by Scott Britz
“Fair? Hah! He’s double-crossed you, Charles.”
“How?”
“Look at this.” On cue, Niedermann scooped up the thicker of the two manila folders from under his chair. “These are confidential files from the Aeterna acquisition. Secret memos. Minutes of late-night meetings. They’ll open your eyes. You’ll see the hardball tricks Eden played with you. The maneuvers of his army of lawyers. The Doomsday Plan he had to tear the Vector out of your hands if you didn’t play along. Look at it, Charles. Then tell me how much you owe it to him to be fair.”
Niedermann held out the folders, but Gifford made no move to take them. “I’m sorry, Jack. I can’t accept that. It wouldn’t be ethical.”
How could Gifford be so naive? His air of superiority set Niedermann’s teeth on edge. Brainy guys like him never acknowledged that they had started out life as lottery winners. Sure, Gifford was just the son of a couple of schoolteachers in South Podunk, Indiana. But his IQ set him up as securely as any trust fund. Look at his trajectory: University of Indiana for his bachelor’s; UCLA for his MD; Stanford for his PhD; Johns Hopkins for his postdoc; a hotshot section directorship at the NIH; and then his own lab at Acadia Springs, all before he was thirty-five years old. Niedermann had never had advantages like that. He got where he was by taking risks and putting his life’s blood on the line for every deal and every promotion.
Now was no exception. He had hocked himself up the wazoo to buy stock options in the company. His bank account had less liquidity than a mirage in the Sahara. So far, he had managed to hide the situation from Elaine, but with a son in the Francis Parker School, a daughter at Brown, and an astronomical mortgage on a nine-bedroom Tudor in Glencoe, the repercussions of a screw-up would be instantaneous. And brutal. Eden could go into full Caligula mode if you crossed him. Blacklists. Lawsuits. News leaks. Criminal prosecutions. One plant manager in Chicago was rumored to have committed suicide over what Eden did to him. Gifford would never understand pressures like that.
Niedermann set the thick file on his lap and reached down to pick up the thin one. “At least look at this.” He extended it to Gifford. “This is my offer to you. Everything I’ve promised. In writing.”
“I’ll look at it. But don’t get your hopes up.”
Niedermann’s fingers dented the folder as he held it out, so much so that Gifford had a hard time pulling it from his grip.
“Dr. Gifford,” came Mrs. Walls’s scratchy voice over the intercom, “your next interviewer is ready. Ms. Betty Osterson, from People magazine.”
“Science editor from People?”
“I don’t think People has a science editor, Dr. Gifford.”
Gifford sighed. “All right. Show her in.”
Gifford stood up as the door opened and a pert redhead in a blue pantsuit came through. She was followed by Mrs. Walls, who brought with her a plastic bottle of spring water, its screw-top preloosened, carrying it not in her hand but on a silver tray. Niedermann sneered at the sight of it. He knew that Gifford made a fetish of drinking eight twelve-ounce bottles of water every day.
Fuck it, thought Niedermann. The conversation wasn’t over—not by a long shot. When Gifford accepted thirty percent of the company from Eden, he became a player, like it or not.
Niedermann shoved the thick folder under his arm. As he stood up to go, his eye was caught once again by Gifford’s doodles on the sheets spread out on his desk. It was the same thing over and over: a small black insect, with oversize hind legs bent like a Greek letter, lambda.
What was the name of that woman out by the gate? Rensselaer-Wright. But Gifford had called her something else.
Cricket.
Niedermann smiled as he realized that he had just cracked the code of Gifford’s private thoughts. He had heard of Cricket, but always in connection with her father. It had never occurred to him that she might have had an emotional hold on Gifford himself.
Here was a new deal in the game. The spell of a woman was one of the most powerful ways to get inside a man’s head. It could work to his advantage, if he played it right.
Hmmm. This called for a little “research” on Cricket Rensselaer-Wright.
Fortunately, he knew just the right man for that.
Five
CRICKET WAS DREAMING OF THE BEACH at Tenerife, a crescent-shaped sill of white sand ringed by dark mountains, where Canary palms waved lustrous green against blue sky and the foaming, wrinkled cobalt of the sea. Étienne stood at her side, tall and lean, with a shock of wavy, black hair dangling over his forehead. Cricket held his hand, squinting into the sunlight as a warm, dry breeze massaged her skin. She was enveloped by song, by a woman’s voice lapping against her—luscious, edgeless, smoky, gliding from note to note like syrup or chocolate:
Duermen en mi jardín
Las blancas azucenas,
Los nardos y las rosas.
White lilies, nards, and roses, asleep in the quiet of the garden. The beauty of the song ravished her. She wanted never to awaken, never to let go of Étienne’s hand. The strange, sweet singer seemed to know what she had suffered—suffering that had to be kept secret, at all costs—even in the solitude of the garden. For if her sorrow were known, even the flowers would die . . .
Then a clang of silverware broke in, and she knew she was no longer sleeping. She opened her eyes. The singer was leaning over her, staring at her with a feline smile. For a moment it seemed that Tenerife itself had come to her, in the form of this elegantly ovoid face, with its perfect mocha-and-cream skin, broad cheekbones, and ever-so-slightly African fullness of lips and nose.
“You’re . . . her,” said the woman, ending her song. She was so close that her long, straight, black hair threatened to brush against Cricket’s eyelashes.
Cricket bolted upright on the sofa. “Excuse me? Hank!” she called out.
“You look just like him,” said the woman, still smiling. “I mean, that big painting of him over the staircase at Weiszacker House.”
Still groggy with sleep, Cricket wrinkled her nose and inhaled sharply to clear her airway. “My father? Sure, I get that all the time. It must be the shiny bald head.” She spoke in jest. But she remembered how, a year ago, after she had shaved her head in her own private kaddish of mourning for Étienne David, she had looked in the mirror and was startled to see how much of a resemblance there was.
“Sorry, Cricket,” called out Hank from the kitchen. “This is Yolanda Carlson. Jack Niedermann’s secretary.”
“Executive assistant,” corrected Yolanda. “Dr. Gifford sent me to look in on you. He said to ask you to please come to the demonstration. It won’t take long, and you can still catch your plane.”
Cricket noted that two small children were clinging to Yolanda, both lighter in complexion. The girl looked about four, the curly-haired boy younger. The boy reached for Cricket’s nose with a chubby, squirming hand.
“That’s Chuck junior,” said Yolanda. “The shy one is Bonnie.”
“Hi, Bonnie. Hi, Chuck.”
Chuck’s eyes opened wide at the sound of his name, and he pumped his hand up and down, as if in a one-sided high five. Bonnie withdrew farther behind her mother’s skirt.
Cricket smiled. “Okay, okay. I’ll come.”
“I’ve brought you an ID badge that will get you in. It’s silver—the highest level.” Yolanda handed Cricket a rectangle of plastic imprinted with a six-year-old file photo, back from when she still wore her hair long. “We have a little time yet, if you want to spruce up or get something to eat.”
A jar lid clattered on the kitchen counter. “I’m already making peanut butter and jelly,” said Hank. “You and the kids had lunch yet, Yolanda?”
Yolanda shook her head.
Just then Cricket saw a shadow pass over the carpet. Emmy was stealing toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?�
�� said Cricket.
“Out.”
“Have you packed?”
“Why should I?”
Cricket glared at her. “Suit yourself. You can come with luggage or without it.”
“Are you deaf, Sandra? I’m not going with you!”
She’s calling me by my given name now, knowing nobody calls me that. Do these kids all read the same book, One Hundred and One Ways to Irk the Living Shit out of Your Parents, or is it some kind of instinct?
“Sit down and have a sandwich, Em,” Cricket said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then sit down and watch us eat. We’re all heading up to campus in a few minutes to see something Charles . . . er, your uncle Charles wants to show us.”
“You go.”
“No, all of us, Em. Your grandfather worked his whole life for this. You need to see it.”
“So I’m a prisoner now?”
Hank stepped out of the kitchen. “Come on, Cricket. Maybe you should lighten up on her. She usually walks Charles’s dog this time of day.”
“No, she’s coming with us. I don’t want her out of my sight.”
Emmy squinted. “Try and make me.”
Hank cleared his throat. “Emmy, hon, if you go against the court order, it reflects badly on me.” His voice was calm, but he had twisted a dish towel so tightly in his hands that it looked as if he were about to strangle someone with it. “I’m on thin ice. Because of the accident, I could lose what visitation rights I have.”
“Dad, you’re so spineless!”
Hank slapped the dish towel against his thigh. “Please sit down and eat, Princess.”
It irritated Cricket when Hank called Emmy that. It had been Daddy’s special name for her when she herself was young. But right now it worked. With a pouty shake of her hair, Emmy went to the breakfast island and climbed up onto one of the tall stools.
“The one on the end is apple butter for you, hon,” Hank told Emmy.
Cricket passed two plates of sandwiches to Yolanda on the sofa, before taking up a stool across from Emmy. “Lovely children you have, Yolanda.”
“Their father was a gunnery sergeant with the Marines. He was killed overseas.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was hard. But people have been very supportive. Dr. Gifford especially.” As Yolanda spoke, she broke off inch-size pieces of sandwich and handed them alternately to Chuck, on her lap, and to Bonnie, who sat cross-legged like a yogi beside her. Cricket noticed the slightest trace of the Caribbean in her voice—not so much an accent as a melody. From a distance, she was astonishingly beautiful—long-necked, round-hipped, tall and smooth of leg, hands swimming through the air with instinctive elegance.
Emmy was still seething. Out of the blue she picked up a jelly-smeared knife and pointed it at her forearm. “What if I just slit my wrists right here and bled to death in front of everyone?”
Cricket fought the urge to laugh. “Sweetie, that’s a butter knife you’re holding.”
“Oh, yeah? Watch this!” Emmy lifted the knife high and started to swing it down.
Cricket lunged across the counter and wrested it out of her hand. “Give me a break,” Cricket said, slamming the knife onto her plate. “You’ll have plenty of chances to kill yourself once we get to Atlanta. For real. Without annoying everybody.”
“And you call yourself a mother? That’s a horrible thing to say. How can you be so cold?”
“Cold? You have no idea, sweetie. I’ve seen girls younger and prettier than you die by the carload. Little girls with yellow fever, vomiting up quarts of icky black blood all over their Sunday best. Little girls starving in the dust, like piles of leather and sticks, too weak to shoo away the blowflies laying eggs in their eyes and mouths. Little girls bleeding from their vaginas and rectums after the militias raped them. You think you have problems?”
Suddenly a scream broke out. Cricket looked back toward the sofa and saw Chuck junior with a strawberry-red face, bawling over his mother’s shoulder.
“Please! Please!” said Yolanda. “Do you have to argue like this? You’re scaring the children.”
“Sorry.” Cricket pursed her lips. Why can’t I just tell her that I love her and need her? But the words wouldn’t come.
“I’m just asking you to try it for six months,” Cricket said, after a few deep breaths. “I’ve put that crappy condo of mine up for sale, and we can go house-hunting together. There are areas around Buckhead with woods and hills that are a lot like New England. I’d have to commute to work, but I can live with that.”
“Don’t knock yourself out,” said Emmy.
Cricket took another breath. “There’s a school there, Westminster, with a campus so pretty it was used to film a Sandra Bullock movie. If you had read my e-mails, you would have found pictures and a link to their website. Margaret Mitchell once went there. They have a brand-new athletic center and a swim team you might be interested in that’s won dozens of state championships. Several of their swimmers went on to the Olympics. It’s hard to get in, but the director of admissions is an old Harvard classmate of mine. She’s going to give us both a tour of the campus next week.”
“Tell her no thanks. I like Ellsworth High. I don’t belong in some rich kids’ school.”
“Look, Emmy, I know changes are hard. I want to make it a positive thing for you. But this decision is not under discussion.”
“No? See if you can make me.”
The muscles around Cricket’s collarbones grew tense. She didn’t dare speak. It was all she could do not to fling her half-eaten sandwich across the counter. In her mind, she repeated the calming mantra she had prepared for this moment: Don’t react. She’s behaving like this because you’ve hurt her. She has a right not to trust you.
Hank must have seen the fury in her eyes. “Truce, girls.” He extended his hands diplomatically toward both sides. “We have a ringside seat to history. Let’s get in the mood. This’ll be like watching the first Mercury rocket take off, or Edison flicking that first light switch.”
Both Cricket and Emmy glared at him.
Cricket knew that the longer she stayed on campus, the harder it would be to get away. Yet she was already compromising. She had let herself get caught like a mouse in one of those sticky traps—caught by her own curiosity. Had Charles really made aetatin work? How did he do it? How long did the effects last? These and a thousand other questions whispered to her, seduced her, like a chorus of sirens.
There was no way she could leave Acadia Springs. Not until she had seen it all for herself.
Six
CRICKET NEEDED NO GUIDE TO LEAD her to the high track field behind the white turrets of Weiszacker House, where some two hundred journalists, camera crews, handpicked VIPs, distinguished scientists, and curious Acadia Springs staff had already crowded into a mustard-yellow pavilion erected beside the bleachers. Preceding Hank and the others through a turnstile into the tent, she found only a little standing room left between the last row of folding chairs and a couple of tables set up to display press releases and a cardboard cutout of a smiling, Santa Claus–like face—no doubt the face of the arch-millenarian Methuselah himself.
Without hesitation, by an instinct familiar to anyone only five feet tall, Cricket slid the stacks of releases to one side and scooted onto a table, giving Emmy a hand up after her. From there she could see a dais and a hanging flat-screen. Leaning back against a tent pole, talking to someone in the front row, was the man from Eden Pharmaceuticals who had met her at the front gate. As he talked, his eyes roved about the crowd until they locked on Cricket’s own. She was used to men giving her the once-over, but Niedermann’s stare was different—almost clinical. Not a smile or even an eyebrow twitch of acknowledgment.
“Look, Daddy, it’s Rick Beach!” Emmy pointed to the very person with whom Niedermann spoke. Although li
ttle could be seen except his tanned ears and wavy, black hair, there was no mistaking the famous action star.
“So it is,” said Hank, grinning. “The old Eagle of Fallujah himself. Would you like Uncle Charles to introduce you to him?”
Hank had barely spoken when a tent flap behind the dais parted and Charles Gifford climbed upon the stage with Hannibal at his heels. The audience fell to silence.
Gifford held a wireless microphone that looked like a cherry ice-cream cone. “Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen of the press, honored guests . . . Welcome!” he began. “I am going to speak simply and directly to you. In return, I ask you to put aside every rumor you may have heard. You are witnesses for the world. I call upon you to judge what you are about to see honestly and without preconception.
“To begin, then . . . Some years ago, Dr. Edwin Rensselaer and I—the late Dr. Rensselaer—were conversing on his veranda in the early-summer evening when a dog walked past us. It was Dr. Rensselaer’s own dog, a black Labrador retriever named Ty.”
Cricket felt a shudder of recognition as the big monitor behind Gifford lit up with a life-size profile of Ty. As a little girl she had loved this very dog, her best friend and protector. He had once scared off a coyote that had tried to attack her.
Gifford pointed toward the screen. “Here is Ty in his younger days. But at the time of our conversation, he was fourteen years old. He had a gray beard, limped, had a cataract in one eye, and could scarcely run fifty yards without getting winded. He was an old dog.”
Cricket remembered that gray beard, and the rainy, windy day in June when they had to put Ty down. He never made it to fifteen.
“I see that none of you is astonished. Fourteen years is old for a dog. That’s a commonplace observation, as common as the fall of an apple from a tree in a Lincolnshire garden. But you would have been astonished had I told you of a similarly aged fourteen-year-old boy. We all know that fourteen years is old for a dog, but not for us. Why? It isn’t random. There aren’t some dogs who grow old at fourteen, while others live to be a hundred. Dogs have a life span of approximately fourteen years, as we have our biblical threescore and ten. Our respective terms are so fixed as to seem a law of nature. In fact, every species on Earth has its own period of longevity, its own floruit, as it were: a housefly, four weeks; a mouse, three years; a goat, eight years; a gorilla, thirty years; a whale, seventy years or more. The luckiest among us exceed these expectancies only as the upper limb of a narrow, bell-shaped curve. Our entire life cycle is similarly predetermined. Where life expectancy is short, so are infancy, childhood, and the span between generations.”
