Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy

by David Spencer

  In the middle of the sidewalk.

  In the shadow of the skyscrapers.

  In front of the world.

  As on either side, unheedful, unimpressed, or misinterpreting, the world passed them by.

  C H A P T E R 1 6

  YOU COULD SAY this much for Maury Richler of Richler Pharmaceuticals: He was certainly a hands-on kind of fellow.

  When Detectives Matthew Sikes and George Francisco flipped their shields at the guy behind the security desk, it was Richler’s office he buzzed, and it was old man Richler himself who came down to the desk. No intermediaries, no henchmen, no flunkies, and no foolin’.

  Richler’s appearance was unlikely for the head of a firm that specialized in so meticulous a field as medicine, for the outer man was anything but meticulous. He was tall and galumphy, about fifty-five or sixty, pot-bellied, big-nosed, round-faced and hairy, the latter despite being clean-shaven. A Toscanini-maestrolike shock of brown hair streaked with gray was swept back over his head; his sideburns and eyebrows were big, bushy and unruly; and stray hairs popped out of every orifice that could reasonably support them. The backs of his hands were very close to being matted with gray as well. His clothes, jacket in particular, hung on him dutifully, but not particularly stylishly, and he wore his tie slightly loose.

  For all his unruliness, though, he was not slovenly. He was simply unvarnished, a plain-spoken fellow of enormous intelligence whose veneer—or lack thereof—mirrored his candor, the impression that he had nothing to hide. It could be a deceptive impression, though. Sikes and Francisco knew that from long experience.

  He introduced himself with a firm handshake, a fleshy, lopsided smile, and a deep, resonant voice.

  “What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?”

  They told him about their investigation into bad Stabilite.

  “I’m aware of the situation, of course,” he acknowledged, “and of course I’m . . . well, appalled puts it mildly. I’m furious and not just because it reflects badly on my business. I’ve offered my help to the authorities before, though, and it was duly noted, never accepted. What’s caused the change of heart”—he nodded with dry, but genuine respect toward George—“or hearts, as the case may be?”

  They told him that the investigation into bad Stabilite had led back to his company.

  Until now, Richler had seemed a fairly unflappable fellow. Now—in his own understated way—he flapped. His jaw dropped, making his double chin conceal his neck completely, and his large eyes grew larger.

  “Back here? You’re telling me the road leads . . . back here? What specifically led you back here?”

  They told him about the car they had been following, and they pointed to it out to him in the lot, whereupon the security guy, listening unobtrusively up to this point, said, “That’s Max’s car, Mr. Richler.”

  “Max?” Richler repeated. It was one syllable, but he managed to say it very slowly. His eyes stayed wide, so George and Matt had to figure the subtext was one of further disbelief.

  “Max who?” Matt prodded.

  “Max Corigliano,” the security guy said. The security guy didn’t know it, but he had just said a lot more than that.

  “We maybe got pay dirt here,” Matt said to George.

  “Filthy money indeed,” George agreed, missing the idiom but not the point.

  “Do you know something about Max Corigliano?” Richler asked.

  “Not as yet,” George replied, “not conclusively.”

  “Hunch,” Matt said evasively.

  “Do you think you might amplify that for me just a little bit?”

  “No offense, Mr. Richler,” Matt said, “but we don’t know you well enough yet.”

  “For the next little while at least,” George offered, “it would be better if we could question Mr. Corigliano ourselves. And—if you’re amenable—take a look around your operation.”

  “The implication being that if I’m not amenable you can get a warrant.”

  “That’s the implication,” said Matt. “Do we need one?”

  “Quite the opposite, Detective. I just respond badly to not being trusted, especially in matters of law, ethics, or business.” He appraised them coolly for a moment, then nodded to himself, having reached some sort of executive decision. He leaned over the security guy’s desk, lifted the receiver on the phone, said, “Tim, would you hit the code for my secretary?” and then, “Thank you,” once the security guy had complied. After a moment he said into the phone, “Norma? Call Max Corigliano, tell him I want to see him. Tell him right away. When he arrives, usher him into my office. Between you and me, I will not be there right away. You just let him sit, though. I want him to wait.”

  He hung up, turned toward the detectives.

  “We’ll do the tour first,” he said. “It may not be what you want, but this is my sandbox. Long as you’re here as my guests, we’ll play by my rules.”

  They were introduced to an organic chemist, a biochemist, a microbiologist, a pharmacologist, a toxicologist, a pathologist, a pharmaceutical chemist, and a physician—the chain of specialists, Richler said, required for the development of each individual drug.

  They were escorted through several research labs, a research library, and the processing plant wherein the medicines were prepared and packaged for shipping. At all times the attention to detail seemed beyond reproach; every procedure, from the first experiment to labeling of the final package, adhered to strict double- and triple-checked regimens of quality control.

  They noted that the general atmosphere around Richler Pharmaceuticals was, in the best sense, collegiate. There was a very definite team spirit at work; and Richler’s employees clearly liked the work as well as the environment provided for it, which was clean, encouraging and—again, in the best sense—adventurous. Pioneerism suffused the gestalt of the place . . . and the fact that salaries, profit sharing programs, health benefits, and pension plans were all generous didn’t hurt either.

  In the middle of the tour, which had thus far occupied something over half an hour, Richler’s secretary had him paged, and informed him that Max Corigliano was becoming impatient and fidgety.

  “Good,” Richler replied, instructing her to continue giving Corigliano the impression that he’d be right there.

  Richler gave them the facts and figures. That each new drug cost between fifteen and thirty million dollars in research that generally spanned five to nine years. That during an average year in the prescription—or “ethical”—drug industry, about 170,000 chemicals were screened; about 1,000 of those were deemed worthy of investigation; and of those, only between 16 and 20 compounds actually made it into the marketplace with FDA approvals.

  “It’s not a racket,” Richler explained. “The only way to make your money in ethical drugs is to keep the patient in mind. If helping people is your goal, you’ll see a return. As for Richler Pharmaceuticals . . . well, I never quite realized the dream. We’re not up there with Merck or Squibb. But I’m proud, at least, that we’re considered the best of the smaller, feistier companies and that we’re known for our integrity, not for fads.”

  “I don’t understand,” said George, and there was genuine sadness in his voice. “It is clear you are a person of honor, and your business does you credit. But—”

  “—but if Richler Pharmaceuticals eschews fad drugs, how did we get involved with Klees’zhoparaprophine?”

  George looked at him squarely. “Yes.”

  “And if research takes so long, how did we manage to get Klees’zhoparaprophine onto the marketplace so quickly when your people are barely five years off the slave ship?”

  “And that.”

  Richler didn’t flinch from the gaze, nor did he even seem especially challenged by it. He returned it as if taking George’s measure.

  Matt, breaking the moment, said, “You know, since this investigation began, you’re the only person we’ve interviewed who refers to Stabilite like that.”

  Richler,
in a curmudgeonly, professorial fashion, narrowed his gaze at Sikes.

  “Because that,” he said, enunciating each word carefully, “is its name.” Returning his gaze to George, he said, “We have one more stop to make.”

  They entered the animal research lab. Though it was as clean and smoothly run as the rest, and though the animals (dogs, monkeys, mice, white rats mostly) seemed to be as well-treated as possible under the circumstances, it was a genuinely depressing place. Not, ironically, because there were animals on view who appeared to be suffering or unhealthy (though some were in a noncommittal sleep that may or may not have been drug induced)—but simply because the mere concept of the place filled the detectives with an ineffable melancholy.

  Sensing their mood, Richler just said without preamble, “I know. I used to feel the same way, and on occasion, when I don’t watch myself, I still do. But there’s no other way. Comes a time you have to know if the idea’s a good one or if it only works on paper. And you can’t test on healthy human—forgive me, humanoid—volunteers until you’ve exhausted every other possibility of exploration.”

  “You test on healthy volunteers?” Matt asked.

  “At first you have to. They’re the ones with the strongest immune systems, the ones best able to ingest a new substance and give you a clear reading. A person in imperfect health can only give you imperfect data. The point to medical research is to dispense with as many variables as you can.”

  Entering an annex to the main lab, they approached a bank of cages. In front of it was someone in a wheelchair, back to them, wearing a lab coat, bent over an open cage in the bottom row.

  “Someone I want you to meet,” Richler said to George in particular. He lifted his voice, “Sotsta.”

  They heard the cage door closing, and the figure in the wheelchair unbent, revealing a Tenctonese head atop a frail body—or, perhaps, deceptively frail, as the thin arms that reached for the wheels and turned the chair around did so with rather remarkable strength and dexterity.

  The figure—Sotsta—was male, by Newcomer reckoning somewhere on the dark side of middle age. Either that or prematurely older in appearance than his years, as his frailty (Matt thought of it as Ghandi-like) was particularly pronounced. And for a final distinguishing feature: He was walleyed. On his lap stood a beagle puppy, its forepaws against his chest, trying, with unbridled, and apparently uncontrollable, affection to lick Sotsta’s chin.

  “Now, now, Dogger,” Sotsta chided, gently muzzling the dog with his palm. The frail Newcomer had a soft, almost ethereal voice. Dogger licked his palm until it became moist enough for Sotsta to wipe it upon his lab coat; whereupon Dogger happily went back to its prime objective: the chin.

  “Sotsta,” said Richler, “these gentlemen are from the police, Mr. Francisco and Mr. Sikes.” He looked at the detectives. “Gentlemen, Sotsta is one of our topflight researchers. It is upon his work that the development of Klees’zhoparaprophine is based.”

  George stepped forward.

  Chorboke is here, he thought.

  Sotsta seemed to be about to offer his hand, a greeting gesture that had become reflexive for Newcomers over the years on Earth; but George, keeping his hands at his side, sidestepped any pretense at amenities and said, “Won oot vot evin tew vostafless?”

  How do you live with yourself?

  He hadn’t really meant to say it, not in Tenctonese, and certainly not with such vitriol. But the words had just popped out of him. He was just grudgingly accepting the notion that Fran Delaney’s actions might have extenuating circumstances and not be easily categorized as right or wrong. But here before him was the architect of her downfall, sitting in a wheelchair, petting a dog, personifying what post-World War II historians referred to as “the banality of evil.”

  And there was simply no excuse for him.

  (Or so George believed right at that moment. He didn’t see Matt behind him, about to step forward and intervene, about to diplomatically pull him away . . . nor did he know when Richler gently touched Matt on the arm, stopped him, lifted a quieting hand, and closed his eyes briefly as if to say, Let this be. Let this happen.)

  Sotsta answered George’s “greeting” in English.

  “Live with myself. Ah. Well. One must. No choice, yes?” He smiled a brief smile that came and went without preparation, like a facial tic.

  Between the walleyed expression and the air of abstraction, it was difficult to know how “present” the little scientist was in the room—difficult to know what he was looking at, if his mind was even on the conversation at hand.

  “Do you know what you have done?” George asked quietly. “What misery you’ve wrought?”

  “Done? Yes. Misery?” Again the spasmodic smile. “Knowledge is not ultimately controllable. Discover something. Look, see? It’s there. And—oh—interesting, it not only does this, it does that. Then the decision. This is desirable. That is, how can we say, a wrinkle. Better yet, a ripple in the water (much apter metaphor, in fact). And the ripple once made cannot be unmade. It travels its course. What ripples do.”

  “The hell is he talking about?” Matt said.

  George, likewise, was utterly bewildered.

  The puppy was starting to nip playfully at Sotsta’s collar.

  “Now, Dogger, now, Dogger,” Sotsta chanted.

  Richler stepped forward, put a hand on Sotsta’s shoulder. The puppy leapt to lick at Richler’s fingers. “Detective Francisco doesn’t know the history, Sotsta. He doesn’t know how it started.”

  Sotsta looked up at Richler—lifted his head, at any rate, hard to tell just where he was focusing—and three seconds went by in which the scientist’s expression did not change. Then he gasped—suddenly—“Ah!”—as if the information had been delayed in reaching his brain, but had just now arrived. “Well, then!”

  Without warning, Sotsta thrust the puppy into Richler’s unprepared grasp—(producing the first and only moment in which George saw the drug magnate unbalanced, comically trying to adjust to the energy of the animal, which found his chin as interesting as Sotsta’s)—and pulled the cuffs on both his legs up to the knee joint.

  The feet above the sagging socks were prosthetic, as were half of each lower leg. Above the prostheses, the skin was scarred and pitted most hideously. Sotsta directed his gaze—his face, anyway—toward George. He spoke matter-of-factly.

  “Experimental test subject. On the slave ship. Salt water. An attempt to seek immunities to its effects. Chorboke’s idea, of course.”

  At first George couldn’t process the information. It went so counter to his preconceptions that he was disoriented.

  “You—” he said. Then swallowed. “You were a victim . . . of Chorboke?”

  Sotsta nodded. “One of the few who amused him. He disposed of most failed tests. For me he actually created these prostheses. Consolation for services.” He shrugged. “Walk on them, yes, sometimes, but not with comfort. The chair I like best.”

  “To the point, Sotsta,” Richler requested gently. And, looking at George and Matt, added, unnecessarily, “He’s a rambler.”

  “The point, indeed,” Sotsta nodded. “The ship, Chorboke, I started to think there must be a true way to desensitize us—that is, you-me-us, Newcomers—to salt water. A way that could be achieved without suffering. No one should again have to . . .” He gestured vaguely at his legs, stamping them against the footrests lightly to shake his cuffs back down to shoe-top level. “. . . like me. Had sporadic access to Chorboke’s lab, some files. Began working in secret, compiling much research, many years.”

  “Sotsta was far along in his discoveries by the time he got to us,” Richler supplemented.

  George was by Earth measuring seventy-five years old; Sotsta was older still . . . and Chorboke had been wreaking havoc on the slave ship for the better part of George’s adult life. Sotsta hadn’t indicated when he had been worked on by that monster, but it was easy to imagine that the “many years” of “much research” were far in excess of
the five to nine cited by Richler as average for development of a prescription drug.

  “Work went slowly on the ship,” Sotsta continued. “Access to lab frequently impossible. No facilities, or stolen sometimes, clandestine experimentation. All the time in the world, though. Not fit for heavy labor. Too favored of the master to destroy. What else for a legless slave-victim but time, yes?” Then his tone became excited. “But, then, boom. Crash, and the ship is on Earth, and the Earth is four-fifths salt water and, this being our new home, I begin to hear the tick clocking, I mean the clock ticking. Ha!” The larger, open-mouthed smile that accompanied the brief laugh came and went as fast as its smaller predecessor.

  “We were looking for Newcomer scientists,” Richler said, continuing the tale, “to help in researching a market clearly about to expand. Sotsta was looking for the facilities that would support his work. We seemed rather right for each other.”

  “And how did you jump from lofty scientific nobility to Stabilite?” George asked Sotsta. “After what you’d been through—how could you?”

  Sotsta looked toward his employer, his odd little face aswim with contradictions.

  “The drug that will, we hope, desensitize Newcomers to salt water is still in the works,” Richler continued, holding the fidgety puppy to his chest. “But in pursuing that goal, we discovered certain chemically-induced properties the Tenctonese physiology must have in order to survive exposure. Similar properties, as it turns out, to those Tenctonese physiology must have in order to maintain a radical cosmetic change.”

  “And so you just opportunistically—”

  “No.” Richler lowered Dogger, who dutifully jumped onto Sotsta’s lap, and decided, for some mysterious dog reason, that the visitors were now interesting enough to observe. The animal nestled quietly, blinking at them soulfully, as Sotsta absently stroked his back.