The Immortality Factor (19 page)

 

MARSHAK KILLS BABIES
NO ABORTIONS FOR PROFIT
USING STEM CELLS IS MURDER

 

Most of his guys were off in a corner of the asphalt parking lot, grabbing sandwiches and beers from the truck that had accompanied them. Some of the club were drinking from bottles or flasks they had brought along with them. Then Larry saw Spider and a couple other of the guys wheeling themselves over toward the orderly lines of protesters marching by the barricade. Ed Frank was with them, leading the charge in his electric-powered chair.
They're going to get themselves into trouble, Larry thought. He called to two of his most reliable club members to follow him as he started wheeling after Spider and Ed.

Sure enough, by the time Larry got within earshot, Spider was shouting at a squad of earnest-looking young men and women in dark suits and modest dresses.

“Hey, why d'you people want to keep me crippled, huh?”

They tried to ignore him and continue their carefully paced march along the barricade that blocked off the Capitol steps. On the other side of the picketers the Capitol Police stood grimly waiting for trouble.

“Hey, I'm talkin' to you!” Spider yelled.

“Pay no attention,” said the marchers' leader, up at the head of the line.

That was the worst thing she could have said. Spider angled his chair sharply and cut into the middle of their line, forcing a placard carrier to stop or fall over him.

“Spider, leave them alone!” Larry called.

But Spider's face was red with more than the afternoon's heat. The placard the young man was carrying proclaimed
ABORTION IS MURDER
. Spider glared up at the kid.

“You want me to sit in this fuckin' wheelchair the rest of my life?”

“I don't want to interfere with God's plan,” said the young man. A little smugly, Larry thought.

“You think God wants me to stay crippled?” Spider demanded.

“You brought it on yourself, didn't you? Nobody forced you to ride a motorcycle.”

“You stupid little shit!” Spider screamed. “I was drivin' a fuckin' school bus!” And he reached up with his powerful arms to wrestle the kid's placard away from him.

The young man tried to hold on to the placard. A couple of his friends jumped in to help him.

“Stop it!” Larry yelled at the top of his voice. “For god's sake, stop it!”

But Spider had wrestled the sign away from them and was swinging it like a two-handed broadsword. He knocked down one protester and several others grabbed at him, at the placard, at his chair. The cops just stood there doing nothing. Larry saw it all dissolve into a wild, fist-swinging, screaming melee within an instant. Then the cops moved in. Ed's chair toppled over and he spilled out, totally helpless, people stepping on him as he screeched with pain. Larry tried to ram his own chair into the growing riot, to protect Ed as much as he could, but somebody clipped him behind the ear and everything went gray and blurry.

The TV camera teams came running to the growing scuffle as police and protesters and wheelchairs and reporters all converged on the fight. An Army-green
helicopter hovered overhead, its engine roar and downwash smothering everyone.

From more than a block away, Reverend Simmonds broke into a sprint, his two beefy security men galumphing along behind him. Get there before the camera crews leave, Simmonds gasped to himself as he ran. Got to get there before the camera crews leave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

W
hen the hearing adjourned late that afternoon and the room began to empty out, Arthur realized that he was facing the prospect of dining by himself.

He hated to eat alone, especially away from home, in a hotel. He needed people to talk to, to review the day's events and prepare for tomorrow's. But none of his own researchers had come down to Washington for the trial; Arthur had thought that their written reports would be sufficient and both the Omnitech legal staff and his public relations consultant thought it would be best if Arthur made his presentation by himself. Now he was starting to think that he might get Darrell Walters, at least, to come down and bolster his own testimony. Rosen was going to use Cassie's DVDs, he was certain. And Graves would let him do it. Talk about murder, Arthur said to himself.

Patricia Hayward had been at the hearing, she was serving as Arthur's PR consultant, but she must have ducked out as soon as the session was adjourned.

Arthur stood uncertainly in the emptying hearing chamber. Everyone else was rushing out. Jesse was nowhere in sight and Arthur could not share a meal
with his brother now, anyway. Then he saw Milton Graves come out of the door behind the judges' desks.

“Milton,” Arthur called to him. “How about dinner?”

The chief judge actually blanched. “Arthur, I simply can't! I shouldn't even be speaking to one of the witnesses outside the court chamber.”

He hurried away, leaving Arthur standing alone. But not for long. As soon as Arthur stepped out into the corridor the news reporters raced up to him.

“Dr. Marshak! One minute, please!”

Arthur was quickly surrounded with microphones thrust in his face and video cameras staring at him. Good thing Graves ran away, he told himself. What would they make out of a harmless conversation between the two of us?

“Dr. Marshak, you seemed very upset at the hearing today.”

“Dr. Marshak, what did Judge Graves say to you and Mr. Rosen when he called you into his chambers?”

“Dr. Marshak, how do you think today's testimony went?”

“What do you think of this afternoon's riot?”

“Riot?” Arthur felt his stomach clench. “There was a riot?”

“A big fight between some paraplegics and the religious demonstrators.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“A few bruises, nothing more serious. About a dozen or so were arrested.”

Arthur shook his head. “That's awful.”

He saw Pat Hayward rushing down the corridor toward him. She must have gone to the toilet, Arthur realized. Now she stopped at the fringe of the crowding reporters and made gentling motions with her hands. Arthur got her message: stay cool, don't give the sharks any blood.

“What was the prepared statement that you wanted to read into the record?” asked one of the reporters. “Do you have it on you?”

“Why wouldn't Graves allow you to read it?”

“Do you think you're getting a fair trial?”

Spreading his hands to quiet them down, Arthur said, “Wait! Wait! One at a time.”

“Do you think you're getting a fair trial?” repeated a determined-looking woman holding a miniature voice recorder in one hand as she pushed a microphone under Arthur's chin with the other.

He made a photogenic smile for her while he thought swiftly. Pat tried to look encouraging from behind the reporters' backs.

“I'm not on trial here,” Arthur said at last. A dozen microphones inched closer to him. “Science is on trial. A particular new capability is on trial.”

“Do you really think you can grow new organs in people?”

“Yes. And I have the scientific evidence to back up that belief.”

“What about the people who say that you'd be tampering with things that should be left alone? Playing God?”

Arthur stretched his smile a bit. “Their great-great-grandparents said that vaccinating children against smallpox was playing God. Their earlier ancestors burned people at the stake for espousing new ideas.”

One of the bright-looking young men grinned as he asked, “Do you think you're going to be burned at the stake in there?”

“I think a good idea might be thrown away,” Arthur replied. “I think that if that happens, people whom we could cure are going to die.”

“Is your idea getting a fair hearing?”

Careful! Pat's expression suddenly told him. They're just waiting for you to say something they can use against you.

He cocked his head slightly to one side, thinking before he spoke. Then, “I was surprised, obviously, that the examiner was allowed to bring in questions about priority and funding sponsorship. I had expected the court to deal strictly with the scientific questions, nothing else.”

“Are you worried about being accused of homicide?”

“No,” Arthur lied. “It was a suicide, not a murder. That's obvious.”

“Do you feel any responsibility about her suicide?”

“No,” Arthur snapped. Another lie.

“So who did get the idea first, you or your brother?”

With only a fraction of a second's reflection, Arthur answered firmly, “Jesse thought of regenerating organs first. I was still thinking in terms of regenerating spinal neurons when he broadened the scope of our concept.”

“Hey! There he is!”

“Thanks, Dr. Marshak!”

Like a school of fish the reporters flashed away, surging through the corridor toward a new bit of bait. Arthur saw who they were chasing. Jesse.

“Dr. Marshak!” they were yelling as they scampered down the corridor. “Dr. Marshak!”

Suddenly there was no one between Arthur and Pat Hayward, looking coolly attractive in a crisp beige miniskirted suit that showed off her long legs to advantage.

“How'd I do?” he asked her.

“Fine,” she replied. “I liked that line about science being on trial instead of you.”

“Well, that's what's happening in there.”

They walked together down the corridor and out into the soggy summer afternoon. The heat hit them like a load of steamed towels dropped onto their shoulders. Not a breath of air was stirring. Independence Avenue was clogged with slow-moving traffic: a sluggish artery of cars and buses and taxis, motors grumbling and growling while they inched along.

As they waited for the light to cross the avenue, Arthur was tempted to invite Pat to dinner. He knew plenty of people in Washington, but none of them
were the kind of acquaintances that he could phone at the last minute for a dinner engagement. Of course, he could get some of the local Omnitech people to go out with him. The corporation had a big office in downtown Washington. But they were virtually strangers who would do it out of duty, and he did not feel like keeping them from their own families and evenings.

Probably better to just order dinner in my hotel room, he said to himself as he walked with Pat across Independence Avenue to the taxi stand where the corporate limo was supposed to be waiting for him. It was not there. A sea of cars, but the limo was nowhere in sight. Arthur could see the tired, exasperated drivers sitting behind their steering wheels with their windows rolled up, the air-conditioning on full blast and their radios blaring. At nearly four dollars a gallon, Arthur thought. The heat from their engines and the sullen glowering sun made the street broil. Arthur felt himself sweating, his shirt sticking to his back and ribs.

As he peeled off his suit jacket he thought, I'll meet with the corporate lawyers over breakfast tomorrow morning, go over today's testimony, and get set for Jesse's day at the witness desk.

“They said there was a riot out here?” Pat asked. Somehow she still looked cool and crisp.

Jolted out of his thoughts, Arthur saw that the Capitol grounds and parking lot were almost empty. No lines of buses, no marching files of protesters.

He shrugged. “It'll probably be on the six o'clock news.”

“If it really was a riot,” Pat said. “The reporters can turn a little scuffle into World War III.”

He almost laughed.

Then he saw the limousine inching through traffic toward them. Should I ask Pat to dinner? Arthur had a rule against socializing with his female employees, a rule that he had bent considerably but never truly broken. At least, that was his view of it. Pat was a consultant, not really an employee, yet he felt doubly uncertain about her. She was very attractive, and Arthur had the feeling that she felt attracted to him. Yet they had both kept their relationship pretty much centered on business, despite the obvious temptation to do otherwise.

The limo pulled up to the curb and the liveried driver hopped out, all apologies and excuses about the traffic and the police, who wouldn't let him stay parked in the taxi stand. As Arthur helped Pat into the blessedly cool interior of the car he heard himself ask, “Do you have any plans for dinner?”

“No.”

He sat beside her and shut the car door. “Where would you like to go?”

She hesitated a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “Someplace quiet, where we can go over the day's testimony and prepare for tomorrow's.”

An hour later they were sipping wine at a small table in an intimate
French restaurant in Georgetown. The place was crowded, tables crammed in with barely enough room between them for the waiters to push through. But a generous tip to the maître d' had gotten Arthur one of the few quiet booths at the back of the room.

“It's not going the way you thought it would, is it?” Pat was asking.

He nodded gloomily. “I thought we could separate all the emotional and political factors and show the world that the science really works. But it doesn't look as if I'll be able to do that.”

“Do you think they're going to use Cassie's videos?”

“I'm certain of it.”

“But it's so unfair!” Pat said heatedly. “You're not responsible for what Cassie did.”

With a wry smile, Arthur said, “Tell it to the judge.”

“It's got nothing to do with the scientific facts.”

His gloom deepening, Arthur said, “You know that and I know that and even Graves knows it. But this trial has been bent out of shape already, on the very first day. God knows what's going to happen tomorrow.”

Pat looked angry, sad, and worried all at the same time. “Why is Jesse so opposed to you?” she asked. “Back when you two first talked about this, he seemed more enthusiastic about it than you were.”