The Immortalist (4 page)

“She's okay. A couple of stitches.”

“Ten fucking stitches, Hank.”

“I haven't had a drop since.” He placed his hand over his heart as if to make light of it, but real remorse was in his eyes. “There's just . . . there's been a lot of pressure. They've taken my lab away. I've gotten on the wrong side of these corporate bastards that Charles brought in to run the institute, and I'm . . . I'm just one slip away from losing my job here. Plus, you know, money. I had to refinance after the divorce, and the interest rates—”

“Skip it, Hank. I know all about you and pressure.”

Hank had seemed like a real up-and-comer when she first met him. He was a visiting professor at Harvard-MIT, teaching a seminar in statistical virology, where he opened her eyes to a new way of using mathematics and computers to investigate how viruses changed over time. They had met, of all places, in a bicycle smashup at the bottom of Mendon Hill, during the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, a 188-mile bikeathon to benefit cancer research. As she lifted herself off the asphalt, bleeding from a gash in her calf, she blew up. She called Hank an ape, an oaf, a reckless idiot. He returned a patient smile, then bound her wound with duct tape. Within minutes, he had her laughing. They rode the rest of the way side by side. That evening, after she got her cut properly stitched up at the stage camp in Bourne, they camped out together on the beach at Grey Gables. By then, she realized that behind his good humor lay a first-rate intellect. They stayed up the whole night, trading research ideas and visions of the future.

Their marriage should have been one of the great scientific matings, like Pierre and Marie Curie, or Louis and Mary Leakey. But Hank, for all his brains, had no urge to change the world. What he wanted was the quiet life—a houseful of kids to play with, cozy evenings by the fireplace, weekends for sailing in his damned boat. Sure, he was conscientious about his work, but when five o'clock rolled by, he would flick a little switch in his mind and turn into something quite . . .
ordinary
.

She had looked down on that. It never occurred to her that maybe Hank had a wisdom that she lacked, and that
that
was what had attracted her to him in the first place. Not the Gary Cooper looks, not the paper on viral recombination, but
balance
. A knowledge of what really counted in life.

What kept things going as long as they did was Daddy. Daddy had been like the strong force of the nucleus that keeps all the protons and neutrons from flying apart. He liked Hank and gave him a job at the institute. He refereed their marital spats. While Daddy lived, Cricket didn't think about the problems in her marriage because Daddy always knew how to smooth things over. It was as though Daddy were more than a man, something like Odin or Zeus—at least until a heart attack at his desk proved he was a man after all. When he died, the hole he left behind was enormous. Cricket threw herself even deeper into her work, with predictable results. She became less and less of a wife and mother, until Hank had enough of it and pulled the plug. She accepted the divorce without demur.

A creak of oaken boards. Cricket turned to see a teenage girl in a sleeveless, green top, dark jeans and sandals staring at her from the middle of the staircase. The girl's straight blond hair had been pinned back to keep it off a square of gauze taped to her forehead.

“Dad, why is
she
here?” asked the girl with a voice as frightened as it was defiant.

Cricket tried to smile. “You know why. I've been sending you e-mails every other day for the past six weeks.”

“I don't read them.”

“Nor do you answer long-distance cell phone calls, apparently. Well—you're coming home, sweetie.”

“I
am
home.”

“Look, Emmy, we need to give this a shot. Both of us. I'm . . . I'm worried about you. You have no idea how scared I was when I heard you got hurt—”

Emmy glared. “You can't be serious! There's no way I'm going with you.”

“You know that it was just a voluntary arrangement between your dad and me for you to go on staying here. I was traveling too much back then. But we're now returning to the original custody agreement.”

“You can't!” Emmy screamed.

Cricket cued Hank with a nod.

Hank bowed his head. “She can, hon.”

Cricket turned away and rested her free hand on the mantel of the fireplace, leaving Emmy's death stare to deflect harmlessly from her shoulder blades.
A bad start
.
Why can't there be an easy way to do this?
She groped in her mind for gentler words, but was afraid to let her self-doubts show. She had plenty of them. “Why don't you get your things together, sweetie?” she said, sipping her coffee with her face to the wall.

“What—you mean
now
?”

“Yes, now. Read my last e-mail. We have seats on a seven-thirty flight out of Logan.”

“You can't be serious! I have a life here. I have friends. I'm on the swim team. I'm gonna play Ariel in
Footloose
this fall.” Emmy shook her little, pink fists. “You can't just yank me away like . . . like . . . like the fucking bitch you are.”

Cricket yawned. “A very tired fucking bitch.” She turned toward Hank and nodded toward the sofa. “Would you mind if I cleaned up a bit and stretched out for a few minutes while she packs?”

“Why don't you use my bed?”

“Sofa's fine.”

The staircase shook as Emmy stormed back to her bedroom.

Hank waited till she was gone, then lowered his voice. “Are you really taking her back with you? To Atlanta?”

“Yes.”

“But your fieldwork—”

“Done with it.” So sharply did she reply that she felt compelled to soften her answer with a shrug. There were things she didn't want to have to explain.

“Are you kidding?”

“I guess I've had one of those epiphanies. Some things are more important than getting one more paper in
Nature
.”

Hank smirked. “Now there's a new Cricket.”

“Don't patronize me, Hank. I've been a crappy mother all these years and I don't need you to point it out. This is my last chance with Emmy. She's practically a woman now, and there're so many things I've screwed up with her that she has every right to hate me. But the fact is, she's really not doing well, is she? You told me so yourself. She's practically flunking out of school. She drinks. She sneaks out at night. She needs a mother. Even a flawed one will do. Because, fair or not, there are levels on which I can communicate with her and you can't. Just by virtue of estrogen.”

“Can't you let her finish out the summer? She has a job.”

“I've always been a believer in letting the ax fall quickly. Besides, you have troubles of your own—don't you?”

That cut off debate. She got up and went into the small half bath beside the kitchen. When she came out, the door to the old guest room was open, and she could see that Hank had turned it into an office, cramming it with the desktop computers and optical storage drives he used for his statistical research, and lining the walls with bookshelves that sagged under piles of
Proceedings
, printouts, research-symposium notes, and randomly shuffled journals. In the far corner, on a window ledge, she spied an empty bottle of Old Grand-Dad.

“Working on anything interesting?” Her question was a simple pleasantry, almost automatic among scientists.

“A dead end.”

“Oh?” The story of Hank in a nutshell. Bright beginning, dead end.

“Not scientifically. Politically.”

“How so?”

Hank started to answer her, then caught himself. “I've been warned not to talk about it.
Strictly
warned.”

“By whom?”

“Ahh, Cricket . . .” Leaning with one arm against the kitchen divider, Hank smiled and softened his voice to change the subject. “I'll bet you can't remember when you last had anything to eat. God knows the planes don't feed you anymore.”

That smile, again. That wicked, goddamned Gary Cooper smile.
Cricket chuckled—the first time in many days. “You know me. My body makes food from sunlight. But I could stand a bite—maybe after I shut my eyes for a few minutes.”

“I can whip up something before the big demo.”

“You mean before we leave for the airport. Emmy and I have a plane to catch.”

“You have plenty of time. You don't want to miss this.”

“I don't see what the big deal is.”

“Big deal?” Hank looked incredulous. “At noon today, your uncle Charles—”

“Please don't call him that. You know we're not related—and I'm not a little girl anymore.”

“Dr. Gifford, then. He's making some kind of earth-shattering announcement. More than an announcement. A demonstration. It's proof that the Methuselah Vector works. There are unbelievable rumors going around, Cricket. They say he's had a test subject under wraps for months. I know people have accused me of not being a team player on this project, but from everything I've heard, it's going to be spectacular.”

“Emmy is all I care about.”

“This is the real thing, Cricket. Immortality.”

“Not everyone wants to live forever, Hank. For some of us, what makes life bearable is knowing it'll never overstay its welcome.”

“Your dad would have wanted you to see it.”

There it was again. That damned trump card.
“I don't know. I don't know, Hank.” She chopped the air with her hands, as if warding off an invisible net closing in on her.

But what if Hank was right? Charles could be arrogant. Obsessive-compulsive, too. But he was damned smart and one hell of a scientist. He would never make a claim he couldn't prove. Would she ever be able to live with herself knowing she had turned her back on the discovery of the century?

Plus, she did owe it to Daddy. If Charles had really gotten aetatin to work, she had an obligation to be there for him, to make sure that his share in the discovery was remembered.

She sat down on the sofa and let herself topple to the side, with her face against the armrest. “I'm just so tired,” she mumbled. “Let me shake some of this jet lag. Then . . . we'll talk immortality. Later . . .”

She fell asleep the instant her eyelids closed.

Four

YOU CAN'T GO
IN THERE, MR.
Niedermann,” said the prim, gray-haired woman at the desk. “Dr. Gifford is in a meeting.”

Niedermann was in no mood to wait. An hour from now news of the Methuselah Vector would hit the world and the value of Eden Pharmaceuticals would shoot sky-high. So he simply barged through the heavy walnut door to the inner office. In his arms he clutched a pair of manila folders, one slender and the other bulging with legal-size papers.

In his book-lined office, Gifford looked up from behind a seven-foot-wide mahogany desk, his hands poised in midair, his gesture interrupted in midsentence. “I'm sorry, Dr. Gifford,” huffed the secretary, who came running after Niedermann. “I told him you were busy.”