by Julius Fast
Staring at him, Jack said, "Yes. Go on."
"Well, sometimes a virus enters the cell and for some inexplicable reason, instead of destroying it at once it hooks on to the cell's hereditary material, the strip of DNA in the cell, the chromosome. When the cell reproduces, it reproduces the new altered chromosome, the chromosome with the attached virus. This new virus-chromosome can eventually fill thousands of cells, and then all of a sudden some trigger mechanism lets loose, and all the cells explode and the virus that's been hitchhiking down the genetic road bursts out in thousands from all those cells. Do you get the picture?"
Jack nodded and Stiener grinned. "Then why don't you take notes?"
Jack looked at his empty pad. "Frankly, I am too interested. Besides I've got good recall. Anyway, you'll have some published papers for me to check with."
"A few. This stuff is pretty basic. The point is, I haven't said anything new. The virus works through the cell's DNA, because the virus is also DNA—or sometimes RNA.
"The DNA molecule is a long strip, like a ladder, made up of thousands of different combinations of four simple bases. These combinations are like a code spelling out, to the body, the way to make enzymes that can build new cells. They're a blueprint.
"When a virus hooks on to this blueprint, it shakes up the configuration, and the new cells are built improperly, the wrong enzymes may be produced, or the virus may cause the cells to multiply wildly and savagely. Then the virus produces what we call cancer. Body function is interfered with, life processes are distorted and eventually the body dies." He spread his hands with finality and Jack felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.
"And you work with rats."
"That's the work our grant supports." He nodded at the lab behind his office. "We're crowded in here, but eventually we'll pop out and they'll have to give us some room." He ran his hand through a shock of black hair. "What we've done is to synthesize a DNA which contains only one base, not a mixture of bases as nature provides, not a coded DNA such as the body uses. You could think of it as a computer tape that hasn't been punched for directions. We code this DNA with a rat's pattern. Once it's coded, we can administer it to them in massive doses. It replaces the body's virus-damaged DNA. Why it happens we don't know. Maybe it's a more labile substance, more changeable. Anyway, it causes the cancer to regress.
"That's a very simplified explanation, but I don't think you'd understand the full procedure, no insult intended. You might think of it in terms of a vaccine, but that's only a mechanical similarity."
Jack stared at him for a long moment, then asked softly, "And beyond animals?"
"You mean on a clinical level? In humans?"
"Yes."
"We've never attempted it. That's the trouble with all of you medical writers. You jump the gun. What works in animals must work in humans and ergo, a new breakthrough, only that's not the way it happens."
"You said yourself that you were on the verge of a breakthrough."
"We are in animals, more specifically, in rats. We've made a few tumors disappear, artificially induced tumors. You can't equate one to the other, animals to man." He shook his head. "Look at it this way. Within its limits, in the rat as we've used it, the results warrant my use of the phrase breakthrough. A very tired cliche, I realize."
"But you could apply it to man."
Stiener stood up and stretched. "This office is so tiny it makes me feel cramped. Come on, I'll show you our labs."
Jack followed him through the corridor into the three small labs behind the office. One was stocked with animal cages, and the overpowering odor of laboratory white rats pushed out at them as Stiener opened the door. In one corner, like a dark shadow, there was a group of cages with grey wild rats in them.
"We inherited those from the psychopharmacology lab," Stiener nodded. "They were using tranquilizing agents on the wild rats—collected them down at the docks." He lifted his lip in a grimace of disgust. "I can't stomach them. White rats are one thing, sweet little fellows actually. But these wild cousins— You know, as a kid in New York I used to hunt them down by the East River. We'd peg rocks at them. You'd be surprised at how many I killed. They called me Eagle-eye Stiener. Never liked them. Make my flesh crawl."
Jack looked at the tier of cages and the prowling, shadowy animals. He felt none of Stiener's repulsion, but strangely enough a queer sense of sympathy for the caged rats. "Did you ever try your DNA on one of them?"
Stiener frowned. "On one, and the damned thing disappeared."
"Disappeared?"
"Someone must have let him out of the cage. Steve said he became a snake and wriggled out. I wonder what the psych boys would say about that? This is our radiation lab."
He opened the central door and pointed out, with justifiable pride, the massive electronic equipment that lined the walls. "We may look pretty shabby on the outside, but there's fifty thousand bucks' worth of grant money stacked up in this room alone."
The third room was set up as a biochemistry laboratory with two lead-topped tables under shelves of glassware and reagent bottles. The tables were covered with a bewildering array of equipment. A handsome, grey-eyed woman in her late thirties was working at the table. She had close-cropped, sandy hair and a glowing complexion that scorned cosmetics. When Jack came in she was titrating a colorless liquid into a glass dish filled with reagent, and as she reached the end point, the solution slowly turned pink. Shutting off the valve, she reached for a pack of cigarettes and grinned at them.
"Steve, this is Mr. Freeman, a medical writer from New York. This is my associate, Dr. Stephanie Douthright, a biochemist, and a good one too."
"The best in the business." She lit a cigarette and inhaled gratefully, then let the smoke trickle out. "That's better." She squinted at the titration apparatus and jotted down the fluid level, then turned to the men. "My first cigarette for the day."
"But not your last," Stiener frowned. "I thought the doctor told you to lay off."
"What the hell does he know? All right, relax. So I get me a cancer. You can shoot me full of DNA and I'll be as good as new. You said you needed a human volunteer." She boosted herself up on the table edge. "What kind of a story is he doing? Boy scientist cracks the genetic barrier or hereditary hitchhiker?"
She broke into laughter at Jack's startled look. "So he fed you that old one? I'm ashamed of you. He's been trying to palm off that title on every science writer who's ever been up here."
Embarrassed, Stiener said, "If you weren't so damned good, I'd bounce you on your butt."
She laughed again, a hearty guffaw, and reached out to rumple Stiener's hair as he ducked out of reach. "He just talks like that because he means it. Have you got your story?"
"Some of it. We were talking about using the method in humans."
Steve looked at Stiener sharply. "What did you tell him about that?"
Stiener's face was troubled. "I told him that what works in animals doesn't necessarily work in humans. You can't equate one to the other."
"The hell you can't." Steve ground out her half-smoked cigarette. "I've told you a dozen times that we're sitting on a powder keg. All we need is some experimental work in humans."
"Steve!" Stiener's voice was suddenly hard. "Mr. Freeman is a journalist. What is released for publication in this lab will be released by me."
She stared at him challengingly for a moment, then looked away and reached for the pack of cigarettes again. Her fingers were steady as she took one out, but her lips were tight.
Jack had been following the exchange eagerly. There was something here that built up his hopes. Stiener was cautious, correctly so. But had they tried it yet? Were they telling him the whole story?
"But you are set up for human experimentation?" he asked carefully.
"Set up? We have the DNA. We've even coded batches for humans. We know how to inject it—what other setup is necessary? That's not what holds me back," Stiener said with a frown. "Do you know what happened in
the States when they started testing Krebiozin?"
Steve snorted. "You're not comparing this to Krebiozin?"
"Of course not. This has no relationship to Krebiozin and we know it. It's the manner of testing. I'm not eager to be branded a charlatan."
"But if you had a terminal cancer case," Jack interrupted, "someone who was going to die in a few months ... wouldn't you try it then?"
"We haven't enough for a controlled study. One man—that would prove nothing."
"Except to the man," Steve murmured. Jack turned to her, and then back to Stiener.
"I am a writer," he said slowly, his heart beginning to race..
This was the gamble. "I work for the agency that puts out Clinical Notes, but I didn't come up here to do a story. Not for Cinical Notes or any other publication."
Stiener stared at him, scowling, as he went on slowly. "I—I want to tell you the truth." He looked around for a chair and pulled out a bench stool, almost collapsing on it. "I came up here because I saw your name on an article in a medical journal."
"The story..."
"The story was a hoax, to get me in here."
"An expensive hoax."
"I've thirty thousand dollars and no wife or children. Plane flight up here isn't so much, especially to a man with two months to live."
It was a bombshell, and he knew it. Stiener's head came up as his eyes widened. Steve slid off the bench to her feet. "Two months?" Stiener asked. "What do you mean?"
Jack took out a little cigar and unwrapped it. He cupped a match and bent to its flame, then straightened up. "I'm a terminal cancer case with two months to live. Gastric cancer, and it's inoperable, I've been told. It's metastasized throughout my body." The words, so calm and devoid of emotion were like coals in his mouth. "I have no family, no attachments and I'm afraid to die."
"We all die," Stiener said softly.
"In twenty years, ten years, a year, but none of us knows when. That doesn't matter. What matters is that there's no earthly reason why I shouldn't be your first case. What do you say to that?"
There was a long silence. The cold sunlight of the late afternoon lanced into the laboratory and shattered into color as it touched the glassware. Very quietly Stiener said, "I'd say we should have a drink, a long, serious drink."
Chapter Three
The bar of the Royal Edward was dark with atmosphere, from the burnished wooden beams to the heavy stained-oak benches and booths. A few dim, amber highlights gleamed off the polished brass mugs on the wall, but failed to do more than accent the darkness.
Jack, at one of the booths, turned his glass of Canadian whiskey absently, staring across the table at Stiener and Steve. Stiener, his voice heavy, was repeating what he had already told Jack a dozen times. "I cannot jump to human experiments. I haven't even established an LD50 in mice. How can I extrapolate dosage?"
"Your lethal dose doesn't matter. Don't you understand that nothing matters? I'm a dead man. There's nothing to lose."
"There are laws about human trials of drugs, new drugs."
"Item one," Steve said, stirring her drink with her finger. "DNA isn't a new drug. Item two: This is Canada, not the States. Item three: Who's to know?"
Stiener tossed a swizzle stick across the table. "Use this. That's a disgusting habit."
She grinned at him, lifting on eyebrow. "You're hostile."
"You're drunk." Stiener chewed his lip. "How do I know it will be specific for gastric cancer? Or even touch it? We've only tried it in artificial tumors in mice, a tumor that has not metastasized."
Jack sighed. They had been over this along with every possible objection that Stiener could raise, and as each was answered he went to another. They had been sitting here drinking for hours, arguing in a circle around what to him was a simple, basic point. He was sick. The drug spelled a chance of help. There was nothing to lose. Why not use it?
He felt an overwhelming wave of tiredness, and deep in his gut the nagging ever-present pain. Why fight? What did it matter? What was he chasing? Why?
Stiener was afraid with a fear born out of years of training. The drug showed promise in animals. He couldn't predict its action in humans. He was a researcher, not a clinician. It must be worked up gradually, cautiously, in an orthodox way, in a controlled way.
Looking at his watch, he stood up suddenly. "I'm an hour late. Martha will start worrying." He looked down at Jack indecisively, searching for words that didn't exist. "I'm sorry." Then abruptly he turned and hurried out of the bar. Steve looked after him cynically. "Now do you think that was just a way to beat the check?"
Jack sighed. "I don't know, but I think I'd like another drink."
Steve signalled the waiter. "Make it four, two gins and bitters and two of those lousy Canadian boozes for him." She stared across the table at Jack, her sandy, short-cropped hair and square face suddenly softened by the dim light. "We can at least get drunk."
"There's a world of philosophy in you, Steve." He finished the glass of whiskey quickly and sighed. "Tell me, how did a nice kid like you get into a racket like this?"
Steve let out a bellow of laughter. "I like you. Finish up and I'll show you my garden."
"That's a new one. It used to be etchings when I was young— when we were both young—that must have been a million years ago."
"Speak for yourself, sonny."
They had another round and then, warm and high, they left the bar. Outside the sun was low above the city and the air had turned cold. Jack could feel the liquor spread through him. On an empty stomach he'd really feel this!
As if reading his thoughts, Steve said, "Let's get some food into us. Come on over to my place. It's only a few minutes away. I'll scramble some eggs."
Jack nodded and Steve took his arm as they walked. "I've got some feminine vestiges yet."
He started to protest and then shook his head. "I don't know. I'm too high to tell." The drinks were like a barrier between himself and the world. He had come here on a last, slim hope. Now it was gone. So what? Find another "cure for cancer"? Search for a quack? Or maybe, he thought bitterly, just stay drunk. At least it made thinking harder and he didn't have to worry about becoming an alcoholic.
Steve's home was a small, two-storied house, squeezed in between an apartment building on one side and a store on the other. "I rent the whole thing," she told him, opening the door and switching on the light. "The whole damn house is only twelve feet wide. I've got a living room and kitchen downstairs and a bedroom upstairs—and my garden."
The living room was a surprise, a completely feminine room with organdy curtains, frilly lampshades and flowered wall paper. Steve grinned at his expression. "That's Rhoda's doing."
"Rhoda?"
"My..." Steve hesitated. "My roommate. You'll meet her later. Make yourself to home and I'll rassle up some grub." She threw off her jacket and went through to the kitchen where a clatter of pots and pans announced her progress. Jack touched the couch and then pushed the organdy curtains aside and peered out. There was an alley alongside the house, and beyond it the vague shadows of a garden.
"Help yourself to some booze," Steve shouted. "There's a bottle and glasses on the sideboard."
He mixed a stiff drink and then wandered into the kitchen, searching for ice. She had set two places at the small table and was taking the eggs off the stove. "Sit down. You're just in time."
The eggs were good and the coffee was perfect. Filled, he sat back and lit one of his cigars. "Well, where do I go from here?"
Steve stared at him speculatively. "You let Stiener off the hook. He was defensive, and maybe if you had pushed real hard — I don't know."
"Will he change his mind?"
"No. He'll have time to come up with a dozen other reasons to justify himself. A nice guy. Sweet, but scared as hell of the label quack." She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. "It's the nature of the beast, of this kind of research. You get burned pretty often with the wrong kind of publicity and every doctor is ready t
o jump on you."
"Steve, tell me on the level, is there a chance that his DNA could help in my kind of cancer?"
She chewed her lower lip. "I don't know. Maybe there's a chance; maybe not. If the cancer is viral as he's convinced all cancer is—I'm not so sure, if the artificial DNA replaces it, if your own body cells aren't harmed by the DNA, if—so damn many ifs. How can anyone say? We're truly groping in the dark."
He sat there, looking down at his plate for a long time. Then suddenly Steve stood up. "Come on, let's look at my garden."
She led him through the kitchen door and down the narrow alley to the rear of the house. The garden was a twelve-foot square, a typical city house backyard surrounded by a tall wooden fence. It was dark, but there was almost a full moon and with that, plus the light that spilled out of the kitchen window, Jack could see the garden, not clearly, but with enough detail to make him gasp.
There were a half dozen trees and twice that many shrubs, all overgrown and distorted into wild, nightmarelike caricatures. Every branch and trunk had misshapen galls and protuberances, wild excrescences bulging out of the bark, and from these startling growths shot up and down and out.
Blossoms grew where they had no reason to, and roots, trunks and leaves seemed confused and disorganized. It was a garden of insanity, of wild, unrestrained growth without rhyme or reason, and it made Jack wince and unconsciously draw back.
"Like 'em?"
"What the hell are they?"
"Take a look. They won't bite."
He walked forward and examined what looked like the misshapen figure of a maple tree. Only a handful of leaves were five-pointed; most were long and tapering, some like ferns. For every stiff branch there was one that drooped and swayed in the breeze, almost with a motion of its own. Here and there along the stems, flowers bloomed, no two alike.
He shook his head, and wandered to another bush, again a travesty of nature or a miracle of grafting. Different flowers ranging through every color of the floral spectrum bloomed along the stems. Farther along, a tall, slim birch sported a mosaic of varicolored bark, and at the far end of the garden a weeping willow drooped with deep, unmistakably blue leaves.
