Dr. Thuc was reviewing the latest CDC updates, which she’d downloaded in full onto her workstation just in case they got a solar storm strong enough to disrupt Internet connections with whatever server they were on. Although she thought the MedCenter over at Grissom City kept copies on their servers, it was still possible that communications between the two settlements could be disrupted.
She was concentrating so intensely that she almost didn’t hear her phone chime incoming text. It was only on the second chime that she realized someone was texting her, that it might be urgent.
She picked up the phone and was surprised to discover that it was Vitali Grigorenko from Gagarinsk. I have some interesting information for you.
Her first thought was what kind of interesting? However, it would be rude to ask so bluntly, even if she was wondering if it were interesting in a bad way.
Thank you. What kind of information are we looking at?
Grigorenko took a little time to respond. English wasn’t his native tongue, even if he was a Grissom — he’d been kidnapped right out of Riley Children’s Hospital hours after birth by KGB agents, and had grown up speaking Russian. Which was what made teleconferences with him such an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
And then the text appeared: I have some connections in Ministry of Health and Imperial Academy of Science. They have passed me some material that indicate Academician Voronsky has success in sequencing DNA of diablovirus. I know Autumn Belfontaine has asked about this, but I want to send it to you first.
Yes, that was probably wise. Autumn was a professional journalist, and she might decide to run it past a medical professional before making any public announcement. However, with everyone desperate for even a glimmer of hope, she might let eagerness overcome her better judgment and release the story immediately.
Before she could even start a reply, a second text came through: Can you receive large attachment to e-mail, or should I give you URL for file to download?
After a bit of technical back-and-forth, they determined it would probably be best to go the URL route. As it happened, Grigorenko already had the file on a server up at Gagarinsk, and it was just a matter of changing the permissions so she could access it and then giving her the URL.
As soon as she got the file downloaded and opened — at least it was in a format her software could deal with, instead of one peculiar to Russian operating systems — she realized that she would need some help reading it. Although she did have a reasonable acquaintance with the Russian language, and with medical terminology in Russian, it didn’t extend to some of the technical aspects of genetics, which had developed somewhat differently behind the old Iron Curtain, back in the days when genetic engineering and human cloning were still burn-before-reading secret in both East and West.
Still, she made sure to let Grigorenko know that she’d successfully downloaded it and thank him for thinking of her.