Web address, or of Marie-Carmen. He wasn’t sure how much of PJ’s work had been shared with Chaldexx and he wasn’t about to break a confidence. For some reason PJ had chosen to trust Jackson with his secret results; until Jackson better understood why, he wasn’t about to share them.

  “You think Hans Runig bugged Pedro Juan’s phone?

  “I’m sure of it. It’s the only explanation for how Runig could still have gotten information from the lab after PJ was gone.”

  She frowned. “That sounds rather ominous. Almost as though you suspected, at one time, that PJ might have been feeding information to Runig.”

  Despite himself, Jackson turned red with anger. “Given the way PJ died, I’d have to say that I didn’t suspect him at all, not at any stage.”

  She shrugged. “Pedro Juan may not have realized the significance of the information he was passing.”

  “You mean he may have known about Runig and believed he was friendly?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “I don’t think so. I trust PJ.” He couldn’t very well tell DiCanio that the main reason he trusted PJ was because of the way PJ had appealed to Jackson, sent him a carefully coded message and entrusted him with the contact details of his favorite cousin. Yet he could see that from DiCanio’s position of limited information, it might look as though Runig and PJ had once cooperated.

  DiCanio rose to her feet.

  “Very well, let’s continue this in my office. There is something I want to show you. And I’ll tell you about Runig. First, I’ll make some calls. You should change hotels, in case you were followed.”

  “Change hotels? You’re kidding.”

  “No. Trust me on this – Runig is extremely resourceful. If he knew you were coming to Interlaken, then it’s safest to assume you’ve been followed.”

  It was only many hours later that Jackson began to wonder why, at that point, DiCanio had not suggested the most obvious and sensible move – to involve the police.

  Hypnoticin

  DiCanio closed the door behind them as Jackson and she stepped into her office. The minimalism of her outfit extended into her environment; grey, frosted glass-topped tables, sleek lines of cherry wood, the only splashes of color present in cobalt blue chunky glass vases containing plump bunches of blue hyacinths. Two pieces of abstract art adorned the walls.

  They faced each other over the meeting table. DiCanio seemed to consider her words carefully.

  “I think, from what you’ve told me so far, that you won’t be surprised when I tell you that we asked you here to talk about a lot more than the structure of joust-like proteins in the brain.”

  Her words struck a chord, a nagging query which had gnawed at him since he’d first learned of PJ’s collaboration with Chaldexx and the scheduled meeting with DiCanio. Why had Jackson, who was known for his work on joust, not been included in Chaldexx’s work?

  He gave her a level gaze. “I kind of guessed that, from the private jet and all the fuss you’re making over me.”

  “Why don’t you let me tell you from the beginning?”

  DiCanio clicked a slim tablet computer which lay on the table before her. Touching a finger lightly to the screen, she continued, “Some years ago, we found joust-like gene sequences in some brain tissue DNA. You won’t have read about any of this, of course. We haven’t published anything around this work. The brain tissue was found in individuals who had experienced visions, headaches and other neurological symptoms, before experiencing what you could only describe as a major psychotic episode, followed by death by suicide. The pathology was unlike any known disease.”

  Jackson had been intrigued from the moment he’d learned, back in Mexico, that Chaldexx had found joust-like sequences in humans. For investigators working in the ‘lower’ order creatures such as bacteria, yeast or even the fruit fly, there was a trade-off between the flexibility of the experimental system and the importance of the discovery. You could perform incredibly powerful manipulations in non-human biological systems, but then the mere discovery of a human version of the same gene, especially if it were found in an interesting context, could blow a non-human gene discovery out of the water.

  In fact this was precisely why he felt slightly irked, as well as excited, to hear that joust – or something similar – had been found in humans. In six months of searching for precisely the same thing, he’d drawn nothing but blanks.

  DiCanio was saying, “We decided to take it seriously, unlike most of the patients’ physicians. We were interested in the fact that each of the patients claimed to be able, under some circumstances, to hypnotize people, an ability which none of them had previously had.”

  Jackson interrupted. “Hypnosis? You’re taking that seriously?”

  DiCanio looked him straight in the eye.

  “Absolutely. Much of what people practice is pure PT Barnum, it’s true. Only a few cases hold up under scrutiny. In a few cases we looked at there’s no doubt that you can measure unusual brain activity during hypnosis – in both the hypnotist and the subject.

  “These patients who killed themselves all claimed to be able to hypnotize people. The psychosis usually followed within a few days. We thought their brain tissue was worth looking at, so we got on it. We looked for expressed sequences, and found that in all of them, a joust-like protein, also coded for by a transposable element similar to joust, was being produced at quite high levels.”

  “How did you get access to the samples? Patients aren’t usually all that happy to hand over brain tissue.”

  “That’s the main advantage of having kept a pure-research lab going in Cambridge. That’s where we did most of this work, at first. It grew out of the work we did on the activity of Tripoxan.”

  He sat back, quite amazed. He wasn’t surprised that PJ had kept him in the dark about his own research results: PJ himself would doubtless have been bound by a secrecy agreement.

  DiCanio turned the tablet so that Jackson could also see the screen. A three-dimensional animated model of a protein rotated slowly before his eyes. Jackson could se
e a similarity to the structures of both joust and phoenix.

  DiCanio continued, “You can imagine the experiments that followed. We looked for the sequence in mice. Well, that went nowhere. We looked for the gene in the general human population. It’s rare, Jackson, really rare.

  “With no naturally-occurring mice with the gene, we had to make a transgenic mouse for the first brain experiments. That way, we’d have a line of mice which possessed the joust-like gene. By now, we were calling this Joust-Like-Factor, or jlf.”

  DiCanio pronounced the name jlf as ‘jelf’. A touch sardonically, he asked, “How do you test to see if one mouse can ‘hypnotize’ another?”

  “Well, you might ask,” smiled DiCanio. “We put several mice in a cage with only enough food and water for one mouse. Occasionally, the transgenic mouse would be the one to survive the first starvation. When we did the same thing again, the transgenic mouse always survived. The other mice rarely even approached the food or water. Even though they were dying. The mouse with the jlf gene always won, Jackson.

  “But the really interesting thing was this. The transgenic mouse, with the jlf gene, would almost starve to death before it started to do whatever it was doing to stop the others getting the food.”

  “So, the gene was only activated under conditions of extreme stress?”

  DiCanio nodded vigorously. “Stress or starvation, we didn’t get around to finding out which. Because in the meantime, we’d been looking for peptides – short sequences of proteins – which could bind to the jlf protein; stick to it really tight. We had a few candidates. We injected some of this into the brain of the transgenic mouse before it went into the second starvation cage.

  “This time, the mouse didn’t wait to starve. Those other mice didn’t get a look in. They stayed away from the food. The males kept their distance from the transgenic. The females didn’t approach. But they were receptive to any attempt at all by the transgenic to mate with them! Yes sir, once we injected him with our peptide, that little jlf mouse seemed to rule the roost.”

  Jackson thought with distaste about the experiments which the Chaldexx team had done, and all the starving mice. He hated animal experimentation. His limit was the fruit fly.

  DiCanio took a deep breath. “Then we moved the trials into humans.” She watched his stunned reaction with evident enjoyment. “All volunteers, Jackson; a few rare people we dug up who have this gene. Injected with the peptide, they asked volunteers to do simple acts, like recite nursery rhymes, make them cups of coffee, give a dance lesson: all very benign stuff. Well, it was like being at a hypnotism show. Except it was real: we’d created it!”

  This far exceeded any of the wildest theories that Jackson had come up with to explain the invitation to collaborate with Chaldexx.

  “You got a name for your peptide?” he asked, “Cos I could suggest something.”

  DiCanio gave a wan smile. “We like to call it ‘hypnoticin’. But that’s only between the closest members of the team. Officially we refer to it as ‘hip33’.”

  “Hypnoticin,” Jackson repeated, trying out the word. “That’s not bad.”

  “Imagine, for a second, the possibilities of a drug like this, in the hands of the wrong people. To someone with political ambitions, for example.”

  Jackson had a sudden insight; “Hans Runig?”

  “Right. So far as we’ve been able to work out, he’s a Swiss businessman with interests in biotech, nanotech, semiconductors . . .”

  “All the cool stuff.”

  “He started as a business angel, helping companies to start-up. Now he controls a number of small, promising companies.”

  “I couldn’t find much about him on the Internet. Isn’t that kind of weird?”

  “People like Runig pay a lot of money to public relations firms to achieve precisely that, Jackson – relative anonymity. The one thing I know about Runig is that he always approaches the scientists directly when he wants to invest. He never waits for companies to go to him.”

  “I guess the early bird catches the worm.”

  She nodded, thoughtfully. “I’d say that’s an extremely astute way to put it. He’s always early to the worm. God knows how he does it. He approached us some months ago, offering to buy the patent for the joust-like factor gene. We don’t know how he got his information, because on its own that wouldn’t do much. Somehow, he seemed to know it was worth something. Of course, we refused.”

  Jackson was beginning to see everything clearly now. Runig had failed to acquire the joust-like factor gene by legal means. There was a good chance he’d resorted to industrial espionage. It had worked. He was willing to bet that Runig already knew the amino acid sequence of ‘hypnoticin’.

  It had to be the same as the sequence which PJ had passed onto him: AGYLIHRPPREIKGR

  Runig had created a website to trap anyone else who knew about the sequence. Jackson had given himself away when he’d logged on. Whatever Runig wanted with Jackson, he couldn’t imagine it would be very friendly.

  “You know what I think, Melissa? I think you got yourself a mole. Right here in Chaldexx.”

  Her features were at once cold, hostile. A second or so later she seemed to regain control and forced a smile. “That had occurred to me.”

  Chaldexx already had found the joust-like factor. They also had a peptide – hypnoticin – which appeared to activate jlf. They had proof of a pretty spectacular biological function – the power to hypnotize.

  The question was – what could Chaldexx possibly want with him?

  Carrier

  “What’s on your mind, Jackson?”

  “I was just wondering. Have you been able to find hypnoticin in any natural context? Like, a hypnoticin gene?”

  This was the crux of the matter. PJ had evidently managed to isolate a naturally-occurring gene for hypnoticin. Had Chaldexx done the same? Were they even aware of PJ’s discovery?

  DiCanio answered by peering at him curiously, as though she were considering him rather than his question. Finally she admitted, “No. No, we’ve searched hundreds of gene libraries, but so far nothing. We don’t have any evidence that it occurs naturally, at all.”

  “That doesn’t strike you as unlikely? I mean, why have a gene which unlocks this kind of incredible functionality, unless you have a way to use it, a way for natural selection to preserve it throughout evolution?”

  “We don’t know the answer to that. But you’re right, it is strange.”

  DiCanio went over to her desk and picked up the phone.

  “Shall we get some tea, or coffee?”

  “Oh, coffee, yeah, coffee is good,” Jackson mumbled, distracted.

  How odd that PJ hadn’t shared with DiCanio his discovery of the gene. It seemed that what Chaldexx had failed to discover, PJ had found. Jackson blazed with curiosity. Where had PJ had found this naturally occurring version of hypnoticin? Somehow, it had been PJ, not the rich, powerful Chaldexx, who had finally cracked the problem.

  Even more curiously, until PJ had transferred that test-tube into Jackson’s pocket at the airport, he’d kept that information from both Chaldexx and Jackson. He could understand if PJ had wanted to be first to publish or patent the finding. It was still a fairly shady way to treat a collaborator.

  A drug which conferred the power to hypnotize. Something like that would be difficult to get past the strict drug regulatory authorities. Who would it benefit? Surely it would infringe the rights of the innocent subjects?

  Why would Chaldexx spend so much investigating a drug which would almost certainly never be approved?

  DiCanio was right to fear the drug falling into the wrong hands. What was Hans Runig’s motive? For that matter, what was Chaldexx’s?

  DiCanio had the air of one who was still withholding something crucial. Jackson felt sure that she was getting ready to deliver the real bombshell. He was itching to find out what it could be.

  Just then, a pert, very fair-haired young woman entered carrying a tray with
a silver coffee pot and china cups and saucers. DiCanio busied herself with serving them both. She mused, “One thing you can say for the Swiss, they know really how to make coffee.”

  Jackson focused his attention back on the computer screen.

  “So what you’re onto, basically, could be a molecular basis for hypnosis, or something that looks a hell of a lot like it. It’s an amazing bit of science, Melissa. Presumably from this you can start to investigate the factors around it, maybe even get deeper into the biology of the brain-mind connection?” He rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. Maybe there was something in this for Chaldexx after all. For DiCanio, it could lead to that elusive Nobel Prize.

  DiCanio seemed delighted. Her enthusiasm was infectious. “The really interesting thing is when you start to look at the occurrence of the gene for jlf, in the human population.”

  “You said it was rare.”

  “Pretty rare. It only occurs less than 0.001 per cent of the human population. So we started looking at older sample from ancient human remains. We wanted to see how old this gene was. Because it came from a transposon, it could theoretically have entered the human genome at any time in the past. The question was when.”

  “You think it was a retrovirus infection or something?”

  “Maybe. We wanted to trace the approximate date of the introduction of the gene; the date when we could calculate that there would be only around one person with the gene. We felt that the best approach would be to actually look for the presence of the gene in DNA from ancient bones.

  “We got samples going back to twenty-thousand BC. You simply cannot imagine what a piece of work it was just to persuade all those museum curators to give us a few scrapings from their exhibits! And the evidence is absolutely clear; there’s no sign of the gene whatsoever before around three thousand BC. After three thousand BC, you can find it in people right through to the present day. But before three thousand BC, nothing.”

  Jackson was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy. The work she was describing would have taken years. Chaldexx might well have the resources – he even believed that they had the inclination – to fund the brain research. She wasn’t being straight with him.