by Ben Bova
Almost.
DARRELL WALTERS
I knew we would have trouble with Cassie Ianetta.
She was about as big as a minute. At first glance she looked like a child, a nervous little sparrow with skinny arms and legs and a wild mop of unruly dark brown hair that was always flopping stubbornly down over her eyes. But one look into those burning brown eyes and you knew that this was a grown-up, an intense, driven adult with a mind as keen as they come.
But she was an emotional mess. I imagine she had good reason to be, what with her bouts with cancer and all. And she had never had any luck with guys, always picked jerks who hurt her. She looked like a forlorn waif as she slowly shuffled through the cafeteria line, a skinny kid in faded old blue jeans that hung on her like they were hand-me-downs from a bigger sister. I was right behind her in the line. I could look down and see how thin her hair had gotten from the chemotherapy. I kind of felt like an uncle to Cassie; I wanted to help her, protect her, as much as I could. She was really a nice kid, no matter how tangled up she was emotionally.
We slid our trays along the counter, past the steam tables and the sandwich display, stopping briefly at the salads and then at the juice machine. I had my usual brown bag on my tray; no respectable Connecticut Yankee would pay cafeteria prices when he could pack his own lunch. Cassie picked the first salad she could reach.
The tables by the windows, with their view of the wooded hill, were already taken. We weren’t interested in the view anyway, so we sat at a table for two in a corner where nobody would interrupt us.
“How’re you feeling these days?” I asked as we sat down.
“Okay,” said Cassie. She perched on her chair like a little bird, tired and scared at the same time. Her skin was sallow, her face drawn.
“No reversion from the therapy?”
She shook her head, but I saw that her lips were pressed into a thin bloodless line.
“No reversion,” she said at last. “It’s gone. They got it all.”
That made me smile. “Then you’ll be okay to go to Mexico, right?”
Cassie looked as if she had known what was coming. “There’s no physical reason for me not to go to Mexico. Or Timbuktu, for that matter.”
I could feel my smile fade away. I knew what was coming next.
“I don’t want to be away from Max that long,” she said.
“It’ll only be six months or so,” I told her. “And you don’t have to stay down there the whole time. Six months, at most, and then a couple months when the results start coming in.”
Cassie shook her head. “You don’t understand, Darrell.”
“Yes, I do. You love him and you can’t stand the thought of being away from him.”
“Don’t try to be funny.”
“You’re afraid to be away from him.”
She bit her lower lip. Then she admitted, “Yes. I’m scared to death, Darrell. For his sake.”
It was nonsense, of course, but she sure didn’t see it that way.
“He can’t get along without me,” Cassie said. “I know he can’t.”
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“It is true.”
She looked sad when she should have looked happy.
I said, “Hey, you can hop back here every couple of weeks, spend a weekend, and then go back.”
But Cassie shook her head again. “That wouldn’t work,” she said, pushing back that tangle of hair that flopped across her eyes.
I hunched forward and grabbed her wrist. It felt as thin and fragile as a soda straw. “You can’t give away two years of your work to somebody else, kid! You’ve got to do the clinical trials, get the results, and publish. Otherwise you’ll be going nowhere.”
Her face twisted up into a frown. “If only we could do the trials here. New York, Boston even . . .”
“Arthur wants to see you this afternoon,” I said. “At three.”
“I know. Phyllis told me.”
“He’s got to know whether you’re going to do the clinical trials or somebody else is.”
“Yes,” she sighed.
“You’ve got to make a decision, Cassie. It’s crucial to your career. Your whole life.”
She glanced down at her salad, pushed it away. She looked miserable.
I tried to lighten the mood a little. “Golly, if Arthur wanted to give me six months in Mexico, I’d jump at it. Six whole months away from my wife? Heaven!”
Cassie didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smile.
ARTHUR
I kept one eye on my digital desk clock while I talked on the phone with the corporation’s comptroller. “Sid, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
Sidney Lowenstein’s voice was usually silky smooth, but now it had a rasping edge to it. “It’s not a molehill, Arthur. Two million dollars is no molehill.”
“I told the executive committee about it three weeks ago, at our last meeting. You were there—”
“You didn’t tell us you were running two million over budget.” As Omnitech’s comptroller, Lowenstein was the man who worried most about the money.
I sat up straight in my chair, planted both feet firmly on the carpeted floor. “Listen to me, Sid. When the report comes out it’s going to be worth twenty million in publicity for Omnitech. You know that!”
“All I know,” Lowenstein’s voice grated, “is that your people are two million over budget on this one project, with no end in sight.”
“But the end is in sight, Sid,” I said. “That’s why we want to start the human trials. All the years of animal tests are finished.”
“And you have to go to Mexico for the human trials?”
“Yes. Otherwise we’ll have to wait for god knows how long to get NIH approval. In Mexico we can start the trials right away, and the sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”
“How soon?” Lowenstein demanded. “And how much more?”
I made a mental calculation and answered, “A few months . . . six, at the outside. And that two million you’re frantic about will cover the rest of the program to its conclusion.”
“Really?”
“And think of it, Sid. Omnitech can announce a new technique for making antibodies work inside a cell. It can stop viruses from reproducing, Sid. It can stop the production of oncoproteins!”
“Onco-what?”
“The proteins that grow uncontrolled in cancerous cells. We’ll be able to prevent cancerous cells from multiplying!”
Lowenstein went quiet briefly. Then he asked, “Can it be used against AIDS?”
I had him hooked. “That will take more research, Sid. A lot more research.”
“When will this final report be ready?”
“Six months, something like that.”
“Maybe we should send one of our PR people down to talk to you about this. We’ll want to time the announcement to make the maximum impact on the stock.”
I grinned. “Yes, this would be a good time to pick up a few more shares, wouldn’t it?”
“I’ll clue the PR department in on this. Talk to you later, Art.”
If there is one thing that I hate, it’s being called Art. Or even worse, Artie. But I said nothing about it as I bid a gracious good-bye to the corporation’s comptroller. I gently replaced the phone in its cradle and took a deep breath. I couldn’t smell any citrus odor. Maybe Phyllis had forgotten about it. Or maybe it was too faint to detect even when I consciously tried to.
I knew damned well that the final work on Cassie’s intracellular targeting project would take more than six months. We hadn’t even started the human trials yet. And we’d have to tabulate the experimental results and write all the reports. Why do scientists hate to write? I asked myself. I looked up at the quotation from Michael Faraday that hung on my office wall:
Physics is to make experiments and to publish them.
Publish or perish, I thought. Worse yet, publish or languish in obscurity. How can the world learn about what a scie
ntist has accomplished if the scientist doesn’t publish?
The digital clock said 12:30.
Jesse should be here soon. I tried to read one of the reports stacked on the corner of my desk, but it was impossible to concentrate. Jesse was never on time, of course; it was only a question of how late he would be.
My intercom chirped softly.
“Yes?”
Phyllis’s voice replied, “Your brother’s here; on his way in from the lobby.”
“Great!”
Jesse is what you would call a natural. He was born with charm and grace, and he learned how to use his gifts when he was still a baby. I work hard at everything I do; things just seem to fall into place for Jesse. I can spend half an hour fretting over which tie goes best with the suit I’m wearing; Jesse just tosses on whatever’s closest to hand and he always looks like he stepped out of an advertisement for men’s styles. Even at the previous night’s banquet in his honor he had ostentatiously undone his bow tie while giving his acceptance speech. And looked completely elegant and relaxed all the while.
But now he looked nervous as he stepped into my office, his usual boyish grin diminished into an anxious expression of uncertainty. He wore a Western-style suede jacket over an open-collar pale yellow sports shirt and faded rumpled blue jeans.
I got to my feet and came around the desk. Jesse stuck out his hand awkwardly.
“I guess this isn’t any easier for you than it is for me,” he said as I reached for his hand.
And then we grabbed at each other, clasped each other’s shoulders and pounded each other’s backs and held ourselves as close as brothers should be.
“It’s good to see you again, Arby,” Jesse whispered huskily. He still used his childhood name for me.
“Jess.” I was on the verge of tears. All I could say was, “Jess. Jess.”
The moment passed. We released one another and took a step back.
“You look great, Arby.”
I took a breath and decided to plunge ahead. “You, too. Married life agrees with you.”
Something flickered in Jesse’s brown eyes. “Yeah. I guess it does.”
“Julia’s fine?” I asked, retreating back behind my desk.
“Wonderful,” said Jesse as he sat in the upholstered chair in front of the desk.
“That’s good.”
“You . . .” Jesse seemed to be studying my face. “You’re not mad at us anymore?”
I forced a smile. “No. That’s over with. I wish the two of you every happiness. Really I do.”
Jesse beamed. “That’s great! Maybe you can come into the city and have dinner with us one night. There’s a great little Italian restaurant just a block and a half from our apartment and . . .”
It’s done, I thought as I listened to my brother with only half my attention. We’ve broken the ice and we’re talking to each other just like we used to do. Maybe I ought to go into the city and have dinner with them. Show them both that there’s no hard feelings. Sooner or later they’ll invite me to their apartment. But not at first. Not just yet.
Phyllis buzzed on the intercom to ask if we were ready for lunch. Jesse nodded as I said yes and she came in a moment later with a tray of sandwiches, a pot of coffee, and two frosted bottles of juice. I thought I caught a whiff of lavender, her aromatherapy for reducing stress. She deposited the tray on my desk and left the office, closing the door softly behind her.
“You remembered my grapefruit juice,” Jesse said as he unscrewed one of the bottles.
“Phyllis did. I can’t take credit for it. She’s a wonder.”
“You still drinking that black poison?”
I nodded as I poured a cup of coffee from the insulated pot. “I keep it down to two or three cups a day.”
“Decaffeinated?”
“No. From what I read in the literature, that’s just as bad for you in the long run as regular.”
“How’s your blood pressure?”
“Okay the last time I had a checkup.”
“What were the numbers?” Jesse insisted.
I waved a hand in the air. “Oh, I don’t remember. Ask Phyllis. She keeps all the records.”
“Who’s your doctor?”
“The corporation sends us to the Lahey Clinic for an annual physical. They’re very thorough.”
“Us? Everybody in the lab?”
“Us, the corporate executives. The lab’s employees have their own health plan. It’s a damned good one, too.”
“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?”
