The Crystal Child (35 page)

Forrester scoffed. “Eternal youth!  That’s what you’re after?”

“Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.   Of course you think I’m an interloper, pretending I have the right to dabble in your esoteric science.  I intend to find the secret of immortality and patent it.  I hope that doesn’t sound too ambitious for you.”

“It sounds absurd.  It is absurd.”

“Which is the absurdity?  Finding or patenting?  It can’t be patenting.  That, after all, is your business at GT.  Or at least I hope it is.”

“I’m commenting on the way you put it.  Immortality.”

“Sorry.  I’m not a professional scientist.  I’m a biological vulgarian;  I use the vernacular.  At present, I take any life span of up to 250 years as immortality.  That may of course alter upwards as we move forward.  Let’s see, how would the scientists I own put it?  Long-term telomere stabilization? Catalytic scavenger enhancement?  Metabolic deceleration?  As you see, I do read all the reports that come to me.  So far, it’s been one dead end after another.  But fortunately for you, I’m willing to bet on anything that looks promising.  Whatever we call it, immortality is an absurdity you share with me, though not so outspokenly.  Isn’t that why Aaron Lacey interests you?  Suppose you found the gene you’re looking for somewhere in the depths of his cells.  What would you do with it?  Eh?  Offer it to the world free of charge?  Add it to the drinking water?  Come now!  My goal is the same as yours.  If it were up to me, I’d launch a Manhattan Project to find the secret of eternal life.  I’ve got a hunch that we’re about as close to that as we once were to atomic fission.  Remember what they used to say of the atomic scientists?  They could tell the difference between one and a million.  Well, what we need are people who can tell the difference between a hundred and a thousand years of life expectancy.  And now that Aaron has turned up, I’m convinced we have the paradigm we’ve been seeking.  I’ve suspected that since we learned about Julia Stein’s achievement.”

Forrester tried to get off a look of confident dismissal.  “Sorry to disappoint you, but even Julia has no idea what she did to cure Aaron.”

“Probably nothing.  But we do have the boy and whatever secret he holds.  What do you think it is, Doctor?  A mutation?  Something in the immune system?  Whatever it is, I intend to place him at the center of the project: the first human being to reach M+1.” Forrester squinted quizzically. “A pet term of mine. M+1: Methuselah plus one year, or quite simply the oldest old anybody has ever reached — and with no sign of aging. How has he done that?  That’s the riddle we need to solve.”

Forrester studied the man.  There was a light in DeLeon’s eye, a maniacal fire.  “This really matters to you.  You really want to know.”

“That surprises you?  I’ll tell you a great secret, Doctor. I’m seventy-one years old.  That’s the true age, incidentally.  After a lifetime of careless debauchery, I’ll be lucky to live another ten years.  So what are all my ill-gotten millions worth?  Nothing.”  He leaned forward, glaring for emphasis.  “Of course I want to know Aaron Lacey’s secret.  I want to wring this boy dry.”

Forrester shook his head decisively.  “Hopeless.  He won’t tell you a thing.  I’ve tried.  The brat is tight as a clam.  He may be deranged.”

“No, not deranged. Advanced.  Advanced in a way that leaves the likes of us far behind.  I have no hesitation to admit it.  I’ve discovered from my experience in the world of finance, when someone is your superior, begin by acknowledging it.  Otherwise you can never get the better of him. You see, that’s our dilemma.  You are a conventional scientist, Hugh and I are conventional businessmen.  We are all brilliant at what we do.  But we’re confronted by someone whose powers lie beyond the conventional.  Aaron owes us nothing.  He needs nothing we can offer him.  There’s nothing we can use against him, nothing we can take from him.  So how do we win him over? I confess that I have no idea what his game is. He’s not after money, that I know.  He has no taste for power. Nor does he have the generosity to let the world share his blessing.  He would seem to be operating on some other plane entirely.  As far as I can tell, he shares no common interest with any of us.  We have one hope only.  Julia.  She is the key to this puzzle.  Through her, we get to the boy — who is, of course, not a boy at all, but a cunning rascal if there ever was one.”

Forrester was taking in very little of this.  He was feeling seriously dislocated by a sickly numbness in his stomach, the feeling that came to him when he knew he was in over his head, as he frequently had been with his business partners.  “Why should I believe any of this?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t I just pack up and go home — even if I have to hitch-hike?”

DeLeon’s mouth curled into an ugly, tough-guy sneer.  “For the same reason I had to believe what you told me when you cornered me in my office and began haranguing me.  I can do you great mischief.  I can have you fired.  I can kill your company as easily as I might swat a fly.  I don’t wish to do that, of course.  I would prefer to persuade you to follow your own best interests.”

“So how do you intend to convince me I should be willing to go on working for you?”

“In your case, Doctor, I have two things to offer by way of inducement.  Money and material evidence.   The money will come in the form of a rise in salary.   Within one week of your return to GT, your partners will come to you with an announcement.  They intend to raise your salary by, shall we say $500,000 a year?  Do try to look surprised.  They’ll have no idea we’ve met.  In addition, within another month, there will be a merger between GT and Technologie Cellulaire, the French firm.  Don’t ask why.  It has to do with a rather complex exchange of assets.  It’s been in the planning stage for several months.  Weems and Stanley will pretend it was their doing, but they know nothing about it.”

“And what is it you want of me?”

“Whatever you know or might still learn about Aaron Lacey.  And beyond that, simply that you stay open-minded about our plans.  In due course we’ll be offering you a position — once we’re up and running.  We’d like you to join in on the effort — at a senior level to be sure.”

Forrester mopped at his brow.  He regretted the liquor he had drunk. His head needed to be clearer to grasp what DeLeon was saying. “I don’t know.  I need time to think.”

“Of course,” DeLeon said.  “Take all the time you require.  And now I’ll call your car.”  He moved across to a phone on the bar, picked it up, and said a few words in Spanish.

Forrester gazed down into his nearly empty glass.  “You said something about material evidence.  What’s that all about?”

“Ah, yes.”  Turning back to Forrester, DeLeon fetched a brown plastic container from his pocket. “Take this along.  It’s hardly a well-prepared sample, but it will give you something to think about.  See if you can make sense of it.”  Forrester studied the container. There were a few amorphous objects in it, but nothing he could identify.  “You may of course have some scruples about the matter, but I hate to see you return home empty-handed.  I’ve instructed the servants who clean Aaron’s quarters to set his bed-clothes aside.  Rather gross, I admit — but not too much for a man of science to stomach.  Strands of hair mainly and a good many flecks of skin from scraping over the cloth. But then that’s the beauty of modern genetics. In principle, you’ll one day be able to reconstruct an entire creature from a single cell, isn’t that so?”  He read the question in Forrester’s eyes.  “No, I have no permission to do this.  Call it genetic piracy if you like, but I’m hardly going to give up the chance to find out all I can about my unusual house guest.  It’s not much to ask.  In return for my hospitality, I take a few cells he no longer needs.  You won’t be the first geneticist to examine these materials, but you’ll be the first who knows the person they came from.”

“Who else have you given samples?”

“I assume you know Françoise Frankel at the Pasteur Institute and Edmund MacDonald in Edinburgh.”

“Of course.”

“And, oh yes, there’s Max Hedwig at Cornell.  They were able to do little more than puzzle over what I sent.  As you can imagine, I had a devil of a time getting them to take an interloper like me seriously.  Really, the intolerance of your profession is disgraceful.  Frankly, I can’t be sure they gave the specimens I sent their full attention.   MacDonald wondered if this were some kind of joke.  He was quite annoyed.  After you do your own analysis, I’ll let you see their reports.”

“What would Aaron say if he found out?”

“For all I know, he may suspect.  But he seems to believe he’s an enigma that protects itself, something too strange, too singular for science to grasp.”

“He’s said as much to me.”

“Well, then, what’s the harm?”

***

It was not until his limousine was beyond the gates of Tlaloc that Forrester felt his muscles relaxing.  All the while he had been with DeLeon talking financial matters far beyond his understanding, he had been as tense as a boxer in the ring, bobbing and weaving waiting for the next punch, a bantam-weight pitted against a heavy-weight.  He reached into his pocket and drew out the phial DeLeon had entrusted to him, supposedly the microscopic debris of Aaron’s body.  For all he knew, DeLeon was making a fool of him, sending him away with some bogus clippings.  Simply to hold the phial in his hand made him feel soiled by fraudulence and superstition.  What irked him the most was DeLeon’s brazen effort to hi-jack science in support of his pipe-dreams.  Without thinking twice, Forrester rolled down the window of the car and threw the phial out.  But that did nothing to rid him of the feeling that troubled him most.  He had left Julia there, a prisoner of this oppressive and obviously ruthless man.  He had no idea how he might have persuaded her to leave; even so, he felt cowardly for leaving her in DeLeon’s hands.

The air of make-believe and madness that permeated the house he was leaving behind was so thick he had nearly gagged on it.  What did it amount to but a pack of lies, tricks, and hoaxes?  DeLeon was the very embodiment of quackery and not even sincere about the medical lunacy he practiced, and Aaron had all the hallmarks of a cunning delusionary.  Forrester had come to San Lazaro expecting to find a demoralized woman and a runaway child, people he could easily persuade to return with him, or if necessary intimidate into compliance.  Instead, he was leaving feeling thoroughly whipped.  He felt ashamed for blundering into such company.  “I think he’s the incarnation of a myth,” Julia had said without a trace of embarrassment.  The calm with which she — a brilliant colleague who had once deferred to his expertise — dropped the remark was as unsettling as the words themselves. More jarring still had been DeLeon’s frank statement of commercial motivation.  Yet he had been right; Forrester’s science had become a creature of the marketplace.  DeLeon’s greed had touched a nerve.  “Be honest,” the man had said.  Well, suppose he, Forrester, were to be honest.  Could he disclaim his own mercenary intentions?  True, he still possessed a biologist’s earnest curiosity to understand the secrets of life.  But like every geneticist he knew, he was undeniably up to his neck in entrepreneurial research.  If he did find the genetic key of Aaron Lacey’s rejuvenation, he would be forced to patent it and make all the money on it his firm could manage to take in.  Why were his motives any purer than DeLeon’s?

His thoughts turned back to Julia.  What sort of relationship did she have with Aaron, he wondered.  He had not asked, but he guessed it was no longer sexual.  Everything about the boy —
boy
! he could not stop thinking of him that way — his every expression and response now seemed so alien that he could not imagine Aaron still possessed an emotion as commonplace as lust.  But perhaps he was kidding himself.  He now realized his feelings for Julia had been tinged all along by jealousy.  Over the years, he had tried on many occasions to recall why they had broken up.  Something about competing careers, professional ambition.  He had forgotten the details.  At the time he felt liberated, but now he suspected it had been a great mistake.  He would never admit it, but the few years he had spent with her when they were students were as much as he could claim to have of authentic carnal knowledge.  Soon after that, he had turned to other, less satisfying passions: fame, money, social position.  Until this last meeting with Julia, he would have said it was her youth and looks that had accounted for their love affair. But then she had never been a great beauty, had she?  That was a false memory, something he used to explain why he had been drawn to her.  Now, though she looked worn down by her ordeal and gave only minimal attention to her appearance, he found her every bit as attractive as she had been when they were young lovers.  Perhaps it had never been her looks he had loved, but something underneath, something that was still there and now showed through more clearly, her willingness to dabble in the unusual and exotic.

He had claimed to be offended by the religiosity of her remarks, the recurrent  references to resurrections, myths, miracles.  How could she expect him to respond to things that were no part of his role in the world?  But in fact that was exactly what made her so intriguing.  Even her relationship with Aaron, a criminal act, touched her with a certain air of the uncanny.  Why would she have done such a thing, and why did she display so little remorse?  She was living by some other standard, more daring and defiant than Forrester could ever adopt.  She was gifted; he might almost say inspired. Was that why she felt so good when he had taken her in his arms? He was flattered by how little she had struggled.  He was sure he felt her soften and give to his embrace.  She might be surprised to learn how chivalric he felt about her in that moment.

If only he could wash his hands of the entire scene!  But again and again his thoughts turned to what he knew as a matter of hard evidence.  Aaron’s genetic fingerprint.  He had thrown away DeLeon’s phial, but not the blood-stained handkerchief Aaron had given him.  His curiosity would not allow him to cast it away; it anchored him to the boy.  He was determined to pursue whatever he had to work with.  A few precious drops of blood on a handkerchief: he was bringing that home like a pilgrim returning from a shrine with the blood of Christ.  The blood, the blood … nothing about the human anatomy was as surrounded with as much superstition.  But the blood he was bringing home would have a story to tell, a statement of chemical truth that could not be tainted with fraudulence or wishful thinking.