Free The Empty House by Michael Gilbert Page A

you appreciate the subtlety.”
    “And they were none of them used.”
    “They were none of them used, for the same reason that the normal products of biological warfare will never be used. Because both sides possess them. Because their effects are too immediate, and therefore ultimately remediable. And because they invite the most unpleasing reprisals.”
    “That’s a comfort, anyway,” said Peter.
    “It would be a comfort, if it was the whole truth.”
    In the silence which followed, Peter could hear tiny sounds. A bird shifting its position on the rafters above him. Some small animal moving in the hay. The comfortable normal sounds of life going on. If all human and all animal life was destroyed, would sound cease too? Would an empty planet revolve in silence around the sun?
    “If you are to understand what I am going to tell you – and I will shortly make it clear to you, I hope, why it is important that you should understand it – then I shall have to assume in you some knowledge of biological structures.”
    “Until a few days ago,” said Peter, “you would have assumed wrongly. Recently I was given a short lesson on the subject. I now know that everyone has a personal genetic code which is carried by a private arrangement of biochemicals in cells called nuclei. What geneticists try to do is to decipher the pattern of information carried by the nuclei. Oh, and I remember, too, that chromosomes play a part in it. They are made up of five different substances, and the most important is called DNA, whatever that may be.”
    “Deoxyribonucleic acid. From whom are you quoting?”
    “From Dr. Wolfe’s sister.”
    “He spoke often of her. I was not aware that he discussed the technical side of his work with her.”
    “Only once. They were on holiday in Wales and it rained and he was bored.”
    “You have a visual memory?”
    “Something like that. Why?”
    “When you spoke just now, you were visualising the words which Miss Wolfe spoke to you, as though they were written down and you were reading them. Does it afford you total recall?”
    “Not total. Selective.”
    “Interesting.” Dr. Bishwas sat swinging his neatly pointed feet. Now that Peter’s eyes had become adjusted to the half-darkness, he could see Bishwas more clearly.
    “If you are to appreciate what I am going to tell you, we shall have to start a little further back. You realise that the human body is entirely composed of cells? Every last part of it, flesh, blood, skin, muscles, and nerves. It is a miraculous living entity, the cell, complete in itself. We can dissect it and destroy it, but we cannot reconstitute it. If we could do that, we should indeed be gods. We could create life.”
    Dr. Bishwas paused, and Peter could again hear the night breathing around him. In seven days created He the world and all that is therein. How long to destroy it?
    “Each cell, you must understand, is composed of two parts. The outer part, the cytoplasm, is the work force. It absorbs food, converts it into energy, and keeps the factory going. Inside the cytoplasm is the nucleus. If we call the cytoplasm the body, we could call the nucleus the brain. It is a minute but immensely complex structure made up of threads of DNA composed of nucleotides. You can think of them as tiny beads on a thread. Until recently we have only been able to study them by biological staining. Very recently the Molecular Biology Research Unit at Cambridge succeeded in reproducing them in the form of microscopic crystals.”
    Peter had been sitting quietly, body and mind relaxed, as he did when he wanted to imprint facts on his memory. Now he said, “I suppose there are only a limited number of people at any time at work in this field.”
    “There are not more than a handful of men in any country who are capable of comprehending it. People who can comprehend the ground gained and advance from it into the unknown are fewer still. When they die, the rest of us are thrown back. We