The Immortality Factor (48 page)

“You sounded distressed on the telephone, Arthur,” Graves said as he gestured me to one of the heavy, upholstered wing chairs by the windows. He took the other one, across from the little rosewood sherry table.

“I am,” I said, a feeling of relaxation easing over me. Graves had an air of the kindly old grandfather about him. He was spare, lean. There was nothing left of his hair but a white fringe around his bald dome. His face was pouchy, sagging around a hooked turtle's nose. But he exuded an air of quiet calm, of warm sensibility, that made me feel . . . I guess the best word is
safe.

“You've been getting quite a bit of publicity lately. You'll be on the cover of
Time
soon, I expect.” His eyes, magnified by his bifocals, told me he was amused by it all.

“Lord, I hope not,” I replied.

Leaning forward slightly, Graves asked, “It's difficult to assess the work you're doing from these news accounts. How is it going? How far have you come?”

We spent the next hour or so discussing the regeneration work. He was surprisingly up on it, for a man who'd spent the past decade or so in administration rather than research. Slowly it dawned on me. He didn't have to say it, but I realized he was vitally interested in what we were doing because he was getting to the age where he could expect his organs to begin to wear out. As far as I knew he was spry and healthy, but still—the clock keeps ticking.

“My mother went blind from glaucoma,” he said, his voice soft, almost musing. “Of course, we have better treatment for it now, but still it's something I have to worry about.”

I had never thought about regenerating parts of the eye. “That's something we ought to look into,” I said.

He broke into an amused grin. “Was that a pun, Arthur?”

We laughed together.

Then I started telling him about Ransom and Reverend Simmonds and all the pressures the news media were putting on us.

“And now I've been visited by two lawyers from NIH,” I said. “It looks like the government's becoming very interested in our program.”

“Can't say I blame them,” he said.

“All they can do is get in the way,” I said.

“Yes, you're undoubtedly right. But, Arthur, do you have any conception of the magnitude of your work? If you successfully grow new organs in people . . . why, it's earthshaking. Revolutionary.”

“Some people want to stop the work.”

“I have no doubt of it. Furthermore, I'm sure that they'll try to hedge you around with government restrictions. Perhaps they'll even get the Congress to pass laws to stop this kind of research altogether. Things like that have been done before, you know, with fetal tissue transplants, remember?”

I nodded gloomily. It had started to rain outside, gray and miserable and wet and cold. Just the way I felt inside.

“For what it's worth,” Graves said, “no one has come to the academy to request a scientific assessment.”

“They will, sooner or later.”

He made a tiny little motion of his head, barely half a shake. “Don't be surprised if your enemies avoid the academy altogether. The last thing they want is a scientific study that says you're on the right track.”

I sank back in the worn old plush chair. “Maybe I ought to ask for a study from the academy.”

Graves nodded slightly, pressing his fingertips together before his lips. “Perhaps I have a better idea, Arthur.”

“What is it?”

“It's an idea that's been around for some time, but it's never really been tried. Not in its full flower.”

“What?”

“A science court.”

I had heard something about that years ago. But nothing had ever come of it.

“A courtroom procedure,” Graves said, “where we examine strictly the scientific aspect of a question of public policy. Strip away all the politics, all the
emotional rhetoric and personal opinions. Stick strictly to the available scientific evidence. A jury of your scientific peers. You present your evidence and the jury makes an informed decision about whether or not your research is valid.”

That could be an end run around all the bureaucrats and politicians who'd want to investigate my work and try to stop it for one reason or another. It could generate enough media attention—and the right kind of media attention—to finally get the truth through to the general public.

“I like it,” I said. “A science court. Can we do it?”

Graves beamed like a happy grandfather. “I believe I can bring the necessary people together, if you're willing to go along with the idea.”

“Certainly,” I assured him. “I think it's a fine idea.”

I really did. Then.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

S
tate your name, please, and your affiliation.”

“Wilson K. Potter, professor emeritus, molecular biology department, Columbia University.”

From his seat on the front row, Arthur saw Potter in profile as the old man sat at the witness table. He's had a stroke, Arthur realized. The half of Potter's face he could see was drawn, tense, the corner of his eye and mouth pulled slightly downward. His cane slipped from his fingers as he tried to rest it against the table and clattered to the floor. Potter glared at it momentarily, then left it there at his feet.

Rosen got up from his seat and walked slowly around the judges' desks as he said, “Professor Potter, it's fair to say that you are one of the pioneers in the field of molecular biology, is it not?”

“I suppose it is,” said Potter.

“Dr. Marshak was one of your assistant professors, at one point in time?”

“He was, until he left for greener pastures.”

Arthur's guts clenched. He could feel his face flame with anger.

Smiling at the old man, Rosen asked, “Professor Potter, are you still active in the field?”

“I am retired. But I still maintain an interest in the field. I read the journals. I write an occasional paper.”

“You wrote a paper on the subject of organ regeneration, did you not?”

“Yes, I did.”

Glancing at Arthur, then turning to face the jury, Rosen asked, “Could you give the jury a brief summation of that paper, please?”

“I assume they have all read it,” said Potter.

“It was only entered into the file of testimony last night, when we learned that Professor Phillips would not be able to appear here.”

“Anyone who wants to keep up in the field should have read my paper when it was first published,” Potter said testily.

“Yes, sir, I'm sure,” Rosen said smoothly, “but a brief summation would be very helpful, sir.”

Potter huffed and turned painfully in his chair to look at the jury. “As you know, even if you read only the abstract, I proved that any attempts to grow new organs inside a human body are doomed to failure. There is no way on God's green earth that it can be done.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
rouble is, Arthur said one thing when he meant something else. He told me to go ahead and set up the protocol for using Max, but I could see that all he was doing was putting off the decision to use the chimp.

He was hung up over Cassie. He knew she'd go ballistic and she was prone to cancer and her emotional condition was tied in to her autoimmune system so strong that he was afraid if she got cranked up about Max it'd knock her immune system down and she'd end up with another bout of cancer.

That wasn't my problem. My problem was that I had hit a dead end with regentide unless and until I could do some experiments on one or more chimps. Max was the only one we had and I couldn't see stooging around for a year or more waiting for another batch of 'em. I mean, who knows who else was working along the same lines we were? We had all this mother-loving publicity from that butthead evangelist, but sixteen dozen other labs could be working along the same lines I was and not say a peep about it. Just stay cool and quiet and beat us at our own game.

I had tried borrowing chimps from other labs, but no go. Everybody knew
it took tons of red tape to bring new animals in from Africa or get newborns from a breeding facility. To make matters worse there was this strain of AIDS hitting the African chimp population and, believe me,
that
put a stop to importing, but good. And to borrowing, too. Nobody wanted to part with the animals they had.

So it was Max. Had to be. Nobody else in sight. I knew Arthur wanted to push ahead as fast as I did, but still he hemmed and hawed. Scared of Cassie. I don't think he gave a shit about the chimp itself. It was Cassie that was bothering him.

I had to have help. I went to Darrell Walters, the grand old man of the staff. If anybody could convince Arthur, it was Darrell.

“I don't know,” he said when I bounced the idea off him. “Cassie's awfully attached to Max.”

I wished I could use Cassie. It would cause less trouble.

But I said to Darrell, “I won't hurt Max. We don't have to do anything major. Just regrow a finger, maybe. Just to show that we can produce a strain of regentide that works on chimps.”

We were in Darrell's junk shop of an office. He was perched on his barstool, swiveling back and forth slightly like he was swaying in the wind. Looked like an older Howdy Doody, all arms and legs and that long horse face of his.

“Arthur's already thinking about how we can do human trials without having the government come down on us like an avalanche,” Darrell said, trying to avoid making a decision.

“We won't get to human trials if we can't get good results from chimps,” I pointed out. “Or one chimp, at least.”

“We've got plenty of monkeys.”

“We've got plenty of yeast molds, too,” I snapped. “What the hell does that have to do with it? We can't move on to human trials without solid evidence from chimps. You know that!”

It was a no-brainer of a decision, yet still Darrell just sat there, swiveling back and forth, back and forth, like some brain-dead idiot who can't make up his mind.

“Tell you what,” he said finally. “Let me make a few phone calls, pull a few strings, call in a few favors. Maybe I can get you a couple of chimps.”

“If Arthur can't do it . . .”

“Let me see what I can do,” Darrell said, and he winked at me. He actually closed one eye in what I guess he thought was a neat trick.

I was disgusted. But I went back to my office to think the whole problem through. One thing I learned as a kid: a little thinking can save a lot of blood, sweat, toil, and tears. Look before you leap, my stepfather always told me. Out on the streets in the neighborhood where I grew up, you looked both ways before
you stepped out of the house. No telling who might be out there ready to give you a knuckle sandwich just for your lunch money.

I had been buddying up to Max for weeks, bringing him candy and treats, getting him used to seeing me. Okay, so it was a rat-fink thing to do. Better than having the chimp bite off one of
my
fingers, huh? Arthur said he would okay using Max, but I knew he'd try to figure out a way to keep Cassie from going into orbit.

If I could bring Darrell around I could get Arthur's okay to work on Max. The boss trusted Darrell, and besides, Darrell could godfather Cassie when she got back. But Darrell was sitting on the pot and I figured he'd stay there for weeks, maybe months. How to move Darrell? Vince Andriotti. Darrell and Vince had been two of Arthur's original staffers. Hired them when he started the lab. The rest of his researchers had been Arthur's grad students from Columbia, at first. But he had taken on Vince and Darrell at the beginning and regarded them as equals, almost, not former students.

Okay. How to get to Vince? And here I had to laugh. His daughter Tina, of course. What could be better? I liked her. This would give me an excuse to get as close to her as possible.

So I set out to win Tina Andriotti's heart and mind. It would even be fun, I thought.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
t took a surprising amount of politicking to get the science court out of the realm of dreamy ideas and into the real, workaday world. Even with Graves pushing for it, the first responses we got from the National Academy and most of the scientists I broached the idea to was—well, tepid, to say the least.

“It'll never work,” was the kindest response I got.

“Arthur, you can't expect to keep a public trial restricted to nothing but the scientific facts,” said the chancellor of the University of Texas, an old friend from back in the days when we were both students at Columbia.

“Of course we can,” I insisted. He was in New York to meet with his university's financial advisors on Wall Street. I had invited him to have a quiet drink at a cocktail lounge in the Waldorf. I wanted his support for the science court; he could be very influential, either for or against.

His hair was still dark, and he had a fine tennis-player's tan. As chancellor of the university, he was involved far more with fund-raising and politics than with academic matters.

“I think the science court is an idea whose time has come,” I said loftily.

He shook his head. “You might just as well simply mail out all your reports to the people you want to serve on your jury and have them write their evaluations back to you.”

“No, no!” I said. “If we set this up as a judicial procedure they can call countering witnesses, we can cross-examine each other.”

“Strictly on the scientific merits of the question?” His voice dripped skepticism.