True-Life Adventure

soon.”
    “How soon?”
    “Within about three months, I should say. Possibly in September.”
    “And how much stock will you offer?”
    “Something in the neighborhood of $250 million.”
    I almost said, “You gotta be kidding!” But I remembered my manners in time. I didn’t say anything.
    “Does that surprise you, Mr. Haas?”
    “I can’t say that it doesn’t. Cetus offered about half that when they were ten years old and already had several products to sell.”
    “Our stock is going to be worth a great deal more than theirs.”
    “Forgive me if I ask you why you say that.”
    “Of course. And I’d like nothing more than to tell you, but the time isn’t right.”
    “Why all the mystery?”
    “We’re just not ready to make the announcement, that’s all. If you’ve finished your coffee, maybe you’d like to look around the plant.”
    “Sure.”
    He picked up the phone and gave orders. “Young John Reid will show you around,” he said. “I don’t know much about gene-splicing myself— he’ll explain it much better than I could.”
    “Do I have to wear a lab coat or anything?”
    Koehler laughed. “Nobody else does. In fact, why don’t you leave your coat here? You’re a bit overdressed for Kogene.”
    I shed it gratefully. I had a sweater underneath and the day was getting warm.
    In a moment John Reid appeared. He looked about twenty-five, wore faded jeans, and had the build of a tennis player— in other words, nothing like my idea of a scientist. As we went through what Koehler called the “plant,” I was forced to revise my stereotype— the scientists were all like Reid, except for the women, who had breasts.
    Their labs were decorated with photos of their most recent camping trips and each lab blared a different rock station, except for one that went in for country and western.
    The equipment wasn’t impressive at all, even the thing called the gene machine. The place looked as if it could have been on a college campus.
    “Do you understand what we do here?” asked Reid.
    “Well, I… uh…”
    “Let me start at the beginning. The thing we splice into bacterial DNA is a human gene. The new organism can then make a protein that may become a drug. That’s what it’s all about.”
    I nodded. I hadn’t a clue that was the way it worked. But Reid had a way of explaining everything so simply that I almost caught on to a lot of it.
    First he showed me the organic synthesis lab, where the gene machine was making synthetic DNA. “Linkers” made this way can be used to hook a gene to a plasmid, which can then be put into bacteria. Once you’ve got your new bug, you “grow it up” in vast fermenters in other labs. After you grow it up, you have to harvest it, or “take it down.” That means getting rid of the growing medium so that what you have left is “cell paste,” which you have to keep refrigerated at -80 Celsius.
    Somewhere in your cell paste is your product, but the problem is, it’s still in the cells. So next you have your “purification” step, in which you must break open the cells and separate the protein of interest from all the others in the cell, and there could be a couple of thousand of them.
    I think that’s the gist of what Reid said. He was very patient.
    I saw the labs where all those things were done, but nowhere did I see Jacob Koehler. “Nobody goes in his lab,” said Reid. He pointed to a closed door. “Just Jacob and his wife. And sometimes his kid.”
    “His kid?”
    “Yeah. Terry. She’s supposed to be super-smart or something.”
    “You mean she works in that lab?”
    Reid shrugged. “That’s what her dad says. Maybe he’s putting the rest of us on.”
    That sounded right to me.
    When the tour was over, my head hurt. I needed a new super-absorbency brain— the one I had just wasn’t getting the job done. Reid took me, limping— mentally, anyway— back to Steve Koehler.
    I donned my coat and sat down for a post-tour chat. It seemed to be what Koehler had in mind, too. “How long,” he asked, “have you been at the Journal , Mr. Haas?”
    “I’m not actually at the Journal. I just freelance for them occasionally. Which brings me to something else I meant to ask you. I was thinking of doing a piece on your brother and Lindsay Hearne for People. Fun couple sort of yarn. You’ve probably noticed those things are pretty short and sweet. Think he’d agree to that kind of interview?”
    “Hardly. They’ve been divorced for