Transhuman

by Ben Bova

  “Life extension,” Fisk corrected.

  “Oh.”

  “We need to lock up our proprietary claims,” Fisk repeated.

  Luke saw iron-hard resolve in Fisk’s cold gray eyes. “I’m not sure my work is patentable,” he said.

  “Let my lawyers be the judge of that,” said Fisk.

  Merriwether seemed puzzled. “And now you’re doing aging experiments on your granddaughter?”

  “To cure her of cancer.”

  Fisk tapped a manicured fingernail on the tabletop. “His work will make old people young again, and as a by-product it’ll cure cancer! How’s that for an investment?”

  “It’s very preliminary,” Luke cautioned. “I’m working on Angela because everybody else has given up on her.”

  “But you believe you can cure her, don’t you?” Fisk asked. The question was almost like an accusation.

  “I think so. I hope so.”

  Merriwether gave out a low whistle. “So that’s why you’re so interested in his work,” he said to Fisk.

  With a tight nod, Fisk said, “Luke, I need you to sign the agreement. We’ll take care of your legal problems, and you can treat the kid right here at Nottaway until she’s either cured or she’s dead.”

  “If she dies,” Luke retorted, “then my research isn’t worth much, is it?”

  Fisk eyed him for a silent moment. Then, “If she dies you could be accused of murder. You’ll need my lawyers more than ever, in that case.”

  Statistical Analysis

  THE WEEK BETWEEN Christmas and New Year’s is usually a slow time for businesses and government agencies. People take vacation time, or use their available sick-leave days to stay away from the office. Most schools are closed. Across the nation, almost everyone is in a holiday mood, partying and reuniting with families. Hardly anyone expects to be working during the final week of the year.

  Hardly anyone.

  Yolanda Petrone was surprised when her supervisor phoned her at home and asked her to come in for a meeting with the National Institutes of Health’s budget committee.

  “Budget committee?” she had asked, into the phone. “Why do you want me to talk with the budget committee?”

  The voice on the other end sounded pained, irritated. “It’s that report you sent in on Professor Abramson’s work.”

  Petrone felt her brows knit. The report was part of her normal year-end routine, a summary of the work that the Cancer Institute had been funding. In Luke’s case, it was a final report, since the agency had canceled his funding.

  Feeling confused and more than a little discomfited, Petrone drove the next day to the NIH campus in Bethesda and made her way to the administration building. The traffic was unusually light, the campus quiet in the mid-morning sunshine.

  She was even more confused, and surprised, when her supervisor introduced her to the others in the conference room. Only one of the men was from the budget committee. Three others were statisticians with the Department of Health and Human Services, another was from the Department of the Treasury, and the seventh person at the table was a youthful, hard-eyed man who identified himself as a special assistant to the President of the United States.

  Lots of firepower, Petrone thought, for an ordinary program review.

  Her supervisor sat at the head of the conference table, looking dour. Petrone—the only woman present—was seated on his left. The White House man was at his right, across the table from her. The statisticians, seated down the table, wore comfortably casual open-necked shirts or sweaters. The White House man was in a dark pinstriped suit. Her supervisor wore a suit, too, dreary gray, and a carefully knotted green and red tie that could only have been a Christmas present, Petrone theorized: No one would buy a tie like that for himself.

  She was wearing a presentable skirt and sweater. But she got the impression that she should have dressed better.

  Her supervisor—gray hair, thick gray mustache almost the same shade as his suit—was actually perspiring, she realized. The various statisticians looked just as curious and perplexed as Petrone herself felt. The White House aide was very serious, all business, and looked to be the youngest man at the table. He was lean, with thinning sandy hair and a stern intensity in his light brown eyes.

  Once the introductions had gone around the table, the supervisor said, “Dr. Petrone, you submitted a report summarizing the work of Professor Luke Abramson, of Brighton University, in Massachusetts.”

  Petrone nodded.

  “Your summary included an analysis of the results of his research.”

  “That was mostly speculation on my part,” she said, immediately regretting that she had dabbled in that direction. “I thought that since our program with Professor Abramson had concluded, it was appropriate to examine where his work might lead. In the future.”

  “Very appropriate,” said the Treasury Department representative, seated next to Petrone.

  One of the statisticians said, with a youthful grin, “You opened up a can of worms, you did.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  The Treasury Department representative was wearing a sporty checkered vest beneath his dark blue jacket, Petrone noticed. He was the oldest person at the table, from the looks of him: chunky, but faded, tired, resigned to the endless tedium of bureaucracy.

  “Do you really believe,” he asked Petrone, “that this man’s research could extend human life spans?”

  She nodded warily. “If he’s successful with his work on telomeres, it could lead to greatly extended life spans, yes.”

  Her supervisor said, “We’re not talking life expectancies here, but actual life spans, is that right?”

  “Yes,” said Petrone.

  Turning to the Treasury Department man, the supervisor explained. “Average life expectancy has been rising for more than a hundred years. Better sanitation, better nutrition, better health care—they’ve all contributed to lowering infant and childhood mortality. More people live into adulthood, you see.”

  “But we’re not talking about average life expectancy here,” said the White House man, his high tenor voice sharp and crisp. He’s from New England, Petrone realized once she heard him pronounce “here” as “hee-yeh.”

  “Exactly right,” said the supervisor. “We’re talking about people living well past one hundred. Lots of people.”

  The White House man shook his head. “We can’t have that.”

  The man from the budget committee blurted, “Why not? Don’t you want to live longer?”

  The White House man gave him a cold stare. “Do you know what it would mean if most people could live to be a hundred or more? Do you have any idea of what would happen to our economy if we had millions of centenarians living, demanding their Social Security benefits, Medicare, retirement pensions?”

  “It would wreck the economy,” said the Treasury Department man. “It would bankrupt us.”

  One of the young statisticians said, “You’ll just have to change the laws, then, and—”

  “Change the laws?” the White House man snapped, his voice sharp as a whip crack. “When we’ve got millions of centenarians voting? D’you think they’d vote to cut their own benefits? Get real!”

  Petrone finally understood. “That’s why we refused to continue Abramson’s funding.”

  One of the statisticians said, “We can’t afford to have this work become successful. It would ruin the economy.”

  “But you’d be condemning millions of people to die before they have to.”

  “Better than allowing the economy to collapse. They’re going to die anyway, sooner or later.”

  He was young enough to see this as an exercise in statistical analysis, Petrone realized. Old age and death were nothing but abstractions, in his mind. For other people, not for himself. Not yet.

  Clasping his long-fingered hands together on the tabletop, the White House man said, “Look, we’re not trying to stop scientific research here. Abramson’s continuing his work s
omewhere, we know that.”

  “The Fisk Foundation is funding him,” Petrone said.

  Nodding, the White House man said, “Then we’ll have to talk with the Fisk Foundation people. Abramson’s work has to be controlled very carefully. We can’t have this new capability suddenly injected into the national economy. It could be ruinous. It’s got to be controlled.”

  My God, Petrone thought, he makes Luke’s work sound like some plague virus.

  With a pained expression on his face, her supervisor said, “We’re going to have to excise your conclusions from your report on Abramson’s work.”

  Before Petrone could object, the White House man said, “You say he’s continuing his work under funding from the Fisk Foundation.”

  She nodded.

  “Then we’ve got to get to the Fisk people and ask them to cooperate.”

  “Drop his funding?”

  He shook his head. “Control his work. Keep it under wraps. No premature publicity.”

  “And if the Fisk people refuse to cooperate?” the supervisor asked.

  With a careless shrug, the White House man said, “Then we’ll investigate the foundation. We’ll find corruption, illegal dealing with overseas companies, tax evasion—something, anything, to convince them to see things our way.”

  The Treasury Department man shook his weary head. “I know Quenton Fisk. He doesn’t scare easily.”

  The White House man smiled thinly. “If he’s a practical man, he’ll cooperate. Otherwise he’ll have to spend a lot of his money defending himself against our investigations. He’ll see the light, I’m sure.”

  Petrone wondered which possibility bothered her more: the idea that the government would take control of Luke’s work, or the idea that the Fisk Foundation would simply move Luke overseas, beyond Washington’s control, and take him away from her forever.

  River Walk

  “NOT BAD WEATHER for the end of December,” said Luke as he, Tamara, and his granddaughter walked slowly along the gravel path that followed the river’s edge.

  It was a sunny afternoon, temperature in the fifties, a few white puffs of clouds sailing serenely across the blue sky. The Mississippi flowed slowly past; Luke guessed it must be nearly a mile to its other bank.

  He was wearing the windbreaker he’d brought with him, but had unzipped it and even thought about removing its zip-in lining. Tamara wore her winter coat, too, and let it flap open in the soft afternoon breeze. They had bundled Angela into the pink quilted coat that Merriwether had brought among her Christmas presents, but Luke thought it might be too heavy for her.

  Angela was trudging along between them, peering curiously at the flowering bushes and the low buildings on the other side of the river.

  “It’s like springtime,” she said. Luke thought her voice sounded strained, raspy.

  “We’re a long way from New England,” he said.

  The child nodded glumly, and Luke thought, We’re a long way from her parents. He wished there were some way he could bring Norrie to be with them. Del he could do without, but he wanted to make his daughter happy.

  On the other hand, he thought, Norrie might freak out if she saw how aged and wrinkled Angie looks. But that will change. It’s only temporary. Once we’ve knocked out the tumors, we’ll reverse the progeria symptoms.

  “Look! A bunny!”

  Angela darted out from between them and ran toward a small rabbit that had popped out of the shrubbery that lined the walk. The rabbit bolted back into the shrubs, frightened by the child’s approach.

  Luke started after his granddaughter. “Angie, wait!”

  Angela half-turned at the sound of his voice, stumbled, and fell forward. She put out both arms to break her fall.

  “Ow!”

  Luke reached his granddaughter and scooped her up in his arms, Tamara a scant step behind him.

  “Are you okay, Angel?”

  “My arm…” Angela clutched her left forearm with her right hand.

  Tamara started to push the child’s coat sleeve up the arm, but Angela yowled with pain.

  “Let’s get back into the house,” Tamara said.

  Luke nodded agreement and headed back, the little girl in his arms. Angela began sobbing. “It hurts.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Tamara said, soothingly. “We’ll make it all better.”

  * * *

  ONCE THEY GOT Angela back to her room and removed her coat, they saw that her left wrist was swollen.

  “Might be a fracture,” Tamara said.

  “She just tripped,” said Luke.

  “Brittle bones are a symptom of HGPS, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, for the love of God.”

  Tamara wheeled the X-ray machine to Angela’s bedside and confirmed it: hairline fracture of her second carpal bone.

  “That’s not so bad,” Tamara told Angela, her voice a gentle purr.

  “It hurts,” Angela whimpered.

  “We’ll take care of that right away.”

  In less than an hour Tamara had injected a painkiller into the port in the child’s arm and encased her hand and forearm in a tightly wrapped plastic cast that she improvised from the box that the robot dog had come in. Angela could wiggle her fingertips but not flex her wrist.

  “She’ll sleep now,” Tamara whispered to Luke, who had stood by the whole procedure, feeling helpless, blaming himself for the accident, for Angie’s brittle bones, for this whole stupid business.

  “She’ll be all right for tonight,” she went on. “I’ll ask Lonzo to send a specialist here tomorrow and put a proper cast on her arm.”

  Looking at his half-asleep granddaughter, Luke murmured, “You did a good job. A great job.”

  “She’ll be all right,” Tamara repeated. “I’ll stay with her. You go down and tell Lonzo what’s happened.”

  Luke nodded. “I’ll bring up some dinner for you.”

  Glancing at her wristwatch, Tamara said, “It’s almost cocktail hour. I could use a drink.”

  “You and me both,” he said fervently.

  Boston FBI Headquarters

  JERRY HIGHTOWER HAD been nettled when he returned from his brief Christmas vacation with his family in Arizona. His chief had taken him off the Abramson case, just told him to fold up the dossier and get on with his other cases.

  It bothered Hightower that a university professor, a scientist, had somehow eluded him. He kicked himself mentally for underestimating Abramson and letting him get away when he had found him in Bethesda. The guy had gone to ground somewhere, and Hightower was determined to find him. It was a matter of personal pride and professional responsibilities.

  But the chief had decided not to waste any more time or effort on what was, after all, a very minor case.

  “We’ve got better things to do than spend our time hunting for some damned runaway scientist,” the chief had said, quite firmly. “We’ve alerted all our field offices to his case. He’ll show up sooner or later and they’ll nab him.”

  Hightower had left his chief’s office feeling annoyed, frustrated. I can find Abramson, he complained to himself. I can run him down.

  Now, though, not even a week later, Hightower could hardly contain his surprise as he sat in front of the chief’s desk once again.

  “You’re back on this Abramson business.” The dapper little man looked far from pleased.

  Hightower said nothing, but the chief caught the expression on his normally impassive face.

  “Orders from Washington,” the chief grumbled. “Apparently somebody in the White House has taken an interest in Abramson.”

  “How come?” Hightower asked.

  The chief shook his head unhappily. “Washington didn’t deign to enlighten me. They just want Abramson found.”

  “Hmph.”

  “So what are you going to do about it? Just sit there and make grunting noises?”

  “No,” said Hightower, lumbering to his feet. “I’m going to talk to the people who’re funding his
research. The Fisk Foundation, in New York.”

  “You think they know where he is?”

  “Even if they don’t, they must know his contacts, his friends and colleagues.”

  The chief heaved a discontented sigh. “Go find him, Jerry. Make the White House happy.”

  * * *

  CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER, Hightower said to himself as the polished, stylishly dressed young blonde led him into the private office of Quenton Fisk.

  “Agent Hightower,” said Fisk, rising to his feet from behind his massive desk. It looked as big as a house trailer.

  The blonde left the office, quietly closing the door to leave the two men alone.

  Hightower had been surprised when the first flunky he had talked to immediately picked up the phone and called Fisk himself. And even more surprised when Fisk quickly told the man to bring him up to his private office.

  “Mr. Fisk,” Hightower said, walking across the thick carpeting toward Fisk’s desk. The office was big enough to house a hockey rink, almost.

  “I understand you’re making inquiries about Professor Luke Abramson,” Fisk said, as he gestured to one of the armchairs in front of the desk. It was upholstered in bottle green leather.

  Easing himself into the chair, Hightower began. “Professor Abramson is wanted in connection with the abduction of his granddaughter.”

  “Really?” said Fisk, all innocence.

  Hightower had seen that act before, on dozens of others he had interviewed over the years.

  “Really,” he said. “I thought that since your foundation is funding his research, you might have some idea of where he might be.”

  Leaning back in his high-backed swivel chair, Fisk said, “I’ll instruct my people to cooperate with you fully.”

  “That’s good.”

  “But you’ve got to understand, the foundation only hands Professor Abramson checks to support his work. We don’t dictate where he goes.”

  “But your people know who his associates are, where he might be.”

  Fisk cocked his head to one side. “Possibly.”