The Immortality Factor (40 page)

“Here is the man who saved my life,” he said to the crowd. A major exaggeration, but what the hell? The mob cheered and applauded as Simmonds laid his hand on my shoulder. He was standing on a little platform behind the podium, so he was almost as tall as I was, as far as the crowd could see.

I stood there with a sappy smile on my face while Simmonds spoke about how the hospital was “doing the Lord's work, toiling in the vineyard among the poor and dispossessed, a beacon of blessed light in the midst of the darkness of violence, crime, and poverty.”

He worked himself up, little by little, and I could feel the crowd getting excited. Couldn't see them, with all those spotlights blazing in my eyes, but I could
feel
them, like a big panting animal out there in the darkness, breathing and stirring, its pulse beating faster and faster as Simmonds stirred them up. He stirred himself up, too. I could see perspiration trickling down his face. Pretty soon he was worming off his jacket and throwing it to the floor of the stage; he loosened his tie, got red in the face.

He went from the good work that the hospital was doing to the evil that surrounded us all. “Every one of us is in the midst of mortal danger. Every minute of the day Satan and his legions are trying to pull us down to everlasting hellfire.”

On and on. I had to stand there at his side while he ladled out fear to the crowd the way a man pours dog food into his pet's dish. Not fear of God; he was scaring them with fear of the devil. To hear him tell it, the devil was after each and every one of us, every minute of the day. Not even our dreams were safe. His words blurred into a long, rhythmic string of cadences that became hypnotic. His voice boomed and I could feel the crowd swaying and sighing to his words.

Me, I never believed in any of that stuff. Our parents weren't religious; the only time they made us go to temple was during the high holy days. I hadn't seen the inside of a synagogue since Ma had her first stroke. Arthur was the same, although—come to think of it—he felt about his research the way some men feel about God. No, not really. What Arby worshipped was success. He didn't want heaven, he just wanted the Nobel Prize.

“The legions of evil are everywhere,” Simmonds ranted on, “even in the laboratories of science where men attempt to tamper with the will of God.”

That woke me up.

“Only a short hour's drive from this very spot, secular scientists are striving to interfere with God's plan of life. They seek to make men immortal, in defiance of God's will. I say to you, they will fail! They will fail just as the heathens of Babylon failed when they tried to build a tower that reached unto heaven. They will fail because these things are not meant for man to know. They will fail because God will strike them down.”

The crowd roared like an angry beast.

“In their blasphemous quest for immortality, these godless men of science are killing babies! They take human fetuses, living human beings, and destroy them so they can harvest their stem cells. And then they clone the cells!”

“Monsters!” roared a voice out of the darkness. Whether he meant the scientists or what they were cloning wasn't clear to me.

“Monsters indeed,” Simmonds agreed. “Who knows what kind of soulless devil's spawn they're creating in their laboratories?”

I was so stunned I didn't know what to do. I guess I should have interrupted, said something, but instead I just stood there like a dummy.

Reverend Simmonds moved on to other matters, but his reference to Arthur's lab rang in my mind like a fire bell. Why the hell did he do that? Did he mean what he said, or was he just using whatever came to his mind to stir up the crowd? Was Julia right; was this little man dangerous?

Sweat was pouring from his face, soaking his shirt.

“Now it is time for you to make your choice,” he bellowed into the mikes. “Are you for good or for evil? Are you ready to make a sacrifice to help further the work of the Lord?”

“Yes! Yes!” they screamed out of the darkness. I began to realize how Hitler could get kids to march their neighbors off to concentration camps.

“Let me see my people!” Simmonds exhorted. “Light your candles of faith.”

Thousands and thousands of candles lit up the darkness like the world's biggest birthday cake. I found out later that Simmonds's people had sold a candle to every person who came to the rally for a buck apiece. We could've run the hospital for a month on the candle money. Now they all lit up, a sea of lights flickering and dancing out there like an ocean of fireflies.

They surged toward the stage, where a solid wall of New York City police stood between them and Simmonds.

“Now is the time to show that you are prepared to sacrifice for the Lord,” Simmonds told them, lowering his voice slightly. The crowd hushed and stilled.

“Now is the time to give generously to this fine hospital, so that this fine doctor can continue the Lord's work here among you.”

The inevitable pitch for money.

“I want to see a sea of green,” Simmonds told them. “As my helpers go among you, fill your hands with cash and raise your hands to the Lord.”

God almighty, I thought, if I were a pickpocket I'd follow this guy wherever he went. I peered into the candlelit crowd and, sure enough, they were digging into their pockets and purses and waving bills over their heads. I couldn't tell if they were ones or bigger, but whatever they were, it must have totaled up to plenty.

When it was all over, it took a full squad of police to get us from the bleachers, through the milling crowd, and out to the buses that waited to drive us to Simmonds's hotel. He was staying at the Marriott this time, down near Grand Central. His people had set up a small reception, small in comparison to the rally, that is. Must have been close to a hundred people in one of the hotel's function rooms. Nonalcoholic drinks, cheese, and fruit. A lot of tuxedos. This was the big-money crowd and Simmonds worked them as expertly as he had the mob in the park. I saw a lot of checkbooks opening up.

I had to stand there with him and chat with just about everyone who was there. Simmonds acted as if we were old friends, almost brothers. Julia stayed by my side, the expression on her face somewhere between worried curiosity and reluctant amusement.

“Tell me more about this scientific work you mentioned,” said one of the men as he shook Simmonds's hand. He was elderly, overweight, his shirt collar at least a size and half too tight for his throat. His wife was rake-thin, and had a pained look on her gaunt face. Bleeding ulcers, she looked like to me.

“Dr. Marshak can explain it better than I can,” Simmonds said, patting the man's hand and moving him and his wife on to me while he turned to smile at the next couple.

The man gave me an expectant look.

“It's research into organ regeneration,” I said, almost mumbled, in fact. “Instead of transplanting organs from a donor, they want to learn how we can grow new organs within our bodies.”

Before the man could reply, his wife snapped, “They're not using animals for experiments, are they?”

“Of course they are,” I answered without thinking. “You wouldn't want to use humans.”

“What kinds of animals?” she asked.

I must have shrugged. “Lab rats, to begin with.”

“Dogs?” she demanded.

“I don't think so,” I said.

But she wasn't satisfied with that. “They always use dogs. Scientists always use poor defenseless little doggies. They
enjoy
torturing the poor things.”

I should have told her she was wrong. I should've told her she was crazy. But instead I just said, “As far as I know, they're not using any dogs.”

Clearly unsatisfied, she dragged her husband away to the fruit punch.

By the time we crawled into a taxi to go home, I was exhausted. I'd put in a regular day at the hospital, then been on my feet all through Simmonds's sermon and the reception afterward. My feet hurt. For the first time in my life, my legs ached from standing all those hours.

Julia seemed tired, too. At least she was quiet all the way back to our apartment.

But as we undressed for bed, she asked me, “Don't you think you should warn Arthur?”

“Warn him? About what?”

“That Simmonds has targeted his lab.”

“Targeted?”

“He practically identified Arthur's laboratory as being the center of all the evil in the universe, didn't he?”

She slipped off her bra, then padded barefoot into the bathroom. I sat on the bed and called out to her, “Don't you think you're exaggerating things?”

“No, I don't.”

I was so tired it was an effort to take off my loafers. I could hear Julia brushing her teeth. I slumped back on the bed and closed my eyes. Falling asleep instantly is an important survival tactic for practicing doctors.

But Julia wasn't ready for sleep yet. “I told you he was dangerous and now he's attacking your brother.”

My eyes popped open. “He was just working up the crowd, for Pete's sake. Just saying whatever came into his mind.”

“I don't think so,” Julia said as she pulled the sheet back and climbed into bed. “I think he'll use Arthur as a target to whip up his followers into a frenzy.”

“And do what? Burn down the lab? Don't be silly.”

“Jesse, dearest, he's dealing with very disturbed people. Don't you realize that? Look at that elderly woman at the reception. She'd rather see experiments on human beings than on dogs. Really!”

“You're getting worked up over nothing,” I said, even though I worried that she might be right.

“Perhaps. I certainly hope you're right. All the same, shouldn't you call Arthur and warn him?”

She was still trying to get Arby and me together. I didn't go for it. “Arby can take care of himself.”

“I wonder,” Julia said, sounding totally unconvinced.

I turned toward her in the bed and stroked her thigh.

“I thought you were tired,” she said.

“Not that tired.” I went to kiss her.

But Julia put a finger against my mouth. “Lips that have not touched toothpaste shall never touch mine,” she said.

So I brushed my teeth and brought the whole tube of toothpaste back to bed and squirted it all over her naked body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Y
our name, please?”

“Professor Doctor Xenophon Zapapas.”

A hint of suppressed tittering rippled through the hearing room. Graves silenced the audience with a stern look.

“Your affiliation?” asked Rosen.

“I am head of the department of molecular biology at the University of Athens and a visiting professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa.”

Zapapas looked like the Hollywood version of a European scientist: he was small, dark, and intense. Dressed almost formally in a striped gray suit with matching vest and precisely knotted cravat, he appeared to be something of a dandy. His face was lean, with large expressive dark eyes and a pencil-slim black mustache, pointed little goatee, and thinning slicked-back hair that glistened in the overhead lights.

Arthur Marshak sat in the front row of the hearing room, watching Zapapas intently. He knew the man by reputation only: Zapapas put out a steady stream of research papers that were all variations of the same basic work he had
done more than ten years earlier. He kept on publishing, and journals kept on accepting his papers, even though he had apparently not had a new idea in a decade.

When the National Academy of Sciences had agreed to convene this science court, Arthur had provided Graves and his staff with the names of more than a dozen knowledgeable researchers who could be called on to testify to the court about their evaluations of the scientific evidence he had prepared. Zapapas had not been among them. Rosen, as chief examiner, had gone out and dragooned his own experts.

Sitting at his place alongside the three judges, Rosen asked, “Professor Zapapas, can you give us your estimation of the research done so far on organ regeneration at Grenford Laboratory?”

“Yes, of course.”

As the professor launched into his scientific testimony, Arthur noticed that Senator Kindelberger's eyes soon began to glaze over. The senator had shown up on time for this morning's session and taken his place at the front row of desks, on the opposite side of the judges from Rosen.

Zapapas wanted to show slides to illustrate the points he was going to make. Clerks duly lowered the window drapes and set up a slide projector on the table where Zapapas sat. The judges, Rosen, and Senator Kindelberger all came down from their seats at the front desks and took chairs in front of the jury, facing the projection screen that now covered the chamber's side wall.

Except, Arthur noticed, that Kindelberger walked quietly through the darkened room and out the door at the rear. He's had enough, Arthur said to himself. The reporters have noted he's here; now he can duck out without being bored by the science.

But then, as Zapapas droned on about his own work in fetal tissue transplants, Arthur saw Jesse quietly get up from his seat on the front bench and tiptoe out of the chamber, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J
esse felt nervous, apprehensive as he walked into the air-conditioned lobby of the Dirkson Building. Like a little boy sneaking into an X-rated movie.

I shouldn't even have bothered going to the hearing this morning, he said to himself. Zapapas and a couple of other so-called experts were scheduled to give their testimony all day. Instead of putting in an appearance at the hearing, I could have slept late for a change.

After going through the metal detector in the lobby, he asked for Senator Kindelberger at the information desk. The security guard phoned, then told him that someone would be down shortly to escort him. Jesse clipped the plastic badge the guard handed him onto his jacket's breast pocket.