OMEGA

by Patrick Lynch

  But then the road was running out. The asphalt surface was split and buckled. Loose grit rapped the underside of the car. Then the impact with a pothole almost threw her against the roof. She put on the brakes and slewed to a halt just short of a junction. A small metal sign read 150th Street East, although there was nothing for miles around but Joshua trees and scrub. She was somewhere on the outskirts of Lancaster, a city of a thousand square miles—planned, but never built, except for a huddle of housing developments by the Sierra Highway. A distant cluster of sodium streetlights marked the spot.

  She sat for a while, unable to understand what had happened. She knew this road so well, and for a moment she had the impression that the road itself had changed, had reverted to what it must have been twenty years ago. She checked her wristwatch. Then she turned and looked back at the ruler-straight track and her own drifting dust.

  There was something she had been meaning to do. She remembered now. With all the excitement she’d put it out of her mind, hadn’t wanted it to cloud things. But now…

  Staring out at the desert, she picked up the car phone, and keyed in the number for the Willowbrook’s pediatric ICU. It was Conrad Allen who answered. His voice sounded as though it were coming from a long way off.

  “I thought you’d be gone by now, Conrad,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be starting at Cedars-Sinai?”

  “Yeah, well … Helen, can you hang on just a…”

  Helen listened to muffled voices. A woman’s, urgent, distressed; then Allen’s, explaining something with exaggerated calm.

  “Sorry about that. The ICU’s blood gas machine is on the fritz. So naturally everybody has to start screaming. What was it you were…? Oh, yeah, the job. Well, you know. What with one thing and another, I … what’s the expression? Well, I changed my mind. I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think it was the right move for me in the end.”

  Helen felt a vague wash of irritation—a confusing feeling that was almost like physical discomfort.

  “But I thought this was what you had been waiting for,” she said. “Marcus said you were all set.”

  Allen sighed into the phone. It had obviously been a long day.

  “Yeah … Yeah, I was, but … I didn’t want to leave just yet. Not with all this going on. I mean, the problems.”

  “You’re staying because of the problems?”

  “Well”—he laughed, seeing the funny side of it—“we’re supposed to make things better, right? I mean, doctors. That’s what we train for. Besides, their … the approach they have up there, in those kinds of places, I’m not altogether happy about it. I don’t think it’s for me.”

  Helen cut the engine.

  “It sounds like you’re staying for good.”

  “Well, nothing’s forever. Anyway, we’ll see.” There was a pause, a crackle on the line. “So was there anything…?”

  There was one Joshua tree that was bigger than the rest. Its silhouette stood out stark and black against the sky. It looked dead, but it came to Helen that the species was, in truth, prolifically fertile. It had to be because of its environment, the white-hot days, the freezing nights. Kernahan had told her that.

  “Helen?”

  “Yes. Sorry, I was just … I’m fine, fine. I called … I wanted to know about Sunny Ford. Is she … Is there any change?”

  There was a long pause. Helen could hear the noise of activity in the ICU.

  “No,” said Allen eventually. “I’m afraid not. In fact we’re going to operate tomorrow morning.”

  “Operate? You mean, surgery?”

  “Uh-huh. A colectomy.”

  “A colectomy? What does that involve?”

  Allen hesitated.

  “I’m sorry … Helen, but we’re not supposed to give out those kinds of details. Only to immediate family.”

  Helen stared hard at the Joshua tree.

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” she said.

  “It’s just one of those rules.”

  “Sure, I understand. Will you be…?”

  “Operating? Yes.”

  “Is Dr. Lee there?”

  “I don’t … No, I don’t think he is. But I’ll tell him you called, if you like.”

  She wanted to say something, something more, but no words came.

  “Yes, please. Well, then…”

  She frowned, trying to find something appropriate to say, but what was there? What could you say in the face of such bleakness?

  “Good luck, Conrad,” was all she could manage.

  She hung up and then sat for a moment listening to the silence. Outside, the sunset had deepened into scarlet and indigo. She climbed out of the car and was surprised by the coolness of the desert air. Overhead the stars were shimmering in a cobalt sky, but away to the south she could see big nimbus clouds building. She told herself that she had never seen anything so beautiful.

  Then she suddenly wanted to walk, to walk out into the desert. She wanted to feel its emptiness, to feel the space. She took a couple of paces off the road—lost her footing, stumbled. She looked down at her Ferragamo shoes and was surprised to see that they were covered in dust. Tears pricked at her eyes. She was just overwrought, she told herself, dabbing at her lashes with the back of her hand.

  4

  They kept him in a bare, windowless room with two plastic chairs on either side of a Formica-covered table and a line of laundry bins next to a chute. High up on one wall a fan turned behind a steel grille, blowing a stream of warm, detergent-smelling air across his forehead. A poster of Yosemite National Park was pinned to the back of the door.

  He had tried to argue with them. All he needed was half an hour. All he needed to do was get across town, get to the Willowbrook with the drug, and Sunny would be all right. He had been so close, had held Omega in the palm of his hand. He had pleaded with them, offered to go with them, to pay them, anything, but they hadn’t listened. There had been a brief, unceremonious search in which they had taken his wallet, his car keys, his black bag, and then the bottle of capsules.

  It was Denman who had stayed with him in the room, flicking through a copy of Newsweek, looking up at him occasionally and smiling.

  At ten minutes before eight he heard footsteps outside in the hall. He thought at first it was the police. Then somebody was asking questions, getting answers from the big guy in the suit who’d been standing outside Edward Turnbull’s room. Their voices were subdued, as if they didn’t want to be overheard. Denman put down the magazine and got to his feet.

  “Who’s that?” Ford asked. “Your boss?”

  Denman raised a warning finger, but said nothing, just stood there, watching the door until it opened and Marshall West stepped into the room.

  Ford got to his feet. He’d expected somebody from the hospital, the medical director or the CEO. The flood of relief he felt at the sight of his friend immediately gave way to confusion. It didn’t make any sense. West came into the room until he was standing directly opposite Ford on the other side of the table.

  “Hello, Marcus,” he said. There was weariness in his voice and disappointment. He gestured to the empty plastic chair.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  He looked different from the way he had that morning. His skin was shiny and the shaving nick was red and angry as if he had been scratching at it. Ford watched him sit down and then lowered himself back into his chair.

  “We found these on him,” said Denman. He put the bottle of capsules on the table.

  West eyed Ford for a moment, picked up the bottle, and unscrewed the cap. He emptied some of the pink-and-yellow capsules into the palm of his hand and closed his fist around them, as if weighing their worth.

  “Where did you get these?” he asked.

  And then Ford understood. Denman and the others were working for West. He was their boss. And they were here to guard the very thing Ford had come looking for.

  “Where do you think?” he said.

  West nodded slowly.


  “Ah, yes, my nephew.” He began putting the capsules back one by one into their bottle. His hands were shaking. “He’s a good kid, you know. I think he’ll go far.”

  “Further than he would have with one arm, that’s for sure.”

  West smiled, let the last capsules drop into the bottle. Then he screwed the cap down and put the bottle back on the table.

  “And how did you know…? What made you think it was worth visiting him? I’m assuming this wasn’t a purely social visit.”

  It was Ford’s turn to smile.

  “What difference does it make? Word’s out, Marshall. Soon everybody will know about Omega. Soon everybody will know how you had the drug and how you let people die.”

  West fell silent, his mouth clamped shut as if there were things he wanted to say, but couldn’t.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said at last, defiance creeping into his voice, “I don’t share your pessimism on that count. I think we’re still well within the”—he paused to savor the phrase—“parameters of plausible deniability. Provided everybody keeps their heads.”

  “Keeps their heads? I think you mean holds their tongues. What have you got going, Marshall? Some nice little deal with Apex? Or is this just another one of your fund-raising schemes for the county?”

  West looked momentarily perplexed.

  “Oh, I see.” He nodded to himself. “You think this is about money.”

  “What else?” said Ford.

  West considered him for a moment, slowly shaking his head.

  “You of all people, Marcus. Surely you can see there’s more to it than that. How long ago was that conference we went to? Three weeks, a month?”

  Ford looked across at Denman and then back.

  “A month ago,” said West, “you were telling us how the drug industry was failing us because all it cared about was profits and market shares. How we needed to regulate before it was too late, how governments had to step in before we found ourselves defenseless against resistant microbes, before our hospitals became … became plague ships, if you’ll forgive me using that phrase. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you were saying we had to find another way somehow. And, Marcus, I agree with you. A lot of people agree with you. More people than you know. Why do you think I got you invited to that conference in the first place?”

  Ford looked up as West leaned forward in his chair.

  “You and I…” he said, “we’re on the same side.”

  For a moment it looked as if West was going to touch him, touch him on the arm, as if they were old buddies, old friends. Ford felt a shudder of revulsion. He pushed back from the table and stood up.

  “On the same side? On the same side, you sonofabitch!” Denman stepped forward, but West gestured to him to stay back. “You lied to me. You told me to give up and go home. You told me to give up on my daughter because there was nothing that could be done. What was it you said? She was going to get the best treatment. You stood there, you sonofabitch, you looked me in the eye and said—”

  West raised his hands.

  “I know.”

  Ford was halted by the look of anguish in West’s face. West drew a hand across his forehead.

  “I know that’s what I … I didn’t like doing that, Marcus, I didn’t…” He closed his eyes as if in pain. “I wanted to help you, believe me, but I’m not … a free agent in this. There are rules I’m bound to observe … protocols. The truth is, I couldn’t take a chance on your keeping quiet. You weren’t … You weren’t stable.”

  Ford searched the other man’s face.

  “Quiet about what? What are we … What’s this all about?”

  West let out a short breath, almost smiled.

  “Helical, Marcus. Omega. I’m surprised you haven’t worked it out already. You seem to be so sure about everything.”

  Then he was suddenly uncomfortable. He stood up, took off his jacket.

  “Christ, it’s hot in here.”

  He slipped his jacket over the back of his chair and stood with his hands on his hips, considering Ford, who was still standing on the other side of the table.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m going to tell you everything. I’m going to tell you because I want you to understand. I want you to see we had no choice.”

  He gestured to Ford’s empty chair.

  “Please,” he said.

  He waited until Ford had sat down again before regaining his own seat.

  “Nineteen ninety-two,” he said. “April, I think. That’s when Helical’s research team made their big breakthrough. It came almost out of the blue, and much sooner than they’d expected.” His eyes narrowed as he struggled to recall all the detail. “For years they’d been trying to find a way to kill bacteria by blocking the transmission of genetic information inside them. In effect, to stop them producing vital proteins.”

  “Antisense,” said Ford, recalling what Helen Wray had told him.

  “That’s right.” West looked up. “So you know about that?”

  Ford shrugged.

  “Well, then you’ll know perhaps that Helical was trying to make an antibiotic based on oligonucleotides. You know what they are? Highly complex molecules made of DNA. They bind to specific sites on messenger RNA, effectively blocking their message. They’re called oligomers for short.”

  Ford shifted in his chair.

  “Yeah, I heard something about it.”

  “Well, Helical had a problem. These big molecules are delicate, they degrade quickly, and many bacteria’s defenses can handle them. So the oligomers had to have extra chemical protection built into them, and progress on that was very slow.”

  “So Helical needed money. Let me guess: they approached Stern.”

  “They needed the support of a larger company. You see, everyone was beginning to run out of patience, the banks, the equity capital people, everyone. Then one day somebody—Charles Novak, actually—stumbled on a much simpler, tougher RNA molecule: a ribozyme. It’s actually a naturally occurring genetic tool, but Novak saw that it could be biochemically engineered to recognize the same genetic sites as the oligomers. The key difference is, instead of binding with the RNA, blocking its message, the ribozymes simply cut the RNA in two, destroying the transcripts. And they’re small, pass much more easily through the bacterial wall. And once they’ve done their job one time, they’re free to pass on to the next messenger and the next. They won’t rest until the bug is dead.”

  “A genuine magic bullet,” said Ford under his breath.

  “Tough, efficient, lethal. The ribozyme discovery knocked at least five years off Helical’s research schedule, probably more.”

  “So? What happened to the drug?”

  “What happened, Marcus, was that for the first time Novak and his team began to see what it might actually mean if their discovery were commercialized in the normal way, made available in the normal way. And they began to have second thoughts.”

  Ford tilted his head over to one side.

  “A little late for that, wasn’t it?”

  “You’d think so. It was the big prize they’d been working towards for years. It was the reason they created Helical in the first place.”

  “So? I don’t get it.”

  West smiled.

  “Marcus, did you know that at the start of the Second World War most of the world’s leading nuclear scientists were German?”

  Again Ford looked at Denman, as if his reaction might help him understand what was actually being disclosed.

  “Well, they all went to work for Hitler. Rolled up their sleeves and got busy trying to make an atomic bomb. And by rights, they should have got there first.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “Bear with me. When the Nazis surrendered, the British locked these guys away in an old country house. Let them read the news every day—including the news about Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and they bugged their conversations. The Brits couldn’t figure out why the German team hadn’t got further. They
even suspected that some of the team—being decent, educated fellows—had been deliberately dragging their feet. But what they discovered was these men of science hadn’t even considered the implications of giving Hitler the bomb. They’d never even discussed it. Why? Because they all assumed that the war would be over, one way or another, years before anybody could make such a weapon. It was only when they saw that somebody had that the arguments started between them.”

  “I don’t see the connection.”

  West closed his hands on the table.

  “What I’m saying is this. We’re in a war, and we’re losing. The bugs are way ahead of us. The old weapons get less effective every day. You’ve seen bacilli at the Willowbrook that can beat vancomycin. Believe me, you’re not alone. I’ve seen reports—confidential reports—that would scare the shit out of you. Half the hospitals in Europe have suffered major outbreaks of multiple-resistant pathogens during the last eighteen months. The percentage in North America is probably higher, only no one wants to admit it because they’re afraid of losing business. The situation—”

  “I know what the situation is. I’ve seen it for myself.”

  West sat back, reining himself in. His voice returned to its normal calm, measured level.

  “Well, Novak and his people saw it first. They saw it coming. They knew that what they’d come up with might be the last broad-spectrum antibiotic for a generation. That’s why they started calling it Omega. The last, Marcus. And if it went the way of the others, if it was patented and sold, and exported and marketed and every goddam thing, then five years down the line it would be as useless as everything else. You’d think they might have considered the problem ahead of time, but they didn’t, not until they were actually standing on the brink.”