by Ben Bova
“Daddy,” she said, breathlessly. “Where’s Angie?”
Luke laughed with delight. “I don’t know. She’s around here someplace. Probably out taking a walk with Tamara—Dr. Minteer, her physician.” He felt glad that Angela’s wrist had healed and the cast had come off the day before.
Del came thumping down the stairs from the second floor and dashed to his wife, clasping her in his long arms. Luke stepped aside, smiling at the sight of the two of them: Del was a good foot taller than Lenore; he had to bend over like a weeping willow to hold her.
“Angie’s fine, hon,” he told Lenore before she could ask. “She’s out behind the building, playing with some of the other kids.”
Other kids? Luke felt surprised, then realized that of course plenty of the personnel on this base would have their families with them. He just hadn’t paid any attention to that, until now.
Lenore left her suitcase by the door and went out with Del to find their daughter. Left standing there, Luke debated going after them, but decided not to.
Leave them alone with Angie; no sense butting in. Besides, I’ve got plenty of work to do here.
* * *
THAT EVENING, THOUGH, they had a family reunion dinner in the base’s mess hall. Angela sat between her parents, laughing happily as she gobbled her dinner. Her face still looked gaunt, with wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but Lenore didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she doesn’t care, Luke thought. At least Angie’s hair is growing back in.
He and Tamara spent most of the dinner explaining the child’s condition to his daughter, with Del listening intently.
“But the cancer’s gone?” Lenore asked, over and again.
Sitting beside Luke, Tamara assured her each time she repeated the question that the tumors were gone.
“And we’ve inserted a second p53 gene,” Luke added. “That’ll help her immune system fight off any new cancerous cells that might arise in her.”
Del summed it up. “She’s going to live, hon. Our little Angie’s going to be all right.”
In that instant, Luke forgave all his son-in-law’s anger and insults. It was fear, he realized. Del was frightened that Angie was going to die.
“And she’ll be … normal again?” Lenore asked.
Tamara said, “The progeria symptoms are fading.”
“Her telomeres are coming back to normal,” Luke explained. “She’s going to be fine.”
Lenore’s eyes went misty. She turned to Angela and hugged the child. Angie put up with it, but was more interested in the peach pie dessert that the camp’s cook had personally carried to the table.
Across the mess hall, Novack sat alone, picking at the lousy Army food while watching Luke and his family. And Tamara.
* * *
LUKE WALKED WITH Tamara through the chilly darkness back to their building, watching his daughter and her family strolling contentedly several paces ahead of them.
“We’ll have to change our sleeping arrangements now that Norrie’s here,” he said.
“She can bunk with Angela tonight,” Tamara said. “Then tomorrow your son-in-law can move to my room and I’ll move to his.”
Luke felt his eyebrows go up a notch. “We’ll have to share the bathroom.”
In the darkness, Tamara’s silky voice sounded amused. “Does that bother you?”
“Norrie and Del might get the wrong impression.”
“Or maybe the right impression.”
Luke’s brows hiked up toward his scalp.
But then Tamara said, more seriously, “Your PSA count is still rising.”
“Yeah, I know,” he replied, feeling almost nettled at being forced back to reality.
“You really should have your prostate removed.”
“No,” he said flatly. “I’ll treat it the same way we knocked out Angie’s tumors.”
“With telomere inhibitors? Luke, that can be dangerous for you.”
Thinking of the incontinence and impotence that often followed prostate surgery, Luke muttered, “Not as dangerous as the side effects from surgery.”
“Do you have the tissue samples that they took back in Portland?”
He nodded. “I packed them in with our other stuff when they moved us here.”
She hesitated, then said, “Luke, I don’t like it. You’re taking telomerase accelerators, and now you want to take inhibitors?”
“Just for the prostate.”
“But you have no idea what the results will be. You’ll be messing with your cellular chemistry too much.”
Luke said flatly, “No surgery. Surgery is an admission that you don’t know how to cure the condition.”
“Your ‘cure’ could be worse than the disease.”
Still thinking of impotence, Luke replied in his best John Wayne intonation. “Not hardly.”
Welcome to the Gulag
ONCE HIS LABORATORY was up and running, Luke settled into a happy routine. Gunnerson and Holmes were top-notch researchers, and although neither of them seemed totally happy working under Luke’s direction, rather than independently, they got along together without too much friction.
God knows how much Fisk is paying them to work under me, he mused. They’re both giving up a lot to stay here.
His PSA count was still climbing, despite the telomerase inhibitors Luke had one of the camp medics inject into his prostate. No discernable reaction after nearly two weeks. Luke tried to shake off his concern. Needs more time, he told himself. The effect of the accelerators is still dominant.
At least, he thought, I’ve got plenty of material for a paper. He spent most of his evenings writing a research report for Fisk’s people. As it took shape, he began to think of publishing it in American Cellular Biology.
But when he tried to query ACB, which had published most of his earlier papers, he found that neither his laptop nor his cell phone could send a message out of the base.
Luke marched off to see Colonel Dennis.
Sitting behind his Army-issue steel desk, the colonel listened patiently to Luke’s complaint, then spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness.
“No one can communicate with the world outside this base,” he said, “unless it’s through our monitored landlines. Army security, you know. What we’re doing here is top-secret work.”
“But that’s not what I’m doing,” Luke protested. “My work has nothing to do with what the rest of you are doing.”
Another spread of arms. “My orders are that you’re not allowed to communicate with anyone except Mr. Fisk,” said the colonel.
The freaking privacy agreement, Luke realized.
“But this is a scientific research paper,” he countered. “The Fisk Foundation will be fully credited as the funding agency for my work.”
Dennis shook his chubby head. “You can ask Mr. Fisk to allow you to publish,” he suggested.
“How can I ask anybody anything if my phone and my laptop can’t get through?”
“You can place authorized messages through the base communications center.”
“Authorized?” Luke snapped, feeling nettled. “Who gives the authorization?”
“I do.”
“And you won’t authorize my query to American Cellular Biology?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. Orders.”
“Orders? From who, Fisk?”
The colonel stiffened. “I don’t take orders from Mr. Fisk. My orders come from my superior officers.”
“Who take orders from the White House, eh?”
“Ultimately,” said Colonel Dennis.
Rossov, Luke thought. He stared at the colonel for a long, silent moment. A middle-aged, overweight nobody in a soldier suit with silver eagles pinned to his shoulders. Career Army man, just following orders.
Without another word, Luke got up and strode out of the colonel’s office.
I’ll stop working, he said to himself, zippering his windbreaker as he stepped out into the brisk, bright morning. I’ll go on strike,
that’s what I’ll do. See how much Fisk and his mother-loving lawyers like that!
But by the time he’d walked halfway back to his own building he saw Angie playing with a bunch of other kids while Lenore and Tamara stood off to one side, chatting like old friends. The kids were running around an open area, kicking up dust on the bare ground, tossing a ball back and forth and shrieking happily.
I can’t stop working, Luke realized. I’ve got to monitor Angie’s condition. And my own.
He turned around and headed toward the mess hall. When in doubt, he reminded himself, sit down, have a cup of coffee, stay calm, and think.
The mess hall was almost empty, with only a handful of civilians and a couple of women in uniform at the tables. Luke went to the big gleaming coffee urns, poured himself a cup of regular, and headed for an unoccupied table.
Almost as soon as he sat down, Nick Pappagannis came over, holding a mug in both hands, and sat next to him.
“Do you mind?” he asked.
“No,” Luke lied.
Pappagannis sipped at his coffee, then put the mug down carefully on the wooden tabletop.
“You’ve got the look,” he said.
Luke stared at him: dark, unhappy eyes and bushy black mustache.
“The look?”
“We all get it, sooner or later.” Pappagannis glanced up at the ceiling briefly, then asked, “Ever been to the Sistine Chapel?”
Luke shook his head.
“There’s a fresco on one of the walls. By Michelangelo. Everybody gapes at the ceiling, of course, but this painting always gets to me.” Pappagannis tapped at his chest with a clenched fist.
“Why?”
“It’s supposed to be Judgment Day. God’s deciding who goes to heaven, who goes to hell. There’s this one guy, he’s just been sent to hell. Damned for eternity. The look on his face—that’s the look you just had.”
Luke didn’t know what to say.
“We all get it,” Pappagannis repeated. “Once a guy realizes what this base is all about, what he’s in for, it’s like being condemned to hell.”
Luke scoffed. “That’s pretty dramatic.”
“Yeah, I know. But look at us. We all signed an employment agreement, a security agreement, all kinds of paperwork. Signed our lives away. So now we’re stuck here in the middle of nowhere—for years on end.”
His brows knitting, Luke asked, “You mean you can’t leave this base?”
“Not for the length of our employment agreement. For me, that’s five years.”
“That’s not eternity.”
“Seems like it. The only way I can talk to my mother back in Chicago is through one of the secure phones, with some Army officer listening to every word we say. Listening, and recording!”
“Security,” Luke mumbled.
“And we can’t leave the base. We’re locked in here, unless Colonel Dennis gives permission to leave. The only way out of here is on one of those damned helicopters. And even then we have to provide a detailed itinerary and stick to it. If you’re half an hour late getting back, they send out the MPs to track you down.”
“Like prisoners.”
“Like prisoners,” Pappagannis agreed. “They say it’s for security. Antiterrorism and all that shit. I say it’s just to keep us here under their thumbs, and make sure we’re working hard for them.”
“You mean everybody here?” Luke asked. “Even the Army personnel?”
“All buttoned up like a high-security prison.”
Luke stared at the man. He was totally serious.
Suddenly angry, Luke shot to his feet and stormed out of the mess hall, heading back to Colonel Dennis’s office.
And he saw Novack coming the other way, heading for him.
“Where you going?” Novack asked, pulling up alongside Luke.
“To see the colonel.”
“You been talking to the Greek, huh?”
Luke stopped in midstride. “You people have been watching me?”
“Sort of.”
“Is it true that I can’t leave this base if I want to?”
Novack hunched his shoulders slightly. “This is a very secure area. People can’t just come and go as they please.”
“I can’t leave?”
“Not without permission.”
“And who gives permission? Dennis?”
Novack almost laughed. “The colonel’s a career Army man. He takes orders.”
“Who gives the goddamned orders?”
“In your case, it’s that slicker from the White House.”
“Rossov? Not Fisk?”
“Rossov.”
“So where’s Fisk come into this?”
“He made a deal with Rossov. You’re working for Fisk, but you work where Rossov wants you to be.”
“And my daughter and her family?”
“Same deal. They all stay here.”
Luke started for the colonel’s office again. “I’m not putting up with this bullshit.”
Novack stopped him by placing a hand on Luke’s chest. “Yes you are. You and me both, we work for Fisk. And Fisk wants us right here, same as Rossov does. We’re stuck here until they’re ready to let us go.”
“You mean we’re prisoners,” Luke growled.
Novack almost smiled. “Welcome to the gulag, buddy.”
Plan of Inaction
LUKE STOOD THERE in the crisp, clear morning, the sky above him a cloudless blue, the wooden buildings on every side looking new yet somehow already drab, dreary. Men and women walked along the dirt streets, some in uniform, others not, each of them bundled in a heavy coat or windbreaker. A jeep puttered by. And out at the perimeter of the base was that ten-foot-high wire fence. Bet it’s electrified, he thought.
Welcome to the gulag.
Novack was eying him, a sardonic grin on his bony face.
“For what’s worth,” Novack said, “I’m stuck here, too. And I don’t like it any better than you do.”
Luke said, “Yeah.” Then he turned and headed back toward his own laboratory.
Got to think this through, he told himself. I’ve gotten myself into this pickle, I’ll have to figure out how to get out of it. And get Norrie and Angie out of it. And Tamara.
* * *
ONCE BACK IN his lab, Luke allowed the familiar routine of his work to fill the rest of his day. But even as he examined the latest scans of Angela’s brain and the results of her most recent physical exam, he was thinking, thinking, trying to figure out what to do and how to do it.
Fisk and Rossov both want to keep me here. Novack’s here to watch me, and the whole freaking base is designed to keep people in, not let them out.
Fisk wants the results of my work. That’s why he’s tied me up with that privacy agreement. But what’s Rossov after? Is he working for Fisk? He said he’s a special assistant to the President. Has Fisk bought him out?
By the end of the day, he had come to no conclusions. One thing seemed clear, though: In another week or two there’ll be no reason to keep Angela here. She’ll be back to normal, just about. She can go home, with Norrie and Del.
But Luke wondered if Colonel Dennis, or Fisk, or Rossov, was going to allow that.
* * *
AS THE DINNER hour approached, and most of his staff left for the day, Luke climbed the stairs from his laboratory to the living quarters on the second floor. Briefly he looked in on Lenore and Del and Angela. They seemed happy enough, gathered around a television set that was showing a DVD of a children’s movie.
He tapped on Tamara’s door, across the hall. After a moment’s wait, she opened it.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” said Luke. “May I come in?”
“The room’s a mess, but yes, sure.” She swung the door wide.
Luke stepped in and saw that the bed was neatly made, although there was a stack of freshly laundered clothes atop it. Through the half-open door to the lavatory he saw a pair of pantyhose draped over the shower stall d
oor.
“This is a mess?” he asked, smiling at her.
“Sort of.”
“You hungry? Want to go to dinner?”
“It’s a little early,” she said. “I thought we’d wait for Angie and her parents.”
“They can find the mess hall on their own.” He extended his hand to her. “Come on.”
Looking pleased but slightly puzzled, Tamara went to the closet and pulled out her long winter coat. “Only thing I’ve got,” she half-apologized.
Luke grabbed his windbreaker from his closet, then went across the hall and stuck his head through the half-open door of his daughter’s room. “We’re going to dinner,” he announced. Before they could reply he added, “See you in the mess hall.”
And he led Tamara down the stairs, through the now-deserted lab, and out into the lengthening shadows of the chilly evening.
Once they had gone a dozen paces along the street, Tamara asked, “What’s going on?”
Luke glanced at her. “Going on?”
“You’ve got the same look on your face as you did back at Nottaway, when you wanted to talk without being overheard.”
He nodded. “Same reason.”
“So what’s going on, Luke?”
“We’re being kept prisoners here.”
“I told you that before we ever arrived,” Tamara said.
“They won’t even let me send a query to ACB.”
Tamara said nothing.
“I don’t think they intend to let Norrie and her family leave this base.”
Her brows knitting, Tamara said, “They can’t do that. It’s illegal.” Then she added, “Isn’t it?”
“It’s only illegal if you can get somebody to pay attention to it. As long as they have us bottled up here in this camp, there’s not much we can do.”
“But why are they doing this to us?” Tamara wondered.
Luke shook his head. “Must be something big. Big enough for the White House to get involved. Big enough to get Fisk to go along with it.”
She thought that over for a few strides. Then, “Maybe it’s all Fisk’s idea.”
Luke shook his head. “Nah. If Fisk had his way, we’d be at one of his labs.”
“You think so?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
They turned the corner, and there was the mess hall standing halfway down the block. A few early birds were already going in.