Angel Falling Softly - By Eugene Woodbury Page 0,47
family and medical histories.”
She pointed to the screen on the right. “This database hooks directly into the Agilent sequencing and microarray platforms, and the Amersham Lucidea array controls for hybridization, scanning, data capture, and analysis.”
“It also tracks the DNA, RNA, and peptide synthesizers,” Dr. Brickey added.
Kammy gestured at the display in the middle. “This is the biostatistics database. It ties everything together in a clinical and epidemiological framework. In other words, gene mining across the board in a real-world context.”
“What about privacy?” Milada wondered, her business-oriented mind focusing on the most likely liability issue.
Kamal explained, “The hashes linking the genealogical and genome sequencing records are indexed to encrypted personal information in a separate database. That database can be unlocked only with a 128-bit private key escrowed by a third party.”
Milada nodded. That sounded good to her. “So I take it you’re impressed with the technology,” she said dryly.
“Hell, yeah.” Kammy grinned again.
A small smile came to Milada face. She didn’t understand half of what her sister was saying, but she completely comprehended this rare burst of enthusiasm. You see, Troy, she thought to herself, recalling their conversation at the Japanese restaurant. This is what a business can do.
And to keep on doing it, it would have to make money. That was something she could do.
Chapter 25
The bishop’s always the last to know
Rachel closed the book and placed it on the stand next to the hospital bed. Most times when she came to see her daughter, she read aloud to her. It was Veralee’s suggestion. The book she’d just finished was Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst by Lois Lowry. It was a funny book, and funny was a prerequisite. Everybody lived at the end. She wasn’t about to read Charlotte’s Web or Bridge to Terabithia any time soon, thank you very much.
In Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst, Anastasia acquires a pair of gerbils for a science project. In no time at all, the two gerbils become eleven and then are set free from their cage by her little brother’s classmate. Making matters worse, Anastasia’s mother has a phobia of the vermin. Frankly, Rachel had never been keen on the whole rodents-as-pets concept herself, not since Carl’s lab rat breeding project back in high school, when pretty much the same thing happened.
Carl’s rats met a more gruesome fate when his project turned into an experiment in building the better mousetrap—the ones who didn’t escape into the Logan Valley countryside, that was. Being at the age at which she could easily imagine her own personal actions holding sway over the fate of the universe, Rachel fretted that loosing lab rats upon the world was going to tip some delicate ecological balance.
Uncle Warren, the herpetologist—it had been his idea in the first place—scoffed at her concerns. “Naw. Snake and coyote food like the rest of them. And pretty bland fare at that. I imagine your typical free-range rodent provides a more succulent meal.”
Her mother’s reaction: “You can sure see what side of the family Carl gets it from.” It being whatever made Carl do the things Carl did.
There was a lot of it in her too, Rachel thought. She just did a better job of hiding it. She worked and played well with others. She always tried to walk a mile in another person’s shoes before criticizing them. And then when she did criticize them, she was a mile away and had their shoes—the old Steven Wright joke.
On the other hand, maybe this was all a façade: denial and repression, the two big self-help/feel good/psycho-crap no-nos. Maybe she was that close to taping aluminum foil to her head and hauling her daughter off to Mexico and cramming her full of apricot pits and snake venom.
Snake venom. A cold knot tightened in her stomach. Like when she cracked a joke in class and the teacher glared at her and said, “That wasn’t funny, Miss Cameron.”
Why wasn’t it funny? This was the same feeling she’d had the night Andy got stung by the yellow jackets and she couldn’t remember what happened. She still couldn’t. That wasn’t funny either.
“Do you think I’d be mature enough not to mind?” Anastasia asks her mother at the end of the book. “Why don’t you ask your analyst?” her mother replies, meaning her daughter’s bust of Sigmund Freud.
Rachel never considered going to an analyst. She’d never thought of herself as depressed. Having bad things happen to her didn’t mean she was depressed. Job wasn’t depressed. He was grouchy and ill-tempered and put out