True (2004)

by Cordy, Michael

  'Love's a great power for good. It's the greatest feeling in the world when it's reciprocated. Well, here it is. My vision is to sell NiL in pairs so we can create a world where the greatest source of happiness and goodwill is available to everyone. If a couple's relationship flags they can each take a drug targeted with the other's profile and fall in love again. No more divorces, loneliness or unhappiness. Like I said, it's emotional Viagra. And this time everyone will realize that their happiness and well-being didn't come from some soulless company but from me. The world will thank and reward me for bringing love into their lives.'

  'How do you administer it?'

  Bacci reached into his case and retrieved a beige vaccine gun, small enough to fit into the palm of a man's hand. Helmut recognized it. 'A standard PowerDermic gun is all you need to inject it into the bloodstream,' Bacci said.

  Joachim scribbled in his notebook. 'How long before it works?' he said.

  'You have to sleep before it takes effect, like restarting a computer after installing new software. The drug makes you drowsy, and while you sleep it alters your brain chemistry and subconsciously imprints the target's face on your inferotemporal cortex. You may even dream of it. When you awake your brain is primed. Apart from the curious side-effect of a healthy appetite you'll feel nothing until you see the target's face.' Bacci gave a delighted laugh. 'Then you experience a classic coup de foudre, as though Cupid's arrow has pierced your heart.'

  Helmut frowned. 'How long does it last?'

  'NiL Sixty-nine targets the somatic body cells, which have only a short life span. It lasts forty-eight hours.' Bacci reached into his silver case. 'But it's not the most advanced version.' He produced a second vial. 'This is NiL Seventy-two. It uses a viral vector that targets not only the temporary body cells but also the permanent stem cells. The effects of Seventy-two don't last a weekend. They last a lifetime. If Nil Sixty-nine is temporary love, then NiL Seventy-two is the Holy Grail - pure, everlasting, till-death-us-do-part love.'

  Helmut reached for the vial and studied it. Apart from the label, it looked identical to the earlier version. His head was throbbing with die implications of Bacci's claims. 'How can you know this works?'

  'I used NiL Sixty-nine three times to keep my love for Maria alive. Then, six months ago, when I was satisfied it was safe, I injected myself with Seventy-two. I haven't needed another dose.' He paused. 'A few weeks ago I widened the sample base. I injected Maria. I wanted to prove the drug's efficacy but I also wanted to help her. She had been hurt and was uncertain about commitment, frightened to trust love. I thought the drug would take away that fear.'

  There was a moment of silence.

  'Did you ask her permission?' asked Max.

  Another pause. 'No. But I myself had already taken it, so I wasn't taking advantage of her. Anyway, I love her and now she's certain she loves me. We're happy.'

  'Have you told her about the drug?'

  'No.'

  'But it worked?' said Helmut.

  We're getting married.'

  "What exactly do you want from us?' Helmut's mind rushed ahead, working out how he could benefit from Bacci's thunderbolt. If it was genuine.

  'I've run out of money,' Bacci said. 'I need funding and expertise to organize clinical trials and the eventual launch. But I won't use the big investment banks because they'll hijack the project and involve the big pharmaceutical companies to milk it for maximum profit. This is my idea, born of my hard work, and I intend to reap the rewards and recognition. I also want to keep control of the project because the technology is open to abuse. I see the drug being taken by couples, equal partners in love. I need you to help me realize this vision.'

  Helmut waved his hand dismissively. "We can provide what you need but our first concern is your technology.'

  'Who else knows about it?' Joachim asked.

  'No one. My lab technician knows aspects of the process but that's all. No one knows what it does.'

  Max looked down at his file. 'Marco Trapani?'

  'I've only told him I've discovered something. I haven't said what.'

  Helmut noticed Max studying a photograph in the file. 'How about your daughter?'

  'No.'

  Helmut nodded. 'Tell no one about this yet, Professor Bacci. It's vital we have everything organized before we go public'

  'So you'll take me on?' Bacci said.

  Max's frown grew more severe. 'If your technology is genuine.'

  'It is. I told you. I used it on myself.'

  Helmut raised his hand. 'Please don't be offended, Professor. It's just that this discovery is so fantastic we need proof.'

  'How can I prove it to you without going public?'"

  'Joachim, you're the scientist. What do you think?' Helmut watched his younger son try to read his expression. Joachim rarely voiced an opinion unless he was confident it agreed with his father's.

  'It depends,' Joachim said. 'I'd need to check out the detailed notes, formulae and overall process.'

  Helmut rolled his eyes. 'What do you think?

  Joachim licked his lips. 'The science sounds convincing. It could be genuine.'

  Helmut glanced at Max's research file. Bacci's reputation was unimpeachable and his explanation of the drug had been clear and cogent, but it was too incredible. Still, the possibilities it presented made his heart race. He looked at his older son, a man he had nurtured to respect duty and scorn emotion, a Kappel incapable of love. 'Max, what do you think?'

  MAXKEPT HIS FACE IMPASSIVE. ALTHOUGHHIS FATHER APPEARED indifferent he could sense he was interested. All his life, Helmut Kappel had stressed his contempt for love -- seeing it as the product of a feeble, diseased mind -- yet he apparently thought Bacci's drug might be more than a fanciful fairy-tale.

  'He turned back to Bacci. 'No offence, Professor, but I'm sceptical.'

  'What can I do to make you change your mind?'

  Max smiled. 'Frankly, only one thing would convince me that your drug works.'

  'What's that?'

  'If I took it myself.'

  His father shook his head. 'That's not going to happen.'

  'Why not? I'd only take the forty-eight-hour version.'

  'It's too dangerous.'

  His father was only concerned about losing his heir, Max thought. 'It's the only way to settle this, and I don't think it'll have any effect.'

  'I said no, Max.'

  'It's perfectly safe,' Bacci said.

  Helmut Kappel turned to his younger son.

  'Professor, your science sounds credible and very impressive,' Joachim said, 'but I'm sure you'd be the first to admit that your trials have been less than conventional. You can't be certain of its efficacy and its safety.'

  'But I can. As I said, I've taken the drug myself.'

  Max glanced again at the file in front of him and the photograph of the young woman. 'You can assure my father that it's perfectly safe for me to take your drug?'

  'I repeat,' Bacci said, 'it's completely safe.'

  Max smiled. 'So safe you'd let your child take it?'

  There was a silence as Bacci and the others realized what he had just said.

  'You'd really let your own daughter take it?' Helmut asked.

  Bacci stared down at the table. He adjusted the knot of his tie and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. T had other plans,' he mumbled, 'but maybe Leo doesn't deserve her. Anyway, it's as good a way as any to cure a broken heart.' He gave an almost imperceptible nod, as though he had come to a painful decision. When he looked up his face was pale. 'I know it's safe. If you let your son take the drug to prove its efficacy, I'll let my daughter take it to prove its safety.'

  His father glanced at Max, checking he was still prepared to do this. Max nodded: it was the only way to end this nonsense.

  Helmut studied the professor. Then he sighed and extended his hand to shake on the deal. 'Okay. For a forty-eight-hour period, your daughter will be the Juliet to my son's Romeo.'

  Bacci adjuste
d his tie again. Then he took Helmut's hand. 'Agreed,' he said. 'On one condition.'

  'Yes?'

  'Isabella must never know of this.'

  24 AUGUST

  OVERTHE PAST COUPLE OF WEEKS ISABELLA BACCI HAD THOUGHT often about her father's surprise engagement. He and Maria would be married in less than three months. But now she had to concentrate on tying up any loose ends before she went on holiday tomorrow. As she took Signor Martini and his wife to the children's ward of MilanUniversityHospital, she stopped herself checking her watch. I've got plenty of time, she told herself. So long as I leave by four I can be in and out of the apartment before Leo returns. And there'll still be time to pack for Antibes.

  When she reached the security door, Isabella pushed all personal concerns from her mind, placed her hand over a palm-shaped black pad and waited while the DNA scanner read the genetic material in her skin. Within seconds it had decoded the five hundred and ninety-seven genes that specified her facial features, and a computer-generated image of her face appeared on the small monitor. Immediately it was matched to the image in her personnel file and the door opened. She turned to the young couple and smiled. 'The hospital takes security very seriously, especially around the maternity and children's wards.' The procedure was standard. Many institutions had similar measures in place.

  Signor Martini noted the model of the system. 'The Interface 3000 isn't foolproof,' he said. 'I work in the business. I could get the hospital an upgrade to the Interface 3500.' He began to explain the weakness of the current system but his wife rested a hand on his arm and he fell silent.

  Isabella led them through the main children's ward to the private rooms and stopped at 109. Through the glass door, Isabella saw Sofia climb out of her hospital bed and walk unsteadily to the adjoining bathroom. The seven-year-old looked frail in her sky-blue nightdress and head bandage, but she was recovering well from the accident -- a delivery van had backed into her bicycle. As Sofia neared the bathroom door she paused by the mirrored glass on the wall and frowned at her reflection, as though she were trying to remember something.

  Isabella opened the door. 'Sofia, it's me,' Isabella said. 'Dr Bacci. Isabella.'

  The little girl smiled when she recognized the voice, then pointed back to her own reflection. 'I know her,' she said triumphantly. 'She's my friend.'

  Isabella crouched down until her face was level with the child's. She observed her own reflection: olive complexion, shoulder-length black hair, strong nose, lopsided smile and large brown eyes. Then she reached out and touched the glass. 'That's my face,' she said. Then she pointed to the little girl's paler features. 'And that's yours, Sofia.' Finally she turned and beckoned to the couple waiting in the doorway. 'Sofia, you've got some special visitors.'

  The child beamed at them. 'Ciao, I'm Sofia. Who are you?'

  The woman bit her lip, unable to speak. The man put his arms round his wife and smiled at Sofia, a sweet, sad smile. He bent and stroked the child's cheek. 'Darling, it's Mummy and Daddy.'

  'PROSOPAGNOSIA,' ISABELLA BACCI REPEATED SLOWLY, WATCHING Sofia's parents mouth the word as they tried to come to terms with their daughter's condition. Ever since she'd been only a little older than Sofia, Isabella had been torn between becoming a research scientist like her father or a doctor like her grandfather. The latter had teased her that scientists were dreamers, idealists who achieved little in their lifetime: only doctors had the power to cure people. But her father never tired of reminding her that without research scientists doctors had no power. The debate had lost its meaning when her mother died of an aneurysm and no one, scientist or doctor, had been able to help. In the end Isabella had decided to become both.

  Now, sitting in her office in the neurology department, she wished she could do more for Sofia. 'Try to understand that your daughter's been very lucky. Her head injuries were severe, but apart from this isolated aberration, her brain functions are unaffected. The surgeons are convinced the physical scarring will be negligible.'

  The mother, calmer now, nodded thoughtfully.

  Isabella pointed to the screen showing the PET scan of Sofia's brain. 'This region on the right side of the brain is the infero-temporal cortex. It's a highly evolved area where visual and memory systems mesh. The inferotemporal cortex and the fusiform gyms specialize in the recognition of human faces. It's their sole function. This inborn skill allows a newborn to recognize its mother at only a few weeks' old. This is the area of Sofia's brain that was damaged in the accident.

  'Prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, is rare. People with autism and Asperger's sometimes have it. A few sufferers are born with the condition and some, like Sofia, acquire it from a specific head trauma.'

  'How long will it last?' the father asked.

  Isabella considered how she might feel if she was unable to recognize her loved ones' faces. Faces that even an inanimate security computer could identify. She thought of Leo and of how she had been able only recently to stop obsessing about his face. The irony didn't make her smile. 'I'm afraid Sofia will probably be face-blind for the rest of her life. Research is being conducted into prosopagnosia all the time, and I've been working in the area for a while, but currently there's no cure.'

  'She'll never recognize us?' the mother said.

  'Not your faces. Not until a cure is found. But she'll recognize your voices, the way you walk and all the other little things. Don't forget, Sofia has all her other faculties. There's nothing wrong with her memory or vision. She's just unable to recognize facial features -- including her own. She'll adapt.'

  'How do you know?' Sofia's father said bitterly.

  'That's a good question.' Isabella stood up and walked across to the glass-fronted refrigerated cabinet on the other side of her office. A tray of stainless-steel canisters sat on the top shelf. She opened the door, selected one and rested it on her palm. The steel felt cool on her skin. 'Research Sample: Amigo Extract' was typed in bold on a white label. As she placed the cannister on the desk in front of Sofia's parents the tablets rattled inside it.

  'This drug is one of the latest research advances. It's derived from an illegal recreational drug called Amigo, an offshoot of Ecstasy. Amigo was created for the club scene on the west coast of the States and is designed to give the user a euphoric high that makes them see everyone as their friend -- hence the name. It has an interesting side-effect, though. It causes temporary face-blindness.

  'Colleagues in the States isolated and extracted the relevant components to create a drug that only induces the side-effect.' She tapped the canister. 'Assuming our ethics committee gives us the go-ahead, we plan to use these research tablets on healthy volunteers. By monitoring their brain activity while the temporary prosopagnosia kicks in and then recedes, we hope to understand better what switches are being triggered in the brain. I've tried the drug myself and the best way of describing the experience was that individual faces became unrecognizable. I could still work out who some familiar people were by their hair colour and clothing, but the overall pattern of their faces meant nothing to me. This might help you understand.' She reached into a drawer in her desk, pulled out four small pebbles and stood them on the desk. 'Suppose these pebbles have names -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.' She waited a moment then jumbled them up, and returned three to the drawer. She pointed to the remaining pebble. 'Can you tell me this one's name?'

  The father shrugged. 'No. They all look the same.'

  'It's Mark.' Isabella put the other pebbles back on the table. 'Mark is slightly bigger and bluer than the others, with a distinctive crack on the side. These pebbles are as different from each other as human faces are, but we're not programmed to recognize them as a cohesive whole. The problem for people with prosopagnosia is that human faces look as indistinguishable to them as pebbles do to the rest of us.

  "The point is, the condition may be frustrating and embarrassing, but it's not debilitating. Many people born with mild prosopagnosia don't even realize they have it. They live perfecdy good
lives thinking they have a poor memory for faces - although prosopagnosia has nothing to do with memory. I can tell you with confidence that Sofia will learn to cope. And, trust me, so will you.'

  Only when Isabella had answered Sofia's parents' remaining questions and walked them back to Reception did she check her watch again. Before she left for her holiday she had to complete her handovers. She would have to hurry, but she still had time to get into and out of the apartment before he returned.

  LEO'S APARTMENT, WHICH HAD BEEN ISABELLA'S HOME UNTIL A FEW weeks ago, was near Corso Italia on the southern side of Milan. She still had the keys. She had lived there for almost a year and, despite her efforts to remain detached, was so preoccupied with memories that she didn't notice the tall blond man watching her from the other side of the road. She stepped into the cool of the familiar lobby and took the lift to the fourth floor. When she unlocked the door to the apartment she was shocked by how completely the interior had been transformed.