The Immortality Factor (6 page)

“I'll bet,” Jesse said. Then he added, “But the corporate executives have a better one.”

“Why not?”

“Because the employees are just as human as the executives, that's why not. They should get the same level of care.”

“Have a sandwich,” I said, pointing to the tray. “I've heard all your blather before.”

He smiled, almost sheepishly. “Yeah, you have, haven't you?”

I picked up one of the neatly cut triangular little sandwiches, thinking how different these were from the thick slabs of bread that Momma used for our lunches when we were both schoolkids.

“Well,” Jesse said, nibbling daintily, “my blather got me named Humanitarian of the Year.”

“A richly deserved honor,” I said. We both laughed at my sarcastic tone.

“You make the money and I get the honors,” said Jesse. “I think it's a damned neat system.”

“It is, isn't it?”

“Have you seen Ma lately?” Jesse asked.

The question caught me slightly off guard. “Two weeks ago.”

“I wanted to take her to the banquet but she wouldn't go.”

“She can't travel in her condition. You know that.”

“I could have gotten an ambulance. A paramedic van. I would have taken care of her.”

“She's got more brains than you do,” I muttered.

“It would've been nice to have her there.”

I felt some of the old irritation coming up again. “Jess, you just don't think about anybody but yourself, do you? How many strokes has Mom had? Four? That we know of. And there's always the ministrokes that they can't even detect.”

Almost petulantly Jesse said, “She would have enjoyed seeing her son honored.”

I stared at him for a long moment, fighting down the anger welling up inside me. At last I admitted, “Yeah, I suppose she would have. It's a damned shame she couldn't.”

Jesse's expression brightened. “I'm going to bring her the DVD of the ceremonies. She'll enjoy that.”

“I'm sure she will.”

Our father had been killed in an auto crash on the Deegan Expressway when we had been twelve and ten, respectively. Momma was crippled in the accident, both legs had to be amputated. Now she was dying, slowly, painfully, ravaged by cancer that was eating its way through her organs and a series of strokes that had taken her ability to speak. Sometimes I found myself hoping that the next stroke would kill her, put an end to her suffering. But she was a strong old woman and she would not surrender easily.

From the night of that terrible accident I had taken on the responsibility of raising Jesse.

“You're the practical one, Arthur,” Momma told me. “You're my helper. You've got to look after little Jesse for me.”

I suppose a psychologist would talk about the older son and the baby son. I just did what Momma told me. I loved Jesse. I wanted to help him and protect him.

We both won scholarships to college, but when Jesse announced he wanted to go on to medical school I paid the bills by working nights as a computer repair technician. Daytime I attended graduate school, heading for a doctorate in molecular biology, paying my own bills with whatever fellowships I could get and tutoring fees.

When Jesse was in his first year of medical school we started tinkering with ideas of genetic engineering. Together we produced a microbe that ingested crude oil and broke it down into methane and carbon dioxide. Others had “invented” similar microbes, but ours was slightly more efficient in gobbling oil spills. We were thrilled speechless with our success. We published our results in the scientific literature—and saw our oil-eating “bug” make fortunes of profits for several bioremediation companies. But not a penny for ourselves.

When we produced a microbe that digested wastes from landfills I patented the invention. I was an assistant professor then. That's when all the trouble at Columbia started. Jesse took the school's side of the argument. He didn't want his name on the patent. He insisted that we should publish in the scientific literature again and give the benefit of our discovery to the world. Instead, I insisted on taking out the patent and then I licensed Omnitech Corporation to produce and sell the microbe. Our royalties made Jesse's humanitarianism possible.

I made the money and Jesse got the awards. It was just as well that way, I thought. Just as well.

“So what about this idea of yours about spinal cord regeneration?” Jesse asked as he reached for another of the little sandwiches. “Still think it's hot stuff now that the light of day is with us?”

“I most emphatically do. I mean, if we can develop agents to block transcription and stop tumors from growing, why can't we develop agents to initiate nerve regrowth?”

Jesse gave me a pitying look. “Tumor cells are
always
multiplying, Arby. They're out of control. That's what makes them so damned deadly, they don't know when to stop multiplying and start differentiating, the way ordinary cells do.”

“So they must have a growth factor—”

“Somatic cells,” Jesse went on, cutting me short, “especially nerve cells, have already differentiated. They won't multiply anymore.”

“Nerve cells regenerate,” I countered. “I've seen dozens of papers on the subject. Hundreds.”

“Only under very special conditions, Arby. Once those neurons are cut you can't just paste them back together again. It's like Humpty Dumpty.”

“Why not? What about the work they're doing at Berkeley with neural growth inducers? Or the work Cephalon's doing on neurotrophic factors?”

Jess made a sour face. “Berkeley's work is with rats, for god's sake. Rat embryos, at that: stem cells, before the cells start to differentiate.”

“But they can induce growth of new neurons with stem cells.”

Jesse's eyes widened. “Stem cells! Wow.”

“Don't tell me you're against stem cell work,” I grumbled.

“I'm not, but the government is.”

“We won't use government money, then. I can fund this without government backing.”

“But they're writing laws, Arby. Against cloning, too.”

“Reproductive cloning,” I corrected him. “We're not going to be making babies. The old-fashioned way is good enough for me.”

Jesse grinned, but said, “They want to outlaw therapeutic cloning, too.”

“Not even Congress is that stupid.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Then we'd better get busy and do what we have to do before they outlaw it.”

“I don't know . . .”

“Come on, Jess. All I'm talking about is regenerating nerve cells. Not cloning, unless we have to clone some stem cells here and there.”

“Here and there?” He raised his eyebrows dubiously.

“While it's still legal.”

Jesse shook his head. “Arby, you can't regrow mature neurons that have been completely severed. The damage is too severe. They won't regenerate.”

He was still doubtful, but at least he was back to talking science instead of politics. I said, “Under natural conditions, you mean.”

“Well, yeah. But it's worse than that, really.”

“How?”

“The problem with spinal neurons isn't just making them regenerate, it's getting them to grow to the right target area. The trauma to the spinal cord produces scarring and debris; it's a mess, and the nerves can't just reconnect themselves even if you can make them grow again.”

I hadn't thought about that.

“The neurons need a path to follow,” Jesse went on. “They need to know
where
they have to grow to reconnect with the severed neurons on the other side of the cut. How're they going to reach their targets?”

I didn't reply. I was thinking.

“I mean, even if you could force some regeneration among the neurons the damned cells would just start proliferating like a bunch of weeds. What the hell good would that do?”

“Suppose you could provide a plan? A blueprint for them to follow?”

“How the hell could you do that?”

I could see that Jess was getting emotional. That was a good sign. That
meant he was interested. Even though he was negative about the idea, it had hit him hard enough to shake him up.

I got up from my chair. “Come on out back with me. I want to show you some of the latest imaging systems we've been using.”

Jesse looked perplexed. “Imaging systems? What's that got to do with it?”

“You want a blueprint, a map for the growing nerves to follow? Let's take a look at what the mapmakers can do for us.”

 

V
incent Andriotti looked more like a Turkish wrestler than an optical-electronics engineer. He was short, thickly built, sparse of hair, swarthy of complexion, and his nose had obviously been broken many years ago. Perhaps more than once. He just happened to be a genius at developing sensor systems.

In his darkened laboratory, lit only by the faint greenish glow from one of his computer display screens, Vinnie grinned maliciously at us.

“It's simple,” he said. “You use the echo-planar MRI to map out the area, tell you which nerve bundles are which, and then you go in with the fiber optics and the laser pulses to get the fine detail.”

Jesse straightened up and stretched his back. He had been bent over staring at the detailed map of a small section of a human brain for so long that his spine popped noisily as he stretched.

The darkened little lab was hot and stuffy, as if too many people or too many machines had been crammed into it. The room smelled faintly of something I couldn't identify, something that reminded me of spicy food. Pizza, maybe.

“I know that MRI is magnetic resonance imaging,” Jesse said to Vince. “But what is echo . . . whatever it is?”

“Echo-planar,” Vinnie replied. “You use much stronger magnetic field gradients than normal MRI and a whole shitful of fast computers to grab the data before the pulse craps out. Call it EPI instead of MRI. It's easier.”

“EPI,” Jesse repeated.

“Once you have the EPI map,” I explained, “you use laser pulses to delineate the individual neurons.”

“Right,” said Vinnie, making the word sound almost like a gunshot.

“That'll take a long time, won't it?” Jesse asked.

Vinnie said, “Depends on how much computer power you throw in. Anyway, if the guy's a paraplegic he ain't going anywhere, is he?”

Jesse shrugged. “No, I suppose not.”

The greenish glow from the display screen made Andriotti's swarthy face look ghastly. He was grinning like a nasty pirate.

I asked him, “You're confident you could map the entire spinal cord on both sides of the cut?”

“Confident as hell,” Vinnie snapped. “I could be wrong, but I'm damned confident.”

I turned to Jess. “Well? What do you think?”

Jesse rubbed a hand across his chin. Then he looked up. “I think it's worth a try.”

“Good!”

I slid an arm around my brother's shoulders and headed for the door.

Vinnie called after us, “Hey, if I'm supposed to work on this, what job number do I charge it to?”

“I'll let you know,” I said as I opened the door with my free hand.

Vinnie grunted very much like a wrestler. He had worked for me long enough to understand that “I'll let you know” means that the work should be hidden for the time being. Moonlighted. Charged to some existing project until I could come up with a legitimate account.

I heard Vinnie start humming to himself, “Dah-
dee
-dah, dah-
dee
-dah, dah-
dee
-dah . . .” His version of the “Moonlight Sonata.” He'd been down this path before.

 

I
walked Jesse all the way to his car, surprised at how chilly the afternoon had become. Rain clouds were thickening and blotting out the sun.

When I got back to my office, Cassie Ianetta was in the outer room, perched on the edge of the white leather sofa like a nervous little schoolkid waiting for the principal's discipline. Phyllis was at her desk, busily typing away at her keyboard.

Cassie jumped to her feet when I came through the open doorway. I ushered her into my office and gestured to a chair at the little round conference table in a corner of the office, then sat down beside her. That would be better than putting the desk between us, I thought. She looked wound tight, about to snap. Time for the fatherly approach.

“Darrell tells me you've got a problem about the clinical trials.”

“Can't someone else handle it?” Cassie blurted. “I can't leave the country. I can't be away for months at a time.”

“Problem with Max?”

“He needs me.” She was clenching her fingers on the edge of the little table so hard I could see her knuckles going white.

“You mean you don't want to leave him.”

“Nobody else understands him!” And she burst into tears.

I let her sink her blubbering face against my shoulder. I put my arms around her, patting her back gently. I really did feel fatherly toward Cassie. I had known her since she'd been a summer intern, working her way through Brown.

I tried to be soothing. “There, there. It's not as bad as all that, is it?”

She sobbed and sniffled for a while, then pulled away and began to apologize. “I'm sorry, it's not your problem, I know.”

“But it is my problem, Cass,” I said gently. “I care about you, and I care about your work.”

Cassie pulled a tissue from the box on the table and dabbed at her eyes.

“You have a brilliant career ahead of you,” I told her. “And I don't have to tell you how important your work is.”

“But I can't—”

The fatherly approach can take you only so far. What I needed was something more powerful than her damned Max, something that would make her understand where her obligations lay.