The Immortality Factor (23 page)

When does it end? I asked myself as I sat bone-tired on my cot at sundown one day. The line was still standing silently by the examination tent, all those big dark eyes staring at me accusingly. I didn't do this to you, I wanted to tell them. You did it to yourselves. But of course I knew that they hadn't. They were victims, just ordinary people who'd been kicked in the guts by the civil war and the famine and their own endemic poverty. They needed all the help I could give them. They need a lot more.

Eberly had been in the tent with Julia when I had come in. I felt so exhausted, so emotionally drained, that I couldn't eat. I just went to the cot and plopped down on it, still fully dressed.

“I think I'll catch a few winks,” I said.

“Don't you want dinner?” Julia asked.

The thought of eating while all those hungry hopeless people waited in the endless line made me feel almost ill.

“Not now,” I said, turning over on my side, away from her, away from them. “You go eat. Keep up your strength.”

“I'll take care of her,” Eberly said.

“Yeah,” I said, staring at the olive-drab fabric of the tent.

It wasn't until the two of them had left that I began to think about stories I had read about American women and white hunters in Africa. Julia was English and Eberly wasn't a white hunter, of course, but he was young and good-looking. A soldier. Just as good as a white hunter. And he's spending more time with Julia than I am, I thought.

I tossed on the cot for what seemed like a few minutes, but when I got up and pushed through the tent flap it was fully dark outside. Stars hung up in the black sky, glittering, almost close enough to touch. I expected to hear a lion roar or wolves howling or something, but there was no sound out in this barren desert except the eternal buzz of the damned insects.

The line had dispersed. Thank god, I thought. They've gone away, or at least they've scattered back to their tents and lean-tos on the other side of the church.

I went into the abandoned church, where the UN soldiers had set up a rough mess hall. Julia and Eberly were sitting together at one of the folding tables, across a corner, close enough to touch hands. Nothing between them but the plastic mess kits we used. We only ate the prepackaged rations that the plane had brought. Boiled our water to hell and back. No local foods for us, although the Pakistani soldiers seemed to be getting along well enough. But they boiled their water, too, and cooked everything to death.

I felt as if I were staggering as I walked up to the table. Eberly shot to his feet, looking almost flustered, if you ask me. Red-faced. Julia smiled warmly at me.

“Feeling better, darling?” she asked.

“I'm okay,” I said, sitting down across the little table from her. “Just tired, that's all.”

But I was thinking, Another seven weeks of this. Seven more weeks. Forty-nine more days of all those people in line and forty-nine more nights of wondering what this Canadian soldier boy is fantasizing about my wife.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
was walking with Max today around lunchtime in the fenced-off area behind the lab. It's starting to get too chilly for Max to stay outdoors for long, even at noontime; chimpanzees can be very susceptible to colds and lung infections.

“So I'll be away for six months or so,” I was saying to Max.

Max knuckle-walked alongside me, then swung up onto his favorite tree. I smiled at him. He needs the exercise. The kids that take care of the animals never give Max enough exercise time.

“I've got to go away for a while,” I said out loud as I signed, Cassie go away.

Max waggled one hand from up in the tree branch: No. No.

“You will miss me, won't you?” I said to him. “I'll miss you, too.”

You stay, Max signed. You good.

My eyes filled with tears. I wanted to clamber up there next to him and give Max a good hug. But one of the caretakers might see; they made enough crude jokes about the two of us already. And sometimes Max forgot how much stronger he was than me; he had bruised my ribs more than once.

They just don't understand. None of them do. I know that Max isn't human. I'm not crazy or weird or anything like that. But Max is trusting and loving in his own way. He's loyal. He doesn't run out on you because you've got cancer. He doesn't go off with some other woman the day you enter the hospital for radiation and chemotherapy.

“There you are!”

I turned and saw Darrell Walters striding busily up the concrete walk that meandered along the grassy enclosed yard; old “Uncle Darrell,” lean, lanky arms and legs pumping away, a stern expression on his long-jawed face.

“I've been looking all over for you,” Darrell said.

I felt a surge of annoyance. I have a right to spend my lunch hour wherever I want to, I grumbled to myself.

“I need your help on this analysis that O'Neill and his technicians are trying to do. They're getting bogged down. They need somebody with your fine touch for these things.”

I looked up at Darrell. He wasn't teasing, not being sarcastic. He meant exactly what he said.

“What's their problem?” I asked.

Darrell glanced up at Max, who was watching us from his tree with sad brown eyes. “It's this nerve-regeneration experiment they're running for Arthur. They're trying to do an analysis of the chemical pathways between neurons and they're swamped with all kinds of spurious signals.”

With a resigned sigh, I signed good-bye to Max. He shook his head, a very human gesture.

Darrell was so much taller than I that I had to crane my neck to look up at him as we started back toward the lab. I asked him, “What equipment are they using?”

“Come on back to Zack's lab. He can show you the whole setup.”

As we came up to the building's rear door I stopped and said, “Darrell, I want you to look out for Max while I'm gone.”

“Me?” He looked startled.

“Please.”

“But the caretakers—”

“They don't exercise him enough. They don't give him any special attention. Max needs companionship. He's not a lab rat or a minihog. He's practically human!”

Darrell just stood there, looking upset.

“And it's starting to get colder. It's going to be winter soon. Max catches cold easily, you know. You've got to look out for him.”

Finally Uncle Darrell broke into a gentle smile. “I'll look out for him. Don't worry about it, Cassie. I'll see that Max gets all the attention he needs.”

“I'll make out a list of what he needs. And the foods he likes best. Treats, you know, like gumdrops; he's crazy about gumdrops.”

“Any special flavor?”

“Spearmint's his favorite. But he likes lemon, too. And raspberry. But don't let him have too many.”

Darrell shook his head, and I could tell exactly what he was thinking. Maybe she'll find some nice guy down there in Mexico and start to feel just as much for a man as she does for the damned dumb chimp. I knew that's what he thought. Just like Arthur and all the rest of them. That shows how much they know about anything.

As we stepped through the door and into the laboratory building, I told Darrell what was really important to me. “Max is not to be used for any experiments while I'm away.”

“Now, wait a minute, Cass. We can't—”

“That's the deal I made with Arthur. Nobody touches Max until I get back. Arthur promised.”

“He did?”

“Yes, he did.” It wasn't a lie, exactly. Arthur had said he had no plans to use Max for anything while I was away.

Darrell shrugged. He knew Arthur even better than I did, so I was certain he never believed for a moment that Arthur would flatly promise to put Max on the retired list while I was away. I was sure Darrell figured that maybe Arthur said he'd try to leave Max alone, or waved his hand and smiled when I asked him not to let anybody use Max until I came back.

“Well,” Darrell said, “you know that we're going to mate him with the female chimps.”

“Yes,” I said. “That's all right.”

A slow smile broke out across his horsey face. “Not such a bad life, at that.”

I didn't dignify his smirk with an answer. But I hoped that Darrell realized I would cause a bundle of trouble if anybody tried to use Max for any experiments while my back was turned. And maybe that was as good as a promise from the boss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
kept telling myself that it's crazy. I'm not a jealous man. And there was nothing to be jealous of.

I turned on that damned stiff, uncomfortable cot and looked at Julia, sleeping soundly on the cot next to me. We were practically touching, we had put our cots so close together. In the darkness of the tent I could barely make out the profile of her form against the slightly lighter side of the tent. I thought of how god-awful awkward it was going to be to try making love on these damned contraptions. Once she felt strong enough again.

Her breathing was deep and regular. That was reassuring. The fever seemed to have disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come. Some doctor. Can't even diagnose your own wife.

And what about yourself? Are you jealous of some Canadian kid in a soldier suit? He does spend a lot of time around Julia; a helluva lot of time. Shouldn't he be out there chasing down the bandits in the hills or inspecting the troops who're protecting this hospital or something?

I turned over cautiously on the creaking cot, worried that it might tip over. I listened for a minute or two longer to Julia's breathing—and for the terrifying sound of a mosquito inside the tent. Nothing, thank god. I bug-bombed the tent every evening, while Julia was outside having dinner.

With Captain Eberly.

I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw that long line of people out there, needing, hurting, waiting for me to do something for them, ease their pain, make their lives better. I could feel their pain, their misery. Every time I started to fall asleep all their stares and moans coalesced into one lone person: Ma, lying haggard and shriveled in her nursing home bed.

It had been almost impossible to get to see her, with so much else to do at the last minute before leaving for the airport. Patients at the hospital. The custodial staff at the medical center was threatening a job action. Inoculations and a ton of paperwork for the UN and the African officials and the damned snotty State Department bureaucrats.

And Arby chewing on my ass every day about driving up to see Ma.

“I'll send a limo for you,” Arthur promised. Threatened, really. “The driver will wait for you and then take you wherever you have to go.”

What good would it do to see Ma? She's dying and there's nothing I can do about it. Not a damned thing. But Arby's pushing and I guess I really should see her before I go. What if she dies while I'm overseas?

Ma looked no different than the last time I had seen her. Emaciated, withered down to wrinkled skin and bones. Somebody had smeared some lipstick on her and brushed what was left of her hair. But that's not Ma, not that dying little bag of bones that can't even smile at me. It's not her. There's nothing left of her. She'd already died, only she wasn't ready to admit it yet.

That
was just like Ma. Strong and gutsy. The mother who fought the whole goddamned New York City school board to get me into the Bronx High School of Science. The mother who sat by my bed every minute when I was sick with hepatitis and the doctors thought I was going to die only she wouldn't let me die because she loved me so much she kept me alive and made me strong again. The mother who told Arby that if Julia wanted me instead of him it wasn't my fault and there was nothing he could do about it.

But this half-paralyzed old lady in this lousy little room—I had to force myself through the doorway and into her room.

Someone had put an extra chair beside her bed. Probably Arthur had phoned ahead to tell them that we'd both be coming.

Ma's eyes fastened on me. I made myself smile and go to her and bend over and kiss her forehead. It felt like kissing a corpse.

“How are you, Ma?” I asked, feeling totally stupid as soon as the words left my lips.

Arby bustled around and pulled the tray with the computer on it over to the bed. I had to scrape my chair across the floor to get it to a position where I could see the display screen.

Painfully, Ma typed, GLAD TO SEE BOTH

“How are you feeling?” Arby asked, his voice strangely low, tight.

OKAY. HOW YOU JESS

“I'm fine,” I said with a heartiness I sure didn't feel. “Going to Africa for a couple of months, working at a UN hospital.”

VERY PROUD OF YOU

That made me smile.

HOW JULIA

“She's fine, Ma. She's going with me.”

WHEN WILL I BE GRANMA

Christ, I should have known she'd bring that up. Nothing but pressure, every time.

But I kept the smile on my face and answered, “Not yet, Ma. We're not ready yet.”

I DONT HAVE LONG

“Oh, you'll be okay,” I said. “You'll be at his bar mitzvah.”

SURE

I looked up at Arby, hovering over Ma. They didn't need an extra chair for him, he wouldn't sit down anyway. Say something, for chrissakes, I begged him silently. Take me off the hook.

But Arby just stood there in his handsome suit and tie, looking as pained and helpless as I felt. If only there was something we could do for her, I thought. Some way to help her. They're standing in line all over the place, waiting for me to help them somehow, all their eyes on me, at the clinic, at the field hospital. Humanitarian of the Year and I can't even help my own mother, for chrissakes, can't help all those frightened, sick, beaten people. AIDS victims, rape victims, addicts and drunks and people starving in Africa and kids dying of dysentery within sight of the big high-rise apartment blocks on the beaches of Rio. And they all want me to cure them, save them, feed them, and make them happy again.