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A.R.Yngve DARC AGES Book Three _________________________ |
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![]() DNA in microscope |
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Chapter 26
It was the beginning of Tsemba, the last month of the year 940 AM. Windowpanes were fitted and reinforced in the front wall of Mechao's mountain mansion. Mechao had daughters from two earlier short marriages, who were spread about the islands of Kap Verita, in keeping with the tradition of uphoding a reduced male population. But it was Amada who had given him his four sons, who in turn had given him grandsons, appointed inheritors of his estate. Thus, through the ties of mutual obligations, Amada alone remained his lawful wife. The two oldest sons were his full-time apprentices in the laboratory; they were to keep the ancient knowledge when he was gone. Neither of the two matched their father in intelligence, but they possessed the kind of endless patience that could carry them through their education. When Mechao gave them the task of locating Virus B, it meant long, focused, repetitive work. Ancient books, hundreds of catalogs covering the basic structure of human genes, had to be searched for the control genes which governed the processes that Virus B had distorted in the Lepers. Nobody knew exactly which control genes to look for, so the search went by trial and error. Samples of Eye-Leg's DNA were then examined, and each control gene was scanned for some small mutation which might be the hidden virus. When no fault was found in one control gene, Mechao's sons proceeded to check the next one. By this time, the year 940 AM approaching its end, they had spent countless hours searching the old catalogs of human DNA. Then it happened: among thousands and thousands of musty pages, they found a control gene that appeared malformed in the Leper girl's cells. Using a simple, ancient chemical procedure, they separated this control gene from the cell sample, isolated it and duplicated it several thousand times. The white-clad young men hurried to tell their father and Darc. The two scientists were not overly enthusiastic at first, until they could see the evidence with their own eyes. They went to a powerful, large microscope and magnified a crystallized sample of the DNA segments. Darc scanned the scattering of duplicated molecules, seeing only a pile of genetic stumps, when -- |
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"There!" Darc whispered as he peered with one eye at the black-and-white image on the small viewplate. He urged Mechao forward to have a look. "See that tiny lump in the chain, Mechao?" he said eagerly. "I feel it in my bones, it has to be Virus B! It's the smallest damned virus I've ever seen! It's so small, that the cells must mistake it for a part of the normal DNA. When the cell divides, the virus is duplicated together with the rest of the cell."
Mechao replied, without looking up from the microscope: "I was not certain all this time whether it was located there, in the actual core DNA of the cell. The gene chains are constantly being repaired and corrected by the inner mechanisms of the cell. How could the gene stick to the DNA in the first place, without being discovered and erased through natural repair?" Darc thought hard, even as he spoke: "Perhaps... perhaps Virus B has an accomplice somewhere in the cell. Another virus, that keeps the cell's defenses in check. I don't know. But we'll find out sooner or later." Darc was exhilarated; he hugged Mechao's two sons, grinning at them as they nearly choked in his embrace. "You boys have saved the world! Saved the world, I say!" "It would never have happened without you, Master Darc," one of them mumbled. "We were just doing the procedures." "He's right," Mechao confirmed, looking up. "Should we act now? I think I can repair those infected genes in Eye-Leg -- right now, the way I altered your immune system when you were sick, Darc. It would only take a few weeks at most, and then she should be clean of the virus. But --" Both Darc and Mechao recognized each other's hesitation. A mistake now might prove fatal to the Leper girl, as she was recovering from the body transplantation. But her head cells still contained the dreaded Plague Virus B, and if they did not remove the virus -- then it could very likely spread to her new body. If the new body transplant came to suffer Plague mutations and deformities, the strain would surely end her life. "If only I could buy more time," Darc muttered. He had done that once, when he froze himself -- this, however, was another time. Even if they by some miracle could freeze Eye-Leg alive, that would make her no safer from other threats. After some debate, Mechao and Darc decided to begin the gene therapy immediately. They promised solemnly that before the end of the year, Eye-Leg would be a completely healthy human being, and no longer a Leper. A sample of normal control genes were extracted and duplicated in the laboratory, to be transferred to Eye-Leg's cells. |
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