The Immortality Factor (24 page)

And Julia's spending more time with that damned Canadian than with me. In my mind's eye I saw her with the UN captain sitting in the shade of a plane tree in the late afternoon while I worked my ass off with these damned hopeless cases. Only it wasn't Captain Eberly that she was sitting with, chatting with, laughing with. It was Arby who was sitting with her. Julia had gone back to Arby and left me alone with the endless needy and my dying mother.

I sat bolt upright on the cot, drenched in sweat.

Julia stirred, woke up. “What is it, darling? Are you all right?”

“Go back to sleep,” I said. “It's nothing. Just a bad dream.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

S
o, after originating the idea for organ regeneration,” said Rosen, still seated at the end of the judges' desks, “you went to Africa to work with a UN mercy mission.”

“That's correct,” Jesse replied.

“And you did not work on the organ regeneration program at Omnitech's Grenford Laboratory?”

“I did not.”

“Not at all?”

“Oh, I talked with my brother about the progress of his program when it first got under way, but by the time I got back from Africa he had already put together a team of Omnitech employees and medical consultants from several hospitals and research centers.”

Rosen seemed to think that over for a few moments, hands pressed together prayerfully before his face. Then he asked, “Did you receive any financial remuneration from Omnitech Corporation?”

Jesse grinned at him. “Not one penny.”

“Did you ask for compensation?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Again I ask,” Arthur called from his seat on the front bench, “what does this have to do with the scientific facts?”

Jesse turned in his chair to see his brother. Arthur was clearly angry, his face a storm cloud. “Does it really change the scientific data if someone was paid by Omnitech or not? Are you implying that the scientists who worked on this program biased their results according to who signed their paychecks? That's monstrous!”

Graves reached for gavel, a pained look on his face. Rosen gave Arthur a wintry smile.

“Dr. Marshak,” said the examiner, “you are the one who has used the word ‘biased,' not I.”

“If you're implying that my staff people deliberately altered their research results to suit some corporate objective, I'll sue you for libel!”

Jesse had never seen Arthur so boiled. He almost laughed out loud; Arby never let his emotions show like this. Rosen must really be getting to him.

The chief judge was pointing his gavel at Arthur, saying, “This is not the proper forum for such an outburst!”

Arthur got his feet. “This isn't the proper forum for smearing honest, dedicated scientists!”

“Dr. Marshak, sit down and be quiet!” Graves screeched.

“I will when you instruct that inquisitor to stop maligning my staff scientists!”

Rosen, still in his chair, raised both his hands, palms outward. “I assure you, Dr. Marshak, that I have no desire to malign anyone.”

“Then retract your insinuation,” Arthur snapped.

“I made no insinuation. I merely asked if your brother received any compensation from Omnitech. If you like, we can have the clerk read it back from the transcript.”

“The implication was clear,” Arthur said. But he sat down.

Jesse turned back toward the judges and the examiner. Wow! he thought. Arby's going to pop his cork before this is over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
stood at the big picture window of my living room with my morning mug of coffee warming my hands and watched Nancy back her red Taurus out of the driveway. Heading toward the corporate headquarters in Manhattan, I surmised. Probably she'll stop at her apartment first and change into fresh clothes. I didn't know and didn't care.

Nancy had awakened early, all smiles, and pranced off to the shower with barely a good morning. I had gotten out of bed, pulled on my robe, pissed in the guest bedroom's toilet, and gone to the kitchen to grind some coffee beans.

“I'll get breakfast in town,” Nancy told me, declining even a cup of fresh-brewed coffee. She swept out of the house with nothing more than a peck on my cheek.

But she whispered into my ear, “It was wonderful. See you next Monday night.”

And I felt my heart sink.

As I stood by the window and watched her Taurus disappear behind the hedges of the front lawn, I wondered if the price of Nancy's information wasn't
going to be too high. I didn't mind helping her to get the advancement she wanted. But I shuddered at the thought of having a regular Monday night date with her. Or anyone. Like paying the rent on the first of the month. Too cold-blooded. It becomes an obligation. A business deal.

Well, I asked myself, that's what you set up, isn't it? A business deal. She tells you what you need to know and you help her move up the corporate ladder. The fucking is just there to clinch the transaction, like the signatures on a contract.

In blood, I thought. She's going to be more trouble than she's worth. I could feel it in my bones.

As I showered and shaved and dressed, I wondered what I should do about this Japanese deal now that I knew about it. Confront Johnston? Find out who Johnston was talking to and go to Japan to see them personally? Find my own buyer for the lab?

Maybe I should just barge into Johnston's office and ask him what the hell he was doing. It might bounce back to Nancy, but why should I care about that? Could be the best way to get her off my neck.

I wanted to be angry with Johnston, sore at him for even thinking of selling off the lab. But I couldn't work up the emotion. Johnston had saved my life, back when Potter had driven me out of Columbia, out of academia. I owed Johnston a lot.

I started thinking back to the first time I had met W. Christian Johnston, nearly fifteen years earlier, at a fund-raising party at Columbia one snowy January evening.

It had been a tepid affair, at best. Weak punch and thin finger sandwiches. Not much to offer the university's big money people, I thought as I looked around the darkly paneled old room. Nobody under sixty except me. All gray heads. I should talk. My hair was already silver.

There was only one black man in the room, a big man, physically. And he must have been big in the wallet, too, I saw from the way the president and other university officers were clustered around him.

Wilson K. Potter, my department chairman, came out of the crowd around the black man and made his way through the gathering directly toward me. Even back then Potter was nothing more than a pinch-faced bald little gnome who hadn't changed his teaching plan since he had achieved tenure ages ago.

“There's someone that the president wants you to meet,” Potter told me. The expression on his face was even more rancid than usual, as if this was a distasteful duty. “He's the new CEO of Omnitech Corporation.”

Johnston behaved like a salesman at first, all toothy smiles and his voice too loud. He insisted on being called “just Johnston. That's all. No Mister or anything. Just Johnston. With the tee.”

He doesn't want to be called Chris, I figured. And whatever his first name is, he must hate it.

The crowd slowly melted away, until Johnston and I found ourselves alone in a corner of the room. Through the narrow mullioned window we could see the snow floating softly through the lights of the streetlamps outside.

“I hear you have some very practical ideas about genetic engineering,” Johnston said, his voice much lower than before.

“My brother and I have played around with a few things,” I replied.

“Bugs that eat oil spills?”

He knew all about that, I was certain. “I think your company is already using some of our ideas.”

“Yes, we are.”

I made a rueful smile. “So we get the credit in academia for the work and companies like yours make the money out of it.”

“What are you working on now?”

“Toxic wastes.”

That made his eyes widen. “A bug that eats toxic wastes?”

“Several different strains, yes.”

“In landfills?”

“In landfills. Or wherever.”

Johnston made a soft whistle between his teeth. “That could be worth a lot of money, Dr. Marshak. A
lot
of money.”

“To Omnitech.”

“To whoever owns the patent on the bug.”

Now my eyes widened. Of course! I told myself. If I could get the university to grant me the rights to the patent . . .

“Omnitech will pay very handsomely for a license to produce and sell your bug,” said Johnston, his voice even lower. Then he grinned and added, “Providing it works, of course.”

But my excitement ebbed as quickly as it had peaked. “I imagine the university will want the patent.”

Johnston gave me a sly smile. “We can work out a deal. They're after me to make a big contribution. I'll get them to assign the patent rights to you. Then you license the rights to Omnitech and Omnitech puts up the money for the new gym or library or whatever they're after me for. Everybody gets happy.”

My relationship with Johnston has truly been happy ever since that snowy evening, I realized. If it hadn't been for Potter, I could have stayed at Columbia and licensed Omnitech to develop whatever I invented and I never would have had to get involved in corporate politics. But Potter put an end to that. Potter and his academic politics.

I should have stayed and fought. I should have demanded that Potter resign. Or retire. But that would have caused more damage to the university than
I could deal with. And inevitably I would have been blamed for breaking the collegial code of brotherhood. Funny how they only threw that collegial crap at you when they knew they were in the wrong and had no other defense. No, there were plenty of older men and women on the faculty who would have sided with Potter. They considered me a young upstart. They were furious that some of us were getting rich while they still toiled along at academic salaries. Even some of the other Jews on the faculty were sore at me.

I let Potter win. I was so shocked and shattered by his hatred that I just walked out of his office and spent the whole Christmas break that year wondering what I could do, where I could go.

It was Phyllis who set me straight. She was a departmental secretary in those days, mother-henning all of us young snot-nosed assistant professors. By the time I showed up in my cubbyhole of an office in January she had heard the whole story. I was on the way out.

“You and that nice Mr. Johnston from Omnitech seem to get along so well,” she said as she poured coffee for me. “Why don't you see if he'll take you in?”

“I don't want a job,” I told her, “I want a laboratory. With a staff of my own.”

“So?” And Phyllis left me at my cluttered desk, wondering if she knew more about this than I did.

So I bit the bullet and called Johnston and asked him if Omnitech would set up a laboratory for me.

“Not just any lab,” I told him. “I want it to be the best research center in the world. I want to bring in the best and the brightest young scientists we can recruit.”

Even over the phone he sounded intrigued. “To do what, Arthur?”

“I've got some ideas about cancer,” I said.

“Patentable ideas?”

I didn't hesitate even a fraction of a second. “Yes,” I said, even though I knew the university would claim the patents for the work I had done so far. The hell with them. Let them have everything I'd done to date. I'd do more. Better.

“We've never gone into the medical field,” Johnston said.

“Pharmaceuticals are a multibillion-dollar business,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. But it's a crowded field, Arthur. And the goddamned government's got its big boots all over it.”

Wishing he were in the office with me so I could calibrate the expression on his face, I answered, “Cancer is a major killer. That makes it a major market.”

He didn't reply for several moments. Then, “Both my parents died of cancer.”

“And it'll come calling on both of us, one of these days.”

“Let me see what I can do,” Johnston said.

It took him a couple of weeks to get the idea past his board of directors, a couple of weeks while I cleaned out my office at Columbia and wondered where my next meals would be coming from. I knew that Potter would do his best to blackball me throughout the academic community. I began to think about going to Europe or maybe Israel.

Then Johnston phoned me, in my apartment in Washington Heights.

“Would you mind working in Connecticut?”

He not only let me set up Grenford Laboratory and hire the staff I wanted, he even made me a corporate vice president in the bargain.

“Be good to let the board of directors see you,” Johnston told me. “Get yourself some clout with them.”

I owed him my life.

But how could he sell me off? I asked myself for the ninetieth time that morning. Like some has-been baseball player.

I went down to the garage and slid behind the steering wheel of my Infiniti, ready to start out for the day's work. But I still had no idea of how to handle the problem, how to deal with the information that Nancy had fed me. How to face W. Christian Johnston with the knowledge that this man I owed so much to was ready to stab me in the back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
woke with a start. Somebody was in the tent, touching my shoulder.

“Wha—”

“Sshh.” Somebody was bending over me. I couldn't make out the man's face in the darkness. “No need to wake up your wife,” he whispered. It was Eberly. “Come outside.”