The Immortalist

by Scott Britz

  “I’m afraid this is it. We’re gonna have to hoof it from here.”

  As if a cage door had been opened, Cricket bounded out of the car, sucking in a lungful of fresh air. But on foot, progress was even more difficult. What looked like a static crowd of onlookers was in fact an enormous battlefield—thousands vying to get to the Lower Plaza. With every step, Cricket collided with elbows and hips and swinging backpacks. Even with a police escort, people swore at her as she tried to cut in, and not a few blocked her way altogether.

  It was a strange crowd, like a septuagenarian Woodstock—thousands of gray- and white-haired people, many with walkers and canes, many in wheelchairs. Some were bald from nature, some from chemotherapy. With her trained medical eye, Cricket picked out those who were pale from heart failure, puffy from emphysema, emaciated from cancer. She heard a Babel of accents and languages—word of the miracle had spread around the world.

  But it was not a Woodstock mood. Faces were grim. Rumor had it that the miracle was a fraud. They had been tricked into coming. Someone was damned well going to have to pay.

  It took twenty minutes of constant struggle just to reach the end of the Promenade.

  Cricket was too short to glimpse the Lower Plaza until she had begun to descend the steps that led down to it. She saw a fifteen-foot-deep basin about a hundred feet wide and sixty feet from front to back. In wintertime she knew it was popular as an outdoor skating rink. In summer, it was filled with open-air dining tables, but these had all been cleared for today’s event. Part of the far wall was recessed to accommodate the most striking feature of the Plaza, a massive golden statue of Prometheus, beckoning with one outstretched arm, and carrying in the other a torch of divine fire—his stolen gift to mankind. Two concentric pools of water extended in front of the statue. Barely projecting from the surface of the water were rows of spotlights and sharply pointed water-spray nozzles. Most of the nozzles had been turned off, except for a single row in the narrow space behind the statue, which threw a glistening sheet of water against the back wall.

  Covering both of the gray marble walls flanking the statue, Cricket saw huge banners displaying the smiling, bearded Santa Claus face of the biblical thousand-year-old man, just as she had seen it at Adam’s footrace, along with the legend:

  EDEN PHARMACEUTICALS:

  A PRESCRIPTION FOR THE CENTURIES!

  NOW PRESENTING

  THE METHUSELAH VECTOR

  She saw a canvas-roofed stage abutting the outermost pool set up for the Lottery. Four feet above the ground and sixty feet wide, it was furnished on either side with ten rows of five blue folding chairs, each accompanied by a small tabouret and an IV pole hung with a bag of saline. A ten-foot-wide aisle separated the groups of chairs and offered a view of the great golden statue. At the very front was a lectern of clear Plexiglas, wired with a microphone.

  Except for the stage itself, every inch of the Lower Plaza was packed with the lucky thousand or so who had stayed up all night to hold a place. The doors to the underground concourse having been roped off, the only way in or out of the well was by the split staircase from the Promenade. So heavy was the crush on the steps that Cricket had to exhale to squeeze through, one step at a time. For once, her tiny stature gave her an advantage, for she was able to wrest her way through the narrowest of crevices between a pair of walkers, or to vault over the side of a wheelchair. Hank and Dayton, on the other hand, were slowed down by their bulk and soon got separated from her on the upper landing.

  When at last she managed to scramble onto the stage itself, she saw two men at the back, huddled together in craven fear of the crowd.

  One, nearly bald, wore a gray pin-striped suit. “No one’s allowed onstage,” he shouted at her. “Go back.”

  “I’m Dr. Rensselaer-Wright. I’ve just come from Acadia Springs.”

  “Dr. Wright—I didn’t recognize you. I’m Phillip Eden.”

  The other man, in pleated khakis and an orchid-purple golf shirt, said, “My name is Boothe. Byron Boothe, from Marketing.”

  “Have you seen Charles Gifford?” Cricket asked. “He left the institute some time ago. We believe he may be headed here with a batch of the Methuselah Vector.”

  “Good Lord,” exclaimed Boothe.

  Eden shook his head. “I haven’t seen him or heard from him.”

  “If you do see him, notify the police immediately. Avoid contact. He’s carrying a virus that’s already killed two people.”

  “Is it true that Jack Niedermann’s dead?” asked Eden.

  “I’m afraid so.” Cricket surveyed the area. “What is this crowd still doing here? Haven’t you called off the Lottery?”

  “We have, we have. Try telling them that. They booed me off the stage. The police are out there trying to disperse them, but they’re hopelessly outnumbered.”

  “There’s over a hundred thousand people here,” said Boothe. “We planned for five, maybe ten thousand. This . . . this is just madness. It’s Dr. Gifford’s doing.”

  Eden touched Cricket’s arm. “I don’t suppose you would be willing to talk to them?”

  “Me?”

  “Explain the cancellation from a medical point of view?”

  Cricket looked at the throng. A hundred thousand. It wouldn’t be like talking to the European Congress for Molecular Biology. But she had to get them out before Gifford showed up. “I’ll try. Is that microphone on?”

  “Yes. It’s all yours.”

  Cricket walked alone to the front of the stage. Placing her manila envelope on the lectern, she pulled the microphone downward and leaned forward until her mouth was only an inch or two away from it. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Can you hear me? I have an important announcement.”

  She saw the faces of those in front look up, but the noise of the crowd, a second Niagara Falls, did not diminish in the least.

  She tried yelling. “My name is Sandra Rensselaer-Wright. I’m a medical doctor with the Centers for Disease Control. That . . . that’s a government health agency. I want to talk to you about the Methuselah Vector. My father—”

  Cricket was startled by a half-crumpled can of soda that bounced across the stage. A fat, bearded man in the front row put his hands to his mouth and shouted at full force, “Tell the government to go fuck itself!”

  Cricket glared at him, then shouted even louder, “My father was one of the scientists who made the Vector possible. Like all of you, I had high hopes for it, but I have seen for myself that there are serious problems—medical problems—that make it dangerous to release the Vector to the public at this time.”

  The entire plaza shook with a groundswell of boos.

  Cricket screamed over the catcalls, “Please! Please listen to me! The Vector is a public health hazard. It’s already created a supervirus that could—”

  Another soda can bounced across the stage. An apple core. Wads of paper and plastic cups. More ominously, a handful of AA batteries went ricocheting off the folding chairs. Then Cricket felt something heavy slam into her forehead. Staggering backward, she saw the full can of soda that had hit her, gushing foam all over the stage from a split in its side.

  Cricket fumed. You stupid sons of bitches. I’m trying to save your lives. But the crowd was equally enraged. One more word and they would have risen up onto the stage and lynched her. So she held her tongue and stalked back to the rear, toward the cowering Eden and Boothe.

  “We have a problem, gentlemen,” she shouted. “How in God’s name did it ever get to this point?”

  Eden said something as he handed her a silk handkerchief to stanch her bleeding forehead. Cricket couldn’t make him out over the noise of the crowd.

  That noise suddenly exploded in an even louder roar. Turning, Cricket saw a short, dark-haired man in jeans and a brown leather jacket and with a red bump on his head climb over the edge of the platform and take hold of the
microphone.

  “You’re all being lied to!” he shouted with throat-rending fury. “The Lottery has not been canceled. I repeat. Not canceled.”

  The crowd went mad.

  Who was this nut? Cricket’s exasperation turned to horror as she realized she had seen those beady, little eyes before—last night, behind the wheel of a pickup on Highway 3. Loscalzo was what Niedermann had called him. Cricket looked anxiously for Hank or Officer Dayton.

  “Quiet, people!” ordered Loscalzo. His words had a magical effect. A hush fell over the entire Plaza. “Listen to me. There are some motherfucking bastards who want to keep the Methuselah Vector from you. Billionaire corporations, like Eden Pharmaceuticals. The city and the fucking cops are on their payroll. Why? Because this drug is too powerful. Too powerful for you? Gimme a break! It’s too powerful for them! They’re terrified, folks. Terrified of what happens to them once you folks get your hands on immortality. All their drug industries, insurance companies, diaper and wheelchair makers, hospitals, funeral parlors—all of them will get shot to hell. They don’t want you to live forever. They want to get rich off of you while you die. They want to suck away your life savings like the leeches that they are.

  “But listen, people! One man had the guts to stand up to them. That man is your champion. He’s with you now. His name—I’m sure you know it—is Dr. Charles Gifford. He didn’t come here to make one dime off of any of you. He’s brought the Methuselah Vector with him. He’s going to give it away to you, here and now. Every ounce he has—he’s giving it away. Absolutely for free. Do you want it, folks?”

  A few voices shouted back from in front of the stage. “Yes! Yes! Give it to us!”

  Loscalzo cupped his hand to his ear and made a sour face. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Do you want it?”

  Two or three hundred voices answered him. “Yes! Yes! We want it now!”

  Loscalzo shook his head. “I can’t . . . I can’t hear you. There must be skeptics in the crowd. Let me hear it!” His gravelly voice rose to a larynx-cracking crescendo. “Do you want the Methuselah Vector or not?”

  Cricket winced as tens of thousands of voices on every side of her erupted in a terrifying roar. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Now! Now! Now!”

  “Then help me out, people. Here he comes—Dr. Gifford himself. Make way for him! Let him come up onto the stage!”

  Cricket heard a collective gasp from the crowd on the left side of the Upper Plaza, along Fiftieth Street. Looking that way, she saw an elevator that ran from the underground concourse to the sidewalk come to a stop inside a bread-loaf-shaped, bronze enclosure. A strange figure emerged, wearing a tan trench coat with the collar turned up, a fedora, black leather gloves, and wraparound sunglasses. With the crowd parting like the Red Sea ahead of him, he walked with a slow, shambling gait past a line of shrubbery, then made a right turn toward the steps to the Lower Plaza. As he descended, Cricket caught a glimpse of a red-and-white ice chest in his hand. The horror that came over her left no doubt as to what it contained.

  From every direction, people were chanting, “Me-thu-se-LAH! Me-thu-se-LAH!”

  Cricket frantically dialed Hank on her cell phone. “Hank, where the hell are you? Where are the police?”

  “I’m on the Lower Plaza,” said Hank. “To the left of the stage. I can’t get near you.”

  “Charles is here. Can you see him?”

  “No. But I can hear—” Hank’s voice became inaudible, then drifted back. “Cricket! Cricket! I can’t—” Inaudible again. “Are you there? Your signal—”

  “Hank, where’s Officer Dayton?” Cricket shouted into the phone. No answer. She thought of calling 911, but half the cops in the city were already on the scene. All of them, like Hank, were immobilized by the crowd.

  Oh, fuck! Gifford had reached the edge of the stage, his dark hat standing out in the sea of silver- and white-topped heads that surrounded him. Loscalzo reached down and helped him up. The two had a brief parley. Gifford stooped low to let Loscalzo speak into his ear, while Loscalzo pointed toward the back of the stage. Even before Loscalzo had finished speaking, Gifford straightened up and looked at Cricket. His face—what little Cricket could see of it—was white as chalk. His sunglasses made his eyes look like empty sockets. A death’s head, Cricket thought, as a chill ran down her spine.

  At a wave of Gifford’s hand, Loscalzo moved toward her. She cast a pleading glance toward Eden and Boothe. Loscalzo would have had no power against the three of them together. But both men stood transfixed, mouths agape, as though Gifford had hypnotized them.

  Meanwhile Gifford turned toward the crowd. Still clutching the ice chest, he leaned one elbow against the lectern and grasped the microphone, which screeched with feedback. The crowd’s chanting fell silent.

  “My friends,” he began in an uncharacteristic rasping voice. “Do not listen to those who have spoken against the Methuselah Vector. Every revolution has its opponents. Every great discovery since the beginning of time has been denounced—by the jealous, the ignorant, the superstitious. Pay them no heed today. The wonders of the Methuselah Vector will soon stop their mouths.”

  Loscalzo kept coming. Cricket moved to avoid him. He mirrored her, calmly chewing a mouthful of gum, threading his way between the chairs like a cat on the prowl. With each maneuver she was driven a little farther toward the corner of the stage.

  Gifford’s amplified voice reverberated from the marble walls of the Plaza. “Trust me, friends, the Methuselah Vector is safe. For that I give you my most solemn oath—swearing not upon honor or reputation, though both are precious to me, but upon my very life. For, friends, I would not ask of you that which I, myself, would not do. I, too, have received the Methuselah Vector. Six weeks ago I injected myself. It transformed me, friends. It transformed me wonderfully. Strength I never knew before. Endurance. Capacity for thought and perception. Sexual potency. Invulnerability to disease. Not only did I not die, but I have lived with a vigor that still astonishes me.”

  Just as Loscalzo got close enough to pounce, Cricket ducked and sprang past him down the aisle in the middle of the stage, charging toward the microphone. “He’s lying!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “This man is sick. Keep away! Keep away!”

  Then Loscalzo tackled her. Blue sky and white stone spun topsy-turvy as she slammed her into a row of empty chairs. For a second she was too stunned to breathe. She rolled over and tried to come up onto her hands and knees. But Loscalzo was on top of her. Pinning her legs to the floor with his knee, he jerked her back with one hand behind her neck and the other over her mouth. She fought to wrestle free, but his grip grew tighter with every twist.

  “Ignore this unfortunate woman,” Gifford told the crowd. “Come, my friends, and share the miracle with me.” Still wearing his gloves, he reached into his pocket and shook open a folded sheet of paper. “I have here one hundred names, drawn at random from the Lottery register. One hundred names. The names of those who will become immortal today.”

  The crowd erupted in a frenzy.

  “Me-thu-se-LAH! Me-thu-se-LAH!”

  A hundred thousand people began shouting their own names.

  “Me! Me! Oh, God, please pick me!”

  Gifford held the windblown paper at arm’s length and slowly began to read. “Selwyn, Roger . . . Levinson, Beatrice . . .” But no microphone could have amplified his voice above the jet-engine roar of the crowd.

  “Quiet, please! Let them come forward,” he shouted, shaking the paper high above his head. Still the earsplitting roar went on. Defiantly Gifford began to repeat the names he had just read. “Selwyn, Roger—”

  Seeing his lips move only goaded the crowd. As Cricket struggled to breathe, she saw waves passing through the sea of people, spreading from the Upper Plaza and Promenade down the steps in front of the stage. Crush piled upon crush, as thousands who were more mobile tried to claw their way past the whe
elchairs and rollators toward the Lower Plaza—already packed to suffocation. Like a flood tide, they spilled up onto the flowerbeds and reflecting pools. The noise terrified her—a tempest of shouts and moans and the stamping of a hundred thousand pairs of feet. It was like being trapped in the eye of a cyclone. The great stone-and-glass cliffs of the towers that surrounded her seemed to rock on their foundations.

  Gifford gave up reading and threw the paper to the ground. Even if the names could have been heard, no one called from the list could have gotten through. But he was not about to concede.

  Stepping to the edge of the platform, he reached down and plucked a frail, gray-haired woman up from the ground. “Are you ready? Ready for immortality?”

  Speechless, the woman knelt down before him and bowed her head, like a communicant receiving the Eucharist.

  Cricket watched helplessly, heart pounding, as Gifford set the ice chest on a folding chair and opened it. Without taking off his leather gloves, he held a small plastic tube in his palm and tore the wrapper from a syringe. When the tube had thawed, he popped open the flip-top and drew its contents into the syringe. Holding the syringe against the sky, he tapped it to dislodge a small bubble of air.

  God damn him. He’s really going to do it. A hundred unwitting subjects were about to be turned into a hundred living incubators for a hundred plagues upon mankind. Not a hand was raised to stop him. Massing her last ounce of strength, Cricket wrenched against Loscalzo’s grip. His hand slipped. She felt her teeth sink into his fleshy thumb-web. She tasted blood and bit down harder, going for bone. A man’s scream rose up. In the next second she was free—bounding down the aisle toward the ice chest full of syringes, toward Gifford.

  Her feet and hands thought for themselves. No time to consider what to do. She had to stop him. Somehow, anyhow. As she closed in, she sensed something ominous in his appearance—the hat, the sunglasses, the gloves. Why? What was he hiding? She didn’t know. She simply saw. The mask was vital—it had to be his vulnerable spot.

  Tear it away! Tear it away! In midpounce, she saw her hand reach, not for the syringe but for his glasses. His face jerked back as he saw her coming. The jerk threw her fingers off the mark. They snagged not only his glasses but something else—something soft and doughy that slid away like a piece of gray cheese on a bed of jelly.