by Ben Bova
I put on a hurt expression.
“I didn’t say pig,” Pat added.
“Well, that’s something, at least,” I said.
Her face became more serious. “You’re really worried about this?”
“Wouldn’t you be, if you were in my shoes?”
She thought about that for a moment. “Yes, I suppose I would be.”
“I don’t want to see Zack mess up what could be a fine career.” Then I quickly added, “The same for Tina, too.”
“But they’re both adults . . .”
“Look,” I said, leaning my elbows on the desk to hunch closer to her, “how many people do you know who’ve damaged themselves and their careers by making the wrong choices in their love lives?”
Even as I spoke the words their impact hit me. I was one of those people. And from the expression on Pat’s face, she had been hit just as hard.
“We’ve all done it,” I said, more softly. “I just don’t want to see those two kids mess up their lives, if it can be avoided.”
Pat looked straight at me with those marvelous green eyes of hers. “All right,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find out from Tina—on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You do the same with Zack.”
I leaned back in my chair. “You want me to ask Zack about it?”
“Why not?”
“I’m his boss, his employer. He won’t be completely frank with me.”
Pat smiled slightly. “You think women always tell each other the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”
I mulled that one over. “Very well,” I said. “It’s a deal. You talk with Tina and I’ll talk with Zack.”
“Good.”
“Under one condition.”
Her brows rose questioningly.
“You have dinner with me tonight.” I don’t know what made me say that. I hadn’t intended to. But there it was.
Pat seemed more puzzled than anything else. “I can’t. Not tonight.”
I mentally reviewed my calendar. “Friday night, then.”
She nodded. “Friday. Okay.”
Then she got up and left my office. Neither one of us was smiling.
Toward the end of the day I wandered back to Vince’s lab. He was bent over a display screen, tracing one finger across its green-glowing surface.
I stood in the doorway, not wanting to disturb him. As usual, Vince’s lab was crammed with humming electronic equipment, dimly lit, hot, and intense.
“Come on in and grab a chair,” he said, without turning from the screen. “Be with you in a minute.”
There was only one chair to take: a spindly little typist’s seat on wheels.
“Whatcha want, boss?” Andriotti asked as I sat down.
“How did you know it was me?”
I could sense his knowing grin. “I got mystical powers. And besides, you ain’t no vampire.”
It took me a moment to realize he had seen my reflection in the screen.
“What are you doing?” I asked. I knew that Vince could work and talk at the same time. Some people can’t, but he could blithely hold a conversation and make the most delicate measurements without missing a beat on either.
“Tracing out this NGF map. Neurons follow the stuff like a bloodhound.”
Nerve growth factor. Vince was still spending most of his time on the spinal neuron regeneration program. I had all but forgotten how we had started the regeneration work.
“We’ll have paraplegics dancing like Gene Kelly one of these days,” Vince said, still staring so intently at the screen that his snub nose almost touched it.
“That’s good,” I said.
“You didn’t come here to check on my progress, though, didja?”
“Not exactly.”
With one hand he pecked at the keyboard off to the side of the display unit. “Worried I’m gonna break Zack’s skull?”
“It’s crossed my mind,” I admitted.
“Tina likes the jerk.”
“Your daughter is a very intelligent young woman.”
“Yeah, sure. But once those damn hormones start bubbling, their brains take a back seat. Guys ain’t the only ones who think with their cojones, y’know.”
“I don’t see Tina doing anything irrational,” I said.
“You’re not her father.”
“That’s true.”
“Arthur, I don’t mind if the kids have some fun together. I can’t tell my daughter she’s gotta keep her legs crossed at all times.”
That was a relief.
But then Vince went on, “But if that punk little sonofabitch hurts her in any way, if I see just the glimmer of a tear in the corner of her eye, then I’ll break his friggin’ skull.”
And he looked up from the screen with a fierce pirate’s grin on his swarthy face.
CASSIE IANETTA
It all started out so wonderfully. I should have known it would end in a disaster.
“How would you like a week in Acapulco?” Bill asked me.
We were sitting in the living room, in the purple dark after sunset, sipping wine and just doing nothing. No lights. Just sitting in the shadows together on the sagging old sofa. Neither one of us had made a move to start dinner. I had just come back from my quick trip to Connecticut to see Max and make certain he was all right after the terrorists’ attack on the lab. I was way behind on my work, and even though Arthur didn’t push me much I swore to myself on the plane back to Mexico that I’d catch up and write the reports I should have done months earlier.
I hadn’t told Bill about my cancer and my decision to inoculate myself. If the enzyme did its work on me I’d never have to tell him about the cancer. That’s what I was praying for.
So now Bill was talking about a week in Acapulco.
“Can we afford it?” I asked him.
I never knew exactly what Bill’s financial condition was. The little row house he rented sure wasn’t in the expensive part of town, but it was a whole house and it was decently furnished and he even had a cleaning woman come in twice a week.
He shrugged. “My mother just sent me a check. Birthday present.”
“It’s your birthday? When?”
“Last month,” he said carelessly. “Anyway, I want to see the tourist traps in Acapulco, make a nice contrast in my film to the reality of the poor people’s living conditions.”
That was another thing. Bill’s idea of working on his film was to travel here and there soaking up atmosphere. I never saw him write anything down, although he had an old-fashioned manual typewriter set up in the bedroom. Whenever I asked him how his work was going he’d tap the side of his head and say, “It’s all in here.”
“You didn’t tell me about your birthday,” I said. “I would’ve gotten a present for you.”
He smiled, bright enough to light the whole street. “Come with me to Acapulco. That’ll be your birthday present to me.”
A week. My work would slide even further behind. But one look at his smiling face and everything else faded away. We went to the glitziest, most expensive hotel in Acapulco and behaved like rich American tourists for a whole week. It was the height of the winter season and the place was crammed with Americans and Europeans and even a few busloads of Japanese tourists.
Bill was already deeply tanned, but I slathered sunblock all over myself the first day we went out to the beach. At this tropical latitude, even the winter sun could burn you to a crisp in minutes, I knew. Our second day, Bill took over the job of covering my skin with lotion and we never did get to the beach.
That was when I first mentioned children, while we were making slippery, slithery love on the big king-sized bed of our hotel suite.
“I want your baby,” I murmured to Bill while we lay side by side, spent and sweaty.
He didn’t respond.
I turned to look squarely at him. “I mean it. I love you and I want to have your baby.”
Bill smiled gently at me
. “I love you, too, Cassie.”
He didn’t say a word about babies, but I thought that it didn’t matter. He loved me and love means children, sooner or later.
We had our first argument two days later. Not an argument, really. A disagreement. A difference of opinion. But it hurt. While we were getting dressed for dinner he asked me if I was on the pill.
“No,” I said. I almost told him that it’s not recommended for women with a history of cancer, but I bit that back. I hadn’t told him about the cancer and this wasn’t the time to break that news to him.
“Are you using any protection at all?” he asked.
Pulling my dress on, I said vaguely, “Vaginal foam.”
He looked very serious, more serious than I’d ever seen him. “I mean, when you said you wanted to get pregnant—you didn’t mean right now, did you?”
“Why not?” I don’t know why I said that. It surprised me to hear myself.
“Because I’m not ready to have kids, that’s why not,” he practically snapped at me.
“Men are never ready to have children, are they?” I snapped back.
He looked like he was ready to snarl. But instead he sat down on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath, a sigh, really. “I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is that I’m not ready. Not yet.”
“But you will be someday?”
“I hope so,” he said, almost in a whisper.
I went around the bed to him and sat on his lap and put my arms around his neck and kissed him. “I’ll wait for you,” I said. “It’s all right, Bill, I’ll wait until you’re ready.”
He tried to smile. It came out as a grimace.
By the end of the week I stopped using the sunblock, figuring I had built up enough of a tan. Stupid of me. Must have been something in my subconscious mind. Naturally, I had a good case of sunburn by the time we drove back to Querétaro. Red as a lobster. Not a smart thing to do for a woman who’s prone to cancer. But I wasn’t being smart where Bill was concerned. I was in love. I wanted to have his children.
For several days I was miserable and feverish from the sunburn. Every square inch of my arms and legs and even my face puffed up. It was agony to be touched or to feel warmth. I stayed in the house with the shutters all pulled down, telling myself over and over again what an idiot I was. Bill stayed away all day long, and slept on the ratty old sofa in the living room until I was back to normal—except for the peeling. By the time all my burned skin had flaked off, I was almost as white as when I had started.
But who cared? We could make love again.
Bill came home a couple of nights later with an enormous straw hat for me. He put it on my head while I was making dinner at the stove and pulled its leather thong tight under my chin.
“You don’t go out in the sun without this on your head,” he said, very serious. “I don’t want you getting sick.”
I still hadn’t told him about the cancer. They had frozen the latest spot and I had started taking the enzyme injections. Physician, heal thyself, I thought. The first few weeks’ results looked good. I did all the testing myself, even drawing my own blood. The enzyme was established in my cells. It ought to protect me against another outbreak.
So I decided that the time had come to be completely honest with Bill. I loved him and he loved me. I wanted his baby and I wasn’t going to let cancer or anything else stop me. So over dinner that evening in our little candlelit dining room I finally told him.
“Cancer?” he said when I told him. “Jesus, that’s a rough one.”
“I’ll be all right, though,” I said with an assurance I didn’t really feel. “I’m going to beat it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I sure hope you do.”
I explained to him that I had inoculated myself with the enzyme I had developed.
“Is that smart?” he asked. “I mean, it’s still an experimental drug, isn’t it?”
“It’s not a drug and it works. I’ve seen it working in the volunteers we’ve been inoculating. It’s working in me.”
But even though Bill spoke all the right words, it was clear from the worried look on his face that he wasn’t convinced. Not at all.
At work, I was watching for any possible side effects on our volunteers. So far the only noticeable quirk was that almost all those who received the real inoculations reported a sharp increase in their appetites. But they didn’t seem to gain any weight. I noted it in my reports, guessing that the enzyme had some weird reaction on the subject’s metabolic rate. It didn’t seem to affect me that way, but maybe it was too early for the effect to show up in me.
It was in the middle of my series of inoculations that Bill told me he was thinking of returning to Los Angeles. We had just finished supper and were sitting on the sofa with a pair of half-empty wine glasses on the coffee table in front of us.
“I’ve gotten as much done here as I could,” he said. “But I can’t write here. It just isn’t working.”
The fear that I should have felt in the gynecologist’s office I felt now, clutching at my heart.
“You’re going to leave?”
“Yeah. Got to.”
“Can’t you write your script here?”
He shrugged. “I’ve tried, Cassie. It just isn’t working out for me.”
“What isn’t? The script, or me?”
“You could come with me,” he said.
“To Los Angeles? And what about my work here? What about my career back East?”
“I’ve got work to do, too, Cass.”
I don’t remember exactly what we said to each other after that. It’s all pretty much of a jumble. I know I cried and Bill got more and more upset.
“But I love you!” I recall saying that, more than once.
He must have told me that he loved me, too. I’m sure he did. But the more we talked, the angrier he became. I knew he was really scared, frightened for me, frightened about cancer, about having children, about making a commitment. But it came out as anger, hot boiling rage. At me.
“I want to have a baby,” I kept sobbing. “Your baby.”
His face got so distorted with fury that I hardly recognized him. “I don’t want a baby! I don’t want any of this!”
“Any of what?” I pleaded.
“You! Dammit, I love you, but you’re turning me inside out! I can’t write, I can’t even think straight anymore. I’ve got to get away. I’ve got to get free.”
“But if you love me—”
He pushed his face so close to mine we were practically touching. “I can’t have you hanging around my neck! I can’t deal with it! With cancer and babies and the whole friggin’ mess! I’m not going to let you tear my life apart!”
I sank back in the lumpy sofa, crying so hard that I couldn’t see anything at all. Just the imprint of his red, twisted face burned into my retinas like the afterimage of the sun.
Then I heard the door slam and, outside, the MG cough to life. He roared away, out of my life. I had nothing left, nothing except my work. Nothing except what’s inside me, the cancer and the antibodies, the good and the bad, the hope and the knowledge that there isn’t a man in the entire universe who can be trusted.
TETRIAL:
DAY FOUR, MORNING
Potter had come prepared. He had two assistants with him, graduate students. Young men, both of them; one black and one Oriental. Politically correct, even in retirement, Arthur grumbled to himself. The black student ran the old-fashioned overhead projector while the Oriental one sat beside Potter and turned the pages of his printed testimony, much as a concert pianist has someone turning the pages of the music.
His paper’s a pile of crap, Arthur told himself. It’s all based on statistics that make no sense. Arthur began to mentally assemble his cross-examination. Isn’t it true, he saw himself asking Potter, that mathematicians in the past “proved” that bumblebees can’t fly? That a heavier-than-air machine could never lift itself off the ground? That AIDS was going to kill half the h
uman race in the next ten years?
Arthur began to smile to himself. Cross-examining Potter was going to be fun, a real pleasure. But then an inner voice warned, Don’t dump on him too hard. Don’t make him look like an object of sympathy. Make it cool and correct. Stick to the facts of his own presentation. I’ve got to read his paper before I face him. It was pretty shifty of Rosen to pull him out of his hat.
I’ll get a copy of Potter’s idiotic paper and read it thoroughly tonight, Arthur said to himself.
It took Potter only a few minutes to read the abstract of his paper to the jury. The slides he showed were all statistical graphs, Arthur saw. All nonsense, as far as he was concerned. The jury looked almost embarrassed; the judges uncomfortable. Arthur was surprised that Senator Kindelberger willingly sat through the entire presentation.
Once the old man had finished, Graves thanked him, then asked, “Will you be able to appear tomorrow morning for cross-examination, Professor? If not we can have the cross-examination now.”
The Oriental student sitting beside Potter had retrieved his cane, which Potter leaned on heavily as he pushed himself up out of the witness chair.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. “You can depend on it.”
As Potter turned to leave, with his student aides at his elbows, there was a stir in the back of the chamber. Someone came in and remained standing at the double doors. People turned to see him and whispers started floating through the spectators.
Graves rapped his gavel sharply, then said, “At the request of Senator Kindelberger, we will allow a slight deviation from our regular schedule.”
Arthur glanced back at the little commotion, quickly dying away as Potter shuffled along the chamber’s central aisle toward the doors to the corridor. Then he turned back to hear what Graves was saying.
“The senator has asked that we permit an interested citizen to read a statement to the court,” the chief judge said, looking less than pleased, “and we have decided to allow this unusual procedure as a courtesy to Senator Kindelberger.”
The man who had entered the chamber minutes before strode to the front and took the witness chair. Arthur recognized him: Joshua Ransom.
