FSF, January-February 2010 (28 page)

Proctor was whining again. Hugh Graeber squeezed his cell phone, envisioned crushing it in his fist. Like Proctor's small skull. It would be such a nice way to end the call.

"Busloads, Hugh,” Proctor whined, “they're chartering busloads of gimpy geezers for day trips north of the border. Why? To go visit pharmacies. To Hell with museums—they're visiting pharmacies! We're talking major market share here! Dammit, Hugh, we own those gomers! They're U.S. citizens!"

Graeber forced his hand to relax. He was already on his third cell phone this month. “You're frothing, Proctor,” he said. “I'm going to have to blow-dry my phone."

"But it's outrageous, Hugh! It's...it's...it's all-out war!"

"You want war with Canada?” Graeber said. “Okay. You've got the list of our senators right there on your computer. Start calling in favors."

"You know what I mean, Hugh. They're killing our profits. It's economic terrorism, that's what it is! We need a fence, a wall. Mexico's got one, why not Canada?"

The limo made a sudden swerve that bounced Graeber against the padded armrests.

"Whoa! Watch where you're going, Carlos!” Graeber snapped.

"Sorry,
señor
,” his driver replied.

Graeber sighed. Hired help were all the same. Proctor included. “We're not dealing with young, agile, broccoli-plucking migrants, Proctor. These are old farts. They're too stiff and blind to sneak through the woods at night through two feet of snow. That's why they need the drugs."

"They don't have to sneak! They're taking buses!"

"For God's sake, relax,” Graeber said. “The new project is going to make Canada completely superfluous. Along with Pfizer and Lilly and all the rest."

"That's what you said about Vaunturplex."

Graeber squeezed his cell phone again. The memory of losing that race still made his palms itch for revenge. “A case of bad timing, Proctor, and you know it. If Pfizer hadn't come out two weeks ahead of us with Viagra we'd have been in like Flynn.” What a difference two weeks could make. Particularly when you were planning the same pitch: Vaunturplex equals sexual prowess. But Viagra came first, and it sounded better. By the time they were ready to reposition as a couple's drug, Cialis had come out. And first out, first in. They were making pennies off Vaunturplex compared to Viagra and Cialis. Cialis! What a ridiculous name. Well, it wasn't going to happen again. “Make no mistake, Proctor, we are way in the lead with nanomeds. No one else even has a clue. When we go public, Pfizer will go limp. And the gomers will drop Canada faster than a call girl with cold sores."

"We're taking a big risk, Hugh."

"It's always a gamble in this business, Proctor. You know that."

"When, Hugh? When?"

"Animal trials wrap up today. Two weeks of analysis, then human trials. Six months at most and we can go public."

"Six months? And then six more for the FDA! Every day we're bleeding profit share!"

"I know, I know! Look, the preliminary reports are good, I'm on my way to the lab now. You stick to your spreadsheets and I'll handle the F—” The limo lurched through a pothole deep enough to leave Graeber's stomach smeared on the velveteen carpet. “Kee-rist, Carlos! Look, Proctor, I've gotta hang up before I get carsick.” He gave Proctor the Off thumb and tossed the cell phone onto the other seat. “What a friggin’ wimp. What a friggin’ country. Carlos, you don't know how lucky you are. All you have to do is drive. Just do it better, all right? I don't pay you to rip out the underbody."

Carlos—whose name was actually Arturo Realizo de Camino—nodded at the rearview. “Yes,
señor
. Sir. The roadway is very bad here.” Arturo hated driving on the parkway. Too many cars, too many bumps, too many—

"Ay,
mierda
!” He hit the brake and swerved to avoid a careening taxi driven by a pinch-faced madman in a turban. The Chrysler limo responded like the barge it was, yawing into the breakdown lane and back into traffic as Arturo fought to feel the road through the overstuffed suspension.

"
Idiota!
” Arturo muttered. “
Coche estúpido!
"

He glanced in the rearview again. Mr. Graeber gave him a disappointed shake of the head.

He looked back at the road just in time to see a pothole the size of a large burro rush from beneath the truck ahead of him and dive under his wheels. The Chrysler wallowed through it with a pair of thuds that left the mushy suspension gasping for the next hundred yards.

"Kee-rist, Carlos!"

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” He hated the highway, hated the big rich-man car.

But it was a job, and far better than roaming the country to pick blueberries and apples and spinach and broccoli and oranges and whatever else needed picking in all the seasons of the year. Particularly now that Esperanza was pregnant. Arturo was lucky, and he knew it. Both he and Esperanza had jobs in the same city in the same country. With an employer who didn't care about Green Cards. A rich man, too important to be bothered by the immigration police. To a point: citizens could go to Canada to buy medicines cheap; Arturo didn't dare go near either border.

Arturo eased off the throttle to put a little more room between them and the truck ahead, but another cabbie took it as a sign of weakness and cut through the narrow gap to claim the breakdown lane as his own private parkway. Arturo gripped the wheel and resisted the urge to chase down the
cabrón pingüe
and rear-end his
carro grasa
. That would get him deported for sure. For just a moment, Arturo wished he was back home in Chiapas, driving the tractor on
Señor
Agarrar's farm. Until he remembered the pleasures of running water, flush toilets, and a regular paycheck that was more each month than he could earn in a year in Mexico. At least he'd learned to drive there, even it had been only a tractor. Luckily, the limo wasn't all that different. Once you got used to the power steering and the shock absorbers. And the dark windows. And the deep seats. And the speed. And the other drivers. Particularly the ones in turbans.

Okay, only the potholes were the same, but he had managed to drive Mr. Graeber around the block that first time without making any mistakes. A day later Mr. Graeber had handed him a very official driver's license, complete with his picture beside his new name: Carlos Lopez. For two hundred dollars a week, cash, plus room and board, with two Sundays off a month, Arturo was willing to wear the silly uniform and drive Mr. Graeber anywhere he wanted whenever he wanted. For that kind of money, he would happily answer to Carlos.

Blue lights flashed up ahead in the breakdown lane. A chill squeezed Arturo's heart. He slowed even more. But it wasn't an INS roadblock. A cop had stopped the turbaned cabbie and was giving him a ticket. Arturo smiled and flashed the cabbie the finger as they rolled by.

The research center was a gleaming, walled block of brick and glass sprouting incongruously from a grubby patch of crestfallen housing projects. Graeber was proud of the location. The price had been fire-sale right and the taxes were low. Cheap, and it took a good photo from the right angle. It had been one of his first major decisions, and it helped solidify his position in the company: a tight fist in a satin glove (with a stiletto up the sleeve).

The security guard recognized the limo and opened the gate with a salute. They drove up the winding, landscaped drive, past the product line—a marble frieze of pills, capsules, and suppositories—to the porticoed foyer.

Graeber let Carlos scurry around to open the door, then strode through the airlock into the controlled environment of pharmaceutical research. He breathed deeply the cool, filtered air, enjoying the crisp scent of antiseptic, solvent, and stainless steel. It was the scent of profit. A hint of perfume wafting from the receptionist provided a pleasing accent reminiscent of cherries ready to be plucked. Graeber smiled. Ah, business and sex. The good things in life.

The lab was quiet but busy. White-coated technicians of many colors drew up sharply when they recognized him, greeting him, speaking his name respectfully. He was, after all, the Director of Research, ultimate Dispenser of Funds, Top Doc. They were his dedicated servants. And they knew it. He'd hired them and he could fire them. His second major decision: hire offshore. They worked cheap, and they knew drugs. He nodded acknowledgment as he made his way down the polished corridors to the lab shared by Doctors Wang and Sprachmaus, of China and Angola, respectively.

They were both waiting for him. Wang beamed, shattering all stereotypes of the inscrutable oriental. Sprachmaus's milk-chocolate face veritably glowed. These were young men, not gray-haired senior researchers, yellow-fingered from a lifetime of stirring noxious compounds into lifesaving solvents. They were half engineer, half chemist, and half electron microscope, able to envision machinery so tiny it would fit inside a medium-sized corpuscle. Even better, able to build it, and not from prickly rain-forest weeds or sticky slimeballs dredged from coral seas. From soot, from sand, from cheap, common elements you could scrape off the sole of your shoe. Graeber loved the concept: cheap resources for expensive medicines. CR=EM2. What a formula.

"Wang, Sprachmaus.” He nodded to each of them. “What have you got to show me?"

"Great success!” Wang crowed. He had a face like an Asian choirboy, all cheeks and dimples. Graeber was certain he'd lied about his age to get his visa.

"Ja! Ja!” Sprachmaus agreed. “Da animal trials are done, and first rate!” Sprachmaus was from Angola by way of the University of Heidelberg, which was where he'd learned English. The mocha skin and surname revealed a mixed parentage; the tribal scars and accent made him a living oxymoron.

"Mice cured, cancer gone, hair glow back,” Wang enthused. “All symptoms hunky-dolly!"

"All of them?” Graeber asked. They nodded in unison, a pair of ecstatic ethnic bobble-heads. Graeber suspected they'd been celebrating with some of the lab's pure grain alcohol. “What about side effects?"

They looked at each other. Their grins grew wider, if that was possible.

"Onry two,” Wang said.

"Only vun dat matters,” Sprachmaus put in quickly. “Come dis vay."

They led him deeper into their sanctum, through a bench-lined lab quietly busy with a team of technicians of color, into the animal farm. The sudden fug of cedar, mouse musk, and dung made Graeber's eyes water. Racks of cages filled the room in ranks. More of them ringed the walls. Generations of little white mice—and gray and black and spotted ones—went about their mousely business. The room...echoed wasn't the word. It rustled. It skritched. It skittered with the pitter-patter of tiny, tiny feet.

Wang and Sprachmaus each pulled a cage from a rack and carried it to a stainless steel counter at the very center of the maze. They set the cages on opposite ends of the counter.

"Vatch dis,” Sprachmaus said. He removed the lid and lifted the mouse from the cage by its tail. It hung stiffly, legs extended, nose whiskers bristling. Its beady little eyes regarded Graeber with a look of reproach.

Wang took out his mouse, which assumed the same stiff position. The two scientists waved their mice gently back and forth. Graeber considered buzzing the security guard. Celebration was one thing; this was looking downright schizo.

"Watch now,” Wang said.

Suddenly, Sprachmaus's mouse took notice. Its head came up. Its whiskers twitched in all directions, then pointed straight at Wang. The mouse lifted itself on the end of its tail and tried to run through the air.

Wang's mouse responded with a single, coquettish squeak. Wang set it on the table, and it scurried across the stainless steel, nose working, like a tiny breed of terrier. It centered itself under Sprachmaus's mouse, stood up on its hind legs, and reached with open arms.

Sprachmaus's mouse writhed. Sprachmaus pointed between its hind legs. “You zee?"

Graeber saw.

Sprachmaus dropped his mouse. There was a flurry of fur, a squeal of squeaks, a few love nips, and a chorus of micely panting. Five seconds later, the two rolled apart and began washing up, paying special attention to their privates.

Graeber looked at the two scientists. They were staring at him expectantly.

Dark disappointment began to swell in his chest, the harbinger of fiscal foreboding. “It makes mice horny?"

Wang looked alarmed. “Oh, no, no, no. Not just horny. Capable."

"So? Viagra will do that.” Graeber felt in his pocket for a cell phone to squeeze.

"You are missing da point, Mr. Graeber,” Sprachmaus said. “Wiagra is fine for dirty old men. Dese mice aren't chust old, dey're ancient."

"Ancient?” Graeber asked. He glanced at the mice. The male was sniffing the female again. She was playing coy. “How ancient?"

"Two year old!” Wang exclaimed. “Back from grave!"

"That doesn't seem very ol—"

"Dis strain of mice lif only for one year, Mr. Graeber,” Sprachmaus explained. “Dese mice vere at death's door vhen ve shtarted treatment. Now look: dey are two hundred human years old! And dey are chust like children!"

Graeber regarded the mice with new respect. They were already through a second round and back into the grooming stage.

"More like randy teenagers,” he said.

"Yes, yes!” Wang said. “You would be dead after that, yes?” He began to laugh.

Graeber glared at him. “I'm a long way from two hundred, Doctor."

Wang's face fell. “Of course. I onry meant—"

"Forget it,” Graeber said. He waved at the mice. “This is great stuff. Great potential. It cured the cancer? And the hair loss? And reversed the aging?"

"Ja, ja, and ja,” Sprachmaus replied.

"And this is the side effect?"

"Yes and ja!” Wang said, all smiles and nods.

"Damn. And right on schedule.” Bonuses, he thought. For the director on down. “You've hired the nurse for the human trials?” They nodded. “You've started writing the analysis?” They nodded. “We've scheduled two weeks; can you cut it to one?"

The two scientists gave each other high fives across the table.

"Ve haf already shtarted!” Sprachmaus cried.