saw Dale. The man with the gun was behind him and Dale wanted in. John wasn't going to let that happen. He held up a finger and turned his back to Dale.
“I promise.” he said to Ruth.
She hung up. John had left out the part about the gunman. What good was that going to do? He had decided to wait until he knew more, or until the police showed up. John was sure he could keep Jason safe in the meantime. He'd done the same for Alice. He remembered how is father had become more erratic after the man lost his job and his wife died. Dad had never been a stable man and these setbacks pushed him over the edge. John had become used to protecting his sister when their father was on a bender, but there was one incident that required a little more force. Just like now, John jad been cornered in a room with a helpless kid. Well, in chronological age Alice hadn't been a kid as young as Jason, but mentally she had. And just like now, the man in John's way had been a fierce, violent prick. Back then, John had found a way to dispatch his attacker in such a way that no one heard from the man again. He'd just been a teenager then. His adult self ought to be even more capable.
John looked for Jason. He wasn't there. That was not a problem he'd expected to have.
He glanced through the window where Dale and the gunman had been. Now the whole gang was gathered around. There was something else, and it was the strangest thing John had ever seen.
TWENTY SIX
Ruth Holland, no longer a detective, crossed the Mass Ave bridge into Cambridge and turned onto Vassar Street. She found herself among the buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cement Jersey barriers narrowed the street to a single lane. Torn up black top and construction equipment filled the cordoned off space. Beyond that she could see the chain link fence and bleachers that marked the edge of MIT's rugby field. Squat brick industrial buildings and parking garages lined the other side of the road. Some of those buildings bore an MIT name plate, but others were private companies.
One of the latter was number 84, a three story warehouse looking structure sheathed in corrugated aluminum. It was windowless, save for a wing that bumped out from a corner. The words Sylvan Laboratory Solutions, with office hours, were etched on the glass door. No passerby would know what this place was unless they took the time to read the little words on that sign. This wasn't a Neiman Marcus and they didn't expect walk in business. Greater Boston was filled with these small time suppliers of specialized equipment. People who needed them knew were to find them. Often, these operations worked with materials that were dangerous or expensive or both. Public recognition wasn't their thing.
Ruth didn't have a badge. She would have to use something else instead to get inside. In the interest of keeping it simple, she pulled on the door. It was locked. Ruth tried the buzzer and a young woman dressed in jeans and a turtleneck answered.
“Hi.” said Ruth. “I'm Christine Kerr and I work with Polymath. You sent us a package today?”
The woman said, “I'm Emily, the manufacturing supervisor on duty here.”
“I think we may have received your delivery by mistake; do you mind if I come in?”
“I don't understand why you didn't just call.”
“I'm sorry.” said Ruth. “I was conducting a college invitational and my boss asked me to stop by while I was out here. Is it a bad time? Is there someone else I should talk to?”
Emily shook her head and stepped back, “Let me take you to shipping and receiving.”
Inside, there was a small reception area with a desk and a Berber carpet, but no chairs other than the empty one behind the desk. The next room was a honeycomb of unassuming cubicles. Ruth wondered if these people really made bombs.
Ruth said, “Do you package products in hypoxic chambers? To be honest, my boss was worried the box might contain something dangerous.”
“Polymath, you said? The personality testing people?”
“The same.”
They came to a tall, wide sliding door. It was locked in the open position. They walked through a vestibule and another doorway covered with plastic strips, like the kind in an industrial freezer. This marked the transition to part of the building that had looked like a warehouse from the outside. Ruth found herself on a factory floor. She didn't see much human activity, but she did hear and feel an overpowering hum.
She said, “What do you make here, Emily?”
“We're a custom biogram production facility.”
“What's that?”
The two women came to a wall with a panel marked shipping and receiving.
Emily said, “Other companies send us genetic material and we build the organism.”
“Excuse me?”
“It has all sorts of uses, such as bio fuels and pharmaceuticals. We mostly make microbes.”
“You mostly make microbes. Could you make a bomb? Or a disease?”
Emily shot her a condescending smile. “Yeah, we build dinosaurs too.”
Ruth didn't take the condescension. “I didn't ask about dinosaurs.”
“So you're really worried this package could be dangerous?”
“Not me.” said Ruth.
“Right, your boss.”
“He knows this part of town. He knows what kinds of things people make here. Or so he tells me.”
They were standing in a room with lines of stacked boxes. Beyond that were piles of bubbled wrapped packages on pallets. A couple fork lifts sat nearby. Emily walked up to a computer and scrolled through records.
As she did so, she said, “Our customers are all reputable organizations. For example, MIT. We run a screen against all the genetic code that we get.”
“And that will find anything dangerous?”
Emily turned her head around and put her hands on her hips.
“You said your from Polymath?” she said.
“I'm pretty sure I did.”
“Because you seem to me a lot like a cop.”
“Oh?” said Ruth. “Do you have a lot of experience with the police?”
“Now I know you are.” said Emily. “Is this your first undercover assignment?”
Ruth was smiling inside. She had wanted Emily to come to this conclusion. She had wanted to convince this woman that there might be some trouble, but without the use of a badge. Emily continued without waiting for an answer.
“We represent the genome with something called Godel Encoding. Turning the code into a Godel Number allows us to analyze it for any number of characteristics. Nonetheless, it's subject to the same limitations of any Godel Number.”
“Those limitations won't find dangerous things?”
“You could represent anything as a Godel Number. The first application was mathematics, where Godel encoded theorems as numbers. He proved that you could not develop a function that would take the number as input and produce as output whether the theorem represented by that number was true or false. What I'm trying to say is that you cannot mechanically prove a mathematical theorem true or false and likewise you cannot detect every possible outcome of a genetic sequence.”
“So something could slip through? Like a bomb made of biological material?”
“Or a disease, as you said, but the people we work with aren't fly by night.”
“They're reputable organizations.” said Ruth.
Emily said, “You see how we're housed in this plain building with a nondescript name written in small letters on the door? What we do is both legal and necessary, but if the public, which is by and large illiterate, were to know about us there would be riots. You saw what happened with genetically modified food. As if there were such a think as unmodified food. That's why I had to explain to you all this stuff about Godel's theorem. We can't screen for all possible outcomes and it's not because the technology hasn't advanced enough. It's simply not possible.”
“Then why do it?”
“Would you stop doing math because there are theorems you can't prove true or false? Whi
le we wait for answers that will never come, the world is warming and people are dying of hunger. Sometimes better is the enemy of good enough. We have to move forward. There's just as much risk in not doing something as there is in doing it. After all, you and I are the product or a genetic accident – millions of them actually.”
“So what you're saying.” said Ruth. “Is that if someone were clever enough, he or she could design a weapon and sneak if past your screens?”
“You really have a one track mind.”
“You're the one who thinks I'm a cop.”
“Fair enough. What you say is true, but it's not as though anyone can mail order a biogram.”
“They have to be a reputable organization, I know. So who placed the Polymath order?”
Emily turned back to the screen. She found the record and said, “The MIT Advanced Storage Lab. We've worked with them before. They're working on biological computer storage. It's higher density and cheaper to make than traditional storage. That explains the hypoxic chamber. It's all experimental and too delicate to transport any other way.”
Ruth said, “And you're sure what you shipped this morning was a disk drive?”
“I can't be sure. Only the storage lab would know what to look for. We just run the screen.”
“And if someone else forged an order from that lab?”
For the first time since Ruth had met her, Emily was silent. She stood there with her arms crossed over her chest and her mouth partway open. She was starting to understand what the problem was here. This place was probably the brain child of some former MIT