The Immortality Factor

by Ben Bova

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “A few bruises, nothing more serious. About a dozen or so were arrested.”

  Arthur shook his head. “That’s awful.”

  He saw Pat Hayward rushing down the corridor toward him. She must have gone to the toilet, Arthur realized. Now she stopped at the fringe of the crowding reporters and made gentling motions with her hands. Arthur got her message: stay cool, don’t give the sharks any blood.

  “What was the prepared statement that you wanted to read into the record?” asked one of the reporters. “Do you have it on you?”

  “Why wouldn’t Graves allow you to read it?”

  “Do you think you’re getting a fair trial?”

  Spreading his hands to quiet them down, Arthur said, “Wait! Wait! One at a time.”

  “Do you think you’re getting a fair trial?” repeated a determined-looking woman holding a miniature voice recorder in one hand as she pushed a microphone under Arthur’s chin with the other.

  He made a photogenic smile for her while he thought swiftly. Pat tried to look encouraging from behind the reporters’ backs.

  “I’m not on trial here,” Arthur said at last. A dozen microphones inched closer to him. “Science is on trial. A particular new capability is on trial.”

  “Do you really think you can grow new organs in people?”

  “Yes. And I have the scientific evidence to back up that belief.”

  “What about the people who say that you’d be tampering with things that should be left alone? Playing God?”

  Arthur stretched his smile a bit. “Their great-great-grandparents said that vaccinating children against smallpox was playing God. Their earlier ancestors burned people at the stake for espousing new ideas.”

  One of the bright-looking young men grinned as he asked, “Do you think you’re going to be burned at the stake in there?”

  “I think a good idea might be thrown away,” Arthur replied. “I think that if that happens, people whom we could cure are going to die.”

  “Is your idea getting a fair hearing?”

  Careful! Pat’s expression suddenly told him. They’re just waiting for you to say something they can use against you.

  He cocked his head slightly to one side, thinking before he spoke. Then, “I was surprised, obviously, that the examiner was allowed to bring in questions about priority and funding sponsorship. I had expected the court to deal strictly with the scientific questions, nothing else.”

  “Are you worried about being accused of homicide?”

  “No,” Arthur lied. “It was a suicide, not a murder. That’s obvious.”

  “Do you feel any responsibility about her suicide?”

  “No,” Arthur snapped. Another lie.

  “So who did get the idea first, you or your brother?”

  With only a fraction of a second’s reflection, Arthur answered firmly, “Jesse thought of regenerating organs first. I was still thinking in terms of regenerating spinal neurons when he broadened the scope of our concept.”

  “Hey! There he is!”

  “Thanks, Dr. Marshak!”

  Like a school of fish the reporters flashed away, surging through the corridor toward a new bit of bait. Arthur saw who they were chasing. Jesse.

  “Dr. Marshak!” they were yelling as they scampered down the corridor. “Dr. Marshak!”

  Suddenly there was no one between Arthur and Pat Hayward, looking coolly attractive in a crisp beige miniskirted suit that showed off her long legs to advantage.

  “How’d I do?” he asked her.

  “Fine,” she replied. “I liked that line about science being on trial instead of you.”

  “Well, that’s what’s happening in there.”

  They walked together down the corridor and out into the soggy summer afternoon. The heat hit them like a load of steamed towels dropped onto their shoulders. Not a breath of air was stirring. Independence Avenue was clogged with slow-moving traffic: a sluggish artery of cars and buses and taxis, motors grumbling and growling while they inched along.

  As they waited for the light to cross the avenue, Arthur was tempted to invite Pat to dinner. He knew plenty of people in Washington, but none of them were the kind of acquaintances that he could phone at the last minute for a dinner engagement. Of course, he could get some of the local Omnitech people to go out with him. The corporation had a big office in downtown Washington. But they were virtually strangers who would do it out of duty, and he did not feel like keeping them from their own families and evenings.

  Probably better to just order dinner in my hotel room, he said to himself as he walked with Pat across Independence Avenue to the taxi stand where the corporate limo was supposed to be waiting for him. It was not there. A sea of cars, but the limo was nowhere in sight. Arthur could see the tired, exasperated drivers sitting behind their steering wheels with their windows rolled up, the air-conditioning on full blast and their radios blaring. At nearly four dollars a gallon, Arthur thought. The heat from their engines and the sullen glowering sun made the street broil. Arthur felt himself sweating, his shirt sticking to his back and ribs.

  As he peeled off his suit jacket he thought, I’ll meet with the corporate lawyers over breakfast tomorrow morning, go over today’s testimony, and get set for Jesse’s day at the witness desk.

  “They said there was a riot out here?” Pat asked. Somehow she still looked cool and crisp.

  Jolted out of his thoughts, Arthur saw that the Capitol grounds and parking lot were almost empty. No lines of buses, no marching files of protesters.

  He shrugged. “It’ll probably be on the six o’clock news.”

  “If it really was a riot,” Pat said. “The reporters can turn a little scuffle into World War III.”

  He almost laughed.

  Then he saw the limousine inching through traffic toward them. Should I ask Pat to dinner? Arthur had a rule against socializing with his female employees, a rule that he had bent considerably but never truly broken. At least, that was his view of it. Pat was a consultant, not really an employee, yet he felt doubly uncertain about her. She was very attractive, and Arthur had the feeling that she felt attracted to him. Yet they had both kept their relationship pretty much centered on business, despite the obvious temptation to do otherwise.

  The limo pulled up to the curb and the liveried driver hopped out, all apologies and excuses about the traffic and the police, who wouldn’t let him stay parked in the taxi stand. As Arthur helped Pat into the blessedly cool interior of the car he heard himself ask, “Do you have any plans for dinner?”

  “No.”

  He sat beside her and shut the car door. “Where would you like to go?”

  She hesitated a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “Someplace quiet, where we can go over the day’s testimony and prepare for tomorrow’s.”

  An hour later they were sipping wine at a small table in an intimate French restaurant in Georgetown. The place was crowded, tables crammed in with barely enough room between them for the waiters to push through. But a generous tip to the maître d’ had gotten Arthur one of the few quiet booths at the back of the room.

  “It’s not going the way you thought it would, is it?” Pat was asking.

  He nodded gloomily. “I thought we could separate all the emotional and political factors and show the world that the science really works. But it doesn’t look as if I’ll be able to do that.”

  “Do you think they’re going to use Cassie’s videos?”

  “I’m certain of it.”

  “But it’s so unfair!” Pat said heatedly. “You’re not responsible for what Cassie did.”

  With a wry smile, Arthur said, “Tell it to the judge.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with the scientific facts.”

  His gloom deepening, Arthur said, “You know that and I know that and even Graves knows it. But this trial has been bent out of shape already, on the very first day. God knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.�
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  Pat looked angry, sad, and worried all at the same time. “Why is Jesse so opposed to you?” she asked. “Back when you two first talked about this, he seemed more enthusiastic about it than you were.”

  “I wish I knew,” Arthur said. “He’s my brother, but he’s become a stranger to me. And an enemy.”

  Pat was staying at a motel near the airport. Arthur drove her there in the limo after dinner, said a polite good night, and returned to his suite in the Four Seasons. All the way there he wondered what would have happened if he had tried to make a move on Pat. Would she have rebuffed him? Or gone along because he was her employer? Or was she disappointed that he had done nothing but say good night?

  Restless, unable to sleep, he put his clothes back on and walked for almost an hour along Wisconsin Avenue, unnoticed by the people who crowded the cafés and movie theater.

  They were young, mostly. The singles crowd, roving the bars and fast-food joints, laughing and searching for romance, for excitement, for sex, maybe even for love. How many of you will die of heart disease? Arthur asked them silently. Plenty of the youngsters were smoking, he noticed with some disgust. How many will need new lungs? Or come down with cancer? How many of you realize that we’ll be able to help you, if only they’ll allow us to?

  None of them, Arthur thought. None of them know. None of them give a damn.

  But I care, he knew. I care. They’re not going to stop me. I’m going to give you all the gift of life, maybe the gift of immortality.

  Then he saw a pair of teenage boys in grimy T-shirts and jeans, spiked hair, dangling earrings. Puffing cigarettes. Christ, he said to himself, do you really want everybody to live forever?

  THE TRIAL:

  DAY TWO, BREAKFAST

  There was a miniature television set in the bathroom of Arthur’s hotel suite, and he watched CNN Headline News as he shaved. It startled him when the screen showed the riot that had erupted in front of the Capitol. As Pat had guessed, it was little more than a scuffle. But he had never seen his name on placards before yesterday, never realized the emotions that his work was stirring.

  “My god,” he said to himself, “what do they want of me?”

  On the front page of the Washington Post there was a picture of demonstrators punching each other. The story about the trial itself was on page three.

  Arthur was knotting his tie when the concierge called to tell him that his three visitors were on their way up to him. His doorbell chimed a moment later, and he went in his shirtsleeves to admit three lawyers: an old man, a young man, and a middle-aged woman, all in funereal dark business suits. They reviewed his testimony from the previous day over breakfast in his sitting room.

  They accomplished nothing, Arthur thought. The young lawyer felt that Arthur had conducted himself brilliantly, especially when he tried to insist that the court stick to nothing but the scientific evidence. The woman worried that Rosen was maneuvering to establish Jesse as the rightful originator of the regeneration idea and thereby strip Omnitech of any patents or other proprietary rights. The third, older and grimmer, said very little but looked as if the world were going to come to an end within minutes.

  Finally, just when Arthur thought they were finished, the older man cleared his throat and said in a rasping voice, “About this business of wrongful death . . .”

  Arthur fixed him with a hard stare. “That’s got nothing to do with this trial, no matter what Rosen says.”

  “It’s not this trial that worries me,” said the lawyer. His two colleagues, sitting on either side of him, nodded their heads in unison.

  “What do you mean?” asked Arthur.

  “It seems clear to me that Rosen is trying to establish a connection between your research project and the unfortunate woman’s suicide.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “Perhaps so. Perhaps not. But the testimony in this trial can and undoubtedly will be used in whatever civil or criminal suits are instituted back in Connecticut in regard to her suicide. You are going to have to defend yourself against charges of responsibility for her death.”

  “She killed herself,” Arthur snapped. “She was emotionally unbalanced. Is that my fault?”

  “You have a high visibility in this matter,” said the old lawyer, his voice like a creaking hinge. “That makes you highly vulnerable. And Omnitech, of course, has the deep pockets that personal injury attorneys look for.”

  “Personal injury?”

  “She had a family,” said the younger man. “If they can prove wrongful death and fix the blame on you—”

  “Nonsense!”

  The old lawyer grimaced. “That is for a court of law to decide. A jury of your peers.”

  Christ, Arthur told himself, I thought I had picked a jury of my peers here in Washington. If I have to stand trial over Cassie’s suicide—

  “You must not respond to any questions about the suicide,” the lawyer said in a tone that sounded already like impending doom. “You must not give them any material they can use against you and the corporation later on.”

  “I understand,” Arthur said, realizing that the corporate lawyer was worried about the corporation, not his own life or reputation. “Thanks for the warning.”

  Arthur ushered them out of his suite, glad to be rid of them, then went to the bedroom to put on his jacket. A civil or criminal trial in Connecticut. Great. Wonderful. Just what I need. Maybe they will burn me at the stake, after all.

  CNN Headline News was still on in the bathroom; they were showing yesterday’s riot again.

  The damned limo was nowhere in sight. Feeling angry and depressed, Arthur took a taxi to the Rayburn Building. The limo’s probably taking the lawyers back to their office, he told himself. I’ll have to get Pat to call the service and straighten them out.

  The taxi driver was an elderly black man who seemed just as somber as Arthur felt.

  “You goin’ to that trial ’bout the doctors?” he asked as they inched through the morning traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “I’m one of the doctors,” Arthur replied.

  The driver glanced up at his rearview mirror. “Yeah, yeah—they had a picture of you in the paper Sunday.”

  Arthur saw the dark, red-rimmed eyes study him as they waited for a stoplight to change.

  “You really can grow a man a new heart?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to do,” Arthur said.

  “You ain’t really done it yet?”

  “Not in humans.”

  “Well, hurry it up, Doc. Some of us cain’t wait all that long, you know.”

  Arthur smiled at him. “We’re doing our best.”

  When the cab pulled up at the entrance to the Rayburn Building, Arthur gave the man a ten-dollar tip.

  THE TRIAL:

  DAY TWO, MORNING

  Dr. Jesse Marshak, please.”

  Jesse looked fine, completely relaxed. He was wearing a light brown Western-cut suit with a bolo string tie. He took the oath with utter seriousness, but that boyish careless smile of his broke out as he sat in the witness chair. He carried no papers, no computer, no notes at all. He just sat down and smiled at Rosen and the judges. Arthur thought for an instant that Jess might throw one arm across the back of the chair and put his feet up on the desk.

  “Dr. Marshak,” said Rosen, from his seat at the end of the judges’ row of desks.

  “Dr. Rosen,” said Jesse.

  “You are the brother of Dr. Arthur Marshak?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what is your professional affiliation, sir?”

  “I am chief of internal medicine at Mendelssohn Hospital in New York City, and director of research at the La Guardia Medical Center in Manhattan.”

  Rosen glanced down at the list of questions he had prepared. “Are you now, or have you ever been, an employee of Omnitech Corporation?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Have you ever been a consultant to Omnitech?”

  “No
t in a formal sense.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Rosen asked.

  Jesse glanced at Arthur, then, “I batted some ideas around with my brother, but I never had a formal, legal agreement of any kind with Omnitech.”

  “Did you work in any way with your brother on this program to regenerate human organs?”

  “I did not.” Firmly.

  “And why not? If the idea was originally yours, why didn’t you work on the program to bring it to fruition?”

  Jesse smiled again. “I was busy.”

  JESSE

  Eritrea. I could smell the poverty the instant the plane’s hatch opened.

  The acrid tang of dung. Human sweat. Dust. Above all, overpowering heat. The blast of sun-scorched hot air coming in through the hatch was like standing in front of an enormous oven. And I had to step into it.

  Julia was right behind me as I clambered down the cargo plane’s flimsy ladder and to the dusty airstrip runway. The rusted hulk of a burned-out truck stood baking in the sun with a mangy starving cow tied to its battered front bumper. Talk about the contradictions of the Third World! I could count the cow’s ribs. I wondered what the hell a cow was doing in the middle of the airstrip. Beetles crawled in the dust. Flies droned in the air. Off in the distance the brown hills shimmered in the heat haze. I wanted to turn around and climb back into the plane and fly home to New York.

  Julia’s voice sounded bright and certain. “Well, here we are! It feels good to be out of that awful plane, doesn’t it?”

  Even Cairo, filthy and crowded and plagued with every disease known to medical science, was starting to look good to me.

  A team of dark-skinned men in shabby clothes helped the plane’s crew to unload the medical supplies that had been our main cargo. Even the pilot helped to unload, while Julia and I stood in the hammering sun, feeling lost and uncertain, looking totally out of place in our clean new khaki shirts and slacks and white baseball caps.

  Within minutes all the crates and cartons were piled up on the dusty runway. My soft-sided glitzy black Samsonite luggage sat there in the bug-crawling dust, with Julia’s handsome blue matched set beside them.