The Immortality Factor (64 page)

The driver was elderly, lean as a rake, two days of gray stubble on his face. “Man, you got woman troubles, don't you?”

Jesse stared at him. “You might say that.”

“So do we all, friend. So do we all. But now I gotta know where you want to go.”

“The Rayburn Building.”

“Oh, man, you takin' your troubles to Congress, heh?”

With a sigh, Jesse repeated, “You might say that.”

What a goddamned mess, Jesse thought. What a goddamned motherfucking no-good sonofabitch bastard mess. It's in my genes. It must be. The first baby miscarried and now we've got a boy with spina bifida. It's my fault. Got to be.

As the taxi crossed the Fourteenth Street Bridge and swept past the domed temple of the Jefferson Memorial, he asked himself, Could Arby really do the kid any good? The boy would be at least five, six years old by the time Arby could try his treatment on him. If he lives that long. If this hearing allows Arby to go forward to human trials.

I'm supposed to stop him. They're all looking at me to cut Arby's legs out from under him. Simmonds, Kindelberger—how the hell did I ever let myself get involved with them?

But he knew. Jesse knew exactly how and exactly why he had placed himself in opposition to his brother. Why spend billions of dollars to help rich people live longer when poor people are dying young? A ghetto teenager doesn't need a new heart, he needs decent nutrition and the kind of simple medical care that the average American takes for granted. A crack baby doesn't need a new spleen, it needs a mother who didn't take the shit. What good does it do to help the wealthy when the poor are dying in the fucking streets?

But my son is one of those wealthy ones. Why shouldn't I want to help my
son? If I stop Arby I'm killing my boy. What will Julia think of me? What will I think of myself?

“We're here, friend.”

With a start of surprise, Jesse realized that they had stopped. He got out of the cab, leaned into the front window to pay the driver. As he straightened up he saw, across Constitution Avenue, a few forlorn pickets tramping tiredly in front of the Capitol, their placards resting on their shoulders instead of being held high.

He turned and up at the top of the steps of the Rayburn Building, waiting for him, stood Arthur.

 

A
fter his chilling conversation with Julia, Arthur called the restaurant where Pat was waiting for him and told her to go ahead and eat her lunch without him.

“Something's terribly wrong between Jesse and Julia,” he said. “I'm going to wait here and see if I can spot Jess before the hearing resumes.”

He paced the corridor outside the hearing chamber for a few minutes, then went down to the main lobby and out to the stairs. It was blazing hot outside: Washington at its summer worst. A few pickets were trudging along cross the way but they could not see Arthur, the man their placards vilified. A taxi pulled up at the curb. Arthur stared at it, and sure enough, Jesse ducked through its rear door, paid the driver, and turned and looked straight at him.

Arthur's first instinct was to race down the steps to his brother. But he hesitated. Jesse saw Arthur up at the head of the stairs, standing there like some emperor waiting for his lowly subjects to come crawling up to him. With a shake of his head he started walking toward the corner, looking for another entrance into the building. It was broiling hot on the street but he could not face his brother. Not just yet. If Arby wants to see me, he knows I'll be heading for the hearing chamber, he decided.

Arthur went back inside, feeling nettled that Jesse was trying to avoid him. We've both got to be at the hearing chamber, he thought. But once the session starts I won't have a chance to talk to him.

He thought briefly about trying to guess which elevator bank Jesse would use, quickly decided that it was fruitless, and went back to the corridor outside the chamber itself. Hardly anyone else in sight. They're all out at lunch, Arthur told himself. He's got to show up here. Arthur glanced at his wristwatch again. Half an hour before the session begins.

The seconds crawled by so slowly that Arthur began to fear Jesse would stay away until the session actually opened. That would be just like him, he thought grimly. Avoiding me.

But then he spotted Jesse coming up the corridor toward him. God, he looks as if he's been hit by a truck!

Arthur almost ran to his brother. “Jess! Are you all right?”

Jesse started to reply, but then just nodded.

“What's going on?” Arthur demanded. “Julia wouldn't tell me a thing.”

“You talked to Julia?”

“Five minutes ago, maybe ten. What's happening with you two?”

Jesse ground his teeth together. He looked up and down the corridor, stalling for time as he thought, How much should I tell him? What should I do?

“In here,” Arthur said, nudging him toward the doors to the hearing chamber. “Nobody's there now, we can talk in private.”

The chamber was indeed empty. Long rows of seats, portraits on the walls, the bank of desks with their padded chairs at the front of the room. The TV cameras were cold, their lights off. No one else in the room.

The two brothers sat on the last row of benches, side by side, facing each other.

“What's happened?” Arthur demanded.

Jesse stared at his brother for long moments, saying nothing.

“Well?”

At last Jesse said, “You've got to promise me, Arby, that you won't mention any of this to anybody. And you can't use it in the hearing.”

“Use what? What's going on?”

“Promise me that this is strictly between you and me; nobody else.”

Puzzled, Arthur said, “All right, I promise.”

“You won't use it in the hearing.”

“I promised, didn't I?”

“Okay.” Jesse took a deep breath, but then said nothing. Arthur could see the pain twisting his features.

“What is it?”

“The baby—”

“Not another miscarriage!”

Jesse shook his head. “Spina bifida.”

Arthur felt as if someone had slammed a bowling ball into his gut. “Spina . . .” The words wouldn't come out.

“Julia won't abort the baby. She wants to keep it.”

“I'm so sorry, Jess.”

“Yeah. I know.”

They sat in grief-racked silence for several moments, heads bowed toward each other. Arthur wanted to take his brother in his arms, yet he could not bring himself to try. He sat there, thoughts spinning.

“Maybe,” he began to say, “maybe we could—”

“Don't!” Jesse snapped. “Don't say it. Don't even think it.”

“But if we can push ahead with the regeneration work, maybe in a few years, five or six at most—”

“The baby'll most likely be dead by then.”

“They can be kept alive a lot longer than that, can't they?”

“I don't want him alive!” Jesse snarled. “I don't want him at all!”

“But if we could repair the damage to his spine, what then?”

“He'd still be a brain-damaged retarded child.”

“But maybe—”

“I don't want you experimenting on him! I don't want you riding to Julia's rescue while I sit on the sidelines like a helpless idiot.”

“But what other choice do we have?” Arthur demanded.

Jesse stared at his brother for a long moment. Then, “The same choice everybody else has, Arby,” he said softly. “To raise a damaged child with as much love and as much patience as we can give him.”

“That's stupid!” Arthur could feel the anger bubbling up inside him. “That's sentimental crap! That's what people try to tell themselves when they've got no other possibilities.”

“That's what we're going to do, Arby.”

“But I can save him. I
know
I can!”

“Jesus Christ, don't say that!” Jesse snapped. “You
can't
save him. Nobody can. Don't hold that up in front of us, Arby. You'll kill Julia with hopes that can't come true.”

“They can come true! I'll make them come true.”

“Not in time for our kid.”

“No, you're wrong, Jesse. I can do it.”

“You're still in love with Julia, aren't you?”

Thrown off balance by the sudden change of subject, Arthur snapped, “No. Not anymore.”

“The hell you're not.”

“I'm not,” he insisted. “She loves you and that ended everything between us.”

“Don't lie to me, Arby.”

And suddenly Arthur realized what this was all about. “I'm not trying to get her away from you, Jess. You've got to believe me. I'm not. I'd never do that to you, even if she'd let me, and she won't. She loves you, Jess. She never really loved me. Not the way she loves you.”

Jesse eyed him warily, wanting to believe, not daring to.

“And besides . . .” For the first time since his parents' accident Arthur felt tears welling up inside. “Jesse, I love you.”

Jesse saw the look on his brother's face: hope and love and fear and pain, all mixed together.

He swallowed hard. “Christ, Arby, I love you, too.”

The two men fell in each other's arms. For a while they simply sat, embracing, feeling the solid warmth of each other's arms gripping them.

Then Jesse pulled away. “But I'm still against you on this.” He gestured vaguely around the hearing chamber.

Arthur nodded. “I know. I understand. But I don't agree with you. I'm going to do my damnedest to win.”

“Yeah,” said Jesse tiredly. “I know you will.”

A voice from the front of the chamber called to them, “Say, you two are awfully eager to get started, aren't you?”

They looked up and saw it was one of the clerks, arranging an armful of papers on the judges' desks.

“Anxious to get it over with, I guess, huh?” the clerk said.

“Yes,” Arthur said.

“Damned right,” said Jesse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he audience was abuzz. They knew that this afternoon's session would be brother against brother. The reporters scribbled away and checked their voice recorders. The TV cameras swung to Jesse as he walked slowly to the witness chair and sat down.

“Jesse,” said Arthur, striding from his own seat to the front of the room, “you stated in your testimony that you are against having the regeneration program move ahead to human trials.”

“That's right.”

Arthur saw Senator Kindelberger leaning forward slightly in his chair, as if he did not want to miss a syllable.

“Your chief reason, you said, was that in the animal experiments the test subjects developed tumors.”

“That's what I gathered from the reports you submitted,” said Jesse.

“And some of those tumors were malignant.”

“That's what killed the chimp, wasn't it?”

Arthur hesitated a fraction of a second. “Actually, the chimpanzee died of
a coronary thrombosis. A heart attack. It had nothing to do with the brain tumor.”

“Tumors, plural,” Jesse corrected.

“There was no connection between the two,” said Arthur. Silently he added, Except Cassie's overwrought emotions.

“Several of the other lab animals died of cancer,” Jesse said.

“But that was before we began to use the tumor suppressant treatment that we had developed.”

“You can't use that treatment on human subjects until you get FDA approval,” Jesse said.

“Which will come in a matter of months,” Arthur countered. “Or so I'm told by the Food and Drug Administration.”

Jesse raised an eyebrow. FDA approvals were never certain, and everyone on the jury knew it. Dealing with that agency had prompted Arthur to put up Yogi Berra's
It ain't over till it's over
on the wall of his office.

“Our reports also show that we are working on methods of narrowing the effective range of regentide, so that we can regress the cells we want to regenerate without inducing tumors.”

“Your reports,” Jesse countered, “show that such work has barely begun. You're a long way from achieving such a goal.”

“Do you think we will achieve it?”

Jesse blinked with surprise.

Waving one hand in the air, Arthur added, “Let's forget about the time factor. Do you think it's possible that we will refine the regentide treatment to the point where tumor growth will no longer be a problem?”

Jesse could see where Arthur was trying to lead him. “Given enough time, I suppose virtually anything is possible. But it might take years. Decades, even.”

“But it should be possible?”

“Given enough time,” Jesse agreed reluctantly.

“And in the meantime, once FDA approval for the tumor-suppressant treatment comes through, we could go into human trials and deal with the tumor problem that way, couldn't we?”

“That would be adding one new and untried treatment to another new and untried treatment. That makes everything much more risky. You don't know what the long-term side effects might be.”

Arthur paced a few steps closer to the witness table. He saw that the jury was watching him now, not Jesse.

“Have you ever been involved in a heart transplant procedure?”

“No,” Jesse answered. “I'm an internist, not a surgeon. I've witnessed open-heart procedures, though.”

“What was the major problem in the earliest heart transplant procedures?”

“Rejection.”

“The recipient's immune system rejected the ‘foreign' tissue of the donated heart, right?”

Oh, god, Jesse thought, he's going to snooker me again. “Right,” he said.

“And how did the surgeons deal with the rejection problem?”

“With immunosuppressants.”