He turned to face them, all personal satisfaction – euphoria even – gone, his attitude and mind coldly analytical. ‘I didn’t do this right, asking you to work as I did. I’m sorry. If it ever arises again, which I hope it doesn’t, it’ll be different. Give your cultures a little longer than the hour we decided upon. I’m going to analyse mine later, but particularly try to isolate if any of the three drugs that have been introduced appear to be causing the greatest damage.’
‘What sort of damage?’ asked Pulbrow.
‘France may be producing a range of Dubette-brand medicines that are going to kill people,’ declared Parnell, already on his way to the door.
As he walked further into the Spider’s Web, Parnell tried to calculate the fall-out from what he was about to do – what he had no alternative but to do – but very quickly gave up. There could only be one consideration, the ethical, diagnostic requirement; any personal repercussions were secondary, less than secondary even. Dubette should actually be eternally grateful, although he doubted that they would be; he certainly doubted if Dwight Newton and Russell Benn would be. Parnell hesitated at the door into the chemical research division, wondering whether to alert Benn first, but hurried on. The alarm, however it was sounded, had to come with the authority of Newton. To discuss it first, explain it first, to Benn would be a waste of time, and from the speed of the mutation Parnell didn’t believe there was any time whatsoever to waste. Any production of the new products had to be stopped immediately, any distribution not just halted but withdrawn, every single last bottle or pill, no matter how difficult to trace. And if that distribution were in Africa, that was going to be very difficult indeed to find.
There were still three women in Newton’s outer secretariat, all of whom looked up in surprise as Parnell burst in.
‘What…?’ trailed Newton’s personal assistant.
‘I need to see Dwight.’
The woman shook her head. ‘He’s chairing an audit meeting. And I know he wants to get away early.’
‘Tell him…!’ began Parnell but stopped, abruptly guessing there would be a damage-limitation operation. Less urgently he said: ‘Tell him that something extremely important has come up. Something that can’t wait until tomorrow: something he’s got to hear about and act upon tonight. I’ll be waiting in my office. Will you tell him that?’
‘What on earth is it?’ asked the woman.
‘Very important, like I just told you.’
Parnell did stop at Russell Benn’s unit on his way back. The research director was in his side office, notebook calculations and reference books side by side on the cluttered desk before him. Benn said: ‘You’re whipping up quite a wind, the speed you’re moving around.’
‘Hope you’re not planning to leave early tonight,’ said Parnell.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ demanded the man.
‘I’ve told Dwight I need to see him right away. Now! You need to be included.’
‘In what?’ frowned Benn.
‘Stopping Dubette killing people,’ declared Parnell, shortly.
‘ What!’ exclaimed Benn.
Parnell nodded at the shelves of textbooks behind the other man. ‘Look up hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyl transferase. And get a message through to Dwight that you want to be there when he and I speak.’
Everyone had completed their initial analysis by the time Parnell got back to his own department. Lapidus said: ‘How did you know?’
‘I didn’t,’ admitted Parnell.
‘What’s causing it to happen?’ asked Beverley.
‘I don’t know that, either. I just know it is happening, that in humans, at this rate of mutation, it’s potentially fatal. And that it’s got to be withdrawn.’
‘You mean it’s already in production?’ said Pulbrow.
‘I think it might be.’
‘Why? How?’ said Beverley.
‘I guess it comes down to money,’ said Parnell.
Twenty-Two
Parnell had anticipated that Russell Benn would already be in Dwight Newton’s office when he arrived, seated oddly at the side of the vice president’s desk, which gave the impression of a two-against-one confrontation. He’d expected it to be that, too, an initially belligerent confrontation, but it didn’t begin that way.
Quietly, without hectoring, Newton said: ‘What’s this about Dubette killing people?’
‘You told me everything added to the French formulae were placebos? That you and Russell had run all the checks and cleared them as safe.’ Parnell decided as much as possible against it appearing a challenge, although he guessed it wouldn’t be easy.
‘They are,’ insisted Benn, at once, more forceful than the vice president.
Benn at least considered himself to be challenged, Parnell accepted. ‘What animals did you test on in your clinical trials?’
‘Mice,’ said Benn. ‘They’re the most compatible.’
Parnell nodded. ‘You look up hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyl transferase, as I suggested?’
‘A growth enzyme,’ identified Benn.
The man had not looked beyond the dictionary definition, Parnell guessed. ‘Present in mice and humans. And essential. People born without it rarely reach maturity. Over-production of it can lead to all sorts of genetic imbalances – can even cause tumours or leukaemia. And the human body has no HPRT control mechanism…’
‘I told you we tested on mice,’ insisted Benn. ‘There was no harmful effect whatsoever.’
‘Mice have a control mechanism. Why or how hasn’t been isolated…’ He looked directly at the black scientist. ‘I’ve tested everything you gave me, made up from the new French formulae, on human blood. Everyone else in my department has done the same today, independent blind tests. All with the same unequivocal results. In about two hours there is a rapid increase in the production of HPRT… an increase a human body couldn’t control. Administration, quite obviously, will be fatal. Production in France has got to be stopped, immediately. I hope to God distribution hasn’t already begun…’
‘There must be more… different… independent experiments,’ blustered Benn, all truculence gone.
‘Production, distribution, has got to be stopped right away,’ insisted Parnell. ‘I extended my tests, separately upon liulousine, beneuflous and rifofludine. By themselves they don’t cause any HPRT increase. There has to be some chemical effect when they’re combined in the cocktail, or maybe with the colouring agents, although I doubt the colorants contributed.’ Parnell hesitated, unsure if he’d left anything unsaid. Quickly he added: ‘I’ve obviously kept all the tests, all the cultures, for you both to examine.’
‘Why did you do this?’ asked the virtually silent Newton, still quiet-voiced. ‘You – your unit – had been given a specific assignment.’
Parnell felt the rising anger but suppressed it, having hoped the absurd demand wouldn’t be made but, deep within himself, believing himself adjusted now to Dubette thinking and Dubette rationalizing, he was not truly surprised that Newton had asked it. Tightly, careless of their inferring contempt or disgust in his tone, Parnell said: ‘Which we have been working upon, uninterrupted, except for two or three hours today. And that interruption was upon my very definite instructions, to confirm my initial personal findings. I worked here on Saturday. Russell had made the samples available to me after our conversation, Dwight, about France. I did the tests on impulse, because the samples were there, right in front of me. You really want to talk about why I did it – my having just told you there was no positive reason – when I’ve just also told you what Dubette are manufacturing in France? And what the result of that manufacture will be?’ He didn’t feel like the explaining schoolboy any longer. Instead he very much felt himself the castigating schoolmaster addressing careless, culpably inattentive students. They even looked like caught-out, culpable, inattentive students, no longer unchangeable senior pharmaceutical executives. It didn’t give Parnell any satisfaction.