Devil’s Harvest (6 page)

A coven of anti–genetic modification types in the top corner appeared to be warming up for a bout of lentil-induced heckling. Gabriel was confident that his change in tack would beat them into intellectual submission.

He doubted they would understand his next point, his explanation of the role of iron in plant physiology and cellular functioning, that iron deficiency leads to chlorosis while iron excess results in oxidative stress and toxicity, with resultant permanent damage.

‘As with all things in nature, the goal is the maintenance of balance,’ he said. ‘The management of iron homeostasis in plants is one of the central battlegrounds of the new research in botany.’

He despised the war motif, reducing research to a military conquest against an unnamed evil. It was his attempt to titillate his audience, who were wilting after only the first page. In truth, the only enemy was the unmitigated stupidity he witnessed around him, the fashionable acquiescence to the lowest common denominator. Journalism, film, literature, political debate … they had all been debased by the increasing tolerance of banality and ignorance. The world should be divided into those who articulated what they thought and those who spoke in the hope that their words might unlock some thought. The former were in rampant decline, the latter apparently simply rampant.

He nevertheless continued with the military metaphor: ‘Our unit at Bristol is at the very forefront of this assault, with our research on mitochondrial ferritin in the iron hyperaccumulator
Arabidopsis thaliana
.’

The department head, Professor Symington, had positioned himself on the side toward the top of the lecture hall. He was an elderly man with wispy grey-white hair and a mottled complexion that made him something of a professorial caricature. A file lay open before him, waiting for the scratching of his pen, but its master nodded genteelly forward, as if in silent prayer. There was no doubt that retirement had been too slow in arriving, the last few years spent in idle dotage, devoid of serious contribution. There had been no publications from him in the
Annals
and the commentary in the parochial
Botany Review
had been of the blandest kind, nostalgic and superficial. The position of head of department yawned before Gabriel. He knew the senate questioned his own ‘human resources management skills’, but his current research would place the department squarely on the global map, establishing him as a leader in evolutionary physiology and placing the unit at the edge of international research. With the conclusion of his work on
Arabidopsis
, full professorship was assured. With that, only he would be considered eligible to replace the head of department. Management skills be damned. His would be a new era of scientific excellence, where funding would flow – not because of the number of Hispanic students and disabled lecturers wheeling around in the corridors – but because of the novelty and significance of the papers produced by its senior leadership.

‘We also know that petroplinthic soils pose particular challenges to plant life,’ he continued, ‘exposing them to the dual difficulty of iron excess and a paucity of humus. The interest for us lies in the fact that these soils occur in the transition zone between wet tropical forest conditions and drier savannahs, also some of the zones in which global warming has its most exacting influence. To put it simply, global warming results in desertification, and desertification results in vegetative denusion and significant increased exposure to UV, sunlight and heat. The three horsemen of the apocalypse, if you will.’

He allowed himself a small smile. A young student in the front row was unusually alert, watching him with apparent fascination. Her skin seemed permanently blushed, her cheeks rosy in contrast to the light hair that fell in a curtain across her face. Gabriel wondered for a moment whether his injury had not started to bleed again and he allowed the back of his hand to momentarily brush over his upper lip. He placed his hand on the lectern and glanced downward as he proceeded. There were no telltale stains.

‘However, this transition zone provides us with a unique opportunity to study the stress response in plants to an increasingly demanding soil and atmospheric environment. It provides a window, if you like, on evolutionary pressure and mutation-triggering in a world increasingly governed by climate change. Perhaps one of the least studied, and yet most dramatic, transition zones is to be found in the Bahr el Ghazal region of Sudan.’

Gabriel paused for a moment.

‘And it is precisely here that the new subspecies is to be found.’

It was intended to be a dramatic moment in the lecture, but it evinced little response. Gabriel let his focus travel about the room, seemingly undirected, but ultimately looping back to the pretty undergraduate. The temperature in the hall was controlled and she had taken off her jacket, her sweater tight across delicate arms and shoulders. She was wearing a short denim skirt with woollen tights beneath, plunging down her legs into green boots with a fluffy trim. It reeked of sexual adventurism and Gabriel suddenly yearned for the decline of his sexual appetite. He found his libido endlessly distracting, part of the clutter that emanated from sex and marriage. It prevented the development of novel and uncontaminated ideas by disrupting the required internal silence and balance.

The young woman uncrossed her legs, as if in response to his agitation, tantalising him with the shadowed triangle beneath the taut edge of her skirt, before smiling, and shifting in her seat. The drumming of lust was immediate. It was infuriating, the base control that momentary flirtation could exercise over cognitive effort. He felt his eyes drawn, as if pulled by weights, back towards her seat. Already he could feel the prickle of unbidden fantasy in his groin. Pushing her back onto his desk, journals flung open to the floor as he yanked her tights down to her porcelain feet, the excitement as she opened her thighs for him and he buried himself in her succulent youth. He felt the heat rise in his neck. God, how Jane would mock him now.

He heard himself hesitate in his lines and he turned it into a deliberate pause. When he started again, it was with renewed vigour, addressed loudly in the general direction of the sleeping Symington.

‘Three years ago, the curators of the herbarium in Khartoum sent us samples of a particular
Arabidopsis
plant, first discovered in the transitional zone near Yei by a Chinese team from the University of Zhejiang. We assumed this plant was a member of the subspecies
thaliana
, having originated from further north where it has become endemic. As you’ll be aware from your early undergrad studies,
thaliana
is a particularly useful species in which to examine the role of ferritins in iron homeostasis. It has more recently also been one of the plants relied upon in bioengineering and albedo research. This coincidence is certainly a happy one.’

The mention of the Chinese had woken Symington, who was now sitting forward and rubbing his eyes; perhaps he had been listening after all. Gabriel had mentioned Zhejiang to give the undertaking an international flavour, but once articulated it sounded forced and perhaps a little dishonest, given that the two university teams were now involved in a desperate race to confirm the distinction of the plant as a new subspecies and to claim the taxonomical right to name it. And exploit all that it had to offer.

‘The critical question is this: is this a mutation of
thaliana
along the lines of Zhejiang’s laboratory-invoked stress mutation, which has formed the basis of much of their work? If so, this sample represents an example of a stress-induced mutation naturally established in order to cope with Fe hyperaccumulation. An interesting mutation but ultimately limited in its significance. Or …’ He paused for dramatic effect, but apart from the overeager admirer in the front row, he was met by largely blank expressions. ‘… Or, as we have proposed here at Bristol – and we believe we’re about to prove – is this a new subspecies, unique and evolutionarily adapted to meet a long-term challenge in a transition zone? Is this a subspecies that has adapted to climate change from above and soil degradation from below, by simultaneously countering iron surpluses while increasing its reflectivity to protect its internal structures and moisture retention from heat exchange? If so, this will provide us with important insights into both the evolutionary model and the prospects of realistic bioengineering to cope with a changing planet.’

This was the climax of his talk, the moment when the audience ought to have burst into rapturous applause. Gabriel knew better than to expect it, and none was forthcoming. There was some shuffling of papers, a cough or two. He was pleased to see that the rosy-faced undergrad was looking at him with an expression of marvel on her face, almost teary in the harsh light. He looked away for fear of raising the devil in him once more, pointing instead to one of the hands raised by a PhD student. The questions were the usual humdrum of references to personal studies, opinions devoid of intellectual rigour. Gabriel answered with increasingly complex explanations, dissuading any continuation. An acne-spotted student towards the back stood up when his limp hand was finally acknowledged. His unkempt hair gave him a slightly demented appearance. Gabriel recognised him – a tutorial class on eukarycytes, he fancied – but he couldn’t dredge up a name.

‘The United Kingdom is a signatory to the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity,’ the boy said. ‘It confirms national sovereignty over the biological resources within any state’s boundaries. How do you marry that principle with the acquisition of a new species from a sovereign territory in the name of this university?’

Martin, that was his name. Martin Harrier. Gabriel was pleased with himself, now remembering the eco-warrior arguments that had knocked around in the tutorial. ‘Capitalism is theft’, ‘Science the watchdogs for multinationals’. The student was a self-proclaimed disciple of Foucault. Gabriel eschewed the idea that you could subscribe to another man’s theory
in toto
: why elevate another person’s thoughts above one’s own? Hadn’t they farted and snored and masturbated like everyone else? Taking on the world view of someone else seemed not just criminally superficial, but somehow lazy as well, a cage rather than a platform. Harrier had annoyed Gabriel in the tutorial all the more because he was clearly bright, but avowedly welded to his emotive self.

‘Science is never about acquisition, Martin. God forbid, or we might all end up as politicians.’ A pleasing titter from the front row. What did the boy think, that the starving peasants of war-torn Sudan could give a toss about a new subspecies of shrub? ‘Science, and in this case taxonomy, is about the sharing of truth,’ he went on. ‘The fact that the truth emanates from a plant growing in the middle of untamed Africa doesn’t detract from its significance. Nor from the world’s right to know its secrets.’

Harrier looked as if he meant to respond, but Gabriel rather obviously turned away and took a last innocuous question from the other side of the lecture theatre.

Then it was over and the half-yearly obligation was fulfilled. He felt both relieved and impatient. He wanted to waste no more time and to return to his unfinished paper for the
Annals of Botany
immediately. A small, disparate group was holding back, hanging around the first line of seats while he packed his laptop into its bag, no doubt hoping for an opportunity to indulge their own ideas further. He tried not to make eye contact and was tempted just to wave them off, but noted the rosy-faced student pushing forward. He shuffled the last of his papers in ambivalence, knocking them into a straight-edged pile and placing them into the side pocket of his bag. As he stepped off the podium, she moved forward to block his path to the exit. Gabriel was about to put his hand out, perhaps place it firmly on her shoulder and invite her to join him as he walked back to his office, when a figure abruptly pushed between them. A short, thin man with a very dark complexion, goatee beard and white skullcap smiled at him, his arm outstretched. The young woman raised her eyebrows in surprise and took a few steps backwards. The man’s eyes sparkled with almost manic eagerness.

‘Professor Cock-Burn, may I introduce myself—’

‘It’s pronounced “Coeburn”,’ Gabriel interrupted him. ‘It’s an old Scottish name referring to a hill or stream.’ He didn’t correct the man’s assumption of his professorial status.

The small man beamed back at him, as if the correction in pronunciation had been a sincere compliment. ‘Thank you. Very good. A name that is not what it appears to be. A mark of heritage and civilisation.’ He grasped Gabriel’s hand. The skin felt like the underbelly of a lizard, cool and soft, but somehow also scaly. Gabriel wasn’t sure that he trusted the man’s tone: there was an obsequiousness in his manner that made his words seem barbed. The young woman in the tights looked ready to give up, fiddling with her cellphone while she waited at a polite distance.

‘If you’ll forgive me, Professor,’ the man proceeded, undaunted. He had moved into Gabriel’s body space, his breath somehow industrial. Like anthracite or wet concrete. ‘I am from the “untamed Africa” of which you speak. You talk about this plant, and the land of its origin, like it is a bug under a microscope. Or a distant star seen through a telescope. But are you perhaps aware, Professor, that the plant of which you speak has been used by the Dinka people of Sudan to treat conditions of the blood for centuries?’

Gabriel saw the combative spark now, the unmistakable challenge disguised by the smile and the warmth of the handshake. Some traditional healer or herbalist come to interfere in his scientific domain, casting his aspersions wide while he peddled his snake oil.

‘How interesting,’ he lied. ‘But herbalism is really a matter for social anthropology, which finds its home in the faculty of humanities. My research is a matter of pure science. Please excuse me.’ It was as cutting as he dare make it.

The man nodded genially and pressed his card into Gabriel’s hand. The aspirant professor closed his fist around the card and headed for the doorway where the young woman was about to make her exit. But up close he found that her face was a little too ruddy, as if she was suffering from an allergic reaction. Her eyes were not so much teary as rheumy. And any passion Gabriel may have harboured fled as she began to speak. A tongue stud flicked about in the lair of her mouth, and her enunciation was unclear and phlegmy. Perhaps the stud was new, but her voice was nasal, as if compensating for the presence of the foreign object. For a moment, Gabriel wondered if she was a foreigner. Her question was delivered with intensity, a plea for him to engage with her seriously. It was intolerable, this neediness, this inability to articulate a single clear sentence. He felt trapped and quickly brought the conversation to an end, escaping her intellectual whimpering with an impolite excuse.