“Well, you know, people are talking about capturing and sequestering some of the carbon we’ve put into the atmosphere, in carbon sinks of one kind or other. But no method has looked really good yet. Stimulating plant growth has been one suggestion, but the problem is that most of the plants discussed have been very short-lived, and rotting plant life quickly releases its captured CO2 back into the atmosphere. So unless you can arrange lots of very deep peat bogs, capturing CO2 in small plants hasn’t looked very effective.”

Her listeners nodded.

“So, the thing is, living trees have had hundreds of millions of years of practice in not being eaten and outgassed by bugs. So one possibility would be to grow bigger trees. That turns out not to be so easy,” and with a red marker she sketched a ground and a tree growing out of it on the whiteboard, so that it looked like something a five-year-old would draw. “Sorry. See, most trees are already as tall as they can get, because of physical constraints like soil qualities and wind speeds. So, you can make them thicker, or” drawing more roots under the ground line “you can make the roots thicker. But trying to do that directly involves genetic changes that harm the trees in other ways, and anyway is usually very slow.”

“So it won’t work,” Brian said.

“Right,” she said patiently, “but many trees host these lichen, and the lichen regulate lignin production in a way that might be bumped, so the tree would quite quickly capture carbon that would remain sequestered for as long as the tree lived.

“So, given all this, what we’ve been working on is basically a kind of altered tree lichen. The lichen’s photosynthesis is accomplished by the algae in it, and we’ve been using this algorithm of Yann’s to find genes that can be altered to accelerate that. And now we’re getting the lichen to export the excess sugar into its host tree, down in the roots. It seems like we might be able to really accelerate the root growth and girth of the trees that these lichens grow on.”

“Capturing like how much carbon?”

“Well, we’ve calculated different scenarios, with the altered lichen being introduced into forests of different sizes, all the way up to the whole world’s temperate forest belt. That one has the amount of CO2 drawn down in the billions of tons.”

“Wow.”

“Yes. And pretty quickly too.”

“Watch out,” Brian joked, “you don’t want to be causing an ice age here.”

“True. But that would be a problem that came later. And we know how to warm things up, after all. But at this point any carbon capture would be good. There are some really bad effects coming down the pike these days, as you know.”

“True.”

They all sat and stared at the mess of letters and lines and little tree drawings she had scribbled on the whiteboard.

Leo broke the silence. “Wow, Eleanor. That’s very interesting.”

“I know it doesn’t help you with your delivery problem.”

“No, but that’s okay, that isn’t what you do. This is still very interesting. It’s a different problem is all, but that happens. This is great stuff. Have you shown this to the chancellor yet?”

“No.” She looked surprised.

“You should. He loves stuff like this, and, you know, he’s a working scientist himself. He still keeps his lab going even while he’s doing all the chancellor stuff.” This gave him credit to burn all over the town’s scientific community.

Now Eleanor was nodding. “I’ll do that, thanks. He has been very supportive.”

“Right. And look, I hope you and Marta keep collaborating. Maybe we can get you here to Torrey Pines. Maybe there’s some aspect of hormone regulation you’ll spot that we’re not seeing.”

“Oh I doubt that, but thanks.”

Soon after that, Leo got an e-mail from Derek, asking him to attend an appointment with a representative of a venture capital group, to explain the scientific issues. This had happened a few times back when Torrey Pines was a hot new start-up, so Leo knew the drill, and was therefore extremely uncomfortable with the idea of doing it again especially if it came to a discussion of “rapid hydrodynamic insertion.” No way did Leo want to be supporting Derek’s unfounded assertions to an outsider.

Derek assured him that he would handle any of this guy’s “speculative questions” exactly the sort of questions a venture capitalist would have to ask.

“And so I’ll be there to…”

“You’ll be there to answer any technical questions about the method as we’re using it now.”

Great.

Before the meeting Leo was shown a copy of the executive summary and offering memorandum Derek had sent to Biocal, a venture capital firm that Derek had gotten an investment from in the company’s early years. This document was very upbeat about the possibilities of the hydrodynamic delivery method. On finishing it Leo’s stomach had contracted to the size of a walnut.

Later that week, on the day of the meeting, Leo drove down from work to Biocal’s offices, located in an upscale building in downtown La Jolla, just off Prospect near the point. Their meeting room windows had a great view up the coast. Leo could almost spot their own building, on the cliff across La Jolla Cove.

Their host, Henry Bannet, was a trim man in his forties, relaxed and athletic-looking, friendly in the usual San Diego manner. His firm was a private partnership, doing strategic investing in biotechnologies. A billion dollar fund, Derek had said. And they didn’t expect any return on their investments for four to six years, sometimes longer. They could afford to work, or had decided to work, at the pace of medical progress itself. Their game was high-risk, high-return, long-range investment. This was not a kind of investment that banks would make, nor anyone else in the loaning world. The risks were too great, the returns too distant. Only venture capitalists would do it.

So naturally their help was much in demand from small biotech companies. There were something like three hundred biotechs in the San Diego area alone, and many of them were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, hoping for that first successful cash cow to keep them going or get them bought. Venture capitalists would therefore get to pick and choose what they wanted to invest in; and many of them were pursuing particular interests, or even passions. Naturally in these areas they were very well-informed, expert in combining scientific and financial analysis into what they called “doing due diligence.” They spoke of being “value-added investors,” of bringing much more than money to the table expertise, networking, advice.

This guy Bannet looked to Leo to be one of the passionate ones. He was friendly, but intent. A man at work. There was very little chance Derek was going to be able to impress him with smoke and mirrors.

“Thanks for seeing us,” Derek said.

Bannet waved a hand. “Always interested to talk to you guys. I’ve been reading some of your papers, and I went to that symposium in L.A. last year. You’re doing some great stuff.”

“It’s true, and now we’re on to something really good, with real potential to revolutionize genetic engineering by getting tailored DNA into people who need it. It could be a method useful to a whole bunch of different therapies, which is one of the reasons we’re so excited about it and trying to ramp up our efforts to speed the process along. So I remembered how much you helped us during the start-up, and how well that’s paid off for you, so I thought I’d bring by the current situation and see if you would be interested in doing a PIPE with us.”

This sounded weird to Leo, like Indians offering a peace pipe, or college students passing around a bong, but Bannet didn’t blink; a PIPE was one of their mechanisms for investment, as Leo quickly learned. “Private Investment in Public Equity.” And for once it was a pretty good acronym, because it meant creating a pipeline for money to run directly from their cash-flush fund to Derek’s penniless company.