The Immortality Factor

by Ben Bova

  I grinned at her. “You’ve been talking to old fogies in the medical profession too much. The real marvel of the human body is that it holds up for seventy years. Just about everything in your body is an accident of history. A very lovely set of accidents, in your case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I shrugged. “Take this regeneration work. Turns out there’s a protein that induces neurons to grow. It’s called noggin. Silly name, but that’s what its discoverers called it.”

  “So?”

  “So how does it work? If you or I or our genial host here had designed the system, we’d design a protein that makes the neurons grow. Right?”

  “That’s what you said noggin does, didn’t you?”

  I waggled my finger again. A habit I can’t seem to break. “Noggin doesn’t do the job directly. It suppresses the activity of another protein that prevents neurons from growing. Instead of a chemical that says, ‘Grow!’ we’ve got a chemical that stops another chemical from saying, ‘Don’t grow.’ ”

  “I see . . . I think.”

  “The whole human body is like that. More redundant systems than a NASA spacecraft. Nothing works directly. Enzymes telling other enzymes to stop repressing still other enzymes. Hell, when you stop to think that we’re the results of an amoeba trying to reproduce itself, you realize what a haphazard set of mutations we really are.”

  “And you’re goin’ to do better than that?” our host asked.

  “Damned right,” I snapped. “We’re going to improve the model—eventually. Right now we’re just trying to figure out how to rebuild it, piece by piece.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Sounds kinda scary to me.”

  “It won’t sound so scary when you need a new set of lungs.”

  He looked startled. Then he took another long drag on his cigarette. “Hell, if you can grow me a new set of lungs I can stop feelin’ guilty ’bout these coffin nails.”

  We all laughed. Pat glanced at her wristwatch and suggested that we get back to town. Our host insisted on driving us, claiming there was little chance of getting a taxi at this time of night.

  “Morning,” Pat corrected. “It’s past midnight.”

  “Even worse,” he said. “You folks don’t mind ridin’ in a pickup, do you?”

  “Can you drive all the way into town without smoking?” Pat asked.

  “For you, pretty lady, I’d drive all the way to Yuma without smokin’.”

  The cold night air braced me, drove away the pleasant cobwebs that the mescal had spun in my brain. It was a gorgeous desert night, stars glittering like jewels in the sky, moonlight making the dry dusty landscape look silvery and romantic. I helped Pat into the cab of the battered pickup, then climbed in myself.

  Even through the truck’s smeared windshield the stars hung out there like friendly beacons.

  “That’s Deneb, in the tail of the Swan,” I said, pointing. “And there’s Altair, in the Eagle.”

  Sitting next to me, her shoulder pressing against mine, Pat asked, “And the bright red one, down near the horizon?”

  I hesitated a moment, thinking. “Must be Mars.”

  “Nope,” said our host. “That there’s Antares, in the Scorpion.”

  “By god, I think you’re right,” I said.

  “It must be fun to know all the stars,” Pat said.

  “It’s fun to know anything,” I told her. “That’s why people do science, because it’s the greatest thrill in the world to find something that no one has found before.”

  I could sense Pat nodding in the darkness.

  “We’re hunters, basically,” I went on. “For millions of years our ancestors lived by hunting. Our bodies, our minds, even our societies are based on that heritage of hunting. That’s why scientists are happy at their work. They’re hunters. Out on the frontier, always moving into the unknown, always hunting.”

  “And what are you hunting for?” Pat asked.

  I heard myself chuckle. “Me? I don’t hunt anymore. Too old. I’m a big chief now. I send out younger men and women to hunt.”

  “Can you get the same kind of satisfaction out of that? The same thrill?”

  I had to think awhile before answering. “No. That’s gone. Now what I want to do is make an impact. I want to have an effect on our society. I want to change the world, Pat, change it for the better. That’s my kick.”

  “And recognition? Do you want that, too?”

  “I don’t want to be buried in an unmarked grave, if that’s what you mean. But I’ll never get a Nobel Prize,” I said, surprised at how much of the bitterness showed up in my voice. “I’ll never even get recognition from the National Academy of Sciences. I’ll just have to settle for money.”

  “And power?” she asked.

  I laughed. “No power. That’s for the politicians and the captains of industry. All I’m looking for is the chance to change the world. I don’t want to run it.”

  “But you have to run a little piece of the world, don’t you, to make the impact you want to make? You have to have the power to run your lab.”

  “Yes, that’s true. That’s the one piece of the world that I have to run. It’s a tiny piece, but I’ll fight to keep control of it.”

  Soon the lights of Las Vegas blotted out the stars. The Strip was just as crowded with traffic as it had been at noon, even more so. Pat directed our host to her hotel. I got out of the pickup with her.

  “Thanks for the lift,” I said.

  The grizzled old man grinned at us. “Hell, thank you for the most int’resting evening I’ve had since the hookers’ convention two years ago.”

  He drove off, laughing and lighting up a fresh cigarette.

  The sidewalk was bustling with people. Standing there in front of the hotel, I asked Pat, “Can I buy you a nightcap?”

  She seemed to think it over. Then, “I don’t think so, Arthur. It’s already pretty late.”

  “There’s nothing much happening tomorrow until my luncheon speech,” I said.

  A faint smile touched the corners of her lips. “I think it’s best that I go straight to bed. Sleep, I mean.”

  I smiled back at her. “All I’m suggesting is a drink, Pat.”

  “One thing leads to another, and if I have another drink I’m not sure where we’ll go from there.”

  “Where would you like to go?” A part of my mind realized how ridiculous it was to be attempting to seduce this attractive young woman on the crowded sidewalk in front of a garish hotel. But what the hell? You fight your battles where they happen to fall. That’s how Napoleon got to Waterloo.

  Pat’s smile faded. “Arthur, you have quite a reputation, you know.”

  “Me?”

  “You. And Nancy Dubois, at the moment.”

  That staggered me. “Well, that’s not . . .” There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t make me sound like an unfeeling bastard.

  “Good night, Arthur,” said Pat, almost solemnly. “Thanks for a lovely evening.”

  “Good night,” I replied lamely.

  Pat turned abruptly and strode into the hotel. I watched her enter the lobby and head straight for the elevators. Then I started walking up the Strip to my own hotel, thinking, She knows about Nancy and me. Of course she knows. Pat’s been around the corporate office long enough to hear the gossip. Nancy must be shooting off her mouth to the other women. I wonder if Lowenstein knows as much as she does.

  THE TRIAL :

  DAY TWO, MORNING

  You say there was a falling-out between you and your brother?” Rosen asked.

  Jesse kept his eyes on the examiner, still sitting at the end of the desks facing him. “Yes,” he answered.

  “What was the reason for this . . . falling-out?”

  “A difference of opinion.”

  “About the work on organ regeneration?”

  “Yes.”

  Rosen asked, “Could you be more specific about the cause of this difference of opinion?”


  Jesse felt annoyed. He had gone over this with Rosen and the others a dozen times in the weeks leading up to the trial. Now the lawyer was acting as if he’d never heard it before. But that’s the way they do things in a court of law, Jesse told himself. They’ve got this antiquated way of getting at the information they want you to say.

  “Well, among other things, Arthur wanted to go into human trials right away,” he said patiently.

  “And you did not?”

  “I didn’t think they had enough knowledge from the animal experiments to rush into human trials.”

  “Butchers!” a man yelled from the back of the chamber. “Animals have feelings!”

  Whipping around in his chair, Jesse saw a rake-thin elderly man shaking his fist in the air. “You’ve no right to hurt poor, defenseless animals!” he bellowed.

  Graves banged his gavel and shouted, “Remove that man from this chamber!”

  Two of the uniformed guards standing at the rear of the room moved in on the man, who glared at Graves but allowed himself to be hustled out into the corridor.

  “I will not tolerate any more interruptions like this.” Graves almost snarled the words. “One more outburst and I’ll clear this chamber entirely!”

  The audience went very silent, just as Graves’s lecture students used to hush when he fixed that baleful gaze of his upon them.

  “Go ahead, Dr. Rosen,” Graves said.

  Rosen nodded to the chief judge, then returned his somber gaze to Jesse.

  “Your brother wanted to go ahead with human trials, but you felt the work was not yet sufficiently advanced for them?”

  “That’s right,” Jesse said.

  “And just when did this difference of opinion first arise?”

  Suddenly Jesse felt tongue-tied. There were so many ways to answer the question he couldn’t decide which one to say. The winter of the big blizzard. The day our mother died. The day Julia lost the baby.

  JESSE

  It had been snowing for more than six hours, with no end in sight. The city was already buried in drifts driven by the gale-force winds. Even the ambulances were having trouble getting through the foot-deep snow that covered most of the streets. The cold was numbing, killing.

  We’ll be getting frostbite cases down in the emergency room, I knew. Exposure and hypothermia. A lot of homeless people aren’t going to make it through this night.

  I was up in the women’s ward, facing row upon row of beds occupied by the poor, the sick, the battered wives, the drug-addicted kids, the rape victims, the tuberculosis cases, the pneumonia and bronchitis and influenza cases, the pitiful helpless dregs who were prey to every predator, microbe or human, that stalked the deadly streets out there. The ward was jammed to overflowing; they had already started putting beds out in the corridors, and more were coming in as the ambulances and police cars struggled back through the howling blizzard. As I made my rounds through the ward, a flash of déjà vu hit me with almost overpowering force.

  I saw myself back in Eritrea, facing that endless line of hopeless, helpless blacks staring at me out of eyes already dead, waiting for me to do something, accusing me. It’s the same thing here, I realized, and the truth of it almost made my knees buckle.

  It’s endless! Day after day, night after night. The more we do for them, the more there is to do.

  Yet they were there, waiting for me, moaning in their pain or staring with blank-eyed desperation at a future as bleak and pointless as the storm raging outside. What can I do? I asked myself. Over and over, as I made my way from bed to bed, I silently asked myself, What can I do? What can I do?

  I was halfway through the ward when a nurse came hurrying after me, grim-faced, a cordless telephone in one hand.

  Wordlessly, I took the phone. “Yes?”

  “Jess, it’s Momma,” I heard Arthur’s voice. “I just got the call. Another stroke. Bad one. They said she won’t live through the night.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’m going to try to get down there,” Arthur said.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the lab. The state police say that the major highways are being plowed constantly; they’re trying to keep at least one lane open.”

  “I’ll drive up.”

  “Don’t take any risks you don’t have to.”

  “What about you?”

  “The state police have offered to drive me to the nursing home.”

  “Maybe I can get an ambulance to take me.”

  “Okay. See what you can do.”

  I handed the phone back to the nurse. “Who else is on the ward tonight?”

  There were half a dozen residents hanging around, trapped by the blizzard. I swiftly made arrangements for a couple of them to take the rest of my rounds. I actually felt relieved to be out of the ward. And I felt ashamed at my sense of relief. Like a kid playing hooky from school; it’s great to be out but you know you ought to be in.

  I went to my cubbyhole of an office and phoned Julia to tell her what was happening.

  “I can drive you,” she said.

  I nixed that idea right away. “No. You stay home. There’s nothing on the streets except emergency vehicles and crazy people. Not even the buses are running, I hear.”

  “Then how will you get to Sunny Glade?”

  “I’ll get one of the ambulance guys to drive me.”

  Julia was silent for a moment. Then, “That isn’t terribly fair, is it? Someone in difficulty might need that ambulance.”

  “Julia—”

  “I can drive. I’m not totally helpless.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “You stay in the apartment and don’t budge. I’ll phone you from Sunny Glade.” Or from the car, I thought, if I get into trouble.

  I didn’t bother with an ambulance. I went down to the underground garage, pulling on my overcoat and gloves as I rode the oversized elevator, wrapping a scarf of heavy English wool around my neck.

  The streets were treacherous. It was still snowing hard, with the wind driving the flakes almost horizontally through the weak cones of light from the swaying streetlamps. Snowplows had obviously been at work: the middle of most of the main avenues were covered with only a few inches of snow while huge banks of white were piled up along each side. God help anybody parked under those piles, I thought as I inched my Firebird along the plowed lane. Plenty of cubes under her hood, but there was ice just beneath the new-fallen snow; I could feel the wheels slipping and sliding.

  At least the streets were empty, almost. Half a block ahead a minivan slid through a red light, spinning a full three-sixty as it sailed through the intersection. Good thing nobody else was in the way. I slowed down even more and inched my way through. Two bashed-in cars were off to one corner of the intersection, the hood of one rammed against the side door of the other. Nobody in sight. From the depth of snow on them, the collision must have happened an hour ago or more.

  Even the bars looked dark and closed. I drove carefully past a snow-shrouded Yankee Stadium and up onto the Deegan Expressway, slipping and sliding on the ramp. The Bronx was silent and cold as an Arctic wasteland, except for a siren I could hear wailing in the distance. Ambulance, it sounded like. Then I got lucky. There was a nice big public works truck plowing the new-fallen snow and spreading sand behind it at the same time. I followed it for miles, feeling like I had a battleship escorting me through enemy territory. I had to turn off at the Cross County Parkway, though, and head for the Hutchinson.

  The snow began to ease off, and I even thought I saw a few breaks in the clouds. Not too bad now. The worst is behind me, I thought. Then I hit a patch of glare ice. The Firebird spun wildly and thunked sideways into a huge snowbank. The seat belt cut into my shoulder but the air bag didn’t go off, thank god.

  For long minutes I just sat behind the wheel, grateful that both the car and I were still in one piece. It took a while for my hands to stop shaking. It was damned cold, despite the car’s heater. Gas gauge read about half, so that was o
kay. Hell of a time to think about that now.

  I gingerly downshifted to the lowest gear and gently put a little pressure on the accelerator. The engine purred, the wheels spun, but the car didn’t move. I tried shifting to reverse and back again, thinking maybe I could rock her loose. The car rocked, all right, but it didn’t go anywhere. The wheels just whined on the ice. I couldn’t get free of the snowbank.

  I sat hunched over the wheel, wondering what to do. The cold was seeping into me, getting past my coat and muffler and gloves, leaching the warmth from my body. I could run out of gas, stuck here, and freeze to death. So I picked up the cell phone and punched star 911.

  It took about ten, fifteen minutes of waiting out in the cold and dark. I was never so glad to see the red and blue flashing lights of a police car. The cop pulled up behind me and came out into the cold and snow, bundled in a thick hip-length pile coat and heavy boots.

  I rolled my window down a crack. Wind-whipped snow stung my face.

  The police officer bent low and said, “Kinda lousy night for a drive, ain’t it?”

  “I’m a doctor,” I told him. “I’m trying to get to an emergency case up in White Plains.”

  The policeman did not ask for identification. He told me to stay in the car, then went back and hooked a chain to the rear of the Firebird. Backing slowly, the police car pulled me free of the snowbank.

  The cop came crunching through the snow again.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I’ll lead you. Gimme the address where you’ve got to go and follow me.”

  Feeling unutterably grateful, I followed the blinking red and blue lights all the way to Sunny Glade.

  Arthur was sitting in the lobby wrapped in a cashmere overcoat when I came in. I had to stamp snow off my shoes. Just the few yards from the parking lot to the front door and my shoes were soaked through. Then I saw the look on Arby’s face and I knew I was too late.

  “She died?”