The Immortality Factor (67 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
rthur felt a hollow chill of foreboding inside him as he rode alone in the limousine to dinner with W. Christian Johnston. The sudden invitation to have dinner with Omnitech's CEO, coming immediately after the jury's lethal decision, sounded more like a summons than a request.

The invitation had been waiting for him at his hotel when Arthur got there after a grueling, exhausting struggle to fight his way through the reporters crowding the courtroom at the end of the trial. Arthur still felt numb, dead inside, from the decision. The trial's killed me, he told himself. I've committed suicide, just like Cassie.

The Cosmos Club was quiet this midsummer evening, its big, genteelly elegant dining room almost empty. The maître d' brought Arthur straight to Johnston's corner table, well away from the few other diners. The CEO was already there, draining a tumbler of whiskey while a waiter placed a fresh one at his elbow. Johnston put his drink down and got to his feet, put out his big hand for Arthur to shake. But the expression on his dark face was grim, ominous.

“You're getting to be a famous man,” said the CEO. “You're on the evening news again.”

“I know,” Arthur muttered as the waiter held his chair.

“They're watching you in Japan, too,” Johnston added as they both sat down. To the waiter he said, “Bring my friend here a glass of white wine.”

“What brings you down to Washington?” Arthur heard himself ask. Stupid question, he thought.

“Oh, business,” Johnston said vaguely, not looking directly at Arthur. “Lawyers, lobbyists, all that crap.”

“Not the trial?”

“And the trial,” Johnston admitted.

Arthur decided to go straight to the heart of things. “How will the jury's decision affect the merger talks?”

Johnston's eyes widened for a flash of a moment. Then he recovered and said dismally, “Just about kills the deal.”

“That's what we were afraid of.”

The waiter brought a tulip glass of chardonnay. Johnston waited for him to leave, then hunched closer to Arthur and muttered, “There's still a chance of putting the merger together. But it's gonna be tough—very damned tough.”

His stomach knotting, Arthur mumbled, “If there's anything I can do . . .”

“This goddamned trial was a mistake, Arthur. A big mistake.”

“You knew about it from the beginning. I kept you informed every step of the way.”

Johnston huffed. “You made it sound like a scientific exercise. You didn't tell me you'd be on C-SPAN every damned day.”

“I didn't know the trial was going to be subverted the way it's been. My idea was—”

“Your idea,” Johnston snapped, “has turned into a goddamned booby trap. They sandbagged you, Arthur.”

“But the scientific evidence is on our side. I'm still convinced of that.”

“Yeah, maybe. That's what you keep telling me. But it doesn't make a rat's ass worth of difference as far as the Japs are concerned. Or the Europeans, either.”

“Now that the trial is over—”

“The legal staff tells me you might be facing criminal charges, for chrissakes!”

“That's . . .” Arthur fished for a word. “Unlikely,” he finished lamely.

“Likely enough to throw everything into the toilet, pal.”

He's really angry, Arthur said to himself. He's sore as hell. At me.

The waiter brought menus. Johnston laid his on the table and took another slug of his whiskey. Arthur had no appetite at all, but found himself picking up his menu as if it could shield him from the CEO's anger.

“The stock price is gonna drop like a lead balloon,” Johnston muttered. “The goddamned Europeans are licking their fuckin' chops.”

“We could do human trials overseas.”

Johnston scowled at him. “Not if you're in jail, Art.”

“That's nonsense!”

“Yeah, maybe, but I've gotta face that possibility. You ought to be worrying about it, too.”

“They can't possibly bring criminal charges against me. I'm not responsible for Cassie's suicide.”

Johnston took another swallow of whiskey, then held the glass high and rattled the ice cubes in it. The waiter came over instantly, asking, “Another, sir?”

“Damned right,” said Johnston.

Arthur had hardly touched his wine. He looked into Johnston's bloodshot eyes and said, “You know as well as I do that there's no way anyone can bring criminal charges against me. Why are you worrying about a problem that doesn't exist?”

“They can tie you up, Arthur. There's going to be a criminal investigation into that girl's suicide, did you know that? They're reopening the case up in Connecticut.”

“That doesn't mean—”

“Kindelberger's people are already talking about a Senate investigation of the regeneration work. You'll be hearing from the NIH soon, I bet, and probably the goddamned FDA, too. Who knows who the hell else is going to stick their muddy boots into this?”

And he's blaming me for it, Arthur thought. He's convinced all this is my fault.

“Maybe you're right,” Arthur said aloud.

“Huh?”

“It's all my fault. I wanted to bring this new capability to fruition; I wanted to show the world we could regenerate organs and limbs. And it's turned into a world-class mess.”

The waiter arrived with Johnston's refill. He brought the glass to his lips, but instead of drinking he put it down gently on the table.

The CEO leaned back in his chair. “Take a look around the room,” he said, more softly. “How many black men do you see? Outside the hired help, that is.”

Puzzled, Arthur scanned the mostly empty dining room. Johnston was the only black seated at a table.

“You know how I got here, Arthur? By being as tough as anybody in the woods. And tougher than most of 'em. I'm not a token nigger, Arthur. I
worked
my way here. I make the tough decisions.”

“I don't see—”

“We're selling the lab,” Johnston said. “The executive committee's okayed the decision and the full board will rubber-stamp it at the next meeting.”

For a moment Arthur thought his heart stopped. This was what he had been dreading, what he had feared was the reason behind Johnston's anger.

“I wanted you to hear it straight from me,” the CEO said, his voice flat and murderously calm. “We can't afford to keep you, Arthur. You've become a liability to the corporation.”

“Who's the buyer?” Arthur heard his own voice as if it came from a thousand miles away.

“A little outfit in Singapore. You never heard of 'em; they're not in the biomedical field yet. But they want to move in that direction and they're offering a good price for your lab.”

“We'll stay in Connecticut?”

Johnston shrugged. “That's up to them. For the time being, I suppose.”

“Most of my people won't want to go to Singapore.”

Another shrug. “That's not my problem. Maybe it isn't even yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“They don't want
you,
Arthur. They want your research staff and your facilities and all the data you've amassed so far on your ongoing programs. But they've got somebody else in mind to run the lab for them.”

It hit Arthur like a high-power bullet. Shock and pain and an endless moment of rattled bewilderment. He thought he hadn't heard Johnston correctly. He thought it was all a joke, a mistake, a blunder.

“I'm sorry, Art,” said Johnston, avoiding Arthur's eyes. “I don't like it any more than you do.”

Arthur was about to ask who was going to replace him, but suddenly it didn't matter to him. Suddenly nothing at all mattered. Without another word he got up from the table, knocking his menu fluttering to the floor, and strode out of the dining room. Johnston stared at his departing back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
rthur spent the most miserable weekend of his life at the lab, alone, even though the lab was far from empty. But he would talk to no one, not Darrell Walters or Zack O'Neill or anyone. He sat for hour after hour in his office with the door shut and the phone on its answering machine.

He couldn't face any of them. Couldn't bring himself to tell them that the lab had been sold and he was fired. Couldn't admit to the men and women who had worked with him for so many years that he was out, finished, dead. They'll have a new boss soon. I'll be gone.

Everything I've ever really wanted has always been taken away from me, he told himself. Julia. My professorship at Columbia. My chance for a Nobel. And now this.

Phyllis was supposed to be off for the weekend, of course, but she showed up late Saturday afternoon and broke in briefly on Arthur's solitude with motherly advice to “get something to eat and a good night's sleep.” Arthur had no appetite and he spent the night roaming the building's corridors and laboratories. If he slept at all it was in his big desk chair, fitfully.

Sunday morning, bleary-eyed, he drove home before anyone else showed up, before the sun rose, then shaved, showered, changed into a fresh shirt and slacks, and—after an hour or two of wandering through the empty house—got back in his Infiniti and returned to the lab.

At his office, the phone machine showed sixteen messages. He ignored them all and sank into his desk chair, uncertain of what to do next.

I've got to tell them, he said to himself. I've got to find the courage to tell my people what's happened. They should hear it from me, not from Sid Lowenstein or some other corporate official.

Lowenstein. Arthur thought of the comptroller's role in dumping the lab. He's happy about it, I'll bet. And Nancy. She must be ecstatic.

The phone rang. His private line. Only a handful of people knew that number. Maybe it's Jesse, he thought.

Arthur let it ring. Twice. Three times. Four.

Exasperated, he grabbed the phone. “Hello,” he snapped.

“Arthur?” Pat Hayward's voice.

He took a shuddering breath. “Hello, Pat.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She hesitated. “I was thinking—maybe you'd like to come over here to Old Saybrook. Unwind a little. We could rent a sailboat and then have dinner at dockside.”

“I don't think so, Pat.”

A longer hesitation. “There's a rumor . . . that Omnitech has sold your laboratory to some Pacific Rim company.”

Christ! he thought. The news is out already.

“Arthur? Are you—”

“I've got to go, Pat. There's a mountain of work here for me to finish.”

“Is it true?”

“Yes,” he admitted. And hung up before she could ask another question.

 

I
t was a bad weekend for Jesse and Julia, too.

As soon as his cross-examination had ended, Jesse had left the hearing and taken a shuttle flight back to New York. He and Julia spent the waning hours of the day in their apartment, trying to console one another, trying to make an adjustment in their thinking, in their lives, that would never be fully made. Trying to imagine what life was going to be like with a hopelessly crippled baby.

That evening, as they picked listlessly at the dinner they had prepared together, the phone rang. It was Elwood Faber with the news of the jury's verdict.

“Congratulations,” Jesse said tonelessly.

“It's a victory for us, I guess,” said Faber. “But not total victory. They're
going to go ahead with more experiments on animals, you can bet. We'll have to work hard to stop them altogether.”

“Leave me out of it,” Jesse snapped.

For several moments Faber said nothing. Jesse could hear him breathing into the phone, like an obscene caller. Then, “I figured you'd drop out. The reverend thought you'd stay with us, but I figured you wouldn't.”

“I've done enough,” said Jesse. “I've got my own problems to deal with.”

“Sure,” Faber replied. “Well, you know how to reach us, if and when.”

“Yep.” Jesse hung up the phone.

In the dark of midnight, as they lay sleeplessly next to each other, Jesse whispered into the shadows, “Even if I hadn't opposed Arby, the jury would've voted the way they did. It didn't make sense to rush into human trials with so little evidence.”

“Of course, darling,” Julia whispered back.

“It's not my fault.”

“No one has said that it is, dear.”

“
He
blames it all on me. You can bet on that.”

Julia turned slightly in the bed toward him. “Jesse, dearest, you are projecting. You blame yourself and you're telling yourself that it's Arthur who blames you.”

He couldn't think of what to say.

Julia went on, “You did what you thought was right. It's not your fault that the trial went the way it did. It's not your fault that our baby is going to be handicapped.”

Handicapped, Jesse thought. What a bloodless word. What a way of shifting the reality into a bland antiseptic compartment. That's what we do: when something's too horrible to think about we find more comfortable words to use. The baby won't be crippled, he'll be handicapped. He won't be a hydrocephalic mentally retarded kid, he'll be intellectually challenged.

“It's not your fault,” Julia repeated, emphasizing each word in turn. “No more than it is mine.”

“I know,” he whispered. “But still . . .”

She waited, and when he didn't go on, she put one arm around him and leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Christ, it hurts,” Jesse said. He broke into tears and Julia began to cry with him. They cried for a long, long time.