The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller (10 page)

As the speech rambles along, Lane decides that the most troubling thing about Green is that he’s right about so many things, even if his attitude seems to come out of hell itself. It’s the first time he’s had any direct exposure to the man. The Feed keeps him out on the far fringe, not because he’s a demagogue, but because he can’t be bought, can’t be molded, can’t be shaped. At least, not yet. Clearly, the man is playing a high-stakes game of political poker, seeing just how far he can get before he has to stop and negotiate. And to date, he’s gotten farther than anyone thought possible, and done it faster than anyone expected. A platform in the middle of the floor bristles with cameras and media gear, and a swarm of camera operators cruises the isles and prowls the stage, where Green’s staff sits in the same type of folding chairs as the audience.

“Now, what did all those people in Washington say they’d do to make things better for you? I’ll tell you what. They said that all you needed was a little
training
, right? Just a little trip back to the classroom to retool you for a new life. Yes, that’s right, they were going to train you for the
new jobs
in the
new world economy
.”

“Now, if they’re so damned smart, why don’t you have one of those new jobs? I’ll tell you why. Because
they’re not so damned smart
. That’s why. And maybe it’s time you stopped listening to them,
and listened to someone who’s making a little sense
!”

The crowd leaps to its feet in undiluted adoration.
“Harlan! Harlan! Harlan!”

He stands with his arms over his head, his fists clenched and his thumbs up. The man has such a
reasonable
appearance, like one of those doctor-type dads on the ancient TV dramas from mid-century, the kind of man firmly centered, who radiates an aura of unshakable conviction.

“And I know that there are those who say I am
extreme
in my message. That I am extreme in what I represent. That I have hidden agendas. That I will take you to the streets. But I ask you, have you heard anything
extreme
here today? I don’t have to speak to you about the things that are extreme. You
live
in the extreme.

“At one time in this great country, the gate was open, ladies and gentleman. Then, bit by bit, it started to swing shut. And today, I tell you,
the gate is closed
.”

He waits a perfect beat, then pounces. “And just what do think we should do about that?”

They rise as one and explode into chant.

“Tear down the gate! Tear down the gate! Tear down the gate!”

Green pivots and abruptly exits stage left. The crowd chants on, and just when they start to lose momentum, Rachel Heinz takes to the podium and thanks them all for their dedication and devotion. Lane has to smile. Her timing and delivery are masterful, the perfect punctuation to Green’s prolonged rant.

The audience files out, the bile temporarily drained. Volunteers pack up the folding chairs and stack them on carts. The floor is half cleared when Rachel comes out from the side of the stage and greets him.

“Lane, how are you doing?”

“Could be better.”

Her eyes dart to the volunteers and back to Lane. “Let’s go to my office.” They walk in silence down the hall past open doors to classrooms that still look like classrooms. Kid-size desks, blackboards, video screens. Each is fronted by a portrait of Harlan Green. He appears firm yet kind, practical yet visionary.

Rachel notes his interest. “We’re starting to offer basic schooling to the children of party members,” she tells him.

“Do they learn how to genuflect when they meet Mr. Green?” Lane asks.

Rachel smiles wryly. “Don’t think so. For one thing, he’s not around much anymore. We now have field offices in twenty-seven cities.”

They pass through a glass enclosure into what were once the administrative offices. Lane points to the open door of a spacious office. “Let me guess: Harlan gets the principal’s office.”

“You got it,” Rachel admits as they move down a door and enter her somewhat smaller office. “And here’s where the vice principal lives.” She shuts the door as Lane sits down in front of her desk. “I watched the Feed for follow-up on the crash,” she says. “There wasn’t anything about the victims’ names.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You mean that wasn’t his flight?”

“Oh yeah, it was his flight all right.”

Her face hardens. “So what are you getting at?”

“He wasn’t on it.”

“How do you know?”

“I talked to him by phone several hours after the plane went down.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“Very little. That’s the problem.”

“Now wait a minute. I don’t know your brother like you do, but he seldom had very little to say—about anything. You think he’s in some kind of jam?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

She sags a little. “I’m sure you’re right.”

“As far as I know, you were the last person to see him. Anything you can tell me might help track him down.”

She crosses her arms on the desktop and leans forward. “I’ll only do that if you’re a little more forthcoming about what’s going on here.”

Lane considers his options. None are good. “He called me in the middle of last night from a motel out on the desert to the east. Scared to death. All he had time to say was that he was in a real pickle. So I took off and went out there. Drove all night. When I arrived, they said he’d never checked in.”

“And you let it go at that?”

Lane feels a touch of irritation. “Yeah, I let it go at that. Now let’s keep on sharing. Let’s talk about the night before last, your date. Did he go home with you?”

“Well, fuck you very much. What’s that got to do with any of this?”

“I won’t know until you tell me.”

Rachel sighs. “Yeah, he went home with me.”

“Okay, now look,” Lane says. “I don’t care what you did. All I care about is what you said.”

“He was higher than a kite. You just couldn’t keep him down.”

“Did he snort any synth?”

“No synth. He didn’t need it. He kept on talking about how New York would change everything, but he wouldn’t say why or how. He came across like a dam holding back a reservoir.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s about it. So where does that leave us?”

Lane stands up. “Simple. I keep looking until I find him.”

“And we’ll continue to share, right?”

“Right,” Lane says as they walk to the door.

Rachel stops and looks down reflectively. “You know, there’s one thing he said, right before he went to sleep. It seemed kind of weird, but he was on such a roll, I let it go.”

“Yeah? And what was that?”

“He said he was going to live forever.”

Arjun Khan barely feels the quiet descent of the elevator as it moves through the hillside toward the building below, the Other Application. Zed sits next to him on a fold-down seat and rests his forearms on the walker in front of him. The old man hates the walker and all that it implies about physical decline. In truth, he should be grateful he can walk at all.

Arjun closes his eyes. The bright fluorescent lighting bothers him. It holds the potential to deliver a nasty headache. Ah yes, the headaches. A legacy of times gone by, of times best forgotten.

He was rising along his professional arc back then, a promising arc in India’s pharmaceutical industry, which was heading toward the top of the global heap. He was an engineer by training, an extraordinary one. He straddled the interface between science and manufacturing, between concept and product. He could visualize how the output of the labs became a saleable item. He saw through the miles of wiring, piping, coiling, computers, and robotics and understood how they would converge to form a process optimized in terms of cost, quality, and efficiency.

He lived for his job. No wife, no children. Just a high-rise condo in an upscale section of Mumbai. Domesticity would come later, if at all. Then, at age thirty-one, he left the shelter of a mega-corporation and joined a biotech start-up as one of the principals. The project was risky, the payoff huge: a cure for rheumatoid arthritis, a malady afflicting hundreds of millions worldwide.

At first, it went well. They labored far into the night. They grabbed catered food on the fly. They applauded themselves on a regular basis. Then it went badly. One failure after another in clinical trials. Still, they sensed a positive outcome. They just had to hold on a little longer. But they had burned through their cash at a suicidal rate and lacked the funding to continue.

Then, one night at an elegant bar in an exclusive restaurant, he met a man who suggested a solution. The man was well dressed, articulate, and highly sympathetic to the young entrepreneur’s dilemma. In the weeks that followed, the full nature of his proposition rolled out in palatable chunks. Arjun would be hired as a consultant to design a pharmaceutical plant, a relatively simple one. His compensation for doing so verged on incredible. He would earn enough to fully resuscitate his company and significantly enhance his equity position.

All he had to do was design a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the processing and refinement of raw opium. At first, Arjun was assured that the substance was part of India’s enormous volume of legally grown and licensed opium. He was shown numerous documents to that effect, and took them on faith. His genius lay in engineering, not law or business or politics.

The police detectives showed little professional courtesy when they appeared at the offices of his start-up firm. They simply barged in, put Arjun in handcuffs, and led him out, with no explanation or apologies to the staff or the principals. A common criminal. His humiliation verged on unbearable as they transported him to jail.

In time, charges were filed, attorneys retained and the full extent of his transgressions played out in a series of pretrial hearings. The government painted him as a key player in a conspiracy to illegally process and distribute opium siphoned from licensed crops. A key player. A man deserving the maximum allowable penalties. A man destined to experience excruciating headaches.

Then, deus ex machina. Several new attorneys joined the team. Somehow, certain legal barriers dissolved. Bail was arranged. He walked out into a glorious flood of light and a warm breeze.

The next day, his attorneys visited him at his condo and gave him the long-term legal prognosis. The government’s case was essentially airtight. He would eventually be convicted and sent to prison. He would spend many years pacing cement floors in plastic sandals. He felt a headache coming on, a bad one. The attorneys sat in silence. The whisper of the air-conditioning filled his living room. The skyline of the city played out through tinted windows.

The lead attorney breached the awkward stillness. It seemed other options could be explored. Arrangements could be made that would guarantee Arjun’s freedom. The final decision, of course, was up to him.

Rain pelted the fuselage of the small jet and spattered the window by Arjun’s seat. Mumbai International Airport was lost in the glare of the floodlight as the plane lifted off and headed west over the Arabian Sea. The ruin of advanced age consumed the face of the man sitting opposite him.

In the course of their flight to Dubai, he would learn that the man was nearly one hundred years old and named Thomas Zed.

The elevator sighs to a stop at the end of its descent to the Other Application. Arjun watches as Zed grasps the handles of his walker and struggles off his seat into a standing position. The doors open to a wheelchair out in the corridor. Zed totters toward it on legs nearly spent. Arjun walks around and steadies the wheelchair as Zed painfully deposits himself. He knows better than to offer assistance to the old man, who cherishes these brief bouts of physical independence.

“I want to stop at Bay Three,” Zed announces as Arjun pushes him down the long corridor.

“That bay’s not currently occupied,” Arjun replies.

“I’m quite aware of that.”

Zed sits alone in his wheelchair inside Bay 3. He stares at the empty bed, with its myriad adjustments. The monitors and their cabling stand lifeless in the background.

Autumn.

He still has vivid memories of her arrival, deep in the night. The navigation lights on the helicopter, the rush of the gurney over the cement floor, her exposed hand flexing on top of the blankets. He should have stayed by her side then, but he didn’t. He should have fixed his gaze upon her sedated face, but he couldn’t. In time, he would come to regret these actions, especially when his love became fully realized. He should have shown his loyalty, his commitment, right from the start. But back then, all he had was purpose and intent. The rest would come later.

To this day, he still hadn’t told her the story, the precipitating incident that launched this entire episode. Perhaps she wouldn’t understand. Few would. Most would see him only as a megalomaniac, and they would be at least partially right, but not entirely.

It happened so long ago, in the former half of the last century. On a day when a heavy snow fell outside and clung to the treetops in Central Park. New York City was frozen, both literally and financially. Sixteen months ago, the market had crashed. Black Friday they called it, the genesis of a chill that now penetrated to the very bone of the nation. His empire had dissolved; his liquidity had vanished. Mines, mills, factories lay idle. Debt had supplied the leverage to create Zed’s holdings, and now debt had brought him low.

He stared in sorrow out the window at the cruel gray sky. He could no longer afford this lavish apartment, this opulent lifestyle. His wife had smiled bravely when he told her, but it belied a disappointment that would inevitably turn to bitterness. Her friends would call less often. The lunch invitations would dwindle. Their social calendar would dissolve into solitude. Shades of schadenfreude would color every aspect of their lives. He knew that she would quietly endure, and he loved her for that, but he also knew that she would become a cistern full of quiet rage. It would seep into every aspect of their marriage. Their son, so young and unaffected, would be steeped in it as the years passed.