by Ben Bova
I hesitated at the door to her tiny room. It was barely large enough for her bed, a chair, and the bureau on the opposite wall that held a television set. The window was sealed shut and grayed with years of soot and grime from the nearby highway. There was little to see out there anyway except one forlorn maple struggling to survive in a field that had been paved over and turned into a parking lot. The only bright spot in the room was the vase of flowers standing beside the TV.
Momma stirred. Her bed had been cranked up and she could see the doorway. One corner of her mouth twitched in what might have been an attempt to smile.
I stepped into the room, feeling as awkward and helpless as I always did.
“Hi, Momma,” I said as brightly as I could manage.
Her eyes shifted to the swivel table beside her bed. The laptop computer I had bought her rested on it, with the oblong black TV remote control unit beside it. I swung the table in front of her and lifted her right hand to the keyboard.
HELLO DARLING, she typed slowly. Momma had been an office manager before the accident, and an excellent touch typist. Now, with only one hand working, it was more difficult.
I pulled the chair to where I could see the blue screen with its white letters and sat down. “How’re you feeling?” I asked.
HOW SHOULD I FEEL? It was her feeble attempt at humor.
“You look pretty good,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage. “Better than last week, I think.”
FEEL ABOUT SAME
“The flowers look nice.”
THEY BRING NEW ONES EVERY OTHER DAY
“They brighten up the room.”
THANKS FOR THEM VERY THOUGHTFUL OF YOU
Her hand looked like a bird’s claw. No flesh on it at all. Skin mottled and gray. But her mind was still alert. I couldn’t help thinking that Momma’s true essence was really in the computer more than the frail dying husk of her body.
I said, “I had lunch with Jesse last week, the day after his award dinner.”
I could see her eyes brighten. Quickly she typed, BEST NEWS IN A YEAR!!!
“Has he been to see you?”
LAST MONTH
I made a point of visiting Momma every week or so.
JESS VERY BUSY, she typed. ALWAYS ON CALL
Very busy, I thought. Sure. Like I’m not. Then I said, “I’m having dinner with him and Julia tomorrow night.”
WONDERFUL
The wooden chair felt hard and uncomfortable. I confessed, “I’m kind of scared about it, Momma. I don’t know how I’ll get through the evening.”
YOU CANT AVOID THEM ALL YOUR LIFE
“I know,” I said. “But still . . .”
YOU STILL LOVE HER
“I don’t know, Momma. I don’t know if it’s love or hate or what. It hurts, whatever it is.”
IS SHE COOKING
“No, we’re going to a restaurant. Someplace Jesse’s picked out.”
GOOD
“Still, it’s not going to be easy.”
BRING A DATE
“Huh?”
BRING A DATE DONT GO ALONE
“You think I should?”
DEFINITELY
“I don’t know if I can find someone on such short notice.”
FIND SOMEBODY
I grinned at her. “I suppose I could rent a date if I had to.”
DONT BE FUNNY
“I’ll see what I can do.”
LOVE YR BROTHER
“I do love him, Momma. In spite of everything. It felt great to see him again. We’re trying to get past this chasm that’s grown between us. But it isn’t easy.”
COME SEE ME WITH JESS
“The two of us together?”
YES BEFORE I DIE
I wanted to reply that she wasn’t going to die for a long time, but the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. Momma had never hidden behind phony words.
“I’ll tell him tomorrow night. It’s a good idea, both of us coming to see you together.”
GOOD NOW FIND A DATE
“You’re tired? You want me to leave?”
YES
I got up from the chair slowly. “Is there anything you need? Anything I can get for you?”
NEW HEART, she typed. Her hand hesitated a moment, then pecked out, NEW LEGS TOO
“I wish I could, Momma,” I said as I bent to kiss her forehead. Her skin felt dry and cold, lifeless, like parchment. “I wish I could.”
PATRICIA HAYWARD
In those days I liked to tell myself that I was a novelist who’d been forced to take on public relations assignments to pay the rent on the modest cottage in Old Saybrook, where I lived with my boozy mother and a half dozen cats. Flacking, I called it. Write a flattering piece about some corporate fathead and then watch their PR troops wheedle it into the national magazines.
So I was not in my most jovial mood as I parked my seven-year-old Corolla in the Grenford Lab lot. At least the parking lot had a section for visitors right up front. I locked the car the way I always did, then looked up at the cloudy sky. A good rain would save the price of a car wash. The old red rover was looking pretty sad and grimy. Maybe this Sunday I ought to break down and give her a good wash and a polish, now that the winter was finally over. Been a long time since she sparkled.
I believed in thorough preparation for any job I undertook. But I’d been surprised at how little information was available in Omnitech’s files about Arthur Marshak and his Grenford Laboratory. A standard company biography in their PR database, a few clippings that mentioned his name. There wasn’t even much in the Columbia University files. A lot more about his brother, but very little on the man I was supposed to interview.
For this meeting I had put on my corporate business suit, a fingertip-length charcoal double-breasted pin-striped blazer with matching slacks. Emphasized my long legs, which were my second-best feature, I thought. Low heels, though; they were much more comfortable and I didn’t need any extra height. Thank god I was still almost as slim as I had been when I played basketball in college. My hair had been brick red then, now it had become a reddish brown. Russet, I called it, and I searched in my mirror every morning for that dreaded first sign of gray. My first-best feature was my eyes: green as emeralds and slightly almond-shaped. After that, my face was kind of long and ordinary.
I tucked my shoulder bag under my arm, marched myself up to the laboratory’s front door, and entered the lobby.
I had expected to be kept waiting. Corporate bigwigs like to show how busy they are, like to impress a mere interviewer with their importance. But almost as soon as the receptionist put down her phone, a matronly graying black woman came into the lobby and smiled at me.
“Ms. Hayward? I’ll take you back to Dr. Marshak’s office.”
There were no ID badges, no visitors’ log to sign. Pretty lax for a high-powered research lab, I thought. Then I noticed the tiny television cameras in all four corners of the reception lobby, up near the ceiling. All four of their red eyes seemed to be watching me. There were more cameras in the corridors as the black woman led me through the building.
“Can I get you some coffee or anything else?” she asked me as she showed me into Arthur Marshak’s office.
The office was empty. I saw a broad desk, two upholstered chairs in front of it, a small round table in the corner, bookshelves lined with dog-eared volumes and stacks of reports, one painting of a racing yacht with sails billowing under a bright summer sun, and a lot of smaller frames that held mottoes of one sort or another. No window. A vague scent of something I couldn’t identify.
“No, thank you, I’m fine,” I answered. Then I asked, “Do I smell vanilla?”
“Heliotrope,” the woman replied. “It helps induce harmony.”
“Really?”
“He doesn’t believe, but it works,” she said. “Dr. Marshak will be with you in a minute. Please make yourself comfortable.”
I took one of the upholstered chairs, thinking that Marshak was going to make me w
ait after all. At least his office wasn’t very pretentious. Heliotrope, I mused. For harmony.
I scanned the printed mottoes framed on the wall behind his desk. Most of them were about science and scientists. I recognized some of the names: Albert Einstein, Stephen Jay Gould. And, surprisingly, Yogi Berra’s It ain’t over till it’s over.
There was one that had no attribution: Living well is the best revenge.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
I turned in the chair and saw Arthur Marshak striding toward me, right hand extended, smiling warmly. Killer smile. Without thinking I got to my feet and took his hand. His grip was firm without being overpowering; he wasn’t trying to impress me with macho muscles.
“I’ve only been here half a minute,” I said. He was handsome, in a solid manly way. Not pretty. Silver-gray hair, very distinguished. He was in his shirtsleeves and if he had worn a tie it was gone now. He looked like a busy man.
“Would you like something to drink? Phyllis makes the best coffee in the universe.”
“No, thank you. She already asked me.”
Dr. Marshak nodded as if satisfied with my answer. Pointing to the round table in the corner, he said, “Let’s sit there. We don’t need the desk between us.”
I followed him to the table. He held a chair out for me, like an old-fashioned gentleman. He wasn’t afraid of militant feminism, apparently.
“Do you work at corporate headquarters?” he asked me as he took the chair beside me.
“I’m freelance,” I explained. “Your public relations department has hired me to do a backgrounder about you.”
“Backgrounder?”
“It’s basically a biographical interview that the news media can use for background information. When they send out your next news release your PR people will include the backgrounder with it.”
He leaned back in the plastic chair. “I see. Then the newspapers or magazines can blend it into their story about the news release.”
“That’s right. My work has been in all the major newsmagazines and lots of big newspapers,” I said. Then I added, “Although I never get any credit for it.”
“They just print your stuff without a byline?”
I made a rueful smile. “I get a check from the client. No byline.”
“What about television? Or radio?”
“They use the backgrounders, too. Or so I’m told.”
With a shake of his head, Marshak said, “I’ve been interviewed a few times on TV. They don’t seem to know anything except my name. And they get that wrong sometimes, as well.”
Thinking of the twinkies I had dealt with at the networks, I laughed and said, “Sometimes they forget to do their homework.”
“Well . . .” He inched his chair closer to me. “What do you need to know about me?”
I pulled my little voice recorder from my bag. “Do these things bother you?”
He waved a hand. “No, not at all.”
I clicked it on, checked to see that it was running.
Before I could ask a question, though, he said, “Actually, I think it’s the lab that you should be writing about. More than two hundred people here, and the work they do is simply fascinating.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“How much do you know about genetic engineering?”
I shrugged. “Just the basics. You snip a gene from one organism’s DNA and attach it to another organism’s DNA.”
“Why?” he asked.
Surprised at the interrogation, I replied, “The gene allows the organism to make something—like human insulin, for example. Put a human insulin gene into a microbe and the bug starts producing human insulin for you. You turn it into a little factory.”
Arthur smiled again, bigger this time. “That’s the basic idea. Good.”
“I do my homework,” I said.
Soon we were talking about restriction enzymes and endonucleases and oncogenes. Whenever I began to feel out of my depth, Arthur slowed down and explained patiently.
“You must have been a marvelous teacher,” I said after nearly an hour’s conversation.
“I enjoyed teaching,” he said.
“That’s obvious. You seem to have an intuitive feel for when I need more explanation.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “It’s not intuition, not at all. You put on this funny frown; a myopic monkey can tell when you’re puzzled.”
“Really?”
He made a face: brows knitted, lips pursed. I started to get angry, but then all of a sudden I broke into laughter. “I look like that?”
“Much prettier, of course.”
I considered the matter for a moment and decided it was time that I took charge of this interview. After all, I was supposed to be interviewing him, not vice versa.
“Why did you leave teaching?” I asked. “You obviously enjoy it.”
Arthur’s laughter died. “Well, you might say that teaching left me, in a manner of speaking.”
“Oh?”
He looked somber, wary. “Put it this way: Academia is interested in pure research; seeking out knowledge for the sake of knowledge. I’m interested in impure research. I want to use knowledge to make the world better. I want to make an impact on people.”
“Applied research,” I said.
He nodded acknowledgment. “You know the term.”
“And that’s why you founded the Grenford Lab?”
“And that’s why I founded Grenford Lab.”
“Tell me about the work that this news release is going to talk about.”
For another hour Arthur talked about the new process for inserting antibodies inside cells.
“Normally, certain cells in your body generate antibodies, but they go outside the cell to find and destroy invading viruses.”
I nodded as if I understood, mentally dreading the additional homework I was going to have to do.
“With this new process we can make antibodies work inside cells that are infected. Stop viruses from reproducing inside the cell.”
I had to hold up a hand to stop him. “Let me get this straight. A virus invades a cell and uses the cell to produce more viruses, right?”
“Right. It’s like Toyota taking over a Ford factory and getting it to produce Toyotas instead of Fords.”
“So your new technique can get antibodies to work inside the infected cell—”
“And destroy the virus,” Arthur said. “Get the factory back to making Fords, the way it should.”
“Nobody’s done this before?”
“The original research was done at several universities. What we’ve done is to take their laboratory results and turn them into a practical system that can be used in the clinical world.”
“And it can be used against cancer?”
He nodded. “Certain kinds of cancer. The antibodies can attack the viruses that produce the oncoproteins. It might also be useful against AIDS.”
“Really?”
“I think so. AIDS is a difficult problem, but I think this technique shows real promise.”
“How expensive will this be?”
Arthur shrugged. “You always get into the question of how to pay for the research. The company will want to write off all the research costs against the price of the treatment. Plus a profit, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. He didn’t seem to catch my little touch of sarcasm.
“In the final analysis, though,” he said, “our process will help to cure cancer cases. That’s what’s important. How much is that worth to you?”
I thought about that for a moment. Then I asked, “Is all the work here at Grenford on cancer?”
“Just about all of it.”
“Anything else I should know about?”
“Nothing that should be released to the news media.”
It seemed obvious that there were things he wanted to talk about.
“Well, I ought to get as much of a feeling for this place as I can, while I’m her
e. What’s going on that might be newsworthy next year? Or the year after that?”
His eyes lit up. “How much do you know about cancer?”
I reached into my memory bank. “It’s the number two killer in the United States. There’re lots of different kinds. It’s got something to do with cells multiplying wildly.”
Pointing a finger like a pistol, Arthur said, “Cells multiplying wildly. Tumor cells seem to be immortal. That is, ordinary cells will multiply for a while and then they differentiate and stop.”
“Differentiate?” I asked.
Pointing as he spoke, Arthur told me, “When an ovum is fertilized, that single cell has the power to produce all the different types of cells that will make up the baby’s body: the original fertilized ovum is a totipotent cell.”
“Totipotent,” I said. “It can make any kind of cell.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“What about stem cells?”
“The first cells the zygote produces are stem cells.”
“As it becomes an embryo.”
“Right. Embryonic stem cells are totipotent at first; they can make any kind of cells you need. As they multiply and begin to specialize they become pluripotent: they can make some types of cells, but not others. Then, as the cells continue to specialize, they produce eye cells, hair cells, skin cells. That’s differentiation.”
“I see.”
“Tumor cells don’t differentiate. And they don’t stop multiplying. They don’t know when to stop, so they just keep multiplying and multiplying.”
I held up a hand to stop him. “Got to switch the recorder’s chip,” I explained. I did it quickly, then nodded for him to continue.
“So the question is, how do tumor cells keep multiplying? The other side of that question is, how do ordinary cells stop multiplying? Find the answer to the second question and maybe you have the answer to the first.”
“And you’ve found it?”