by Ben Bova
“If this leaks out to the media before the eye grows back,” I said, “we’ll have animal-rights commandos trying to blow up the whole laboratory.”
“With us in it,” said Andriotti.
“Maybe they’d be right,” Walters muttered.
Again the table fell silent. All eyes turned to Arthur. It was his decision to make.
“All right, dammit,” he snapped. “We use Max as soon as the surgical team is ready. Before the week is out. Take the arm, but not the one he uses for sign language.”
“And the eye?” Zack whispered.
“Yes, the eye, too,” Arthur said with an exasperated sigh. “What the hell.”
Then he turned to me. “But not a word of this goes beyond the walls of this building. Understand that? This operation has got to be so secret it’ll make the CIA look like a network news broadcast.”
ARTHUR
Ifelt like a vampire. I wasn’t as close to Max emotionally as Zack had become, and nowhere near as wrapped up in the chimp as Cassie. But still it felt—well, evil, almost, to be chopping off one of his arms and taking an eye, as well. What did Darrell call it? Ghoulish.
But what choice did I have? If we had other chimps, if we could have kept our work secret, then I could have gone slower, been more careful, kept my promise to Cassie to protect Max. But I wasn’t going to let them stop me: not the competition, not the crazies like Ransom and Simmonds, not the government bureaucrats who’d smother us in red tape the instant we slowed our pace. Everything I’ve really wanted in life has been taken away from me. Columbia. Julia. Momma. Any chance of real recognition. Even Jesse had turned away from me.
Well, they weren’t going to snatch this prize from my fingers. As long as I’m running the show we’ll move as fast and as hard as we can, I decided. And damn the torpedoes.
I knew that Johnston was talking to at least two of the biggest pharmaceutical firms in Europe. Nancy Dubois wouldn’t give me the time of day, but Johnston himself told me that more than one European corporation was interested in a merger with Omnitech.
“That could be our salvation, Arthur,” the CEO told me. Then he added, “But don’t breathe a word of it outside this office, understand me?”
“Are the Japanese also interested?” I asked as casually as I could manage.
Johnston’s brows popped up. “The Japs? I haven’t talked to Nakata in weeks.”
Which was an evasion, not an answer. I worried about that as I drove from corporate headquarters back to the lab. Is Johnston talking seriously to the Japanese? If he is, what conditions are they putting on a possible merger? Where does the lab fit in?
The only course I could see was to plow ahead. I still believed that the best thing we could do was to move forward with the regeneration work as fast as we could. That would make the lab too valuable to sell off. But would it make us so attractive that some overseas firm would buy the entire corporation?
We kept all the preparations for Max’s surgery top secret. We swore the surgical team to secrecy, even made them sign confidentiality statements. Not that there was anything we could really do to them if they talked. This wasn’t the government and they were consultants, not employees. About the worst we could threaten was to splash their names around the profession as unreliable.
Pat got a stroke of genius in that regard. She suggested sending the whole team off on a month’s vacation after the operation on Max, just to get them away from the media.
“The Caribbean, Europe, anyplace where they won’t be tempted to talk to reporters,” she said.
“How about Australia?” I suggested.
“Or Tibet?”
We gave them their choices. I’m sure they knew the motivation behind our generosity but they went for it anyway. The chief of the surgery team opted for a month traveling through Italy. Most of the others picked the Caribbean, although one of the nurses wanted to visit her family in Taiwan. Fine by me. Sid Lowenstein got red in the face when I told him about it, but even he saw the wisdom of the plan once I explained it to him.
The day came. The team’s anesthesiologist had mixed a powerful sedative into Max’s evening meal. The chimp was sleeping like a baby when we went to his cage and started strapping him down and prepping him for surgery.
I went with them, every step of the way. This was my responsibility and I wasn’t about to duck away from the messy part of it. I suppose Jesse would have said it’s part of my god complex. As long as I’m there watching nothing will go wrong.
It was incredibly messy. Giving a sleeping chimp an enema is not easy, and the results are foul and stinking beyond belief. Then came the needles and the catheters. By the time they wheeled Max into our little surgical lab he was wired up like an astronaut. And firmly strapped to the table. The display screens off to one side of the room showed his pulse and respiration rates, blood pressure, brain wave patterns, everything. They beeped and hummed softly. The room was cold, tiled walls and floor, big ring of high-intensity lights over the surgical table. It smelled of antiseptics and strange, other odors. I wondered if we were catching whiffs of the anesthesiologist’s gases from the metal cylinders up by the head of the table.
We were all dressed in hospital greens, complete with masks and hairnets and disposable booties over our shoes. Very antiseptic. They had put a breathing mask over Max’s muzzle. I noticed that it was held tightly in place with leather straps. They were taking no chances on the chimp waking up and using his teeth. I thought it didn’t show much confidence on the anesthesiologist’s part.
Darrell stood beside me through the whole long, gruesome procedure. At the last minute Zack begged off. He looked almost as green as the surgical gowns. Sick with fear and guilt.
The chief surgeon was a little round butterball of a woman with the tiniest hands I had ever seen on an adult. She handled the laser scalpel without a flaw. Max’s left arm came off just above the elbow, the laser beam cauterizing as it cut so there was relatively little blood. The whole procedure took less than ten minutes, once she started cutting. But the smell of burnt meat and hair made me queasy.
The eye was different, more delicate. She had to use knives for that. I had to look away. I was getting sick to my stomach from the smell and the blood.
I heard Max whimper.
“Watch it!” one of the assistant surgeons snapped.
I turned back and saw that Max was stirring slightly. The monitor displays were getting jagged instead of showing smooth curves and their audio signals whined to higher pitches. The anesthesiologist twirled knobs on his control console and Max calmed down. So did the displays. The chief surgeon glanced at the anesthesiologist. I could only see her eyes above the mask, but she radiated displeasure.
At last the eye came free. An assistant took it tenderly in her gloved fingers and deposited it in a freezer box. If the regeneration didn’t work we would attempt to replace Max’s original eye. I felt bile burning in my throat.
Then it was patching, suturing, bandaging, while I fought the urge to throw up. The homestretch. I looked up at the clock on the cold tile wall and realized with some surprise that we’d only been in there for a little more than two hours.
It was over. The chief surgeon peeled off her mask and hat. Her hair was matted down and glistening with perspiration. The tension dissolved. Everyone unmasked, relaxed, stretched tightened backs, and walked around a bit on stiff legs. The surgical team began to congratulate one another.
I looked down at Max, still strapped to the table and muzzled with the breathing mask. His left arm was only a bandaged stump now. More bandages covered the empty socket where his right eye used to be.
His other eye opened.
I felt a jolt, whether it was fear or surprise or guilt, I don’t know. But in that instant I saw in Max’s one remaining eye all the pain and shock and terror that a human being would have shown. I’m sure I was projecting my own emotions, yet I’ll never forget the sight of that one eye going suddenly wide and then blinking and filling with
tears. I knew, in that one startling moment, how I would have felt if I’d awakened one fine morning and found that my arm had been amputated and an eye put out.
Without a word I turned and walked out of the surgical lab as calmly as I could. Once outside I almost ran to the men’s room and locked myself in a stall. I didn’t want any of my people to see me vomiting.
I sent a long e-mail to Cassie and then for good measure faxed the same letter to her, explaining as gently as possible what we had done to Max and trying to make it clear to her that we had no viable alternative. I thought that putting it all on paper would be easier—for both of us—than breaking the news on the telephone.
No response.
I tried phoning her in Mexico and got only an answering machine with her voice promising to call back as soon as she possibly could.
No call back. Nothing.
I asked Darrell what he thought about the situation.
“Let me go down there and get her,” he said. “This must’ve hit her like an atomic bomb.”
“All right,” I said. “Bring her back here. I don’t care what shape her program is in or what shape she’s in. Bring her home.”
“Right,” said Darrell.
I tried to put Cassie out of my mind. I had work to do. Graves’s idea of a science court was starting to get some support from key players in the field. I shuttled down to Washington several times and spent hours on the phone with scientists from some of the most prestigious schools in the nation.
Many of those academics were frankly skeptical of dealing with me. I was one of those big bad industrial guys who had turned his back on the purity of academic research. I was out to make a buck instead of pursuing pure research. It was an archaic attitude, ludicrous in the light of the modern scientific scene, but it was uncanny how quickly some of the academics could climb up on their white horses and pontificate.
Graves was an invaluable help. He had wanted to try out this idea of a science court for years, he told me, and now I had given him the opportunity to make it real. So he ran interference with the stuffier academics and began to line them up—not on my side, necessarily, but on the side of giving my work a fair and rigorous hearing before a court of my peers.
The more I thought about it, the more sense the court made to me. I wanted the regeneration work to be assessed rationally. I had no intention of allowing it to be tried in the media, or by mobs of six-pack-swilling know-nothings whipped into a frenzy by the likes of Joshua Ransom or Reverend Simmonds over nonsense like mutant monsters.
Simmonds. Every time I thought of him I thought of Jesse. That made me simmer with anger. Yet Julia had told me that Jesse never knowingly tried to hurt me. And I knew she was right. At least I tried to convince myself she was right. In all honesty, I couldn’t picture Jesse deliberately getting Simmonds on my back. It’s just that Jess is so damned blind to everything and everyone except himself. He wouldn’t ask Simmonds to attack me, but he’d blithely tell Simmonds all about the work I was doing without even thinking for one moment that Simmonds would be smart enough to latch on to that idea and use it as a rallying cry to draw more attention and bigger crowds to himself.
Simmonds wouldn’t be allowed to testify in the science court, of course. But Jesse could. He was in at the start of this work, and if the opposite side in the court procedure had any brains at all they’d call on Jess to testify.
Would he agree to appear? And would he testify against me? I had to find out.
Somehow, dealing with my brother had become like walking through a minefield. Ever since Julia had come into our lives.
No, that wasn’t right, I told myself. Jesse had always been irresponsible, self-centered, even as a kid. It just never bothered me before Julia. We had never wanted the same exact thing before. He had never stolen anything away from me.
But no matter how much trouble or pain, I had to find out what he’d do if he was asked to appear at the science court hearing. And, in the back of my mind, I could hear Momma telling me that it was wrong to be angry with my brother. And I heard Julia saying to me that I ought to take the first step in healing the breach between us.
I asked Phyllis to track him down on the phone. It took two days. Actually he called around midnight, just as I was getting ready for bed after a dinner out with Pat.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed when the phone rang. Somehow I knew it would be Jesse. Who else would call at this hour, unless it was Darrell with news about Cassie?
“Arby?” His voice sounded tired.
“Hello, Jess.”
“I got a couple messages that you’ve been trying to reach me.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
“How are you?” I asked. “How’s Julia?”
“We’re both fine. What’re you up to?”
It felt both good and painful to hear his voice again. I wanted to love him the way a brother should, I really did.
“It’s been a long time,” I said.
He started to say something, then changed his mind and said simply, “Yeah.”
“Do you have any time for lunch in the next few days? I could come down into the city.”
“Breakfast would be easier,” he said. “I never know when I’ll get a chance to break for lunch.”
“Okay. Breakfast.” That meant I’d have to get up very early, or go into town the night before and stay over.
“Tomorrow?” he asked.
“How about the day after tomorrow?”
He hesitated. “No good. Got a fund-raising breakfast with some investors group on Wall Street.”
“I could meet you afterward,” I suggested. “Pick you up and drive you to the hospital. We could talk in the limo.”
He laughed softly. “I don’t think I ought to let those people see me get into a limo. I’m always poor-mouthing them.”
“I’ll come in a taxicab, then.”
Suddenly his voice became suspicious. “What’s so damned important?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
He had to think about that for a moment. At last he agreed, and gave me the address and time when he would be finished with his breakfast meeting.
“I’ll see you then,” I said.
“Okay,” he answered guardedly. Then he brightened and added, “Oh, by the way, Julia’s pregnant again.”
And he hung up.
THE TRIAL:
DAY FOUR, LUNCH RECESS
I wish I knew what’s on those disks,” Arthur said to Pat.
“The DVDs Cassie made?”
They were having lunch at one of the little restaurants just off Capitol Hill, leaning together conspiratorially over the tiny, wobbly table. Neither of them recognized anyone else from the trial in the restaurant, yet still they talked in near-whispers.
“Yes,” Arthur said gloomily. “Cassie’s legacy.”
“I still think Rosen should have allowed you to see them before they’re introduced as evidence in the trial,” said Pat.
Arthur grimaced. “His position is that they’re not scientific evidence. They’re just a personal statement by a scientist who worked on the program.”
“We’ve come a long way from restricting ourselves to the scientific facts, haven’t we?”
Nodding, Arthur replied, “And Graves is letting him get away with it.”
“She won’t be helpful to you, will she?”
“Rosen wouldn’t use the disks if they were helpful,” Arthur grumbled. “The only question is, how much damage can they do?”
Pat tried to change the subject. “You really demolished Ransom.”
“He had it coming.”
“I didn’t think he’d be so easy to knock off.”
Arthur smiled grimly. “That sneaky little sonofabitch has never had to stand up to cross-examination before. Not in any way. He’s always attacked through the media or through the courts, always arranged things so his victims are on the defensive and he’s on the attack. On
ce he had to defend his own position, he crumbled.”
“No,” Pat said admiringly, “you crumbled him. And then you held out your hand to him, at the end. That was beautiful.”
Arthur looked surprised. “Oh, you mean when I said he’d need regeneration one day?” He shrugged. “Well, we all will, won’t we?”
“Potter needs it now,” Pat said.
Arthur’s face hardened. “I wonder what I’d do if we were ready for human trials and Potter came to me and asked for help.”
“You’d help him.”
“Would I? That man ruined my life.”
Pat laughed. “I wouldn’t say your life is exactly ruined, Arthur.”
“No thanks to him.”
She grew more serious. “His testimony was pretty damning, though.”
Arthur huffed. “He made an ass of himself.”
“He sounded very convincing to me.”
“You’re not a scientist. Anyone in the field who still has a few brain cells functioning will see that Potter’s so-called scientific study is nothing but numerology.”
“Really?”
“I’ll tear him to shreds when I cross-examine him.”
Pat smiled a bit. “Perry Mason attacks.”
“You’ll see.” Arthur smiled back.
At least he’s smiling, Pat thought as their waiter brought a pair of salads. Pat was drinking iced tea, Arthur a nonalcoholic beer.
“How much damage can Cassie do?” she asked.
Arthur’s smile vanished. “Not much scientifically. But if her video is as emotional as I think it’ll be, we’re going to get lynched in the media.”
“I don’t think there’ll be all that many reporters back for the afternoon session. They got their story when you and Ransom squared off.”
“They’ll be there,” Arthur said. “Let Cassie break into tears just once on her videos and they’ll swarm around us like piranhas. She’ll be on the six o’clock news, not Ransom and me.”
“Her and Max.”
“And we’ll look like monsters.”
He picked listlessly at his salad, then looked up again. “I wanted this trial to go strictly on the scientific merits of our work. If we could just stick to the science we’d have no trouble whatsoever.”
