Transhuman (2 page)

At last Luke showed his final slide. “As you can see,” he said, working his laser pointer down the list of test results, “by activating the controlling gene set we increase the body's production of telomeres, which rejuvenates the subjects and alleviates the symptoms of aging.”

He thumbed the button on his remote that turned off the projector and turned on the ceiling lights.

Luke's legs ached, and he desperately wanted to urinate, but he remained standing at the front of the conference room. The committee members glanced back and forth at each other. No one spoke.

Finally, one of his former students, now head of the university's grant committee, cleared his throat noisily. “Luke, your work with telomerase is very interesting, but I don't see how it could possibly apply to Angela Villanueva's case.”

A better reaction than he had expected. Luke made a smile as he replied, “Glioblastoma multiforme is a form of cancer.”

“A very dangerous form,” said one of the women, halfway along the table. She was plump and gray-haired, wearing a stylish slate gray dress and a pearl choker beneath her double chin.

Nodding, Luke went on. “Cancer cells multiply wildly, they don't stop proliferating. But if we can inhibit their production of telomerase, we can kill them.”

“Wait a minute, back up a bit,” said the committee's chairman, Odom Wexler, a small, roundish black money manager with a fringe of silvery beard and wire-rimmed tinted eyeglasses. Frowning puzzledly, he asked, “Inhibiting their telomerase will kill the cancer cells? How's that work?”

Christ, Luke snarled silently, didn't you listen to
anything
I told you?

Patiently, he explained. “All normal cells reproduce a certain number of times, then they stop reproducing.”

“The Hayflick Limit. I understand that.”

“Cancer cells don't have a Hayflick Limit. They just go on reproducing, making more of themselves, building tumors that just grow and grow.”

“Unless we intervene with radiation or chemotherapy,” said the dean of the psychiatry department, a handsome man dressed in a navy blue three-piece suit. He had a leonine mane of silvery hair and a smile that had reassured countless wealthy wives.

“There's also surgery,” added the surgeon seated down at the foot of the conference table.

“Surgery, of course,” the psychiatrist muttered.

“All of those interventions have serious side effects,” Luke said. “In Angela's case, surgery is impossible, and both radiation and chemo have been ineffective.”

“And your intervention doesn't have serious side effects?”

Ignoring the snide tone of the question, Luke continued explaining. “Telomeres control the cells' reproduction rate. Each time a cell reproduces, the telomeres at the ends of the chromosomes shrink a little.”

“Telomeres are sort of like aglets at the end of a shoelace, aren't they?” asked a balding man seated across the table from the chairman. He was a financial guy, a glorified accountant, neither a physician nor a scientist.

“Like aglets, right,” said Luke. “Telomeres protect the ends of the chromosome strings, keep them from unraveling. But they shrink every time the cell reproduces.”

“And when they get small enough the cell stops reproducing,” said one of Luke's former students. “Everybody knows that.”

You always were a smug little prick, Luke said to himself. Aloud, he replied, “And when your cells stop reproducing, you begin to get the symptoms of aging. Your skin wrinkles. Your eyesight fades. Your muscles weaken. When enough of your cells stop reproducing, you die.”

His former student, almost smirking, said, “Telomeres were a hot subject for a while, back in the nineties. The cure for aging, they thought.”

“They were right,” Luke snapped.

“Inject telomerase into the body,” the younger man continued, “and you regrow the cells' telomeres. The fountain of youth.”

“It works,” Luke insisted.

“In mice.”

“It works on genes that mice and human beings have in common. It will work on humans. I'm sure of it!”

Before the back-and-forth could grow into a really bitter argument, Chairman Wexler interrupted. “But what's all this got to do with Angela Villanueva's case?”

“As I explained before,” Luke said, trying to hold on to his temper, “by inhibiting her telomerase production we can kill the cancer cells.”

“But what about the other cells of her body?” asked the gray-haired woman.

“We'll be inhibiting their telomerase production, too, of course. But the cancer cells will die long before her somatic cells become endangered.”

“How do you know that?”

“I showed you my experimental evidence—”

“But that's with lab mice!” said one of the younger men. “You can't expect us to approve a human trial with nothing more than mouse experiments to go on. The FDA would shut us down in two seconds flat!”

Luke stared at him. He wasn't much more than forty, and he'd made his way through the political jungles of academia by smilingly agreeing with almost everyone but then going ahead ruthlessly with his own ideas. He never stuck his neck out, though. He always had underlings do his dirty work, and he had no compunctions about chopping their heads off when he had to.

“If you told the FDA that you approved the therapy and wanted to do a clinical test—”

“No, no, no,” said Wexler, wagging his bearded head back and forth. “Luke, you know as well as I do that it takes years to get FDA approval for any new procedure. Then there's the state medical board and at least three other federal agencies to get through.”

“There's an eight-year-old girl dying!”

“That's regrettable, but we can't put this hospital in jeopardy by going ahead with an unapproved therapy.”

Luke exploded. “Then you pea-brained idiots might just as well put a gun to my granddaughter's head and blow her freaking brains out!”

He strode angrily down the length of the table, past the stunned committee members, and stormed out of the room.

 

Beacon Hill

L
UKE SAT ALONE
in the living room of his darkened top-floor apartment. Through the uncurtained window he could see the gold dome of the state capitol shining in the moonlight. He swished a tumbler of Bushmills whiskey in one hand, wondering what to do now. Maybe I should turn in my resignation after all, he thought. What the hell good am I doing anybody?

No, he told himself. I won't give those pinheads the satisfaction. Let them carry me out feet first.

He realized that the big recliner he was sitting on had become shabby over the years. The sofa, too. All the furniture. The place needed a paint job. It had needed one for years. The only new thing in the apartment was the flat-screen television that Lenore and Del had given him last Christmas, sitting there on the lowboy, dark, dead.

So many memories. Lenore had been born in the bedroom, down the hall, four weeks premature. His wife had died in the same bed. Luke had closed her eyes. He had wanted to die himself, but then Lenore gave birth to Angie, and the gurgling, giggling little baby had captured Luke's heart.

And now she's dying. And those freaking idiots won't let me even try to help her.

Well, screw them! Each and every one of them. I'll save Angie. I will. I'll save her or die trying.

The phone rang.

He glared at it, a flare of anger at the intrusion. Then he realized he was being stupid and picked up the handpiece before the automatic answering machine kicked in.

“Dad?” Lenore's voice.

“Hello, Norrie.”

“Aren't you coming over? It's almost eight o'clock.”

Luke remembered he had agreed to have dinner with his daughter and her husband.

“I'm not very hungry, Norrie.”

“You shouldn't be sitting all alone. Come on over. I made lasagna.”

He grinned despite himself. He heard her mother's tone in his daughter's voice: part insistent, part enticing.

“Del can drive over and pick you up,” Lenore added.

He bowed to the inevitable. “No, that's okay. I'll come. Give me a few minutes.”

Del and Lenore lived in Arlington, across the Charles River from Boston, in a big Dutch colonial house on a quiet street that ended at a two-mile-wide pond. The trip from Beacon Hill took Luke less than twenty minutes; during peak traffic hours it could take at least twice that.

Del opened the door for him and tried to smile. “We heard the committee turned you down.”

They didn't get a chance to, Luke said to himself. I walked out on the stupid brain-dead morons.

As he took off his overcoat Lenore called from the kitchen, “Lasagna's on the way!”

The two men sat at the dining table as Lenore toted in a steaming tray. Del poured red wine into Luke's glass, then filled his own. Lenore sat down with nothing but water at her place.

“How's Angie?” Luke asked.

Lenore's dark eyes widened slightly. “She was sleeping when we left her.”

“Dr. Minteer says she'll sleep more and more,” Del added.

“Yeah,” said Luke.

“We had a meeting with the grief counselor from Hospice,” said Lenore. “She's very sweet.”

Luke could see that his daughter was straining to hold herself together, to keep from blubbering. Grief counselor, Luke thought. Fat lot of help a grief counselor can be. He remembered when his wife died and they sent a minister, then a grief counselor, and finally a psychologist to him. Can you bring her back to life? Luke demanded of each of them. Finally they left him alone.

“Dr. Schiavo—he's the head of the oncology department—he wants to try nanotherapy,” Lenore said, her voice flat, empty.

“It's a new technique,” said Del. “Experimental.”

Luke said, “Now that they've given up on Angie, they want to try
their
pet experimental ideas on her. Get another datum point for their charts. But not my idea. I'm not part of their team, their clique. I'm off their charts.” He gritted his teeth with anger.

“Isn't that what you want to do?” Del challenged.

“No! I want to save her.”

“We told Schiavo no,” Del said. “Let her be.”

“She's resting comfortably,” said Lenore, almost in a whisper.

Luke stared at the lasagna on his plate. He couldn't touch it.

“She's not in any pain,” Lenore went on. Like her father, she hadn't even picked up her fork.

“We're the ones in pain,” Luke muttered.

Lenore burst into tears and pushed her chair back from the table. Before Luke could say anything she got to her feet and ran out of the dining room.

“Why'd you have to say that?” Del snarled. “Can't you see she's holding herself together by a thread?”

Luke didn't answer him. He got up and went after his daughter.

Lenore was sitting on the living room sofa, next to the end table that held Angela's kindergarten graduation photo, racked with sobs, bent over, her forehead almost touching her knees. Luke sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her quaking shoulders.

“Norrie, it's going to be all right,” he crooned to her. “I'll fix everything. I'll make her all better.”

“That's a helluva thing to tell her.” Del stood in the doorway, fury radiating from his tall, broad-shouldered form.

“I can do it,” Luke insisted.

“The hell you can! The committee turned you down flat. You can't do a thing for Angie.”

“The committee's a collection of assholes.”

“But without their approval you can't do a damned thing,” Del repeated, advancing into the room and standing over Luke.

Luke rose to his feet. “I know what I'm doing. I can save her.”

“Don't!” Lenore screamed. “Don't say it! Don't even think it! Angie's going to die. She's going to die.”

Luke stared down at his daughter's tear-streaked face. “Norrie, don't you believe me? Don't you believe I can save her?”

Lenore took a deep, shuddering breath before replying. “Dad, I know you want to help. You believe you can. But everybody else says you can't. Even if they gave you permission to try, it'd never work. Angie's going to die, and there's nothing you or anybody else can do about it.”

Luke felt shocked. Norrie doesn't believe in me? My own daughter doesn't trust me?

Without another word, he got up and brushed past Del, went out to the front hall, and pulled his overcoat out of the closet.

Del came up behind him, still obviously simmering with anger. “Luke, I don't want you telling Lenore any more of this crap about saving Angie. It's tough enough for her without you telling her fairy tales.”

Luke looked up at his son-in-law's grim face. “Don't worry,” he said. “I won't bother either of you again.”

 

University Hospital

E
ITHER THIS WORKS
or I end up in jail, Luke said to himself as he strode through the front entrance of the hospital. It was eight
A.M.
, the hour when the administrative offices officially opened for business.

The door to the admitting office was open, but no one was at the counter. The desks beyond the counter were unoccupied, the computer screens dark. Luke could smell coffee brewing and heard voices chatting through the open door to the back room. Frowning, he hollered, “Is anybody here?”

He had spent the past two weeks preparing for this move. He had gutted his bank account and used part of the cash to buy a used Ford Expedition SUV, blood red. Then, in the garage beneath his Beacon Hill apartment building, he had done his best to turn the van into a makeshift ambulance.

Stocking the vehicle with the equipment and medications Angie would need wasn't easy, but the grad students who staffed his lab were willing labor. He answered their questions with gruff half-truths.