The Eternal World Read online

  “It’s a lot of money, but that’s not why I do this.”

  “No,” Simon said. “You do it because of your sister.”

  The words hit David like a blow. “What do you mean?”

  “David. Come on. Give me a little credit. I can tell you think I’m a moron. But I am in charge of a multibillion-dollar company. You think I wouldn’t have people looking into your past?”

  “We never told people.”

  “Doesn’t take much to get medical records. Or a death certificate. Even ones that are supposed to be protected by privacy laws.”

  David realized he was clenching his fists. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I think it’s exactly my business. Because what happened to your sister is what drove you to become the world-class scientist you are today.”

  “You—you had no right.” He realized he sounded like a little kid. But by mentioning his sister, that’s exactly where Simon had dragged him: back into the past.

  SHE WAS YOUNGER THAN he was. And then she was so much older.

  At first, Sarah was the typical pink, pudgy, gurgling little baby that his mom and dad had promised. David was five. He didn’t pay a lot of attention to her, but he had to admit she was cute. She crawled around the house after him and subjected his toys to drool and teeth marks, and hugged his knees fiercely until she finally stood up on her own.

  She gave him kisses all the time, and sometimes, it was just too much. She’d still laugh and giggle, even when he pushed her away. He would go into his room and close the door so she couldn’t toddle after him. He figured she’d get more interesting later.

  But then, one day, he noticed she wasn’t getting any bigger. He mentioned it to his mom. She said something about all babies being different, and growing at different times, but he noticed: she looked worried.

  His father always took his observations more seriously. He knew that David was smart—very smart. And so that began a series of trips. First to one doctor, then another. And another. Sarah came home with lots of stuffed animals and different brightly colored Band-Aids on all her fingers and toes from the needle sticks.

  The disease became evident in those months. Her skin, once soft and pliant, bunched and wrinkled. Her face became stretched and birdlike. When she smiled, people no longer smiled back. Adults looked away. Other children stared.

  It was about this time David became interested in medicine. A therapist would make a big deal of that, but it seemed logical to him. He spent a lot of time with his mom and Sarah at a lot of different hospitals and clinics. There wasn’t much else to pay attention to. So he began soaking up as much information as he could on those visits.

  His father, on the other hand, spent more time away from the house. At first that struck David as strange, because he knew his dad was some kind of doctor. But his father explained, as patiently as he could, that he was a doctor who looked at very small parts of a person: their genes. And if he could find the genes that were going wrong in Sarah, he might be able to help her.

  Sarah kept getting older. She had a hard time walking. David slowed down so she could keep up. Kids who made fun of her at school quickly found that David could fight. It rarely came to blows after Sarah’s first year in elementary school, however. David was, even then, a golden-blond picture of the perfect kid. Everyone, students and teachers alike, wanted his approval. So they treated Sarah with the same respect he did.

  Which isn’t to say it was always easy on David. There were many times he got sick of Sarah being sick. Got tired of her endlessly cheerful demeanor, that toothless smile in her face as she went through treatment after treatment. None of them worked and she never complained, never got angry. It made him feel cheap and stupid somehow. He could never whine about a test or a bad day, because she was always there to remind him how much worse he could have it.

  He felt a little relief when she could no longer go to school with him. Her condition worsened. Her bones became too brittle for any kind of sustained activity outside the house. He was free to be himself, to be someone other than Sarah’s protective big brother. He could go a whole day at school without thinking about her. And it nearly choked him with shame on his way home, when he suddenly remembered her.

  So he did everything he could to bring the outside world to her. He read to her from his books; he drew her pictures; he watched TV with her in bed when she could not manage to do much more than stay awake. The shades were always drawn—light hurt Sarah’s eyes and her skin. She couldn’t eat much, either; her teeth had fallen out, and her stomach couldn’t handle much of the bland blended mixes he and his mother spooned into her mouth. He gave her ice cream once and the resulting vomiting and diarrhea nearly drove her into seizures. His mother slapped him for that, and he didn’t blame her.

  His father was barely ever home in those days. His mother would go into the bathroom and turn on the fan and cry. She didn’t think David could hear it. Sarah couldn’t. She was partially deaf by then; they had to turn the volume all the way up on Rugrats just so she could hear. But David’s ears were fine.

  He had the sense something huge and awful was coming down on the whole house. He could almost feel it placing a large, clawed hand on them all.

  Then one morning, Sarah died.

  His mother wouldn’t let him into her room. She was crying and wouldn’t stop. His father told him, in clinical terms, what had happened. He talked like a robot. The words “heart failure” and “pneumonia” were the only ones that really came through.

  His sister was dead. She was seven years old.

  “COCKAYNE SYNDROME, TYPE TWO variant,” Simon said. “It must have been terribly hard for your father. That’s probably when the drinking started, wasn’t it?”

  David felt numb for a moment. It was a couple of years after Sarah. He remembered the police coming to the door the morning after his parents went out. There had been a car accident, the officer said. It wasn’t until the funeral that he heard the words “driving drunk.”

  He went from having a family to being an orphan before he was fifteen. He spent a few years with an aunt and uncle he barely knew, then escaped to college and a series of dorm rooms and cheap apartments.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “You dug up the worst time in my life. Brilliant recruiting strategy.”

  “David—”

  David was suddenly on his feet, his finger in Simon’s face. “You want to be really careful about what you say next.”

  Simon opened his mouth and then closed it. “I’m sorry.” It almost sounded genuine. “I didn’t bring up your sister to insult you. Or upset you. Really.”

  “So why did you?”

  The party-boy facade seemed to drop from Simon then. He sagged on the couch. He looked almost apologetic. No, David thought. Not apologetic. Humble.

  “I wanted you to know that I get it. That I’ve lost people, too.”

  David felt a sudden pang of guilt. “Your father. Right. I’m sorry.”

  Simon smirked, as if David had made a joke—but the expression vanished almost immediately. “Not just that. I’ve lost more people than you can count. And you might not believe me, but I feel every one. You are the first candidate I’ve seen in a long, long time who might understand that. Who wants the same things from this as I do. I know you don’t really give a shit about the money. I know you can turn that down. When you strip away everything else, you’re just that kid who never wants anyone else to die.”

  After the sudden rush of anger, David simply felt drained. All he wanted to do was get Simon out of here. He sounded sincere, but David wasn’t ready to buy it. “Thanks. But I’ve heard it already, from better therapists than you. I know the drill: It wasn’t my fault. Everyone dies. That’s how the world works. No matter how hard I work, no matter what I do, I can never change that.”

  “But what if you could?”
/>   “What?”

  Simon smiled. It was calm. Peaceful. A different kind of smile from his usual shit-eating grin. “This is what I’m offering you, David. This is a chance to change the world. I’m talking about an end to human misery in our lifetimes. I’m talking about the end of disease. I’m talking about a cure for cancer, for AIDS, for everything. I’m talking about the greatest discovery since Jesus Christ rolled out of bed three days after being nailed to a hunk of wood.”

  David hated to admit it, but he was curious. This sounded like something much bigger than the drugs and stem-cell treatments Conquest bragged about in its annual reports. “What exactly do you mean? What are you working on?”

  Simon seemed to sense him wavering. “You’ve got to see it. It’s the only way you’ll ever believe me.”

  David turned away. Simon grabbed his arm.

  “Just let me show you this one thing,” he said. “If you still think I’m an asshole who’s wasting your time, well, great. Vaya con Dios. I’ll drive you to the airport myself. But I know you won’t. I know you’re going to take the job.”

  David looked at Simon for what seemed like a long, long time.

  “All right,” David said. “Where are we going?”

  “To see the future,” Simon said. “So you’d better get some pants on.”

  CHAPTER 4

  CONQUEST’S MIAMI CAMPUS was nowhere near as big as the Tampa headquarters David had seen in the publicity materials, but it was still impressive. An armed guard let them through a gate into the parking lot. Another one issued David a badge with a computer chip and an RFID tag at the front desk. Simon used his own badge to get them past the first set of doors, and from there put his eye to a retinal scanner to unlock more passageways, deeper into the facility.

  If this was all for show, David thought, at least they were putting some effort into it.

  They stepped past another locked door. David could feel the slight puff of air that came from a negative-pressure seal. They were entering a biologically secure zone. So he wasn’t surprised when Simon pointed to a side door and said, “Strip down and shower. There will be a set of scrubs for you.”

  It was the first thing he’d said to David in a while. In the limo on the way over, Simon had tried to strike up a conversation. It didn’t go well.

  “Did you know that the early Christians believed in the actual, physical resurrection of the body?” he’d said. “Not just the soul. They believed that we’d actually crawl up out of the ground on Judgment Day. Like zombies.”

  David had just stared at him.

  “Saw it on the Discovery Channel.”

  David hadn’t replied, and since then, they’d mostly ignored each other.

  David’s head pounded and the coffee burned in his stomach. He wondered if he should have taken a cab to the airport. But since he was here, he might as well see it through.

  He put on the scrubs and stepped through another air lock. He looked around and saw a fully equipped diagnostics lab. Everything from chemical testing equipment to a portable MRI to a table of centrifuges and analytical tools. Once again, Conquest had not gone cheap.

  David turned and saw Simon. He was on the other side of a thick observation window. It made David a little nervous.

  “You’re not coming in?” David asked.

  “I already showered once this morning,” Simon said, pressing a button to speak through an intercom. “Messes with my skin regimen. Besides, I don’t want you saying I tried to influence you or what you’re going to see.”

  David sighed. Whatever. His patience was nearing the bottom of the tank.

  Then a door on the other side of the lab opened, and a nurse pushed an old man in a wheelchair through.

  David was not a medical doctor, but he’d done plenty of research in hospitals and med schools. He recognized the symptoms immediately. Vacant stare. Eyes covered with milky-white cataracts. Unkempt hair. Open-mouthed breathing and muscular degeneration. And, of course, the smell of human waste from a soiled diaper. The patient had an IV hooked to one arm, probably running fluids, since he could not feed or hydrate himself properly.

  Severe dementia. Most likely late-stage Alzheimer’s.

  Wordlessly, he looked at Simon through the plate glass.

  “Check his chart,” Simon said through the intercom. “I’m not holding anything back from you.”

  The nurse handed over a metal clipboard. David flipped through it. It said everything he thought it would. Buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain. Steady loss of memories and physical abilities. The man’s name was Robert Mueller, but that hardly mattered anymore. David was looking at a dead man, a body that was simply waiting for his brain to forget everything, even how to breathe.

  He handed the chart back to the nurse, who took it without a word. All of this passed over Mr. Mueller’s head without the patient noticing a thing.

  “Why?” David asked. “Why is he here? Shouldn’t he be with family? He doesn’t have much time left. You must know that.”

  “You think he’d even notice? He’s gone already,” Simon said. “Besides, he has no family. We pulled him out of a homeless shelter.”

  “So that gives you the right to experiment on him? That’s pretty sick.”

  “Check the file before you get all righteous on me, please. Back when he still had some marbles, he signed up with us. Free medical care in exchange for a few tests. It’s all ethical and legal. We take better care of him than anyone ever has in this life.”

  “Great,” David said. “Good for you. Now, what did you want me to see? I’m ready to be done with this.”

  Simon looked at the nurse and nodded to her. She took out a syringe, tapped the needle, and, before David could object, injected the contents directly into the patient’s IV.

  “What was that?”

  The nurse didn’t answer. Simon didn’t, either. They both stared at Mueller.

  “I said, what was that?” David asked again. Still no answer.

  David marched over to the glass and got as close to Simon’s face as he could.

  “Hey. I’m talking to you. Whatever forms he signed when he was competent, that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want—”

  “David,” Simon said, as gently as possible through the intercom. “Shut up and look.”

  David turned around.

  Mr. Mueller was blinking and moving his head. He stared and stretched, as if waking from a long nap.

  “What happened?” he said. “Where am I?”

  Then he stood up, out of the chair.

  Impossible, David thought. Even if Simon had hired an actor, there was no way to fake the degraded muscle tone, the loss of motor ability that David had witnessed just a second before.

  The man in that chair did not have the self-control to keep from crapping his pants, let alone stand.

  Now he was walking.

  David noticed more changes in Mueller. Muscle tone. Skin texture. Even the old man’s hair seemed to be thicker. He looked a decade younger in every way. At least a decade. Maybe two.

  The nurse finally spoke, since David was gaping in silence.

  “Mr. Mueller, you’re in a long-term care facility. Do you remember coming here?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Right. It just seems like it’s been a long time.” He looked down at himself. “Have I been sick?”

  Simon’s voice came over the intercom again. “You were, Mr. Mueller. But I think you’re going to feel a lot better from now on.”

  “I feel pretty good already,” Mueller said.

  “Well, why don’t you let our doctor here check you out,” Simon said. “Just to be sure.”

  He meant David. And David was ready. Whatever kind of hoax this was, whatever kind of sick joke, he was sure it would take him only a moment to unravel it. He wasn’t a medical doctor, b
ut he knew there was no way to undo the damage he’d seen in this man.

  To Mueller—if that was the man’s real name—David was achingly polite. He smiled so hard it hurt his face.

  “Just have a seat on this table over here, Mr. Mueller,” he said. “I’d like to run a few tests.”

  “Whatever you say, doc,” the patient said. “It’s just, uh, you think I could have a fresh change of drawers? I seem to have messed these ones up pretty bad.”

  Mueller smiled at David. Jesus Christ, did the man suddenly have more teeth? No. That had to be David’s memory playing tricks on him.

  “Of course,” David said, and the nurse led Mueller to a changing room. David accompanied him the entire way, to make sure no one played any more tricks he couldn’t see.

  When Mueller was freshly cleaned, David guided the suddenly quite limber older man to the exam table, still playing the dedicated M.D.

  He spared a moment to glance through the window at Simon. Simon looked peaceful.

  David had no idea what was going on. But he would find out. He didn’t like being played. He was sure this whole joke would collapse once he got to work.

  SIX HOURS LATER, MR. Mueller was not smiling anymore. He’d become cranky and bored as David ran every test he could. The old man was clearly getting tired of having his blood drawn and sitting his ass on a cold metal table.

  But he was still healthy. Still vital. Still a completely different patient, in every way, from the end-stage Alzheimer’s case that had been wheeled into the room.

  David had put Mueller through an MRI, a CAT scan, and a PET scan. He compared the resulting images with scans taken just a week before, according to the charts. Dark spots from miniature strokes in the man’s brain had disappeared. Cerebral tissues that had once been clotted with Alzheimer’s plaques were now free and clear.

  David assumed, of course, that the earlier scans were fakes, planted in the file for just that purpose. But the recovery wasn’t just internal, either.

  The cataracts over Mueller’s eyes that David had clearly observed were gone. Mueller’s vision was back to 20/20, unassisted. “Haven’t seen that well since Nixon was in office,” the old man joked after David and the nurse ran the eye exam.