The Immortalist (13 page)

“I've never been more serious about anything.”

Director of Acadia Springs.
It was a chance to make a tremendous impact in experimental virology. She had been itching with big ideas her whole life. It would give her the chance to move full speed ahead with them, without having to wait for funding from CDC or the NIH.

“I can have a contract drawn up in the morning. Name your terms. Until then, take this as proof of my seriousness.” Gifford reached inside his dinner jacket and drew out a silver cigarette case. Balancing it on the intercom, he opened it as if it contained a diamond necklace. But inside Cricket saw only a slender tuberculin syringe and a conical plastic tube.

“What's this?”

“Immortality,” he said with a flourish.

“You can't mean—”

“The Methuselah Vector.”

“This?”
It looked so small. A few drops of clear liquid in a tube no bigger around than the tip of her little finger.

“Let me inject you, here and now. It will only take a few seconds.”

“You've got to be kidding.”

“You can't imagine how it can change you. Not just your body, but your mind. I know . . . because my own mental powers have grown by leaps and bounds.”

“
Your
mental powers? You've taken it yourself?”

Gifford smiled impishly. “Look at me, Cricket. Didn't you already know?”

She should have expected it. Charles Gifford, lifelong fitness fanatic, vegetarian, megavitamin hog—he'd always had an obsessive fear of growing old and dying. How could he have resisted the Fountain of Youth once it was within his grasp?

Cricket felt her breath taken away. “This is dangerous, Charles,” she said in a near whisper.

“No, it's perfectly safe. You've seen Adam.”

“It's your judgment I'm talking about. You're responsible for this drug. You have to prove to the world that it's safe and that it works. How can you keep your scientific objectivity when you've already bet your own life on it?”

Gifford raised his eyebrows indignantly. “There's nothing wrong with my judgment. Why should I stand by and watch others reap the benefits of my invention ahead of me? It could be years before the FDA approves the Methuselah Vector for sale. In the meantime, my body will age—leaving me weaker, slower, duller—ever closer to decrepitude. Why should I have to endure that? Where's the justice of it? I've found the cure for aging. Why should I age?”

Agitated, he started crowding her against the glass with all of this six-foot-three-inch frame, dominating her with his eyes. “You must take it, too, Cricket. Join me. Show that you're on the team.”

“No, Charles. Just looking at that syringe makes me feel like a junkie.”

“Don't be afraid. Don't. It's the greatest gift I can give you.”

“Over my dead body!”

“You don't mean that. You couldn't possibly mean that.” He seized her by the wrist. “Let me show you there's nothing to fear. One small injection—”

“No, Charles! Let me go!” she shouted. She tried to break free of his grip, but couldn't budge him. She smacked him in the face with her free hand. He scarcely seemed to feel it. She slapped him again. Nothing. Again, harder. It felt like slapping a pillar of stone.

“Don't fight me, Cricket. You
do
want this. I know you.”

Yes, she
was
tempted, despite her protests. Not by the idea of living forever, but by curiosity about what the drug would do inside her body. What would it feel like? Was it like being reborn? Would it change her thoughts, her feelings, her soul? Would it cure her panic attacks? After Étienne . . . would it make life worth living again?

But for all that, she knew in her gut it was wrong. If she let him inject her, it would pull her inescapably to his side. Hardly a soul was questioning the Methuselah Vector at this critical moment. She was one of the few. But having the Vector inside her would turn her into just another acolyte in the cult. Gifford's syringe had the power to silence her.

She tugged as hard as she could to get away. But his iron grip did not waver. Calmly, he took the syringe out of its box and held the plunger in his mouth. Cupping the small tube in his free hand, he popped the lid open with his thumb, pulled off the safety sheath of the needle, and began to draw off the clear liquid, pulling back on the syringe plunger with his teeth.

She kicked and flailed futilely, like a captured butterfly flapping its wings. Gifford let drop the empty tube and repositioned the syringe in his hand. He pulled her toward him, the needle pointed at her forearm.

She saw a terrible nonchalance in his eyes, an ice-cold certainty.

“Get that thing away from me!” she screamed.

And then—a growl. A woolly, gray blur. An impact that almost knocked her and Gifford together to the floor. Hannibal had leapt into the fray. She saw gleaming white fangs slash through the air. She heard a scream—Gifford's—as Hannibal's teeth sank into his forearm, forcing him to loosen his grip.

Instantly, she tore away and scrambled for the door.

“Don't go! Don't go!” shouted Gifford.

She ran past the guard's window, flung the outer door open, and ran out into the night.

Behind her she heard a long, drawn-out canine whine and then a bang as the metal door flew open. Gifford stood silhouetted in the light of the doorway.

“Cricket! Wait!” he shouted. “Come back!”

Throwing off her high-heeled shoes, guiding herself by the lights of the tall lab buildings in the distance, she sped barefoot across the darkened lawn, running for her life.

Ten

NIEDERMANN SAT HUNCHED
OVER A CHERRYWOOD
desk in his office in Weiszacker House, fingering a shot glass filled with aged Glenfiddich while he pored over a small photo of a dark-haired woman on the Web directory of the Centers for Disease Control. He thought about what it might have been like to share a tent with her on one of her tomb-raiding safaris. Dark of the jungle, a thousand miles from nowhere. Only a spotted eagle-owl to know the goings-on. Sure, he was no Clark Gable. Why, he couldn't even get lovely Yolanda to take a look at him in the year and a half she had worked for him. It was a height thing, he figured. Chicks went for tall men. But what would that matter once he was standing on a pile of dough?

Niedermann drained the shot glass, enjoying the warm, burning sensation as the Scotch flowed through his chest.
Here's to you, Cricket Rensselaer-Wright!
He chuckled.
Your ship has just come in.

Then, as his desk clock turned eleven, there was a knock at the door.

Niedermann opened the bottom desk drawer and carefully stowed both the shot glass and the Glenfiddich. For good measure, he picked up the little snub-nosed 9 mm Sig Sauer P290 automatic that lay on the desk blotter and stuck it in his pants pocket. A lot of money was in his safe, and he had to be careful. Going to the door, he opened it a crack. He saw a neatly coiffed, gray-eyed woman in a sequined black dress.

“Senator Libby!”

“Excuse the lateness. One of the waiters said you'd be in your office.”

“Welcome! Welcome!” Opening the door, Niedermann heard the clatter of dishes down the hall as the houseboys went on cleaning up after the banquet. “Please come in.”

Senator Libby shuffled into the office, her soles rustling softly on the carpet. Niedermann politely took the senator's silk shawl and seated her in a red-leather tub chair.

“How can I help you, Senator?” Niedermann said as he hung the shawl on a coat peg.

“Please call me Harper.”

“Very well, Harper.”

“I don't know how to begin.”

“Don't worry. Anything you say will be held in the strictest confidence.”

Senator Libby waited until Niedermann had sat back down. Then she anxiously touched her hand to her throat. “Last summer, while vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, I had a small . . . s-s-stroke. It was kept out of the papers. I have a difficult election facing me in the fall, and all I need is for rumors to get out about something like that.”

“I understand. It doesn't show.” That was a white lie. Thanks to his research, he already knew all about the stroke. Beyond that, it was easy to spot the funny way she walked, with her left foot dragging and almost making her stumble when she crossed the threshold. You didn't have to be a doctor to know something was wrong.

“Fortunately, I made a good recovery. I still have a little leftover weakness on one side, but I've been doing a lot of exercises, and swimming every day.”

“That's good.”

“But . . . a couple of months ago, while I was giving a speech at a community center in Brooklyn, I suddenly had terrific trouble getting the words out. I was trying to say, ‘Now, more than ever, we must not lose heart before the challenges that face us.' Instead, what came out was ‘None gramma happy happy heart heart heart minister.' Can you believe that? I didn't even know that I had said it. My aide quickly got me off the podium. A few minutes later, I was fine. I went out to the receiving line and shook a hundred hands and smiled till they could see the back of my molars, and everyone sort of shrugged off what had happened.”

Niedermann nodded sympathetically. “I'm no doctor, but it sounds like something called a TIA, or transient ischemic attack.” That's what her confidential medical reports had said. Niedermann was glad he had practiced how to pronounce it without twisting his tongue.

“Yes, it's like a momentary stroke. That's what I've been told. I went through a whole gauntlet of scans at the Neurology Center at Columbia-Presbyterian. Their opinion is that I have a fifty percent chance of having a major stroke in the next six months.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It could ruin my career just for people to know that. I don't want to retire now. I've been fighting all my life for the people of my state, fighting the banks and the utilities and the wholesale job exporters, and I'll be damned if I'm going to throw in the towel over this. There's too much at stake.”

“I understand. It would be a great loss to the country.”

“Thank you. I, uh, I just wanted you to appreciate what I'm dealing with. You see, uh . . . this Methuselah Vector . . . do you think it could do anything for someone in, uh . . . in my predicament?”

“Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, I am,” Niedermann answered without a second's pause.

There was another knock at the door. “Please excuse me,” said Niedermann, rising. At the door were two delivery boys in green uniforms. One of them held an ice bucket and stand, the other an enormous bottle of champagne.

“Look what we have here!” Niedermann motioned for the two to set up the stand next to his desk. Opening the attached card, he beamed. “Rick Beach sends his compliments.”

“That's the biggest champagne bottle I've ever seen in my life,” said Senator Libby.

“It's a joke. A six-liter bottle is known as a Methuselah.” Niedermann lifted the bottle an inch or two out of the ice and read the gold label. “Cristal Brut 1990. Hmmm. Not a bad vintage.” After tipping the delivery boys, he locked the door. Then he sat down again and folded his fingertips pensively. “So . . . where were we?”

Senator Libby cleared her throat. “Is there any possibility that I could, uh . . . get a place . . . in the Lottery this Friday?”

“I wouldn't advise it. It wouldn't do for you to be seen in public getting the Methuselah Vector. Politically speaking, I mean.”

Senator Libby looked crestfallen. “I could help you with the FDA. I'm a ranking member on the Senate Health Committee. I know Dr. Smead, the FDA commissioner, personally.”

“We could certainly use every bit of help.”

“I
will
help you. I'll do everything I can, Mr. Niedermann.”

“Call me Jack.” Niedermann smiled.

“Can you help
me
, Jack?” she pleaded.

Niedermann let her dangle a second or two. “Of course, Harper. Will you be in New York on Friday?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Never mind about the Lottery. The FDA lets us make special exceptions for what is known as compassionate use. In fact, we've reserved a confidential stock of the Methuselah Vector specifically for these, uh,
urgent
cases that are bound to come up. On Friday, as soon as the Lottery ceremonies are over, it would be my pleasure to have one of our company doctors give you an injection—discreetly and privately—in my suite at the Waldorf Astoria.”

“Oh, you're a lifesaver, Mr. Niedermann!” gushed Senator Libby.

“I need to point out that there are some very unusual expenses associated with the Methuselah Vector. It's a gene-therapy agent, not a blood-pressure drug or antibiotic. It can't be synthesized. It has to be harvested very carefully from a culture of living cells. There are all kinds of quality-control tests. So the costs—”