by Ben Bova
The terrorists’ attack on the lab wasn’t as bad as the media’s. Simmonds kept drumming away at us. He never mentioned me or the laboratory by name; we could have sued him for slander or gotten an injunction, the corporate lawyers told me. He was too clever to fall into that trap. But I watched one of his televised rallies one night, broadcast from Denver.
The baseball park was filled to capacity, and he was working himself up into a sweat beneath the bright lights. He had peeled off his Western-style suede jacket and pulled his string tie loose from his collar. One hand gripping a cordless microphone, he pranced and jittered across the stage, perspiration pouring down his reddened face, the picture of honest distress and righteous wrath. He looked like an overworked little gnome, with those bushy brows and his slightly hunched posture.
“This life is only a preparation for the paradise that God has created for us! And yet unholy scientists, godless atheists and Antichrists, they want to stretch out their lives, they want to make themselves immortal, they want to challenge God’s plan!”
I thought he was very clever telling them that we want to make ourselves immortal and ignoring the fact that we would make his audience immortal too, if we could.
“So they can keep themselves alive for ten or twenty or fifty-so years more with their devil’s science,” he went on. “How do you think God’s going to feel about that? He’s prepared paradise for us and they’re telling him, ‘No, thanks, Lord, we’d rather stay here in this vale of tears because we don’t really trust You to give us paradise.’
“And that’s what they’re really saying, isn’t it? They don’t trust God and His goodness. They don’t believe what the Lord Jesus Christ has told us out of His own mouth. They don’t want paradise or any part of God’s plan.”
He hesitated, let his head droop and the hand holding the microphone drop to his side as if he were utterly exhausted. I couldn’t hear a sound from the huge crowd surrounding him. Not a cough or a shuffle of feet.
Slowly, slowly, Simmonds brought the mike back to his lips. “Do you know what God thinks of people like that?” he asked softly. “Do you know what God’s gonna do to those who don’t trust Him?”
He turned slowly in a full circle, his question hanging in the air.
“He’ll send them all to hell!” Simmonds roared. “And they’ll deserve it! Those who have no faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will be condemned to spend eternity in hellfire! Don’t let these fiendish scientists, these tools of Satan, lead you on the road to everlasting damnation! Accept God’s plan, not the evil enticements of secular scientists. Save your souls, don’t worry about your bodies. God will take care of you in this life and the next.”
For a man who didn’t worry about his body, I thought, Simmonds wears expensive shirts.
But he made me think about my own religious feelings. I really had none. I couldn’t accept the idea of some supernatural being creating the universe for his entertainment. That’s what most religions seemed to be saying: God created the universe and put us in it just to see if we would do what he tells us. Nonsense. It seemed to me that the only reason people turn to religion is because they’re frightened of death. There are no atheists in foxholes, and many a dying man has suddenly seen the light. That’s what Simmonds was playing on: stark fear. Fear of death.
For months he kept yapping about scientists interfering with God’s plan, and he or somebody in his organization must certainly have tipped off the reporters about who he meant because it wasn’t long before they started to descend on us like a plague of electronic locusts.
I’m a ham, I admit it. I don’t mind in the least sitting in front of a TV camera and telling everybody what I think. But I didn’t want to make the lab a target for more animal rights activists or religious kooks. We were doing very sensitive work and I didn’t want the staff upset, either.
Johnston and the corporate board backed me all the way. A little publicity was fine, as far as they were concerned: just enough to keep up investors’ interest in our work and keep the stock moving upward. That would even help blunt the European takeover bid. But tabloid stuff about Dr. Frankenstein creating monsters in his lab—whether in print or on TV—we all wanted to avoid that.
So I called a meeting of the whole staff, everybody, down to the cooks and security guards. Packed everybody into the cafeteria, standing room only. Rented a squad of security people to watch the building while I explained to my people what was going on and why. Held the meeting at the end of the nominal working day on a Friday, at five p.m.
The cafeteria was packed shoulder to shoulder, two hundred and fourteen people. I had our personnel chief take a count. I insisted that everybody be there.
I stood up on the only table left in the room; we had moved the others out into the halls. All their eyes were on me, from Darrell and Zack and Vince Andriotti down to the secretaries and stock clerks and our purchasing agent, who insisted on keeping a cigar between his teeth even though we didn’t allow smoking anywhere inside the building.
“You’re probably wondering why I called you here this afternoon,” I started out. It was a lame joke and it got more groans than laughs.
“I’m sure that all of you know about the research we’re doing on organ regrowth,” I said. “This is important work. Vital work. It’s going to change history.”
They shifted on their feet a little. Somebody coughed.
“We’ve tried to keep this work as quiet as possible as far as the media is concerned, but the terrorists’ attack on the lab a few weeks ago has let the cat out of the bag. We’re prime news now.”
“Were they really terrorists?” a woman’s voice asked from the back of the crowded room.
“I call them terrorists,” I answered. “The FBI calls them terrorists. Working for animal rights is one thing. Destroying lab equipment, throwing genetically engineered rats out into the cold world, kidnapping experimental animals—that’s terrorism and it’s criminal.”
“The rats can’t survive on their own,” Tina Andriotti called out. “Whoever broke them out of Zack’s lab has killed them, one way or another.”
“What happened to the chimps?” someone asked.
“Hold on. I don’t want this meeting to become a debate about animal rights. We all treat our animals as humanely as we can, but we all know that without animal experiments we can’t make any progress. Right?”
A few scattered voices answered, “Right.” It was halfhearted, I thought, but enough. I went on.
“You probably know that an evangelist preacher has been bad-mouthing us all across the country. Other ministers and media commentators have taken up the same theme. Even a few politicians have spoken out against us.”
“Only young ones,” Zack O’Neill wisecracked. Everybody laughed at that.
“Some of you may have noticed,” I went on, “that we’re getting a lot of calls from news reporters. They’ve even been showing up at our doorstep unannounced. Perhaps you’ve received calls at home, or had reporters try to interview you.”
I heard a few murmurs and saw heads nod.
“All right. From now on, I want you to refer any media contacts to me. If a reporter calls you or tries to talk to you, just tell them to call me about it. Then tell Phyllis. Get their names and their affiliations, if you can. We need to know who they are and where they’re coming from.”
More nods.
“Fine. One more thing,” I added. “We’ve got to tighten up the lab’s security. You probably know that the terrorists were let into the back compound by one of our own employees. That staggered me, I’ve got to admit.”
I glanced at my personnel chief. I had warned her I’d be mentioning this, and assured her all over again that I didn’t blame her for it.
“We’ve been studying the situation ever since the attack. I asked our personnel and security chiefs, together with the head of administrative services, to see what can be done about preventing another such attack. They’ve come up with several recomme
ndations that I think are sensible.”
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a plastic badge.
“One of them is that we all start wearing security badges.”
That brought out a collective groan. One wise guy in the back of the crowd yelled in a Hollywood Mexican accent, “Badges? We don’ need no steenkin’ badges!” That broke the unhappiness very nicely.
“I don’t like them any more than you do,” I said, clipping the badge to my jacket pocket. “But it makes sense. We want to be sure that everybody inside our building belongs here.”
We were adding more security cameras, too, and tightening up our procedures for checking out new employees.
“Over the next week or so, each of you will be scheduled to have your photo taken,” I told them. “If you like the picture you can order some for yourselves free of charge. Fair enough?”
“Whoever heard of an ID photo that comes out good?” Vince Andriotti grumbled.
The only full-time employee who was not at the meeting was Cassie Ianetta. Her field trials in Mexico had gotten even more seriously bogged down; what should have taken six months now looked as if it would drag on for more than a year. Of course, she had flown to the lab immediately as soon as she had heard about the terrorists’ attack. She went straight from the front door to the animal compound. I found her there, rolling on the tiled floor with Max, the two of them hugging each other like long-lost siblings.
Once they untangled, I began to explain what had happened. Cassie certainly thought of the attackers as terrorists.
“Kidnap the chimps?” she raged, glaring at the empty cages. “Kidnap them? They’ll kill them! They don’t have the facilities or the people to take care of them! They’ve murdered them!”
Her voice was so shrill that Max let go of her hand and scampered back outside. Cassie’s face looked as if she had crucified her own mother. She turned and ran after Max.
“I’m sorry,” she called after him. Max had scampered up into his favorite tree. “I wasn’t angry at you, Max, baby. I could never be angry at you.”
From up in his perch, Max pointed his index finger at his mouth and twirled it around a few times.
“Candy?” Cassie asked, repeating the sign. “Come on down and we’ll find some candy.” She gestured for him to come down to her.
Cassie stayed for a weekend, spending just about the whole time with Max. She certainly coaxed Max out of his fright; in that one weekend she had him back to normal, just about.
Before Cassie left to return to Mexico, she dropped into my office.
“I’m sorry the trials are going so slow,” she said, perching herself on the chair in front of my desk like a frail little sparrow. “It takes ten times longer to get anything done down there.”
And ten times as much money as we had budgeted, I said to myself. But I didn’t want to bother Cassie with that.
“You’re making progress,” I said. “You should be finishing up soon.”
She nodded tiredly. “I’m going to try the enzyme on myself.”
I could feel my eyebrows hike up. “Why?”
“It’s come back,” Cassie said. “I had a checkup and they found a spot.”
That was what we had all feared: that her cancer wasn’t gone, it was merely in remission. “Will you need more surgery?”
“They froze it with liquid nitrogen. I didn’t want it removed. I want to see if the enzyme can destroy it.”
She seemed very matter-of-fact about it. Very controlled.
“But once it’s been frozen the cells are dead.”
Again that tired nod, her head drooping and then slowly, painfully coming up again. “There’ll be more.”
It’s hell knowing that your body is betraying you. Cassie looked as if she expected nothing less, as if she thought she somehow deserved to be put on the rack.
“Stay here, then,” I said. “Get back to your own doctors and—”
“No.” She pushed at that stubborn flop of hair. “The facilities in Querétaro are fine. So are the doctors. I’ll be okay there.”
“But if—”
She tried to smile. “I can inject myself with the enzyme down there without worrying about the FDA and all the other regulations. I’d be dead before we worked through the red tape here.”
“Cassie, if there’s anything I can do . . .”
“I’m not worried about it,” she said. It looked like a patent lie to me. Then she leaned closer to my desk and said, “What I’m worried about is Max.”
“He seems okay, now that you’ve been with him. That’s another reason for you to stay, isn’t it?”
“I’m going to finish these field trials,” she insisted. I realized that she meant she wanted to remain in Mexico long enough to try the enzyme on herself. “I just want to make certain that you stick to your promise.”
“What promise?” I asked.
“About Max.”
“Oh. That.”
“He’s not to be used in any experiments,” Cassie said firmly. “Just because you’ve lost the other chimps doesn’t mean you can use Max again.”
“We may need him.”
“Get another chimp. Find human volunteers. Come on down to Mexico and I’ll get hundreds for you.”
Her eyes were burning as if she had a fever.
“You asked if there’s anything you can do for me. That’s what you can do. Leave Max alone. You promised.”
I nodded reluctantly. “I did promise you, didn’t I?”
There was no way we could keep the media totally out of the lab. The more Simmonds spoke, the more the word got around that Grenford Lab was the hotbed of godless scientists that he had been railing against. I’m certain he was giving our name—my name—to the reporters in private. Or Jesse was. At any rate, we were besieged with requests for interviews and camera coverage of the lab. It got so bad that Phyllis complained she was spending all her time trying to fend off reporters.
I went down to corporate headquarters to talk it over with Johnston and his public relations people. Nancy Dubois got herself invited to our impromptu conference: the marketing department had an interest in our public image, apparently. She greeted me coolly as she came into Johnston’s office. It seemed clear that she was already running rings around her ostensible boss, Uhlenbeck.
We had a new corporate PR director, a tough-looking woman of fifty or so, Deborah King. She had let her hair go gray and wild, it looked almost like an Afro. She had a lantern jaw, narrow suspicious eyes, and a pugnacious nose. She looked as if she’d just as soon spit in your eye as say hello to you. And this was the head of our public relations department.
But her voice was silky and she knew her business. After listening to me complain about the media for ten minutes she said calmly, “What you need is a PR manager at the lab who can deal with this.”
“I don’t need a public relations assistant,” I protested. “What I need is some peace and quiet. Can’t I rout all these requests for interviews and whatnot to you?”
“Certainly you can, Dr. Marshak,” she said softly. “But then I’d have to call you to find out if you wanted to talk to the reporter or not. And I’d have to come down to the lab to set up the areas that the camera crew would be allowed to photograph. It would be much simpler for all of us if you had a resident PR manager.”
Johnston agreed. “You can’t expect Deborah or one of her people to go running back and forth to your lab every day.”
I looked at Nancy. She smiled thinly at me and said nothing.
“We’ve never had a public relations manager on the staff,” I said.
“It needn’t be permanent,” Ms. King assured me. “Just until the present furor dies down.”
“It’ll save you a lot of grief,” Johnston said.
A sudden thought struck me. “Are you thinking of sending one of your regular staff to the lab, or hiring someone from outside?”
Ms. King glanced at Johnston. “My staff is stretched pretty thin
as it is . . .”
“Since we’re thinking in terms of a temporary situation,” said Johnston, “we ought to get a consultant to do it. No sense hiring anybody on a permanent basis.”
I said, “All right. I know who could do a good job on this. She’s worked here before; did that backgrounder on me last year.”
“Oh, yeah.” Johnston smiled. “The redhead.”
“Pat Hayward,” I said.
“I don’t know her,” said King, “but if you’re happy with her, I’m happy.”
I looked at Nancy. She was decidedly unhappy. In fact, she was glowering at me.
THETRIAL:
DAYFOUR, MORNING
Arthur took his customary seat along the front row, then got to his feet as the three judges filed in and sat at their desks. Senator Kindelberger was nowhere in sight. Neither was Jesse. There were noticeably fewer reporters in the chamber, and only one TV camera remained.
Yesterday’s testimony by Zapapas and the other experts had been a bore, although Arthur felt a sort of perverse admiration for the Greek. Zapapas had shamelessly tried to take the credit for everything that had happened in the field of biology since Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. Arthur decided he wouldn’t bother cross-examining him. At bottom, beneath his flow of words, Zapapas had confirmed that organ regeneration was possible. He even hinted that he had done successful regeneration work himself, although he never presented any evidence of it.
This morning they would hear from Quentin Phillips, the Nobel laureate from Oxford. Arthur looked forward to his testimony. Phillips was a man of uncommon good sense, one of the world’s leading microbiologists, and he had never had any connection whatsoever with Grenford Laboratory or Omnitech Corporation. He’d talk sense to the jury, Arthur knew.
It was this afternoon’s testimony that worried him. Rosen was going to play some DVDs that Cassie Ianetta had made before her suicide. Arthur had tried to block that, claiming that they would not be relevant to the trial, but Rosen had insisted and Graves had gone along with the examiner.
Arthur had no idea of what Cassie’s disks would say. But since the first day of the trial Rosen and the judges had talked about her death as if somehow Arthur bore the responsibility for it. Omnitech’s own lawyers had mentioned the possibility of a civil or even criminal action against Arthur once the science trial was over.