"Decker," she whispered in feigned embarrassment, "you look like you're undressing me with your eyes."
"Oh," he responded with a smile and a gleam, "I'm way past that."
Decker was feeling much better.
Derwood, Maryland
The Hawthorne family arrived at Dulles Airport outside Washington early in the morning and were surprised to find a limousine waiting there to pick them up – courtesy of Hank Asher. For the next three days Decker, Elizabeth, Hope and Louisa spent time getting to know each other again. They bought jumbo steamed blue crabs at Vinnie's Seafood and went to a small park they knew at one of the C &O canal locks. They stayed around the house and just talked. They cooked steaks on the grill. They went shopping. They drove around town so Decker could get reacquainted. They just did whatever they wanted to do.
At about noon on the third day the phone rang and Decker answered it. It was Professor Goodman.
"Decker, we need to talk," Goodman said with what seemed to Decker to be a bit of self-important urgency.
"Sure, Professor. I want to follow up on that story we talked about, anyway. How about some time in a month or so?" After three years as a hostage, even the 'biggest story since Columbus discovered America' could wait a few more weeks.
"Not soon enough." Goodman's voice gave no indication he was even aware that Decker had been gone.
"Well, I'm really not in any shape for a long trip," Decker responded. "I've just gotten back from three years in a small room in Lebanon and I thought I'd take it easy for awhile."
"Yes, I know all about that," Goodman said. "I do read the newspaper, you know. You're quite a celebrity. But you don't have to go anywhere. Martha and I are in Washington. In fact we're here in Derwood, at the German restaurant two blocks from your house."
"What are you doing here?" Decker asked in surprise.
"I came out for a scientific conference. Martha had never seen Washington and insisted on coming along. Christopher is staying with a friend from school. So can we come over or not?"
Decker quickly talked it over with Elizabeth and they agreed to have the Goodmans come over, but Decker insisted that the professor promise it would take no more than an hour. Harry and Martha Goodman arrived in just minutes. Elizabeth had never met Martha Goodman and both women felt a little uncomfortable – Mrs. Goodman for imposing, and Elizabeth about being imposed upon.
Professor Goodman made it clear that the subject of the conversation was for Decker's ears only, so Elizabeth suggested that Mrs. Goodman go for a walk with her and the girls.
As soon as they left, Goodman began.
"I'm sorry to barge in on you but it isn't really for my welfare that I'm here. There are a thousand other reporters out there who would love to get an exclusive on what I'm about to tell you."
Decker realized that Goodman was probably right. He just hadn't planned on getting back to work quite so soon. "Of course," he said. "It's just that I really need to spend some time with my family."
"I understand that. But what I'm about to tell you will change the world forever. Forgive me, I just thought you might be interested," Goodman added with mild sarcasm.
Decker's once overpowering curiosity had lain dormant for nearly three years. Deep inside he felt it stir again. "I don't want to impose any more than necessary," Goodman said, "so I'll leave a copy of my notes for you to study later. Right now, I'll just give you a summary."
Decker retrieved a fresh yellow legal pad and Goodman began.
"First of all, you remember that the last time we talked, we discussed the methodology I used for creating the viral cancer antibodies, and I told you that it would probably also work on AIDS and other viral strains? Well, that work has continued with some outstanding results. But as important as that work is, all that I could really ever hope to accomplish with that methodology was to use the C-cells as an agent for producing antibodies. That seemed to me to be little more than running a 'pill factory.' Well, I didn't want to just make 'pills.' Even if they could cure cancer or AIDS, it still seemed to be such a waste of potential. What I really wanted to do was to figure out some way of altering the cells of living people to enhance their own immune system.
"For a long time it just ate at me. How could I ever hope to alter the genetic structure of every cell in the human body? You can make changes on a few cells in a laboratory. With C-cells it's even possible, as we both know, to create a totally immune individual like Christopher. But how do you give that immunity to someone else like you or me? That had me stumped."
Decker listened quietly, nodding when appropriate. Goodman was going to tell his story the way he wanted to tell it, and the best thing to do was just listen.
"Then I had an idea. Decker, do you know how the AIDS virus works?" Decker thought he had a pretty good idea, but before he could answer the question, Goodman continued. "All around the outside of the AIDS virus are tiny spikes which are made of glycoproteins. These spikes are imbedded in a fatty envelope which forms the outer shell of the virus. Inside this envelope are RNA strands, each with a quantity of reverse-transcriptase enzyme. The spikes bind the AIDS cells to healthy cells of the immune system, called T-cells, by establishing an attractive link with certain receptor molecules which occur naturally on the healthy T-cells. The infection occurs when the virus is absorbed into the interior of the healthy cell. Once inside the T-cell each individual strand of RNA material in the virus is converted into a complementary strand of DNA by the reverse-transcriptase enzyme. Enzymes which occur naturally in the cell duplicate the DNA strand, which then enters into the nucleus of the cell. That strand then becomes a permanent part of the heredity of that cell!" Goodman paused for Decker's reaction.
"Okay, so then what?" Decker had understood most of Goodman's explanation but failed to comprehend the significance.
"Don't you see? The AIDS virus is able to alter the genetic structure of living cells and it does it inside the body!"
Suddenly Decker realized what Goodman was getting at. "You mean you could remove the harmful genetic material from the nucleus of the AIDS virus… "
"… and replace it with the specific immunity-providing DNA strands from the C-cells," Goodman said, finishing Decker's sentence. "Except, of course, viral cells do not have a nucleus, they have simply a core." Goodman – ever the professor – could not allow such an error, no matter how insignificant to the main topic, to pass uncorrected. "That way it's not necessary to alter each individual cell of the body. We can accomplish nearly the same result by just altering the T-cells!"
"And that result is… " Decker urged.
"Total immunity! Maybe even reversing the aging process! Life expectancies of two, three, four hundred years, maybe more!" Goodman's voice had grown as excited as he dared risk without sacrificing the appearance of appropriate scientific aloofness.
"So when can you begin to move beyond theory on this?"
"I already have," Goodman answered. "I began working on it two and a half years ago. For the first six months I focused my efforts on a cold virus. I felt that the dangers involved in using an AIDS virus were too great, and I must concede that the problems I encountered with my previous AIDS research soured me on having anymore to do with it."
"Does the cold virus work like the AIDS virus?" Decker asked.
"Similarly, but the AIDS virus is actually a retro- or reverse-virus because of the existence of the reverse-transcriptase enzyme which converts the RNA strand into a DNA strand. There are a number of other differences as well, but for the early studies the differences didn't really matter. All I needed was a carrier, some means of bringing the desired genetic information to the individual T-cells of the immune system. I got as far as the creation of an extremely resilient second-generation test strain. Of course at that time I was still experimenting to isolate the specific DNA strands in the C-cells that were needed for transplant into the carrier virus.