The Immortality Factor (70 page)

An attendant—he couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman underneath the
shapeless gown—brought them to a glass-topped incubator that bore the name
MARSHAK
taped to its side.

The baby looked to Arthur like a tiny lump of reddish flesh, lying on its belly, mouth flapping like the gills of a fish, eyes closed, arms and legs unmoving. How frail and helpless! He saw that the baby's hands were clenching and unclenching slowly, the only motion it was making, except for the labored breathing that forced its tiny rib cage to expand and contract, expand and contract. Slowly, it seemed to Arthur. Painfully.

Someone stepped between him and Pat. One look into his eyes and Arthur knew it was Jesse.

This is Jesse's son, Arthur said to himself. His and Julia's.

“There he is,” Jesse whispered, his voice shaking with hope and despair, wonderment and fear.

“We've got a lot of work to do,” Arthur whispered back.

Jesse looked at his brother, then nodded. “We sure as hell do.”

So I won't win the Nobel, Arthur said to himself. So what.

Yet he knew, at that precise moment, that he would go to Japan or Patagonia or the moon to carry on the work that this baby so desperately needed. For him, Arthur said to himself. For all of them. For the whole human race.