The Immortalist (19 page)

He felt restless and snappish. It was almost intolerable to have to sit through interview after interview. Practically every minute of his day had been scheduled weeks in advance, so there was little he could do. But the triumph he once thought he would feel this week was missing.

Cricket, who should have been a support to him, was instead a second cause for worry. He hated having to go to Hank Wright, hat in hand, to ask for help with her. But there was no one else to turn to.

The deck of the sleek white fiberglass sailboat gave a hollow thud as Gifford jumped onto it. “Hank!” he called out. Peering through the open companionway, he saw Hank's legs stretched out across the floor of the galley, his hips wedged between a sink and a sofa-dinette, his spine supported against a tiny stove. Between his feet were scattered a dozen or so small metal parts, oozing oil onto a mat of white paper. The blue valve cover of the boat's engine peeked out through a tangle of gray hoses and copper pipe. But Hank's face was hidden from view.

“Engine problems?”

“Just replacing the fuel filter,” came Hank's voice. “I'm getting her ready to sell. Don't suppose you'd be interested? She's a Wauquiez thirty-eight-footer. A damned fine boat.”

“Sorry. The sky's my element. My little Cessna is my baby.”

“I hate to let her go, but it's this or the condo. I overmortgaged everything to pay off Cricket after the divorce. Now I can't keep up, especially with your friend Jack Niedermann putting my job ‘under review.' I figure the
Bay Dreamer
's worth eighty or ninety grand. If I can clear at least thirty-five after the sale, that'll bring all my condo payments up-to-date.”

Gifford passed his hand lightly over the molded seat just above the companionway. Satisfied that it was dry and clean, he sat down and leaned into the opening. “Hank, I need help with Cricket.”

Hank chuckled. “My condolences.” Without looking up, he scooted forward and began pumping a wrench back and forth against a bolt deep in the engine compartment. It annoyed Gifford that Hank wouldn't turn and look at him. All he could see was a bald spot the size of a quarter on the crown of the younger man's head.

“I've, uh, asked her to take over as director of Acadia Springs.”

Hank whistled.

“I'm serious.”

Hank drew out the bolt and wiped it with a rag. “Don't get me wrong. I think it's an inspired choice. But if you ask her to take over, she
will
take over. She won't be one of your Niedermann-style lackeys.”

“She hasn't agreed yet. And, quite frankly, I think I may have blown it with her. I've done something I regret. It's gotten us on the wrong footing.”

“Welcome to the club.”

Gifford wondered if Hank was smirking at him. “You know how sick Yolanda Carlson is. I asked Cricket to take charge of her case. But she's flashing her CDC badge around all the labs on campus, disrupting everyone's work, and spreading a rumor that we've got a case of ebola or something.” Gifford felt the boat roll slightly as the wake of a passing motorboat struck the hull. After that, all he heard was the sloshing of the water. He leaned back over the companionway. “Look, Hank, I'm going to level with you. This paranoid idea of ebola could end up hurting a lot of people. I don't think it's good for Yolanda. It's wasting time when we need to find out what's really wrong with her.”

“Yolanda, hell. This is about the Methuselah Vector, isn't it?”

“It's about a lot of things.” Gifford sensed hostility in Hank's tone of voice. Reaching out was beginning to feel like a mistake. “Listen—Cricket could have a bright future here, if only she'd learn to play along.”

Hank laughed. “You've come to the wrong guy, Charles. Controlling Cricket—now, that's a skill I never mastered. She's taking my goddamn daughter from me. You think I would let that happen if I had any influence over her?”

“I thought you two were on friendly terms. Yolanda said you were letting her . . .” Gifford found his tongue tied at the words
sleep over at your place.

“She's still my crazy girl, Charles. I'd give her the moon and stars if she asked for 'em. I'm just saying that I have no influence.”

“Please. I need you to talk to her. If she took the job, Emmy wouldn't have to leave Acadia Springs. Surely that's what you want, too.”

Hank picked up a screwdriver, leaned back over the engine, and began tapping the manifold. “Go fuck yourself, Charles. Don't try to tell me what I want.”

“Am I wrong?”

“You've got a lot of nerve coming to me for help. After what you and Jack Niedermann did. Taking away my computer lab. Threatening to cut me off if I breathed a word against your precious Methuselah Vector.”

“Yes, I did take away your lab—after you tried to get
Nature
to publish a dangerous and speculative theory. Jack was all for throwing you to the wolves when we found out. It was I who saved your job.”

“Only to keep me quiet.”

“Come on, Hank. Your theory—this ‘redundant targeting' idea, as you called it—was all speculation. I gave you a chance to prove it and you didn't. In fact, you
dis
proved it.”

A loud thump came from the cabin below. Only Hank's back and hips were visible, but his voice came through clearly. “It's mathematics, Charles. Not speculation. Because of the way the Methuselah Vector inserts itself into a cell's DNA, there are always going to be a few off-target insertions. The Vector can wind up going places where you never meant it to go. I can calculate the statistical probability of that happening. That's beyond dispute. What I can't do is figure out how to detect it biologically. Because, frankly, I'm not a biologist. In a wet lab I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground.”

“Your calculated probability of an insertion event was, as I recall, infinitesimally small. Even if you were right, the biological effect would have been trivial. So what's the point?”

“I don't know. I'm just a number cruncher. But the fact remains, you folks don't know as much about this thing as you think you do. I pointed out just one blind spot.”

Gifford drummed his fingers against the frame of the companionway. “You don't understand what a battle it is to bring a drug like this onto the market. The politics is insane. It's killing me. It's robbing me of sleep and giving me migraines. But I have a duty to use every resource in my hands to bring the Vector to the world. I can't let anything stand in its way.”

“You mean, in
your
way.”

Gifford clenched his teeth to keep from lashing back. He had known Hank long enough to be aware that, despite his drinking binges and his live-and-let-live attitude, he could be stubborn when pushed. And he could be dangerous. The
Nature
manuscript had been compellingly written. If
Nature
's editor in chief hadn't been an old UCLA classmate, nothing would have kept it out of print. “I didn't come here to fight with you, Hank,” Gifford said, when he had had time to calm down. “I came because Emmy asked me to.”

“Emmy?” Hank leaned back and looked up at last through the companionway, shielding his eyes from the sun. His jaw hung open in astonishment.

Gifford saw that he had struck a nerve. “She was in my office, not more than ten minutes ago. Distraught, almost in tears. She begged me to keep her mother from taking her to Atlanta.”

“Why the hell did she do that? Why didn't she come to me?”

“You tell me.”

“I'm her father, for chrissake.” Hank threw a screwdriver, which rattled in the dark cranny beneath the engine.

“Look—don't get jealous. She sent me to you. You're the one she wants to handle this.”

“Me? How?”

“Talk to her mother. Make Cricket see reason. I meant it when I offered her the institute. I want her to stay. It'll keep Acadia Springs in the family, so to speak. It's a win-win for everyone. But I can't have her working against me. Not now. Not this week, of all weeks.”

“Fuck it.”

Words of refusal. But they sounded more like a sigh. “What does that mean?”

“It means fuck it.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It's a fuck, what the hell.”

Gifford realized he had won. “You'll talk to her then?”

“Not for you. For Emmy.”

“Good, good. Talk to her now, Hank. She's in the BSL-4 lab.”

“Sure, I'll drop everything.” Hank threw a handful of tools and parts into his open toolbox and stood up. His head was down and his back was all Gifford could see. “Now, if that's all you came for, please get off my goddamn boat.”

Gifford knew better than to press his luck. He felt spent anyway, and the hot sun seemed to be worsening his migraine. On the other side of campus, Yolanda was lying helpless, maybe even dying.

The greatest week of his life was turning into a nightmare.

Six

HANK CHUCKLED TO
HIMSELF AS HE
heard Gifford spring off the deck.
News flash!
Cricket's making waves. Ebola, for God's sake.
Normally, he'd have just cheered her on, but this time, she was courting danger. The Methuselah Vector steamroller would run her over if she got in its way. She needed to be warned.

Hank quickly washed his hands in the tiny galley sink. Leaving the engine disassembled, he replaced the cover of the engine compartment, hooked the ladder into position, and climbed into the light. Standing on deck, he paused for a look at the
Bay Dreamer
's mainsail, carefully furled and stored under its blue polymer cover. It was amazing how far you could go with just a few yards of canvas. How far and how free.

Maybe he had it all backward. Why not get rid of the damned condo and keep the boat? Then sail for the South Pacific and never come back.

He got into the pickup, with its smashed bumper and headlight, and drove across campus to the hillside cutout where the Center for Advanced Virology Research was nestled. With its tiny windows, it looked like a prison. What was inside was even less inviting. With all the air seals and protective glass and space suits, it wasn't like any other lab he'd ever seen. It was more like an alien spaceship—a place for things that could kill you in ten seconds flat, and for which modern medicine had no cure. It scared the shit out of him.

Gifford had called ahead to give him a pass through security. Entering the main lobby, Hank looked through the windows and saw Cricket in Bay 1, closest to the front door. With Jean Litwack at her side, she was standing at the head of a plastic isolation tent, holding Yolanda's head back and moving something around in her mouth.

Hank hit the intercom. For a moment he just stood there with his hand on the button, not sure how to begin. Gifford had told him what to say, but he wasn't Gifford's messenger boy. “How is she, Cricket?” he finally said.

Cricket was busy. She handed the end of a plastic tube to Jean, who attached it to a blue, football-shaped air bag. As Jean began to squeeze the air bag slowly in and out, Cricket unzipped a vent in the isolator and inserted a small metal disk—the transmitter for an electronic stethoscope. Over the intercom Hank could hear the signal from it—a roar from Yolanda's lungs, rough as an Atlantic gale. It confirmed that the airway was correctly placed.

Cricket seemed satisfied with the sound, and only then did she acknowledge Hank's question. “Yolanda was stable all morning, but it took a lot of pressor support and diuretics. We've just had to change her endotracheal airway. Her lungs are filling up with fluid. I don't know if it's from pneumonia, or heart failure, or from her kidneys shutting down. It's all happening at once.”

“What in hell has she got?”

Cricket zipped the isolator vent shut. “I don't know. I gave Wig Waggoner a blood sample for analysis, and shipped another to USAMRIID. No word yet. I've combed through every laboratory on campus. There's no record of anyone here working with a virus that could have this effect.”

“Still a mystery, then?”

“No, it's not a mystery.
Mystery
's just a word for sloppy thinking. This disease has a cause as simple and definite as the common cold. I'm just too stupid to see what it is.”

“You—stupid?”

“Give me a break, Hank. I'm in over my head and I know it.”

Hank was taken aback. Self-doubt was so uncharacteristic of Cricket that he thought he must have heard wrong. “Well, I mean, you're the expert, right?”

“Why do you all keep saying that? There's no ‘expert' for a thing like this. This is a lightning bolt out of nowhere.”

Cricket disconnected the tube from Jean's air bag and reconnected it to the ventilator machine behind her. As she adjusted the controls for pressure and oxygen, the silence over the intercom was suddenly pierced by a barrage of electronic shrieks. Hank saw a red warning light flashing on the vital-signs monitor.