The Same River Twice (55 page)

“Well,” said Max, greeting Isabelle H. with a kiss on either cheek and a small smile, “I guess something’s funny. May I get you a cool drink?”

“Thanks, that would be wonderful.” She took a seat at the table, removed her broad-brimmed sun hat, finely woven of lavender flax, and shook out her famous blond hair. “But I can’t stay long. I just wanted to see if you were really here.”

“Yes, I’m here.” He continued to inspect her. “I came. We’ll see. You’ll conquer.”

“Really? Do you think so?”

“No question.”

She laughed again: a sound like a handful of gold coins tossed carelessly down a stone staircase.

The housekeeper arrived with smiles and more iced tea. She recognized Isabelle H. without fussing over her, thus putting both actress and director at ease, then discreetly withdrew.

“But seriously,” Isabelle said, once she’d drunk down half her tea. “I’ve now read the script five—no, six—times and not yet have I begun to exhaust its possibilities. We don’t start shooting until Monday, yes?”

“That’s right.” Max lit a cigar and studied her. “Tell me,” he said, “what’s it about, this screenplay?”

She told him. At great length. In French.

For a long time he smoked without speaking, brow furrowed, considering her answer. Then, abruptly, he leapt to his feet and hurled his glass as far out over the sloping lawn as he could, tea spilling from the vessel’s lip in a lazy amber skein. “You know nothing!” he shouted at her. “Nothing!”

“Yes,” she told him calmly. “And I intend to know even less.”

He looked at her with new interest. “Really?”

“Really. For this film, I want to be a blank slate, open to anything, without preconceptions.” She tilted her head and smiled. “Like the characters in
Bateau ivre
, of course.” After studying him for a moment, she laughed wickedly. “Max! You didn’t take all that nonsense I just said about the script seriously, did you?”

Moving to her side of the table, he leaned down and kissed her respectfully on the cheek. “So, we understand each other even better than I thought. And I’m certain now—totally and completely positive—that this is going to be a very, very fruitful experience for both of us.”

She smiled and returned her tranquil gaze to the vista spread before them. “But of course,” she said. “Why else would I possibly be here?”

MAX, Odile, and Allegra had dinner that night in the villa’s cypress-paneled dining room. The housekeeper’s sister, a silent disapproving woman who departed as soon as the food was ready, had prepared artichokes,
fruits des mer
, frisée salad, and grapefruit granité. Allegra, the only one of the three not exhausted by the day’s activities, wanted to know if it was really true that oysters acted as an aphrodisiac.

“It’s disputed,” answered Odile. “How many have you eaten?”

“Seven?”

“And do you feel like making love?”

Allegra considered this seriously. “Yes, I think so.”

“Then don’t eat any more. You’re too young.”

Smiling craftily, Allegra immediately downed another. “Aiee!” she cried out. “My ass! It’s on
fire
! Quick, put it out, put it out! Anyone, please! It’s unbearable! Help me! Help!”

Max closed his eyes and shook his head in refusal of the inevitable.

“Allegra,” said Odile, “that’s enough. Your father and I are too tired tonight for your antics.”

“I know.” She spoke as if privy to secret ironies, smiling to herself.

They ate for awhile in silence.

Halfway through the granité, they were startled when the living-room phone rang. As far as Max knew, no one even had their number.

“I’ll get it!” cried Allegra, springing from her chair.

Max and Odile exchanged a glance of concern, but a moment later she reappeared looking somewhat deflated. “It’s for you, Dad. Monsieur Bouvier. He says it’s important.”

Wiping his mouth with his napkin, Max went into the living room.

Odile gave Allegra a reflexive, uncharacteristically self-conscious smile. She’d postponed informing her of the pregnancy for all the usual reasons: fear that first-trimester complications would make the news superfluous; reluctance to announce her state publicly before her body did it for her; uncertainty, despite Max’s reassurances, that Allegra would respond well to hearing she was about to have a half sibling; and, finally, a desire, as inexplicable as it was instinctive, to keep her condition a secret—one to be shared only with Max—for as long as possible. She supposed all women had this impulse. It was the beginning of the long custodianship that was motherhood.

Across the table, Allegra’s honey-brown eyes were fixed on hers. The tilt of her head indicated both the intensity of her curiosity and her desire to appear casual about it.

It was time, Odile decided.

“Listen, sweetheart. There’s something I want to tell you.”

Allegra sighed and took a huge spoonful of granité, as if to forestall all possibility of having to respond to whatever was about to be said.

“Your father and I—”

But exactly at that moment Max reappeared, looking both agitated and strangely puzzled. “Quick! Where’s the TV in this wretched place?”

Shifting her mouthful of granité to the side of one cheek, Allegra jumped to her feet. “You don’t know? I mean, would you guys be totally clueless without me or what? Come on!”

She led them at a run to the wing of the villa that looked out on the swimming pool in back. Over her shoulder, she called, “It’s a satellite dish, so we get, like, everything!”

“What’s this about?” Odile asked Max quietly.

“No idea. Eddie only said—”

“And it’s got a giant hi-def screen, really supercool!”

“—not to miss the BBC international news. Which down here, he says, starts any minute now. ‘Something of personal interest to you and Odile in particular,’ was how he put it. Those were his actual words.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“He wouldn’t say more.”

“Hey, are you guys lost?”

They found Allegra in a long rectangular room, one wall of which was glass. Incorporated into this wall was a sliding door that led to the pool and its cedar deck. The underwater lights were on—somewhat perplexingly, since as far as Odile knew, no one had used the pool since their arrival—and lent the air a turquoise shimmer. On the wall adjacent to this one was a huge flat-screen TV that Allegra had already switched on. She was now blasting fiercely away at it with the remote, the tip of her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on the succession of crystal-bright images.

“Which channel?” she asked. An intricately coiled rug of sisal rope covered the floor.

“BBC World,” Max said.

He and Odile seated themselves on the chrome-framed, cream leather couch facing the TV as Allegra continued to scan stations. When the quaintly familiar orange-and-black BBC logo sequence appeared, Max stopped her.

“Oh, puke-orama!” Allegra exclaimed in disgust as soon as she saw that all this excitement was over nothing more than a foreign newscast. “Boring, boring,
bor-ing.”
She tossed her father the remote and left the room.

“What’s gotten into her tonight?” Max wondered aloud.

“Shh.”

The anchorwoman, blond, attractive, but broad-shouldered and maternally stern in the British manner, had already begun her lead-in: “—so that what for so long seemed only a promise, at times hardly a hope, has at last been redeemed beyond all doubt. For more, we go now to King’s College, London, and our science correspondent, Vikram Gupta. Vikram?”

“Thank you, Katty,” said the slim young man, his eyes appearing very large in his tea-colored face. “Just two hours ago, right here in the staid precincts of King’s College, an announcement was made which one can safely say will change the course of medicine, if not of human life itself, for all time.”

The picture cut to a taped video excerpt from the press conference the reporter had been referring to, and immediately Odile knew what was to come. A middle-aged man at a lectern—the screen chyron identified him as “Director, Stem Cell Biology Laboratory, King’s College, London”—was declaring in deliberately understated tones that, thanks to recent breakthroughs at the lab, his team was now able to attain a one-hundred-percent success rate in transforming therapeutically cloned human embryos
into viable stem cell lines, cells capable of turning into any of the more than two hundred forms of tissue that make up the human body. Here, clearly mindful of the political and moral brush fires this announcement was certain to ignite, he raised a calming hand. A therapeutically cloned embryo, he reminded his audience, was nothing more than a human egg cell whose nucleus has been replaced with that of a cell belonging to the patient to be treated. “Thus,” he added, “however one defines life, nothing of it—nothing whatsoever—is lost in this process. There can be no moral qualms, and for that we can only be grateful.” He paused briefly. “But we have still more to report.”

Max turned to Odile in astonishment. “Is this what—”

“Shh!”

The scientist adjusted his spectacles and continued. “While we have had some success in creating stem cells before—nothing like a hundred percent, of course, but some success—the real problem has always been how to direct these stem cells to grow into the kind of tissue required in any given instance, whether it be heart muscle for the cardiac patient, bone marrow for the leukemia victim, or brain cells for someone suffering from Parkinsonism. Today it is my privilege and honor to announce that, due largely to the efforts of one man—a brilliant scientist and recent arrival at our laboratory, our small band of devoted brothers and sisters—we are now able to accomplish this extraordinary task with the same one-hundred-percent efficiency attained in the stem cell production.” He appeared briefly overcome with emotion—a good portion of it envy, only partly disguised. He turned to his left. “The man I am referring to is Dr. Aleksandr Tregobov. Sasha, I don’t believe anyone has seen your face outside a laboratory in years. So would you please rise? Rise and be counted among the greatest minds of our time.”

Looking very uncomfortable, Tregobov got up from his seat. He was wearing a white lab coat and the same black-framed glasses he’d sported in the photo Rachel had been shown by the CRS. At the sight of him, the press corps rose as one to its feet, shot a flurry of photos, then burst quite unexpectedly into applause. Tregobov, looking if possible even more discomfited, acknowledged this accolade with a brief bow before sitting back down. “Thank you,” he said inaudibly.

The picture cut back to the science reporter, standing outside the lecture hall as he sketched out for his viewers the ramifications of this stunning development.

“I can’t believe it!” Max said. “How much of this did you know back when—”

“I’m not sure,” Odile replied. She’d moved so close to him that the entire left side of her body was pressed against his and her left leg slung over his right. Now she sought out his hand and squeezed it tightly.

“Odile, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Let’s listen.”

“So,” concluded the young reporter, “it is no exaggeration to call this development one of truly earthshaking proportions, its implications virtually unlimited. You can be sure we’ll be hearing a great deal more about it—and the many vexing issues it raises—in the days and weeks ahead.” He paused to sweep his straight black hair back from his brow. “Katty?”

“Earthshaking news indeed, Vikram,” the anchor replied. “Thank you.” Flashing an appropriately bedazzled smile, she reengaged the camera—and her viewers—before assuming a more solemn manner and picking up her end of the story. “Of course, with today’s rapidly changing intellectual-property laws and the corporate sector’s involvement in just about everything, from soup to nuts, it’s no surprise that science and business have become ever more closely intertwined. Here tonight to help us understand this still-evolving alliance”—she swiveled in her chair to introduce her guests, whose images now filled the screen—“are two people in the very thick of it.”

“Oh my God!” said Odile in a low voice.

“Him!” Max exclaimed. “And what’s
she
doing there? I thought—”

“Mr. Nikolai Kukushkin and Ms. Gabriella Moreau, codirectors of the StemTech Corporation, based here in London. Thank you both for joining us on such short notice.”

“So that’s Kukushkin,” said Odile to herself. “Unbelievable.”

“It is our pleasure to be here,” intoned the Russian, who, in addition to his usual boxy British suit, had donned a tie for the occasion. Beside him, Gabriella smiled fetchingly in a soberly cut turquoise dress.

“Ms. Moreau,” the anchorwoman said, “could you begin by telling our viewers what StemTech does, exactly? Or rather what it will do, since I gather it’s a very recently formed enterprise?”

“Yes, this is correct. As you perhaps know, Katty, it has for several years now been possible, under the Worldwide Patent Cooperation Treaty, to patent things not previously covered by copyright law. I’m speaking of genes and other living matter, whether ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’ in origin; the scientific processes that make them available for practical use; previously unknown applications for naturally occurring substances; and so on. Accordingly, all the processes announced at King’s College this afternoon have been duly patented, as is common practice today, and StemTech
was formed as the sole licensing agency for those wishing to make use of those procedures. The corporation, in other words, was designed to be the most efficient conduit to the patent-holding party, so as to minimize bureaucracy and quicken response time. We are very concerned about accessibility.”

Katty, who appeared mildly dissatisfied with this answer, turned next to Kukushkin, and as she sought to formulate her question, Max said to Odile, “You never actually met Kolya back then, did you? Kukushkin, I mean.”

She shook her head. “No. Just his minions.”

“Mr. Kukushkin, your background is mostly in banking. What drew you to this project?”

“Such revolutionary advances, such exciting possibilities, who would not be drawn to them? Is for the good of mankind, and how often does one get a chance to be part of such work? But, speaking more personally, I have known Dr. Tregobov for a number of years, back when he was virtual slave to state of Belarus, from which he has now fortunately emigrated. The fact is this: he, like any true research scientist, is concerned only with his work and where it leads him. He does not want to be bothered by legal details and trivialities, of which there are bound to be an infinite number in this case. And so we may say it is only natural that he should turn to me, his loyal and admiring friend, at this critical time. Part of StemTech’s mission, besides to act as conduit and licensing agent, will be to shield this great scientist from the countless distractions he must otherwise face, distractions that would likely be overwhelming and make further research very difficult for him, maybe impossible.”