The Immortality Factor (45 page)

That was what we had all feared: that her cancer wasn't gone, it was merely in remission. “Will you need more surgery?”

“They froze it with liquid nitrogen. I didn't want it removed. I want to see if the enzyme can destroy it.”

She seemed very matter-of-fact about it. Very controlled.

“But once it's been frozen the cells are dead.”

Again that tired nod, her head drooping and then slowly, painfully coming up again. “There'll be more.”

It's hell knowing that your body is betraying you. Cassie looked as if she expected nothing less, as if she thought she somehow deserved to be put on the rack.

“Stay here, then,” I said. “Get back to your own doctors and—”

“No.” She pushed at that stubborn flop of hair. “The facilities in Querétaro are fine. So are the doctors. I'll be okay there.”

“But if—”

She tried to smile. “I can inject myself with the enzyme down there without worrying about the FDA and all the other regulations. I'd be dead before we worked through the red tape here.”

“Cassie, if there's anything I can do . . .”

“I'm not worried about it,” she said. It looked like a patent lie to me. Then she leaned closer to my desk and said, “What I'm worried about is Max.”

“He seems okay, now that you've been with him. That's another reason for you to stay, isn't it?”

“I'm going to finish these field trials,” she insisted. I realized that she meant she wanted to remain in Mexico long enough to try the enzyme on herself. “I just want to make certain that you stick to your promise.”

“What promise?” I asked.

“About Max.”

“Oh. That.”

“He's not to be used in any experiments,” Cassie said firmly. “Just because you've lost the other chimps doesn't mean you can use Max again.”

“We may need him.”

“Get another chimp. Find human volunteers. Come on down to Mexico and I'll get hundreds for you.”

Her eyes were burning as if she had a fever.

“You asked if there's anything you can do for me. That's what you can do. Leave Max alone. You promised.”

I nodded reluctantly. “I did promise you, didn't I?”

 

T
here was no way we could keep the media totally out of the lab. The more Simmonds spoke, the more the word got around that Grenford Lab was the hotbed of godless scientists that he had been railing against. I'm certain he was giving our name—my name—to the reporters in private. Or Jesse was. At any rate, we were besieged with requests for interviews and camera coverage of the lab. It got so bad that Phyllis complained she was spending all her time trying to fend off reporters.

I went down to corporate headquarters to talk it over with Johnston and his public relations people. Nancy Dubois got herself invited to our impromptu conference: the marketing department had an interest in our public image, apparently. She greeted me coolly as she came into Johnston's office. It seemed clear that she was already running rings around her ostensible boss, Uhlenbeck.

We had a new corporate PR director, a tough-looking woman of fifty or so, Deborah King. She had let her hair go gray and wild, it looked almost like an Afro. She had a lantern jaw, narrow suspicious eyes, and a pugnacious nose. She looked as if she'd just as soon spit in your eye as say hello to you. And this was the head of our public relations department.

But her voice was silky and she knew her business. After listening to me complain about the media for ten minutes she said calmly, “What you need is a PR manager at the lab who can deal with this.”

“I don't need a public relations assistant,” I protested. “What I need is some peace and quiet. Can't I rout all these requests for interviews and whatnot to you?”

“Certainly you can, Dr. Marshak,” she said softly. “But then I'd have to call you to find out if you wanted to talk to the reporter or not. And I'd have to come down to the lab to set up the areas that the camera crew would be allowed to photograph. It would be much simpler for all of us if you had a resident PR manager.”

Johnston agreed. “You can't expect Deborah or one of her people to go running back and forth to your lab every day.”

I looked at Nancy. She smiled thinly at me and said nothing.

“We've never had a public relations manager on the staff,” I said.

“It needn't be permanent,” Ms. King assured me. “Just until the present furor dies down.”

“It'll save you a lot of grief,” Johnston said.

A sudden thought struck me. “Are you thinking of sending one of your regular staff to the lab, or hiring someone from outside?”

Ms. King glanced at Johnston. “My staff is stretched pretty thin as it is . . .”

“Since we're thinking in terms of a temporary situation,” said Johnston, “we ought to get a consultant to do it. No sense hiring anybody on a permanent basis.”

I said, “All right. I know who could do a good job on this. She's worked here before; did that backgrounder on me last year.”

“Oh, yeah.” Johnston smiled. “The redhead.”

“Pat Hayward,” I said.

“I don't know her,” said King, “but if you're happy with her, I'm happy.”

I looked at Nancy. She was decidedly unhappy. In fact, she was glowering at me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
rthur took his customary seat along the front row, then got to his feet as the three judges filed in and sat at their desks. Senator Kindelberger was nowhere in sight. Neither was Jesse. There were noticeably fewer reporters in the chamber, and only one TV camera remained.

Yesterday's testimony by Zapapas and the other experts had been a bore, although Arthur felt a sort of perverse admiration for the Greek. Zapapas had shamelessly tried to take the credit for everything that had happened in the field of biology since Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. Arthur decided he wouldn't bother cross-examining him. At bottom, beneath his flow of words, Zapapas had confirmed that organ regeneration was possible. He even hinted that he had done successful regeneration work himself, although he never presented any evidence of it.

This morning they would hear from Quentin Phillips, the Nobel laureate from Oxford. Arthur looked forward to his testimony. Phillips was a man of uncommon good sense, one of the world's leading microbiologists, and he had
never had any connection whatsoever with Grenford Laboratory or Omnitech Corporation. He'd talk sense to the jury, Arthur knew.

It was this afternoon's testimony that worried him. Rosen was going to play some DVDs that Cassie Ianetta had made before her suicide. Arthur had tried to block that, claiming that they would not be relevant to the trial, but Rosen had insisted and Graves had gone along with the examiner.

Arthur had no idea of what Cassie's disks would say. But since the first day of the trial Rosen and the judges had talked about her death as if somehow Arthur bore the responsibility for it. Omnitech's own lawyers had mentioned the possibility of a civil or even criminal action against Arthur once the science trial was over.

They're not only out to discredit the scientific work, Arthur told himself. They're out to get
me,
personally.

Arthur looked at the jury as the chamber settled down for the day's testimony. Graves had tried to make the jury as valid a cross section of working biologists as possible: someone from every major area in the field, someone from every section of the country, someone from every age group. Not an easy thing to do, with only twelve men and women to go with. Arthur had carefully read hundreds of curricula vitae before agreeing to these particular twelve.

Then Kindelberger came in and sat alongside the trio of judges. Why? Arthur asked himself. Does he think that Phillips and his Nobel will bring out the reporters? It certainly didn't look that way. There were only a handful of media people present.

Rosen looked more somber than usual in a dark blue suit and matching tie. From his seat at the end of the judges' table he riffled through some notes, then turned toward Graves and the others.

“I regret to announce to the court that Professor Phillips will not be able to testify here today.”

The audience stirred. Arthur felt a flash of angry disappointment.

“Professor Phillips suffered a stroke at Gatwick Airport yesterday,” Rosen went on mournfully, “as he was waiting to board the plane that would bring him here. He is in the hospital, in critical condition.”

The crowd sighed. Arthur felt sad for the old man, but his irritation remained.

“In his place,” Rosen went on, “we were fortunate to obtain the gracious consent of the retired chairman of the molecular biology department of Columbia University, Professor Emeritus Wilson K. Potter.”

Arthur spun around in his seat and saw Potter, a frail and ancient wisp of his former self, limping up the central aisle, leaning heavily on a cane. Two students were walking a few steps behind him. When Potter caught Arthur's eye he smiled maliciously.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he phone call from the new Omnitech PR director kind of surprised me. I mean, usually a new chief wants to bring her own people on board. I thought when the old guy retired I wouldn't hear much from Omnitech anymore. That's one of the hazards of the freelance business.

But she called me and explained what was happening and I knew without her telling me that Arthur had asked for me personally. I told her I was awfully busy—which was a whopper of a lie—but that I'd try to sort things out and see if I couldn't work her project in.

“This would be a full-time job for the next several months,” she said. Her voice was kind of testy, like she was saying,
Who the hell do you think you are to turn your nose up at an opportunity like this?

“I understand that,” I said. “That's why I want to make sure I can clear my calendar of all other commitments.”

“I see.” Sniffy.

“Can I phone you back first thing tomorrow?”

“Certainly.” And she hung up.

The only commitments on my calendar were attempts to find paying assignments. I had plenty of time to work on my novel, and it was actually starting to go somewhere, but that wasn't bringing in any money. My piggy bank was dangerously low and my mother's “career” as the neighborhood babysitter didn't bring in enough money to pay for her vodka.

Livvie was out at the supermarket just then, so I absentmindedly fed the cats and then wandered back to my room, where my computer screen still flickered with my deathless prose. Arthur had asked for me to come and work for him. Only a temporary job, to be sure, but even if it lasted only a couple of months the money would be more than I'd made all year so far. That was on the plus side. Then there was Arthur himself, maybe a negative. Not that I didn't like him; I did. That was the problem. And he seemed to like me, at least we had a lovely night that time in Las Vegas. But–

“It's me!” Livvie shouted from the kitchen doorway. “I'm home.”

I helped her tote the groceries in from the car and while we were putting them into the fridge and the cupboards I told her about the call from Omnitech.

“Terrific!” Livvie said. “Snap it up.”

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe Arthur's got more on his mind than public relations.”

Livvie gave me a lascivious grin. “Whatever kind of relations he's interested in, go for it.”

“Mother!”

She raised both hands. “Only kidding. But, well, you said he was cute and you liked him. Looks as if he likes you, too.”

“That could be a problem,” I said.

“Patricia,” she said, “there are times when you absolutely drive your poor old mother to drink.” And she headed straight for the vodka bottle on the countertop beside the toaster.

 

I
took the job, of course. Showed up two days later at the laboratory and was ushered straight into Arthur's office. I wore a sea-green business suit with a tailored white blouse; no frills, no jewelry except a couple of rings. I was there to work, not to look alluring. Still, I didn't want to look like a clod.

Arthur seemed happy to see me, but he was all business. I listened carefully to his outline of the problem. It took him almost half an hour.

“What we need is three things,” he finished, ticking points off on his fingers. “First, to keep scare stories out of the media. Second, to keep the reporters off the necks of my researchers and me. And third, to take the workload off Phyllis.”

“And something else,” I added.

“Oh?”

“You don't want to give the reporters the idea that you're hiding something. Right? You want to appear to be open and aboveboard.”

He thought about that a moment, nodded. “Yes, I suppose so. But I don't want any screaming headlines about mutant monsters and that sort of stuff.”

“Then the best way to handle it is to be right up-front with the reporters. You're going to have to make yourself accessible to them. And some of the key players on your staff, too.”

Arthur shook his head stubbornly. “I don't want them bothering my researchers. I'll talk to them all they want, but they've got to leave my staff people alone.”

“I'm not sure that's going to work,” I said.

“That's what I want.”

No sense arguing with the boss the first day on the job. “Okay, we can try it that way and see how it works.”

“Good.” He reached for the intercom on his desk. “Phyllis has set up an office for you just down the hall.”

“Wait,” I said.