The Immortality Factor (38 page)

I took a sip of coffee from the delicate china cup. “That's what he's after. When you wear out the organs you were born with, you can grow a new set as you need them.”

He gave me a fishy stare. “Then you wouldn't die when your time came.”

“How would one know when one's time has come?” Julia asked sweetly.

Simmonds was a little guy, like I've said. He was sitting in one of the hotel's fake Louis XIV chairs, across the white-clothed table from us. The chair was big and ornate; it made him look even smaller. He frowned like a petulant kid.

“That's interfering with the Lord's plan,” he rumbled.

“So's taking antibiotics,” I said.

“No, no, this is serious.” He seemed really troubled. “This would allow people to prolong their lives indefinitely, wouldn't it?”

“If it works,” Faber said, as he reached for a second helping of dessert.

“Oh, it'll work,” Simmonds growled. “Sooner or later the scientists will make it work. They always do.”

He had more faith in Arthur than I did.

Julia said, “But if it can be made to work, wouldn't that mean it's part of God's plan?”

The reverend shook his head doggedly, lips pursed, brows pinched together. “It would be the devil's work,” he said. “So it must be stopped.”

Well, we argued
that
point long into the night. All very politely, mind you. None of us raised our voices. I was amused by it, more than anything else. Here was this little guy who thought he was plugged into God's personal Web site worrying that what Arby and other scientists were doing was the work of the devil. It was ludicrous.

But Julia took it all much more seriously. In the taxi going back to our apartment she said to me, “I wish you'd never mentioned Arthur's work to that man.”

“He did get clanked up about it, didn't he?”

“He's dangerous, Jess. I'm afraid of him,” she said.

“Him? Dangerous?” I laughed. “He's just a showman who uses religion instead of performing dogs. One step up from a con man.”

Sitting beside her on the back seat of the cab, I could feel the tension in her. She had been more relaxed in Eritrea.

“You're wrong,” she said. “He believes what he's saying. That's what makes him dangerous.”

That was just what Elwood had told me: the reverend really believes.

“He's going to raise a great deal of money for the hospital, isn't he?” Julia asked me.

“If Elwood and his people can pull off this rally in the park, yeah.”

“That means he'll be attracting a huge crowd to the park, doesn't it?”

“Sure, but—”

“That's his power, Jess. He can draw crowds.”

“So do the Rolling Stones,” I said. “And bigger crowds, too.”

“That kind of power can be used for more than just raising money,” Julia said. “He can turn it into political clout. Or worse.”

All of a sudden I got a picture of the mob from the last scene of every Frankenstein movie I had ever seen when I was a kid. Always brandishing their torches and marching up to the castle and burning the place to the ground.

“Aw, don't be silly,” I said to Julia. “This is just a little guy who can sweet-talk people out of a few bucks by spouting that old-time religion. It's show business, not politics.”

But Julia shook her head and said, “You're wrong, Jess. He's dangerous.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he demonstration for the CEO had gone extremely well. By the time Johnston, Lowenstein, and Tabatha Young had left the lab, they were assuring me that the regeneration work was going to be the salvation of Omnitech Corporation.

“Send me a budget plan for the coming year,” Johnston told me as I walked them to their waiting limo.

“I'd like to see a copy of that myself,” said Tabatha.

I smiled and nodded.

“No gold-plating, Art,” Lowenstein warned. But he was smiling.

“When have I ever gold-plated a budget?” I replied, with as much innocence as I could muster.

We all laughed together. The best of friends, the four of us. As long as I could hold up before their eyes the prospect of a golden future. Tabatha even kissed me on the cheek, for god's sake!

By the time I got back inside the building, Zack O'Neill had already sent poor little 3C278 down to Tina's dissection lab.

“Seems a shame to sacrifice him,” I said to Zack.

He shrugged. “I'm building up a timeline study to see how fast the tumors grow. Old 3C's part of the study. And she's a her, not a him.”

“Couldn't you let her hang in there for a while longer?” I asked.

Zack grinned at me. “You're not getting sentimental over a lab rat, are you?”

“That rat has earned us a year's operating budget, maybe more.”

“I could have her stuffed and mounted for you,” he joked. “She'll look great on your desk.”

I thought about hurrying down to Tina's lab and making a dramatic rescue of our brave little rat.

Zack was saying, “Besides, the tumors'll kill her anyway in a few days. Why put her through all that pain?”

“Yes,” I said. And to myself I added, Stay away from Tina, you fool. Life's complicated enough without chasing an employee—who's the daughter of an employee, yet.

I left Zack's lab and went to my own office. Phyllis was at her desk, as usual, pecking away at her keyboard.

“Phyllis,” I asked, “have you heard any complaints about sexual harassment?”

She looked up at me warily. “I wouldn't call them complaints, exactly. But there's some talk, here and there.”

“About me?”

“Not to my face, no.”

Of course, I realized. They wouldn't talk about me in front of Phyllis. She'd fry them.

“Well, if you hear anything, would you let me know?”

She gave me her schoolteacher look. “I told you, they won't talk in front of me.”

“Oh. I see,” I said. “Well, if you do hear anything about anybody, please let me know.”

“Sure,” Phyllis answered, but there wasn't much conviction in it.

I went into my office, wondering what else I could do about it. Then I remembered that I should call Nancy. Tomorrow, I decided. Or maybe the next day. Spend the weekend with her, maybe. After she's had a chance to observe what Sid and Johnston really think about the demonstration they saw here today.

 

F
or some reason I didn't call Nancy at all. I spent the weekend by myself, the first really hot weekend of the summer. Families streamed to the beaches or the mountains. I took off by myself in my Infiniti, with the air-conditioning
turned up nice and high, and drove all the way up to Rockport, Maine. Ate a lobster dinner in a crowded ramshackle tourist joint built on a pier that swayed with every incoming wave. Then drove back home to Connecticut, listening to Ravel and Debussy on the CD player. And Schubert's Unfinished Symphony; perfect for that dark, breezy summer night. Slept late Sunday, read the
Times,
poked around the house until early afternoon, then finally went down to the lab to work on the budget that Johnston had asked for.

Anyone who thinks you can make a schedule for research is a fool. I don't care what the corporate management wants or needs, no one on earth can write a schedule for work that is essentially a trek into the unknown. That's what research is, a safari across the frontiers of knowledge. Trying to make a neat little budget with a schedule of goals to be accomplished, well, it's as if Jefferson had insisted on a schedule from Lewis and Clark before they set out on their exploratory trip across the Louisiana Territory: you will arrive at the River Platte by such-and-such a date. They didn't even know the River Platte existed when they started out!

So creating a research budget is a work of art. The management types think it's simple: you determine how many researchers and technicians you need for the program, tote up their hours, throw in estimates of the equipment and supplies they'll require, and then add a generous figure for overhead and administrative costs.

Yes, but how many researchers do you need to get the work done? To some extent, manpower buys time, true enough. The more people you can put on a job, the sooner it gets done. Up to a point. More important, in research, is the quality of the people working on the task. And not just their qualities as individuals, either, but the mix of their personalities. You can't have an entire team made of chiefs, you need some Indians. And even among the Indians there are prima donnas, personalities that will clash with certain other personalities.

That's what I wrestled with all that long sunny Sunday afternoon: building the right team and providing them with the equipment, supplies, and—above all—the flexibility they'd need to get the job done.

I wasn't alone in the building, of course. I could hear the distant yowls of Max and some of the other chimps around feeding time. Their handlers took turns working the weekends. Vince Andriotti stuck his swarthy face in my doorway, but I waved him off.

“Budget,” was all I needed to say. He grinned and vanished like a genie, minus the puff of smoke.

I realized, as I crunched through the numbers with my desktop computer, that we could use Cassie's tumor-killer to help us. If we couldn't make regentide specific enough to avoid sprouting tumors, we could at least use the tumor-killing antigen that Cassie was testing to knock the tumors out. I felt
better about that. We had a backup, a way to solve the biggest problem that had come up so far.

The next evening was Nancy night. The fencing season had ended weeks ago, but we still met almost every Monday evening. I was feeling good enough about the way things were going to start thinking about how I might disencumber myself from her. But I had to be graceful about it. Hell hath no fury and all that. If she thought I was dumping her, she might turn very nasty. I still wanted her friendly; she was a valuable ally in the corporate office.

She had obtained her promotion to the marketing department and was busily getting herself acclimated to the new position. And already beginning to undermine the vice president of marketing. Uhlenbeck seemed an easygoing character, quite pleased to have Nancy taking over his chores for him. He reminded me of a character out of Dickens: tall and gawky, bald except for a fringe of white hair, slightly out of focus with the world around him. He must have been a good man once, but now he seemed to be resting on his laurels, waiting for retirement age or his golden parachute. Nancy was already right there behind him, ready to push him out of the plane.

I called her that Monday afternoon to cancel our date. She had her answering machine on, and I felt grateful to give the message to the machine instead of Nancy herself. I actually felt relieved. Then I started to ask myself why I wanted to get Nancy out of my bed. Time for a reality check. Well, I told myself, for one thing, she'd been bragging about our relationship to the other women in the corporate office. That's bad news. It could cause trouble, sooner or later. For another, it was tough to think about dating other women when I knew Nancy was hanging around my neck. I didn't want a scene with her accusing me of two-timing her.

If there had been some real emotional commitment from either one of us it would have been different. But Nancy didn't really care about me and I certainly didn't care about her. She had wanted that promotion and I had wanted information. The sex was a by-product, not a reason for our affair. We had both gotten what we had bargained for, so what was the point of keeping the relationship going?

The truth was, I was getting bored with her. And she probably felt exactly the same way about me. One of us had to put an end to this affair, and I told myself it was my responsibility. Just do it nicely, I thought. With tact and kindness.

That's what I was thinking about when I visited corporate headquarters in the middle of the week after our demonstration for Johnston et al.

Nancy sauntered into my office unannounced and sat herself primly on the chair in front of my desk. She was dressed in a power suit: no-nonsense beige slacks and jacket, hair done up slickly, just the right amount of makeup to show that she was a hard-driving executive who happened to be an attractive female.

“So what are you doing with your Monday nights?” she asked.

One Monday night I had begged off and she was acting like the wronged woman already. I looked up from a computer screen filled with cost estimates. “The same thing I do almost every night,” I said. “Working at the lab. This regeneration program is moving ahead now, accelerating. It's taking almost all my time.”

“Weekends, too?”

“Weekends, too,” I said.

She seemed to think that over for a moment. Then, “I know that Sid and Johnston were tremendously impressed with their visit to the lab.”

I nodded. Nancy had never come to the lab, despite my invitations.

“But you can't be working
all
the time,” she said.

I had to bite the bullet. “Nancy, I think it's best if we let things cool down a bit, don't you?”

“Cool down? What do you mean?”

She wasn't going to make it easy for me. “We should stop seeing each other.” There. I said it.

Her face crumpled. One moment she was a self-assured executive, cool and in command of herself, then all of a sudden she looked like a child who'd just been told there is no Santa Claus. Her eyes filled with tears.

“But I thought you cared about me!”

I looked past her to the door to my office. She had left it open and people were walking by in the corridor outside.

“I like you a lot, Nancy,” I improvised, keeping my voice low, “but I don't think we should—well, I'm just not ready for any kind of a commitment. It's best if we break it off, right here and now.”