Free Resurrection by Ken McClure Page A

some way out of his predicament. Eventually he just said, ‘Oh dear.’
    Humble pie time, thought Dewar.
    ‘I remember now,’ Davidson announced, clearing his throat to cover embarrassment, ‘Six months ago, I was talking to a French scientist; I met at the Birmingham virus meeting, you remember, Eric?’
    Larsen nodded. He was enjoying Davidson’s discomfiture as much as Dewar was.
    ‘ He was working as a post doc in Malloy’s lab in Edinburgh. Maybe he still is. He was working on much the same thing as us and he’d obtained DNA for a couple of smallpox fragments that I thought would be useful to us too. He agreed to send some to me to save me going through the usual bureaucratic channels. I quite forgot about that.’
    ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have declared them on your audit,’ said Dewar.
    Davidson remained silent.
    ‘As it is, you delegated the job to someone else who came up with the truth and declared it.’
    ‘What happens now?’ asked Davidson, coming as near to contrition as someone like him could.
    ‘Six months ago, this sort of thing was little more than a paperwork offence,’ said Dewar. ‘But things have changed. There is an absolute ban on the movement of these fragments, official or unofficial and the twenty percent rule is being rigidly enforced. Decide what fragments you no longer need and I’ll take them away with me to bring you under the twenty percent mark. On this occasion this will be the last you hear of it. You will of course be subject to unannounced auditing from time to time in the future. I’ll also have to ask you the name of the French scientist you mentioned.’
    ‘Is that really necessary. He did it as a personal favour to me.’
    ‘He knew the rules too.’
    ‘Pierre Le Grice. He works at the Institute for Molecular Sciences in Edinburgh.’
     
    As Dewar headed south again he looked around at his fellow passengers in First Class and wondered if any of them were carrying anything as bizarre as two fragments of smallpox virus DNA in their briefcases. It seemed unlikely but there again, making predictions about human behaviour was something you could never do with absolute confidence.
    Looking back on what had happened in Manchester did not bode well for his current assignment. One institution had been caught out simply because someone had told the truth. How many others were holding illegal stocks and falsifying their returns so that officialdom would see what they wanted to see? From previous experience he knew that researchers were a competitive, self-centred breed. Rules were there for other people to obey unless it either suited or caused no inconvenience. Nothing would be allowed to get in the way of their pet projects if they could help it. There wasn’t much he could do about that. Swimming against the tide of human nature was not an option for the intelligent. He had to be pragmatic in the circumstances. If he couldn’t change the way things were in the scientific establishment he could at least be firm about stressing the consequences of not complying with the WHO/UN ruling. The prospect of having their labs closed down and their careers damaged should do the trick. If there was one thing researchers cared more about than their research it was their careers. Any good that came out of research was almost invariably a by-product of the competitive struggle for career advancement and personal glory.
    He felt tired when he got into the flat. He kicked off his shoes and took a cold Stella Artois from the fridge, rejoicing in the first ice-cold swallow. After a second, he ‘woke up’ his IBM Aptiva computer and checked the message centre. There was one from Sci-Med and one from Karen. He played that one first.
    ‘Adam, I’m going to be tied up at the lab all evening. There’s been a Salmonella outbreak centred on Kensington. We’re trying to find the source. Give me a call when you get back. Love you.’
    Dewar permitted himself a small smile at the idea of