by Ben Bova
I pressed the intercom switch. “What?”
“Cassie wanted to see you before she left.”
I pulled in a deep breath. “Okay. Now’s as good a time as any.”
Within minutes Cassie showed up at my office door, her face sallow, her eyes sad, as if she were going to a funeral. She looked like I felt. She was wearing a long-skirted maroon dress instead of her usual jeans.
“Cassie, come on in.” Putting on a smiling front, I waved her into the office. “You look wonderful.” In truth she looked on the verge of tears.
She perched on the edge of the cushioned chair in front of my desk. “I’m going to the airport this afternoon. The field trials.”
“You’ll love Mexico,” I said as heartily as I could manage. “Especially once you’re outside Mexico City. The pollution there is pretty bad, but the countryside is beautiful.”
“I’m worried about Max,” she said.
“Max will get along fine. It’s only a few months.”
Cassie sniffled. “He doesn’t want me to go.”
I sighed inwardly. “Cassie, we’ll take good care of him. We’ve got all your instructions about his diet and his exercise and everything, right?”
“I don’t want him used in any experiments.”
“We have no plans for that. I’ve told you a dozen times.”
“Zack is already talking about animal experiments for the regeneration work.”
“That’s on lab rats, Cassie. You know that. You’ll be back long before we’re ready for monkey work, let alone the chimps.”
“I don’t want anybody touching Max.”
I forced a smile. “What do you want from me, Cassie? A written promise? In blood? Will that do?”
She hesitated, obviously struggling within herself. “I trust you,” she said at last. But it didn’t sound convincing.
“Good.” I got up from my chair and came around the desk. “Good. I’ll personally look in on Max every day, if that’ll make you happy.”
She got to her feet. “I’d appreciate it.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do.” I put my arm around her skinny shoulders and walked her to the door. “Now you go to Mexico and do the field trials and don’t worry about a thing here.”
She looked up at me with those big solemn waif’s eyes.
“And watch out for those Mexican caballeros,” I joked, smiling. “They’re very romantic, I hear.”
She almost smiled back.
After Cassie left the outer office, I turned to Phyllis, who was watching the empty doorway with a thoughtful look on her face.
“Remind me to look in on Max once a day,” I said.
Phyllis cocked a brow at me. “You gonna learn sign language, too?”
I shook my head wearily and went back into my office. I got a barely discernible whiff of peppermint. Phyllis’s aromatherapy again: peppermint for pep. Sitting at my computer, I pulled up the latest written reports on the regeneration work. When in doubt, dive into the science. Do some useful work instead of letting your emotions drive you crazy. The computer file showed nothing but lab notes and fragments of commentary that would one day be incorporated in publishable papers. I’ll have to get Darrell and Zack and the rest of them together and have them give me a complete rundown on where we stand, I told myself.
Long after darkness had fallen, I had the small group sitting in my office. Darrell Walters had commandeered the couch; Vince Andriotti was astride one of the conference table’s chairs, sitting on it backwards, as usual, his chin on his hairy forearms.
Zack O’Neill was saying, “I don’t see why we shouldn’t go right into animal tests.”
“Do in vitro first,” said Darrell. “It’s easier and we can avoid the complications of in vivo work.”
O’Neill frowned. “Hell, what good is growing a rat’s heart in a flask going to do us? We want to grow it inside the experimental subject, don’t we?”
“Once we know we can grow it in a flask,” Darrell countered. “Never add an experiment to an experiment, Zack. Pare down the unknowns and the risks.”
Zack shook his head, obviously disappointed with such a conservative approach. He was all fired up, full of youthful piss and vinegar, certain that he was on the right track and ready to push the throttle all the way.
I said nothing, but I was thinking that we couldn’t be the only research team working along these lines. I knew that several university labs were moving in the same general direction, to say nothing of other outfits overseas.
Andriotti piped up. “The computer simulation of the spinal neuron growth pattern is just about ready. Do we publish or not?”
“Not,” I said. “Not yet.”
“When?”
“After the patent application is filed.”
“Then I better start talking to the lawyers,” Andriotti said, in a tone that showed clear distaste.
“I’ll handle that end of it,” I said. “You prepare the documentation.”
“Another six hundred pounds of paperwork,” he grumbled.
O’Neill asked, “Once the computer simulation is finished, what do we do about it?”
“You mean, do we go to animal tests?”
“Right.”
I looked around at my researchers. They all seemed agreed. “Animal tests, then,” I said.
“What about funding?” Andriotti asked. “We start doing multiple animal tests—”
“On the spinal cord neurons?” Darrell asked, looking puzzled. “Or the organ regeneration?”
“Spinal neurons,” said Zack.
“We can’t keep using the IR&D number,” Andriotti said. “The accounting people are already turning purple whenever I charge to it.”
I knew that the internal research and development account was almost completely drained. I’ll have to get a special appropriation from Johnston, I told myself. The prospect did not cheer me.
But then an idea struck me.
“Zack,” I asked, “do you really think you could grow a new heart in a lab rat, based on what we know now?”
He didn’t hesitate a microsecond. “Yes.”
“How soon?”
Darrell started to protest, but I waved him down.
O’Neill turned thoughtful, then said, “Two, three weeks, maybe. Give me a month.”
Swiveling my chair to face Darrell, I said, “I want to push ahead on this as hard and fast as we can.”
“But—”
I told them, “I want to do a demonstration for Johnston. And Lowenstein.”
Darrell’s long face broke into a canny grin. “Oh-ho! Want to impress the money boys, do we?”
“You’re damned right,” I said.
But it was more than that. When I finally left the lab that night, I decided it was time to stop fumbling around and start a determined offensive. Sell my lab off to the Japanese, will they? Not if we make them think we’re on the verge of the biggest breakthrough of the century. I grimaced in the darkness as I drove along the winding Fairfield County roads. I’ll make the lab so goddamned important to them that they’ll sell off their mothers before they touch my lab!
The problem was that I wasn’t supposed to know about Johnston’s dickering with the Japanese. It’s impossible to fight a battle when you’re not supposed to be aware that the battle is going on. To reveal what I knew would be to betray Nancy’s confidence, which would poison a damned good source of information into the inner workings of the corporate office. I had to fight fire with fire; I had to use Nancy to smoke out Johnston and his offer to Japan.
I worried about that. Not that using Nancy troubled me; she was using me to get ahead on the corporate ladder, so what the hell? But exactly because our affair was based on our individual ambitions rather than passion, it was dangerous. She could be playing a double game: telling everything she finds out about me to Johnston. Or Lowenstein, more likely. I distrusted the corporate comptroller. Probably Sid was the one who was pushing Johnston to get rid of the la
b, in the name of the almighty bottom line.
Perhaps because I was so guarded with her, making love with Nancy had become less exciting, almost a chore instead of a joy. Let’s put it this way: I didn’t get any great ideas during sex with her. But she seemed to expect a tumble in bed, as if it bound me to her. If she noticed that my performance had become routine, mechanical, she never mentioned it.
I’ve got to find a way to break off with her, I told myself as I pulled up on my driveway and reached for the garage door control on the panel over my head. I’ve got to end it with her. The garage door swung open smoothly and the light inside came on. But not yet, I figured. I’ve got to carry it on a little while longer.
The following Monday night I met Nancy at the fencing academy as usual and took her home with me. We shared a precooked dinner in front of the fireplace, then went to bed. I felt especially interested in her and we had a rousing good time.
“You’ve never visited the lab, have you?” I asked her as we lay side by side, warm and wet after sex.
“No,” said Nancy drowsily.
“You really ought to. It’s a fascinating place. Especially if you’re going to move over to marketing. The lab is the key to the corporation’s future.”
“Then why is Johnston ready to sell it?” she asked, almost like a challenge.
I hesitated. Peering into the shadows of the darkened bedroom, I could barely make out Nancy’s face on the pillows next to me.
“Johnston is making a mistake. A big one. What we’re doing now at the lab will be worth billions, eventually. That’s why the Japanese are interested in us, I’ll bet.”
That stirred her. She turned toward me and propped herself up on one elbow. “What are you talking about?”
“In a month or so we’ll be regenerating hearts inside of living animals.”
“Really?”
“Imagine what that could mean to the corporation.”
“You’re actually ready to do experiments on animals? So soon?”
“Yes. The work has been going extremely well.”
“Does Johnston know about this?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I’m going to tell him about it the next time I’m in the office. This is too hot to talk about over the phone. I want to get him in complete privacy.”
“If news about this leaked out . . .” Nancy’s voice drifted away into silence.
I knew what she was thinking. The effect on the price of Omnitech stock. If the stock goes up it makes it harder for the Europeans to mount their hostile takeover. We won’t have to sell off the laboratory. The lab will be too important, too precious, to even consider selling it.
“I’m telling you about this,” I said softly, almost whispering, “because I have a terrible fear that the Japanese might have a pipeline into the lab.”
“A pipeline?”
“Or more likely into corporate headquarters. They know what we’re doing, I think. And I think that’s why they’re prepared to buy the lab from Johnston.”
Even in the darkness I could see her eyes widen. “Do you think that Johnston has been telling the Japs what you’re doing?”
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. Then I added, “But I’m afraid that somebody has been. I think there’s a leak in corporate headquarters and the Japanese are benefiting from it.”
Once I said it, I realized that it might even be true. I smiled in the darkness of the bedroom. Let’s see how that goes over downtown.
JESSE
There’ve been times when I’ve had to wonder whether Arby has a heart inside him. Here I phone him, practically the instant we get to London, to tell him that I’m going to be a father and all he wants to talk about is his goddamned organ regeneration work.
I put the phone down and turned to Julia, standing on the other side of the bed, unpacking. We had come in late the previous night and spent the morning in an obstetrician’s office getting Julia checked out.
We had splurged and taken a suite, very nice in a kind of stuffy, old-fashioned way. Cost an arm and a leg, but Julia got a pretty good discount through British Airways, so we could afford it, just about. What the hell, I thought, we were back in civilization after all those weeks in purgatory and London was Julia’s town, after all, and she was going to have a baby and why shouldn’t we celebrate a little? The hell with the cost!
It’s true that most of my income was from the royalties on the patents that Arthur filed while he was at Columbia. He put my name on them alongside his because we worked on the ideas together. I deserved to be there; we were partners back in those days. My salary from the medical center was nominal, of course, and my income from the hospital was negative, when you figured out all the hours I put in. I wasn’t hurting, financially, but then I didn’t have all the corporate perks that Arthur did, like limousines and private jets and swanky condos in midtown. Of course, once he went to work for Omnitech, they got the patents, not us.
Anyway, I hung up the phone and said to Julia, “Arby says congratulations.”
She looked up from her unpacking. “Is that all? You were on the phone for quite a while.”
“He said I should phone Ma and tell her about the baby.”
“Of course you should.”
I tugged the biggest of my own suitcases up on the bed and opened it up. “Naw, telephoning Ma is sheer torture. We can go see her when we get back.”
“But—”
“Arby can tell her about the baby.”
Julia looked as if she wanted to say something, then thought better of it.
“He’s offered me a consulting position with his lab,” I told her. “Says we could use the money.”
“Ah, that’s what you were talking about when you said you wouldn’t have the time.”
“Yep.” I started taking the slacks and jackets out of the suitcase. They all looked frayed, dusty, caked with the dirt and sweat of Eritrea. All of a sudden I had an urge to throw them all away and go out and buy a whole new wardrobe. In London, yet. That’d be terrific.
“Could you actually find the time to work with Arthur?” Julia was asking, very seriously.
“I don’t see how.”
“Perhaps instead of the time you put in at the medical center,” she suggested.
“They couldn’t get along without me,” I said. It sounded arrogant, I guess, but it was true.
Julia pursed her lips for a moment, thinking. Then, “Why not arrange a consulting agreement between the medical center itself and Arthur’s laboratory?”
“Between La Guardia and Grenford?”
“Yes, that way you could use the facilities at the center for whatever work you’ll be doing for Arthur. It would save you going up to Connecticut every week, wouldn’t it?”
I had to admit that she had something there. “If I could get Arthur to take on the center as a kind of subcontractor, have all the medical work concentrated there—it’d pump a lot of bucks into the center, that’s for sure.”
“It would help La Guardia and it would give Arthur a firm medical team to work with his researchers.”
I dropped the clothes on the floor and went around the bed to grab Julia. “Forget about unpacking,” I said. “Let’s go out and see this town of yours.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me. “Yes, let me show you London.” Then she added, “After we’ve finished the unpacking.”
That was Julia. Always fun, but always practical. Me, I was wondering if we had enough left on our credit cards to buy a new wardrobe on Savile Row.
ARTHUR
Johnston arrived at the lab two days later. Just happened to be driving through, on his way to Boston, he claimed. As if he drove to Boston instead of flying in the corporate jet.
I kept a straight face and walked him straight down to Zack O’Neill’s lab. I watched Johnston closely as I introduced him to Zack. The earring and semiwild haircut didn’t bother the CEO at all; he didn’t even blink. Good.
Zack’s lab was neat
as a pin. He ran a pretty tidy operation, normally, but I had given orders to make certain his lab was especially gleaming on this day. Visitors seldom realize that a clean, shipshape lab is one in which little creative work is being done. A working lab looks frantic, haphazard, busy. So Zack’s lab was sparkling. It was crammed with equipment, of course, so much so that there was barely room to walk between the benches. But everything was in its place, all the equipment shining as if it had never been used. One entire wall of the room was covered with cages for several dozen purebred laboratory rats.
Johnston’s face twitched unhappily at the rats, who twitched their whiskers back at the CEO and stared at him with beady eyes through the wire doors of their cages.
“Don’t like rats,” Johnston said. “Saw plenty of ’em when I was a kid.”
“These are purebred laboratory strains, made to order, genetically,” I told him. “They won’t hurt you.”
“I still don’t like ’em.”
“Then you should have gone into biology,” I said jovially. “You get to slaughter them by the thousands.”
Zack O’Neill did not laugh at my little joke. He was smart enough to sense that something was going on between the CEO and me, though. I could see a cagey look in his eyes. He showed Johnston through his laboratory setup like a square-shouldered lieutenant briefing a visiting general. Zack seemed to enjoy the CEO’s obvious aversion to the lab rats.
“This little fella here,” O’Neill said, opening a cage labeled 3c278 and taking a trembling white ball of fur into his hands, “is going to have the honor of growing a second heart pretty soon.”
“How soon?” Johnston asked, staying an arm’s length away from O’Neill and the rat.
“About a month from now,” I said. “Isn’t that right, Zack?”
O’Neill nodded. “If things keep going as well as they have been.”
Johnston made a toothy smile. “That’s great. Just great.” Then he headed for the door.
I patted O’Neill on the shoulder before following the CEO out of the lab. Zack grinned at me and returned 3C278 to its cage.