by Ben Bova
“I’m not surprised,” Arthur said. “This is a big story, no matter which way you look at it. We’re offering the first step to immortality, Pat. What do you expect the media to do, forget about it?”
The truth was, I dreaded the moment when some news media heavy hitter took it into his or her head to crucify Arthur. So far they had all been easy on him, treating this more as a science story than as a blockbuster. But just let one of those egomaniacs understand that they could zoom their ratings by doing a story on cruelty to animals or tampering with human lives, and we’d be off to the races.
What I feared most was that Simmonds would challenge Arthur to a public debate. I knew that would be a circus, if Arthur accepted. And if he refused, it could be even worse.
“Maybe you ought to hire a first-class PR firm to handle this,” I blurted. “Maybe I’m just out of my depth.”
My own words surprised me. I hadn’t really intended to say that. What the hell’s going on inside my head? I asked myself. Do you really want to run away and hide?
He looked surprised, too. “You want to leave?”
I didn’t, not really. But I was getting scared. Scared that this was getting too big for me. Scared that in the end Arthur would get terribly hurt and it’d be my fault.
“Don’t go,” he said before I could answer. “I need you. I think we work well together, don’t you?”
My mind was racing, jumbling all sorts of thoughts together in a crazy hodgepodge. The money was good. And regular. But what if I screwed up and Arthur got blasted by the media? I was still hoping that he might ask me to dinner or invite me to a party he had to attend or fly me off to Samarkand. I was being stupid, I told myself. His affair with Nancy Dubois had ended, that much I knew from the gossip at the corporate office. But as far as I could tell, Arthur didn’t get himself entangled with any of the women at the lab. Too smart for that. From what I had heard, Nancy was still steaming over him. He wouldn’t want to get involved with me, I knew. He had hired me for business reasons only. Stop being a silly fool.
“If you need more help we can get you an assistant,” Arthur offered. “Even if we hired a PR firm I’d like you to stay and be my liaison with them. I need you, Pat.”
“Okay,” I heard myself say. “I’ll stay.” And my stupid heart fluttered inside me.
Every evening when I came home, Livvie gave me that slaphappy vodka grin of hers. “So how’s things at the office?” she’d ask.
It made me angry. Because it kept me dreaming, in spite of myself.
I kept wondering why Simmonds didn’t challenge Arthur to a debate. Maybe he was afraid Arthur would mop the floor with him; after all, Arthur had all the scientific facts on his side, and he came across beautifully on TV. But I figured that Simmonds would go for the emotional appeal, you know, There are some things man was not meant to know. Don’t interfere with God’s plan. And then it hit me. If it came to emotional appeals, Arthur could clobber Simmonds but good. He was offering immortality! He could tell people that they could avoid death! No wonder Simmonds wouldn’t want to be on the same stage with him.
Gradually I stopped worrying so much about my nightmare scenario.
And then the government people arrived at the lab.
ARTHUR
Simmonds was damned clever. When he saw that his public attacks weren’t going to stop me, he turned to the government. No one will admit it, but I’m certain that’s what happened. Either he got the government involved or Ransom did. Or maybe some bureaucrat somewhere in that tangle of Washington offices decided they’d better get involved before Ransom put public pressure on them.
Thanks to Pat Hayward’s really professional handling of the media, we were weathering Simmonds’s ravings with only a few blatantly hysterical headlines, and they were mostly in the tabloids that only the crazies read anyway. So there was no major public relations disaster, despite all the hoopla. In fact, the price of Omnitech stock kept creeping upward, in part because of our excellent handling of the media. The news was getting around that our research in organ regeneration was moving ahead nicely, and it would be worth megafortunes in the not-too-distant future.
It was the day of the first snowfall of the season, early in December. The lab buzzed with talk about a white Christmas. Zack O’Neill popped his head into my office and asked, “Got a minute?”
I waved him in. Funny how he had toned down his appearance; the more successful he became in his lab work, the less flamboyant his clothes and his hairdo. Of course, he still wore his earring, but it was down to a little jewel now, not a dangling iron cross.
He spread a handful of X-ray pictures across my desk. Macaques.
“Blocked the coronary arteries to induce cardiac insufficiency,” he said, pointing to the first X-ray. I could see the dark shadows of the plugs they had inserted in the monkey’s arteries.
“Injected regentide at this point.” The second picture clearly showed necrosis of the heart tissue. It was dying from lack of blood, just as any muscle would if you cut off its nutrition supply.
Zack spread the other X-rays out and I could see the monkey’s original heart dying while a new heart grew beside it, with new coronary arteries to feed it.
“The new heart took over thirty percent of the blood-pumping at this point,” he said, tapping a finger on one of the pictures. “By here”—he tapped another—“it was doing eighty percent of normal and our patient started acting like a healthy macaque again.”
I saw that tumors had appeared shortly after the first regentide injection, but then they shriveled and died.
“You used Cassie’s enzyme on the tumors?” I asked.
Zack grinned and nodded. “Been talking to her every day on the phone.”
“How is she?”
“Sounds okay. Says she’ll be coming home in another few weeks or so. Everything’s going well.”
“But how is she? Health wise?”
Zack looked surprised. “I dunno. We never talk about that, just the work.”
I made a mental note to call her, find out how she felt.
Zack bit his lip for a moment, then said, “We’ve gone about as far with the macaques as we can. It’s time to take the next step.”
I knew what he was going to say.
And he said it. “We’re ready to try this out on a chimp.”
“But we don’t have any chimps.”
He gave me a sly grin. “Come on, boss. We’ve still got Max.”
“I sort of promised Cassie that we wouldn’t use Max.”
“We need a chimp experiment. Genetically, they’re the closest to humans.”
“I’m trying to import some new ones. They’ll be younger, probably better specimens for us.”
“How soon can you get them?”
He had me there. Our application was already bogged down in red tape. “A few months, at best,” I admitted.
“Max is our best bet, then. You don’t want to let everything we’ve accomplished hang fire for months, do you?”
I wasn’t even certain that it would be a matter of months. The way the various government agencies were processing our request for chimps, it might take a year or more.
“We could just do something simple, like a finger,” Zack coaxed.
It was tempting. No sense slowing ourselves down because of an emotional girl. But still . . .
“Let me talk to Cassie first,” I said.
Zack shrugged. “Too bad we can’t try it on human volunteers.”
I grunted as if he’d hit me in the pit of my stomach. “We don’t have enough reporters prowling around looking for trouble. You want to start operating on people?”
Zack laughed. “Max is our best bet.”
“I know,” I admitted. “Talk it over with our medical team, get the protocols written up properly. I’ll deal with Cassie.”
Easily said. But that was my responsibility. Zack would do the experimental work, my task was to clear the way for him and then back him to the h
ilt.
No less than a week later we were visited by two NIH officials. I wondered if they had bugged my office.
They were both lawyers, not scientists. The senior of the two was a plumpish pink-faced woman with graying hair pulled back tightly into a ponytail. She wore a rather pretty flowered dress. She sort of looked like a TV commercial version of everybody’s maiden aunt. The guy with her was also well fed, much younger but already paunchy. His face was pretty well covered by a heavy black beard, thick mustache, and beetling black brows. Put him in a doublet and he’d be your perfect pirate.
They had phoned from Washington to set up an appointment with me. NIH is not a regulatory agency, but when they told me they were from the legal division I called Johnston at his downtown office and asked him to provide a corporate lawyer. They sent a young man named, appropriately enough, Charles Eager. I also asked Pat Hayward to sit in on this meeting; it might have serious public relations repercussions, I thought. Besides, I’ve found it’s always best to outnumber the enemy, even if it’s nothing more than an informal visit by government representatives.
As if any visit from a government representative is informal.
So there we were, the five us, seated around the circular conference table in the corner of my office: three lawyers, a PR consultant, and me.
We exchanged pleasantries while Phyllis brought in a tray of coffee, tea, and soft drinks. The office smelled faintly of . . . nutmeg? Then I recalled that in Phyllis’s mind, nutmeg reduces stress.
Once everyone had taken the drink they wanted, I asked the NIH people why they had asked for this meeting.
The woman started by saying, “We appreciate your granting us the time to talk with you, Dr. Marshak. We know you’re a busy man these days.”
I didn’t like the sound of “these days.”
“We’ve been monitoring your request for chimps,” she went on. “And we’ve received several inquiries about the work you’re doing on organ regrowth.”
Before I could ask who the inquiries were from, the bearded pirate butted in, “Since your work is not being funded by NIH we don’t have an official claim to oversight.” He had a sweet tenor voice that didn’t go with his fierce hairy face at all.
Our corporate Mr. Eager quickly said, “There has been no government funding whatsoever for the work in question.”
“There’s been quite a lot in the media about your work,” said the woman, ignoring Eager. “From the nature of the stories, and the inquiries we’ve received, we thought it would be proper for us to have this little chat with you.”
I glanced at Pat, sitting across the round table from me. Simmonds was responsible for this meeting, we both knew. Or Ransom. Directly or indirectly, one or both of them had stirred up the goddamned government.
I tried to smile and asked amiably, “What would you like to know?”
If they had been scientists, they would have been avid to get back into the labs and see what was going on, talk with the people actually doing the research, look over the hardware. But they were lawyers.
The pirate said, “Whether you’re receiving government funding or not, there are still protocols to be followed in all animal experiments.”
“I assure you we are following those protocols punctiliously.”
He raised those heavy eyebrows almost to his shaggy hairline. I thought perhaps he didn’t know the word “punctiliously.”
The woman said sweetly, “I assume you have the proper documentation for your experiments?”
“We do indeed,” I replied. “Tons of it.”
“That’s good.”
“You’ve applied to obtain six chimpanzees,” said the pirate.
“Most of the chimps we had were stolen by animal rights terrorists,” I said.
“Yes, I read about that.”
“You’re planning to perform experiments on chimpanzees,” the woman stated, a cheerless little frown on her buttercup face.
Why else would we want them? I silently retorted. Aloud, I explained, “Chimps are our closest relatives, genetically. Their DNA is only about two percent different from our own. Since this work involves genetic triggering, we’ll need to test it on chimps.”
“And eventually on human beings?” she asked.
I took a breath and then nodded. “Eventually on human beings. The entire purpose of this work is to help humans.”
“Extend their lifespans, you mean.”
“Grow new organs in their bodies when their original organs begin to fail,” I said. “Think of it as a form of organ transplant, except that the patient is his own donor.” I quickly added, “Or her own donor.”
“And you don’t need surgery,” Pat added.
I smiled at her. “That’s right. You won’t need surgery.”
We talked around the subject for the better part of an hour. Finally, the woman said, “Dr. Marshak, we have no real jurisdiction over you, since you are not being funded by NIH, but I think you should know that the government is taking this matter very seriously.”
“The government?” I asked. “Who in the government?”
“The National Institutes of Health, for one,” said the pirate. “The Justice Department might also become interested.”
“The Justice Department?” yelped Eager. “What do they have to do with it?”
“It is their responsibility to investigate possible violations of federal code.”
“We haven’t broken any laws,” I said. I felt certain he was bluffing, although Eager looked upset.
“If and when you go to human trials,” said the woman, “you will need the consent of the NIH, regardless of your funding sources.”
“And I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more congressional committees wouldn’t want to look into your program at that point,” the pirate said.
“Perhaps sooner,” the woman added.
Pat looked worried. Eager looked as if somebody had just put a gun to his head. I knew, there and then, that I would have to take steps to forestall an avalanche of government interference.
So I went to Washington the following week. To the offices of the National Academy of Sciences, to see my old friend Milton Graves.
I had first met Graves when he’d been a visiting professor at Columbia. Back then, I thought for certain that one day I’d be elected to membership in the NAS.
The National Academy was founded by no less than Abraham Lincoln, right in the middle of the Civil War, to bring together the nation’s best scientists to advise the government on technical matters. Being elected to it is just about the highest honor an American scientist can get in his own country. But if you’re an industrial scientist it’s not so easy. And if you’re a refugee from academia who’s regarded as a pariah by somebody as vindictive as Wilson K. Potter—forget about it.
The academy’s building had a great view of the Lincoln Memorial, but I wasn’t in a sightseeing mood as I ducked out of the taxi from the airport. It was a raw wintry day in Washington, gray and overcast, with a cutting wind blowing in off the river. Pulling my trenchcoat around me, I hustled up the front steps.
Milton Graves had been president of the academy for more than five years. We had served on a handful of committees together, evaluating new procedures in molecular biology or generating a report to one government agency or another on where the taxpayers’ money would be best spent. I always felt like an outsider on those committees, the token representative of industry and big business. The rest of the committee members were usually academics or government scientists.
But Graves had always been friendly to me. I got the impression that he didn’t like Potter very much and he realized what a raw deal I had received at Potter’s hands.
Graves’s office was big but not pretentious. Warm and comfortable as an old shoe, dominated by an elaborately carved mahogany desk and beautiful glass-fronted bookcases. It was a corner office, with views that looked out on the classic white marble of the Lincoln Memorial and Berks’s marvelous
statue of Albert Einstein on the lawn below. The Vietnam Wall was out there across Constitution Avenue, too, but from Graves’s windows I could barely see a corner of its low, dark, sinuous shape.
“You sounded distressed on the telephone, Arthur,” Graves said as he gestured me to one of the heavy, upholstered wing chairs by the windows. He took the other one, across from the little rosewood sherry table.
“I am,” I said, a feeling of relaxation easing over me. Graves had an air of the kindly old grandfather about him. He was spare, lean. There was nothing left of his hair but a white fringe around his bald dome. His face was pouchy, sagging around a hooked turtle’s nose. But he exuded an air of quiet calm, of warm sensibility, that made me feel . . . I guess the best word is safe.
“You’ve been getting quite a bit of publicity lately. You’ll be on the cover of Time soon, I expect.” His eyes, magnified by his bifocals, told me he was amused by it all.
“Lord, I hope not,” I replied.
Leaning forward slightly, Graves asked, “It’s difficult to assess the work you’re doing from these news accounts. How is it going? How far have you come?”
We spent the next hour or so discussing the regeneration work. He was surprisingly up on it, for a man who’d spent the past decade or so in administration rather than research. Slowly it dawned on me. He didn’t have to say it, but I realized he was vitally interested in what we were doing because he was getting to the age where he could expect his organs to begin to wear out. As far as I knew he was spry and healthy, but still—the clock keeps ticking.
“My mother went blind from glaucoma,” he said, his voice soft, almost musing. “Of course, we have better treatment for it now, but still it’s something I have to worry about.”
I had never thought about regenerating parts of the eye. “That’s something we ought to look into,” I said.
He broke into an amused grin. “Was that a pun, Arthur?”
We laughed together.
Then I started telling him about Ransom and Reverend Simmonds and all the pressures the news media were putting on us.
“And now I’ve been visited by two lawyers from NIH,” I said. “It looks like the government’s becoming very interested in our program.”