Blowback

“In one building, people who had been infected with the illness were hung from the ceiling, apparently while still alive.”

“It would appear that you’ve just learned something else,” said Vanessa. “Anecdotal, of course, but potentially useful.”

“Which is?”

“We may be looking at an illness that needs to grow in vivo, rather than in vitro.”

“You mean it has to be grown inside of people?”

“Maybe not every batch, but if this illness had been lying around for over two thousand years, whoever is behind it might have wanted to increase its potency by exposing it to the human immune system and letting it figure out how to beat it before setting it loose.”

“Are you saying this thing can learn?” asked Harvath.

“All living things learn. Their survival depends on it. They must adapt and overcome. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

Harvath contemplated that possibility as Mrs. Whitcomb continued. “After dripping down, the snake’s venom would then collect in the bottom of the pot and congeal into a yellowish gumlike substance. When the viper eventually died, another pot was placed beneath it to catch the watery serum as it drained from the carcass. It took about three days for those secretions to jell into a deep black substance. At this point, you had two completely different poisons that killed in two completely different ways. Neither of which was very pretty.”

“How did they kill?”

“Well, the black substance was said to cause the lingering-style death over several years, while the yellowish poison derived from the pure venom-are you ready for this?”

Harvath nodded his head and leaned toward her.

“The pure venom concoction caused violent convulsions followed by the victim’s brain turning to a black liquid that ran out his nasal passages,” said Vanessa as she sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest as if to say beat that.

Harvath looked at Jillian, who simply nodded her head. “And there’s nothing else that causes the brain to liquefy and run out the nose like that?” he asked.

“Not one single thing on this earth,” replied Vanessa.

TWENTY-FIVE

As the facts tumbled around the fertile soil of Harvath’s brain looking for places in which they could take root, he asked, “If this is about snake venom, why can’t we use some sort of antivenin?”

“Because,” said Alan Whitcomb, “we don’t exactly know for sure what we’re dealing with here. Improper use of antivenin can not only delay a patient’s recovery, but more often than not, it can actually speed up the mortality process. Unfortunately, because of the rarity of this snake, there are no test kits or special instruments available for the conclusive identification of the presence of Azemiops feae venom. There is also no known antivenin.”

Harvath was frustrated. What good was discussing what kind of venom they might be dealing with if there was no sure way to detect it and no sure way to treat it? “I don’t understand, “He replied as he looked at Alan. “Jillian said that she had come to both of you for help because she believes the illness is derived from something in antiquity. If you’re not a paleopathologist, how do you fit into all of this?”

“Well, as Jillian said, my field is molecular biology-which encompasses both biophysics and biochemistry. In short, I study the building blocks of life, specifically something called aDNA. In case you’re wondering, the a stands for ancient. Many people in my field like to refer to it as molecular archeology. You see, for a very long time the scientific powers that be didn’t see a need for our expertise in helping examine human remains. The commonly held belief was that degradation of DNA occurred within hours or days after an individual’s death.

“The tide turned in our favor, though, in the early eighties when a group of scientists reported finding a significant amount of viable genetic information in a four-thousand-year-old Egyptian mummy. A few years later the PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, technique was invented and voilà, molecular archeology was born. Ever since, it has been possible to extrapolate a lot of data from minimal traces of DNA.”

“How minimal?”

“Theoretically, one needs only a single molecule for a positive result.”

“Like Jurassic Park?” asked Harvath, slightly embarrassed that his contribution to the conversation was nothing more than a pop culture reference. Not that anybody could fault him for reaching. The concepts they were discussing were very difficult to comprehend.

“ Jurassic Park was a good story, but it seriously stretched the bounds of credibility. As far as we can tell, DNA probably can’t last much more than ten thousand years and definitely not beyond one hundred thousand years, so the concept of finding viable DNA in a mosquito from over sixty-five million years ago gets a bit of a laugh from those of us in the scientific community.”

“So Jurassic Park-style cloning couldn’t be done then.”