by Scott Britz
“Thanks.” But she did not tell him about the pain in the other place.
He was proud now, as men always were when the needs of nature had been freshly answered. After dressing himself, he sat back in his wine-colored leather chair, clasped his hands behind his neck, and said in a merry voice, “Tell me, Yolanda, did Dr. Rensselaer-Wright say anything to you after the race?”
“Dr. Rensselaer-Wright?” Her glance shot to him like an arrow. “Not much.”
“Nothing?”
She sat on the desk and straightened the wrinkles of her skirt. “Why? Is it important?”
“It’s very important, Yolanda. You do know who she is, don’t you?”
“Her father ran this place. As you do now.”
“It was amazing luck that she showed up here today. I asked Jack to send her an invitation, but he said he couldn’t find her.” Gifford leaned forward and took hold of her hand. “I want you to escort her to the dinner tonight. Make sure she comes. Stay with her. Whatever questions she has, answer them plainly, just as if she were me.”
“Why do you care?”
Gifford chuckled. “Jealous, mi paloma?”
“Not of her. She is old.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. I love you, Yolanda. Only you. Cricket is like a daughter to me. That’s all. I helped to raise her. I gave her a microscope when she was a girl and taught her to think like a scientist. I know I can trust her. And right now I need someone I can trust.”
“Can’t you trust me?”
“Only with my life and my heart, mi tesoro.” Gifford laughed, then put on a more serious expression. “I’m talking about the institute. I may need to go to Chicago, you see. Jack and Phillip Eden are quarreling. That’s bad for the company, and what’s bad for the company is bad for the Methuselah Vector. It’s a distraction we can’t afford. There’s still important work to be done. The Vector has to be made available to everyone—not just the wealthy few. My contract gives me the power to oversee the main Vector production facility that’s being built in Chicago. If I go there, I can keep things moving in the right direction.”
“And Dr. Rensselaer-Wright will make that possible?”
“With your help.”
She had heard of Cricket Rensselaer-Wright from many people, but never from him. He had known her since she was a baby, but still he had never said a word. When a man does not speak of a woman whom he knows well, it makes one wonder. But she had never worried about it because Cricket Rensselaer-Wright was far away. Now she was here. It was evident that she had a certain beauty and even gentileza about her, and the fact that the great doctor had suddenly started to speak of her made Yolanda more suspicious than when he had not.
“I will do as you ask,” she said drily.
“There’s something else, Yolanda.”
“What?”
He opened a drawer and took out a legal-size paper, which he pushed across the desk. “This is yours.”
“What is it?”
“A deed. Signed and notarized.”
“Deed to what?”
“To one-half of one percent of the common stock of Eden Pharmaceuticals. Proceeds from the Methuselah Vector. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’ll make you a rich woman. You won’t ever have to work again. Your children’s future is secure.”
She was shocked. She jumped off the desk as though it were a hot stove. “I never asked for this.”
“Which is why it gives me pleasure to give it to you. I set it up a few weeks ago, but I wanted to give it to you today. Especially today.” He seemed surprised by the indignation in her eyes. “Look, it’s independence I’m giving you. I don’t ever want you to have to be with any man because of what he can give you.”
“Even you?”
“Especially me.”
She looked at the paper, with its gold stamp of a many-pointed star, and his big, flowing signature at the bottom. Something about it made her angry. “I’m not worthy of this,” she said through her teeth.
“Please, take it.”
“No.”
He gave her a perplexed look. “It doesn’t matter whether you pick it up or not. It’s yours. There’s a registered copy on file. No one can undo it.”
“Are you sure?” She picked up the paper and ripped it in half. “Will this undo it?” She threw the pieces onto the desk.
“No, dammit. What’s gotten into you?”
She had seen it before. This was how a rich man said good-bye to his puta. It seemed like a farewell gift. It promised bad luck.
She looked at the painting of Doreen Gifford above the fireplace. Doreen had been a beautiful woman, with smiling hazel eyes and skin with the soft rosiness of a white nectarine. A singer, a star of society, well-read, her hands never worn-out by typing or scrubbing floors or changing her own child’s diapers. In the painting she seemed to be laughing. Was it the foolish Puerto Rican girl she laughed at? The slums of La Perla would never be welcome here. Never, except through the secret door.
“Keep your money, querido. I work for Jack and not you. But I will do as you ask.” She forced her mouth into a smile. “Your friend Cricket is most charming. There’s much we have to talk about.”
Eight
LIKE A MAUSOLEUM TO HER PAST, Weiszacker House, with its three turrets and ten gables, loomed over Cricket at the top of the redbrick steps. In the light of sunset the white building took on a soft, gauzy orange hue. The opening strains of the andante from Schubert’s D minor string quartet pulsed serenely through the open front door.
In her simple, all-purpose black dress, Cricket felt plain beside Yolanda’s string of pearls and formfitting, red, backless evening gown. Cricket had never liked soirees. If Gifford hadn’t sent Yolanda to escort her, she might never have come. It was all she could do to slap on some lipstick and mascara. Yolanda seemed to smile condescendingly at her more than once as her heels snagged on the cracks between the bricks—so unaccustomed was she to wearing them.
They made it to the top of the steps and crossed the broad wooden veranda. A doorman in an evening suit checked their names off a list. Through the entryway they passed into the two-story, oval Grand Hallway, floored in black and white marble, and brilliant with the light of a six-foot-wide chandelier. Fifteen guests in formal attire were scattered in small groups, the hum of their conversation echoing in the vast chamber, and vying with the music of the string quartet stationed on the landing.
Cricket’s eye was immediately drawn to the portrait of Daddy at the bottom of the curved marble staircase—placed as though to welcome her home. He stood in full-length majesty, one hand on his hip, his white coat parted to show a vest and gold watch chain. Bald above, the sides of his face were framed by remnants of wavy, platinum-white hair cascading over his ears. His thin lips were set with determination. His eyes, violet-blue, were overhung with shaggy, white snowbanks. They were knowing eyes, loving eyes, their sparkle undimmed by the lines of work and care etched into his face. Her heart ached to see him so nearly alive again.
A white-jacketed waiter bumped into her with a tray of hors d’oeuvres—buttery, dark grayish blobs on toothpicks.
“What are they?”
“Escargots de Bourgogne, ma’am.”
As Yolanda made a gagging gesture with her mouth, Cricket waved the platter away. Looking around, she recognized Rick Beach, the actor, as well as the governor of California and one of the senators from New York. In the largest group, Niedermann was having an animated discussion with a man in a dark green military dress uniform. Next to him stood a writer from the Wall Street Journal who had interviewed her a couple of years ago for a book on AIDS in Africa. She looked in vain for local faculty, until she spied her old mentor Erich Freiberg pushing through the crowd on a beeline for her. He carried three glasses of white wine in his hands.
“My dear, dear Dr. Renss
elaer-Wright.” He passed a glass to Cricket and hugged her with his elbows as he held the other two glasses aloft. Although his German accent was almost imperceptible, he had a Continental habit of keeping his upper lip almost rigid as he spoke. “Come out of the jungle, have you, to observe our own homegrown shrewdness of apes?”
Cricket chuckled when she noticed Freiberg’s tie. Like the other men, he wore a tux and cummerbund. But his white bow tie, sprinkled with tiny black question marks, was not exactly regulation. “Yolanda, have you met Dr. Erich Freiberg?” Cricket said. “Long, long ago, I did a summer internship with him. He was the first investigator at Acadia Springs to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine.”
“Old news, Cricket. Old news,” said Freiberg, handing Yolanda a glass. “There will soon be two of us, I’m sure, once Charles receives his due.” Bypassing the hand Yolanda extended to him, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.
“Isn’t it amazing what Dr. Gifford has done?” Yolanda exclaimed. “We can all be so proud of him.”
“Well, he’s certainly made a splash today,” said Freiberg. “I guess this justifies handing the keys of the citadel to these moneygrubbing snakes of Eden.”
“It’s too bad Eden employees can’t enter the Lottery,” said Yolanda. “But I guess I can wait a couple of years for the commercial version. I’ll still look young then.”
Freiberg looked shocked. “You mean you’d let them inject you with a filthy virus just to keep a few wrinkles off your face? You’re too beautiful for that. You deserve to age gracefully.”
“Oh, it’s not a virus,” Yolanda objected. “The Methuselah Vector is . . . well, it’s a vector. Dr. Gifford explained it to me. I always thought a vector was something like a wild rat, you know, that spreads disease. But he says when they talk about a vector this way it just means a delivery vehicle. It carries the DNA for the aetatin gene to the cell.” She emphasized the name of the gene, as if it were something she had conscientiously memorized.
“And that, my dear, is exactly what a virus does,” said Freiberg. “In fact, most of the vectors used in human gene therapy today are modified viruses.”
Another waiter came by, this time with a tray of tiny slices of toast bearing shredded meat garnished with parsley. “Rillettes de canard. Shredded duck,” he announced. This time, Cricket took a slice. Freiberg took three, stacking them atop one another in his free hand.
Freiberg gave Cricket a confidential look. “The Cell Gate is MHC-1, you know.” He crunched a piece of toast in his mouth.
Cricket knit her brow. “MHC-1? You can’t be serious.”
“A brilliant stroke, too, I must admit.” Freiberg turned to Yolanda, who was massaging her forehead as if she had a headache. “Young lady, what we are speaking of is the Type I major histocompatibility complex. It’s a cluster of molecules found on the surface of nearly every cell in the body. Think of it as a tiny viewing screen by which the immune system can tell whether a cell is healthy or sick. If you wanted to distribute the aetatin gene everywhere, you couldn’t do better than MHC-1.”
“Oh, I know about that,” said Yolanda. “The idea for it came to Dr. Gifford the night his wife died. I think her ghost gave it to him.”
“He told you this?” asked Freiberg.
“Mmm-hmm. Well, not about the ghost. That’s just my guess.”
Freiberg cocked his head. “Well, ghost or not, it took buckets of sweat to make it work. After Doreen’s funeral, Charles locked himself in his laboratory for months. His goal was to make an artificial form of CD8, the hooklike molecule white cells use to grab MHC-1. He wanted it to fit so tightly the connection would be unbreakable.
“He began by programming a bank of DNA synthesizers to make something like a trillion random variations of CD8. Then he set up a massive game of musical chairs, mixing all of the mutants together and letting them compete for binding space on MHC-1 complexes on the surface of a culture of human cells. Those that fit MHC-1 more closely stuck better to the cells; the rest were washed away. This gave Charles the seeds of a new library, with fewer but better quality mutants. A few billion, instead of a trillion.”
Cricket chuckled. “Only a few billion.”
“After the first round. The whole process had to be repeated over and over again. I checked in on him once. I could hardly walk through his lab, it was so crammed with incubator ovens—each of them growing hundreds of culture plates. Charles was sleeping in his office, scarcely eating at all. It seemed like he was in a trance. Finally, after thirty or forty rounds of screening, he had six mutants left. The best of these had an affinity a hundred million times stronger than the natural attraction of CD8 for MHC-1. I remember the day Charles emerged from seclusion, with the look of a conqueror who has just taken a city by storm. He placed a small vial into the hand of Wig Waggoner, his chief molecular biologist, and announced, ‘I give you the key to the Cell Gate.’ ”
“I still don’t like the idea of using MHC-1,” said Cricket.
Freiberg lifted an eyebrow.
“Is something wrong?” asked Yolanda.
Cricket eyed Freiberg intently. “How is it packaged? The Vector?”
Freiberg shrugged. “My dear, I have no idea. I’ve spent the last months trying everything short of suicide to avoid hearing so much as the name of that infernal Mephistopheles Vector.”
Cricket noticed Yolanda’s pained look and assumed it was because she felt left out of the conversation. “It’s like this, Yolanda. A virus can’t go just anywhere it wants. Before it can infect a cell, it needs an entry key. That’s called a receptor, and it’s different for every virus. The reason a cold virus doesn’t kill you is because its receptor is the CD54 adhesion molecule found in cells lining the nose and throat. It infects only these cells, and once the infection has burned itself out, you get well and live on until your next cold virus infection. There’s a kind of truce that’s been worked out between us and hundreds of innocuous little viruses like that. They agree not to kill us, and we provide them with a nice, warm home, where they can multiply and go on living as a species.
“But what keeps a virus in its place is its receptor. CD54 isn’t a problem. It’s a key that only opens one door. But MHC-1 is a master key. It exposes every cell in the body to infection. A virus that could target it would be lethal in the extreme.”
Yolanda’s mocha-and-cream complexion seemed to turn a shade redder. “Why does everyone have to be so critical of Dr. Gifford? Don’t you think he knows about this?”
Cricket drained her wineglass. “I’m sure it was the first thing he thought of,” she said drily.
In her glass, Cricket saw the distorted reflection of Jack Niedermann hastening toward her. “Dr. Rensselaer-Wright! How nice to see you again,” he called out as he drew near. “Have you found your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean you’ll be leaving us?”
“Tomorrow.”
“A pity. I had hoped to get to know you better. I googled you, you know. I came up with a ream of scientific papers, most of which went right over my head. But there was one feature about you in the New Yorker, something entitled ‘Tomb Raider with a Microscope,’ which I found quite fascinating.”
Cricket was annoyed to feel herself blush. “I was barely out of my fellowship when that came out. The photos are supposed to be of me as a nerdy microbiologist’s sex symbol.”
“Yes, I can easily see that,” said Niedermann, smiling wolfishly.
To Cricket, Niedermann’s come-on seemed fake, a balloon that needed puncturing. “Do you mind my asking you something, Mr. Niedermann? My ex-husband, Hank Wright, contributed to the Methuselah Vector project. Why wasn’t he invited to this banquet tonight?”
“This banquet is for special guests. Not staff—except for the esteemed Dr. Freiberg, of course.”
“I see. Is it true you took Hank’s computer lab a
way from him?”
Niedermann winced. “That’s institute business.”
“So his research threatened you? It was about his research, wasn’t it?”
“Uh, he had a theory about something he called redundant targeting.”
“Meaning what?”
“Nothing,” said Niedermann. “An idea that in rare instances—say, one in a billion cells—the Methuselah Vector could be fooled into inserting itself into the wrong place in the host-cell DNA. He had no experimental evidence for it. Doctor Gifford gave him a lab and invited him to prove it, but he failed.”
“He’s a mathematician, not an experimentalist.”
“Obviously.”
“All the same, Mr. Niedermann, you can’t really say that every question about the Methuselah Vector has been laid to rest, can you?”
With a rumble the twin pocket doors to the dining room slid open to disclose a short, fine-featured Asian man in a white jacket and toque. “Ah!” exclaimed Freiberg. “Here comes Mr. Thieu.”
“Who?” asked Cricket.
“Charles’s personal chef.”
Mr. Thieu stood in the doorway to the dining room. “Please, everyone, to take your seats,” he said curtly. “Dinner will begin.” With a bow, he took a step back to let the guests file in. The room was decorated in formal Victorian style, unchanged since the nineteenth century, with dark oak wainscoting and green-and-white-striped wallpaper. At one end, a bay window gave a view of the sea; at the other, an oil portrait of a walrus-mustached Emil Weiszacker presided over a marble fireplace. Above the sideboard was a second painting, a huge but fading depiction of a whaling ship in a troubled sea. As a girl, Cricket had always felt anxious about the fate of that poor ship, surrounded as it was by whitecaps and the ominous fins of sharks.
The guests took their places, assigned by placard, around a twenty-foot-long cherrywood table.
“Since when does Charles have a personal chef?” asked Cricket.
“His tastes are most exacting,” said Freiberg. “He never defiles his body with flesh food or with tawdry sweets. He eats for immortality. Ergo, feeding him requires an expert.”
