The Immortality Factor (68 page)

Saturday was gloomy and gray, but at least that night they both slept, exhausted physically as well as emotionally. Sunday morning broke bright and almost cheerful. When Jesse awoke he found that Julia was already up and about. He smelled coffee and bacon aromas coming from the kitchen.

By the time he had showered and pulled on a robe, she had breakfast on the table. Julia smiled at her husband as he came into the tiny alcove that served as their dining area. She was dressed in a loose-fitting sun suit.

“Are we going to the beach?” Jesse asked.

“Hardly,” she said. “But the way I'm growing I won't be able to wear this outfit much longer, and it's a warm day, so I thought I'd throw it on.”

The devils of the nights before seemed banished. Julia was as bright and perky as he had ever seen her. Yet he knew the darkness was still there, beneath it all. He felt it inside himself. It'll never go away, Jesse told himself. Never.

“Bacon and eggs,” he said as he sat at their little glass-topped table. “The cholesterol special.”

“The eggs have no yolks and the bacon is made of turkey meat,” Julia said. “No cholesterol at all, practically.”

He tried to kid with her, and she gave a good appearance of bantering back with him. But as he finished his decaffeinated coffee Julia grew serious again.

“You really should phone him, you know,” she said.

“Who? Arby?”

“Of course.”

His first instinct was, We don't need his help.

But before he could say a word, Julia went on, “He must be devastated by the results of the trial.”

“You're feeling sorry for
him
?”

“He could use a friendly hand, I expect.”

Jesse almost laughed at her. “He'd bite my hand, most likely.”

“I rather doubt that.”

He gave her a suspicious look.

“Jesse, darling,” said Julia, coming around the table to sit on his lap, “we simply cannot go on forever with you being jealous of your brother. There is nothing for you to be jealous about.”

“I'm not jealous of him!”

“Then why are you reluctant to phone him?”

“Because he'll be sore at me.”

“So what is he going to do, say naughty words to you? He
needs
you, Jesse. Can't you see that?”

“And we need him, is that it?”

“No, we don't need him. We have each other. He has no one. No one except his brother.”

“Arby's never needed anybody,” Jesse grumbled. “He's always been at the top of the mountain, all by himself.”

“He needs you now,” Julia insisted, “and if you're going to let jealousy stand between you and your brother I shall nag you nigh unto shrewdom.”

He sat there with her in his lap, his arms around her waist, their noses almost touching.

“There is no reason for you to be jealous of Arthur,” Julia repeated firmly.
“None whatsoever. There never was and there never will be. He's the one who needs you, right now.”

“Maybe,” Jesse conceded.

She kissed him on the lips and got up from his lap. Jesse, still feeling slightly uneasy, went to the phone on the kitchen wall and pecked out Arthur's number.

“No answer,” he said after seven rings.

“He's probably at his laboratory.”

Jesse tried the lab and got Arthur's answering machine. He left a brief message, feeling relieved that he had done his duty, as Julia conceived of it, and still hadn't had to face his brother.

 

P
hyllis came in early Monday morning and immediately started coffee brewing. She peeked into Arthur's inner office and found him asleep in his desk chair, a day's growth of white stubble on his face, his sports shirt wrinkled and soggy with sweat.

She went back to her own desk, picked up the phone, and touched the intercom key. She heard the phone on Arthur's desk chirp once, twice . . .

“Yes?” His voice sounded groggy, thick with phlegm.

“Good morning,” Phyllis said cheerfully. “Ready for some coffee?”

He cleared his throat. “Give me ten minutes.”

“There's a couple of clean shirts in the top drawer to the right of the lavatory sink,” said Phyllis.

“I know.”

As he shaved, Arthur could smell the coffee. Staring at his image in the mirror, he thought, Okay, you've spent a weekend feeling sorry for yourself. Where do you go from here?

He called Walters, O'Neill, and Vince Andriotti to his office, bracing himself to tell them his news. They had already heard about the trial's outcome.

Before Arthur could work up the nerve to tell them, Darrell asked, “So what's the government going to do about this now?”

Andriotti grumbled, “They'll get involved, one way or the other.”

“They could help get us more chimps,” Zack O'Neill said hopefully. “NIH has a whole breeding colony set up out in California.”

“That's a possibility.”

“They're gonna want to set up protocols,” Andriotti said, from his usual perch straddling one of the chairs from the conference table.

“Red tape.” Darrell wrinkled his nose.

“They'll slow us down,” said Zack.

“Wait a minute,” Arthur said. “I've got something to tell you.”

Andriotti cocked an eyebrow at him. “You mean, about the lab being sold?”

“We heard about it Saturday,” said Darrell.

Arthur blinked with surprise.

“It doesn't make any difference,” Zack O'Neill added.

“But the new owners don't want me to stay,” Arthur said.

“Fuck them,” Andriotti snapped.

“We're not staying, either,” said Darrell. “We're forming our own company.”

“We've been hashing it out all weekend,” Zack said. “Got a luncheon appointment with some risk capital people.”

Grinning toothily, Darrell said, “And I've got a cousin in the banking business who thinks he might be able to loan us enough to get us started.”

Arthur sank back in his chair. “That's . . . great,” he said, feeling breathless.

“Only if you come along with us,” said Darrell.

“Now, wait,” Arthur said. “I appreciate your loyalty, but—”

“None of us knows how to be a boss,” said Andriotti.

“Or wants to be,” Darrell added.

“It's not that simple,” Arthur heard himself reply. “I've got an awful lot of baggage attached to me. You'd be better off without me.”

“We need you,” Zack said.

“They're talking about a criminal investigation into Cassie's suicide,” Arthur pointed out.

“We need you,” Darrell repeated. “The money people won't talk to us unless you're part of the deal.”

Arthur stared at them. “You think the four of us—”

“What four of us?” Andriotti snapped. “We've got everybody in on this.”

“Practically the whole lab.”

“Including Phyllis,” Darrell said, as if it were a trump card.

“Everybody?” Arthur felt almost giddy.

“Now, what we really need you for,” Darrell said quite seriously, “is to go to Omnitech's corporate people and tell them we won't work for the company they want to sell us to.”

“We'll buy the lab ourselves,” Zack said. “Set up our own company.”

“Do you think we really could?” Arthur asked, trembling inside.

“If you can sweet-talk the suits into selling the lab to us instead of the Orientals,” Andriotti said.

Arthur took a deep breath. He sat up straighter in his desk chair. “I'll talk them into it. If they don't like it we can buy some space elsewhere and set up shop there. Let Lowenstein sell the empty buildings to Singapore.”

“Want to come to lunch with us and talk to the money people?”

Arthur grinned at them. “Damned right I do!”

And he was thinking, We'll push ahead as hard and fast as we can with animal experiments. I'll get Graves at the National Academy to start leaning on NIH to loan us some of their chimps. Zack will have to get into the molecular
structure of regentide and see what can be done about making it more specific so we can stop generating tumors.

The three men got to their feet and left Arthur's office. Alone, he pictured what the next weeks and months would bring. I'll have to deal with Kindelberger's committee and the investigation into Cassie's suicide and god knows what else. But they're not going to stop us. Slow us down a lot, okay, that can't be helped. But they're not going to stop us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
fter the three researchers filed out of Arthur's office, Phyllis popped her head through the doorway. “Your brother called yesterday, left a message to call him back.”

Arthur felt his hackles rise.

“I've already phoned the hospital,” she said, her face almost perfectly blank. “They're paging him.”

“But . . .” Arthur wanted to say that he had no intention of speaking to Jesse, but Phyllis fixed him with her no-nonsense gaze.

He picked up the phone grudgingly. Phyllis nodded as if satisfied and left his office.

For a few moments all Arthur could hear was a background murmur, several people talking. Then a slight clatter and:

“Hello. Dr. Marshak here.”

“Jesse, it's me. Arthur.”

“Arby?”

“You left a message yesterday?” Arthur's throat felt tight, as if he could barely get the words out.

“Yeah. I, uh—I wanted to tell you I'm sorry things turned out the way they did.”

“Sure.” You helped them turn out that way, Arthur fumed silently.

Jesse's voice dropped a notch. “I really am sorry, Arby. I know how much you wanted to push ahead and—”

“How's Julia?” he asked, cutting off that line of conversation. It could only lead to a fight.

“She's fine.”

“I mean emotionally. This must've hit her terribly hard. Both of you,” he added.

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry that it happened.”

“So am I.”

“But you're going through with it? She's going to have the baby?”

“That's what she wants.”

“And what do you want, Jess?”

A long pause. Then, “I guess I want what she wants, Arby.”

“You love her that much?”

“Yeah, I do.”

And Arthur realized that he didn't. He could never do what Jesse was going to do. Jesse really is ready to give his whole life to her, Arthur told himself. He's ready to make all the sacrifices that the baby will require. For her. For Julia.

“God,” he said into the phone, “I could never do that.”

“I don't know if I can,” Jesse replied, his voice shaking slightly. “Not really.”

“You can. You've got a lot more strength than I do, Jesse. A lot more strength.”

“I wish I believed that.”

“You'll see,” Arthur said. And he knew it was true. “The two of you together can deal with anything that the world throws at you. You'll see.”

“I hope so.”

Jesse's voice sounded choked with tears, and Arthur's own vision was blurring slightly.

“Arby? Are you going ahead with the regeneration work?”

Arthur had to clear his throat again. “Yes. Certainly. As far and as fast as the goddamned government will allow.”

“Could I—I mean, would it be all right if I stuck my nose in once in a while? Just sort of looked over what you're doing?”

Arthur straightened up in his chair. “Of course, Jess! I'd be happy to have you working with us again.”

“I don't know how much time I can put into it.”

Nodding, Arthur said, “Jesse, you know that it's going to take years before we'll be able to help your baby. Even if we could go as fast as we want to, I don't think . . .” He stopped, unable to say the words.

“I know,” Jesse said. “But I'd still like to help, if I can.”

Beaming, Arthur said, “I'll send a limo to drive you up here whenever you want.”

Jesse said, “I can drive myself.”

Arthur wondered if he'd have access to a limousine once the lab's staff owned the laboratory. But he said, “With somebody driving you, you can read our latest reports while you're on the way up here.”

His brother laughed. “Christ, Arby, you're trying to make a plutocrat out of me.”

“Just being efficient.”

Another voice interrupted, muffled but sounding urgent.

“They need me upstairs,” Jesse said. “I've got to run.”

“Call me when you want to come up here,” Arthur said.

“Julia sends her love.”

“I'll come down and take you out to dinner later in the week. Got a lot to tell you.”

“Great. 'Bye, now.”

“Say hello to Julia for me.”

The phone went dead. Arthur realized that “Julia sends her love” was nothing more than a polite conversational phrase. The words meant almost nothing. And they didn't hurt.

He took a deep breath, as if testing to see if he'd been injured. No broken bones, he said to himself. No internal bleeding.

Then he glanced at the digital clock on his desk. Darrell and the others expected him to go with them for their lunch with the investment brokers.

 

T
hey were surprisingly young, Arthur thought, to be playing with tens of millions of dollars. The investment brokers turned out to be two men and a woman, none of them looking more than thirtyish. The men wore sports coats and casual slacks, the woman a tailored skirt suit.

They met in a less-than-elegant restaurant off the Saw Mill Parkway, roughly halfway between the laboratory and Wall Street. Darrell handled the introductions, but as their conversation lengthened, Arthur began to do most of the talking.