Transhuman (37 page)

Okay, he told himself. Keep going until the phone gets clear of the jamming.

Far off in the distance he heard a coyote howl. And beyond that, the faint throbbing rumble of an approaching helicopter.

*   *   *

H
IGHTOWER WAS STILL
munching his way through a sizable dinner when Tamara finished her coffee.

Pushing back from the table, she said, “I've got to get back.”

“Sure,” said Novack, getting up from the table also. “I'll walk you home.”

She gave him a cold stare. “I don't need any company.”

“It's on the way to my room,” Novack said easily. Raising both hands as if to show he wasn't carrying any weapons, he added, “Honest.”

Wordlessly, Tamara turned and headed for the row of pegs by the door, where people had hung their coats. Novack went with her.

Hightower looked up from his bowl of chili and watched them go.

*   *   *

T
HE HELICOPTER WAS
hovering over the trees. And there was more than one of them, Luke realized. If they head this way they'll spot me easily.

He looked down again at the phone in his fist. Time and date!

“It's working!” Luke shouted into the night. He squatted on the dusty ground and punched up his paper and its foreword. Tap. To
ACB
. Tap. To his university. Tap. Tap. Tap. To three blogs that he followed.

The helicopters were still down by the trees. He could see searchlights flicking back and forth from them.

Twitter, he thought. Send the foreword to Twitter. Too long. Chop it in half and send it in three pieces.

The searchlights winked off. Luke stared up into the moonlit sky. Why'd they do that?

Never mind them. Send the foreword to the university's Facebook site. And the whole paper to the AAAS. And
Science News.

One of the choppers was definitely heading his way. Luke ignored its approach as he bent over his phone, sending his paper and its foreword to one Web site after another.

*   *   *

T
AMARA WALKED ALONGSIDE
Novack, never letting him get close enough to touch her. He chatted amiably enough, though. Maybe he doesn't have any ideas about me, she thought.

But then he stopped and pointed at the nearest building, a two-story wood frame structure identical to the building where she and the Villanueva family were housed.

“That's my place. I've got a bottle of pretty good Scotch in my room. Practically untouched.”

“No thanks,” she said, and started walking toward her own quarters.

She only got two steps away before Novack gripped her arm. “Come on, don't be so antisocial.”

“I said no.”

In the moonlight she could see his face harden. And his grip on her arm along with it. “One lousy drink. It won't kill you.”

“No.” Tamara tried to pull loose.

“You think you're better than me? You got the hots for the professor? Well, he's flown the coop, babe, and I'm all you've got.”

“Let go of me!”

He pulled her to him and twisted her arm behind her back. Tamara was pinned to him. She opened her mouth to scream, but he clapped his hand over it.

“You just keep quiet and you won't get hurt.”

Tamara kicked him in the shin as hard as she could. Novack yelped with pain, and she broke free of his grip. She started to run away, but a sudden blow to her back knocked her sprawling on the dusty sidewalk.

Novack loomed over her. “You open your mouth again, bitch, and I'll break your fucking face.”

Tamara tried to get up, but Novack was on top of her, pinning her to the ground.

He slapped her face, hard. “Come on, bitch. You're going to get it, whether you like it or not.”

Suddenly he was lifted up and off her. Tamara saw that Hightower, massive as an avenging angel, had hauled him up in the air by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants and was shaking him like a terrier shaking a rat.

Novack yowled and struggled, arms windmilling and legs thrashing at the empty air, unable to get at the bigger man. Hightower raised him high over his head, still shaking him mercilessly, then slammed him to the ground. Tamara heard a resounding thump and a sharp crack as the man's head hit the pavement.

She raised herself up on one elbow. Novack was sprawled facedown on the ground, his limbs twisted, his eyes half closed. But he was breathing, she saw. Gasping for air, actually. Unconscious, not dead.

Hightower offered her a hand, and she got shakily to her feet.

“He … he…”

“He's not going to do anything for a while,” Hightower said, as calmly as if discussing the weather. “Come on, I'll take you to your building.”

*   *   *

“P
ROFESSOR ABRAMSON.” THE
loudspeaker blared over the thrumming of the approaching helicopter. “STAND WHERE YOU ARE. WE'RE GOING TO LAND AND PICK YOU UP.”

Luke watched the chopper settle onto the ground, kicking up a whirlwind of dust. No searchlight, he said to himself. They must have an infrared detector.

He got slowly to his feet and raised his arms above his head, like a prisoner who's been caught by the guards. In one hand he still clutched his cell phone.

You got me, he said silently to the chopper crew, but not soon enough to stop me.

 

Viral

W
HEN THE HELICOPTER
crew brought Luke into the little wooden shack that served as a control center for the helipad, Tamara was there, standing between Colonel Dennis and Hightower. She looked anxious, Dennis tense and angry, Hightower as imperturbable as a mountain with his beefy arms folded across his chest.

She ran across the tiny room to him. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he answered, with a crooked grin. “I'm fine. Now.”

“You look terrible,” she said. He saw that there were tears in her eyes.

“Cut my hands a little.” He showed them, palms up.

“Your face is bruised. And your nose has been bleeding. Clotted blood.”

“Tripped in the dark.” He glanced down at his ripped trousers. “Cut my leg, too.”

“My God. We've got to get you to the infirmary.”

“Not so fast.” Colonel Dennis came between them. “You've got some explaining to do, Professor.”

But Luke noticed that Tamara's cheek was bruised. “What happened to you?”

Hightower stepped up and answered, “Novack.”

“That sonofabitch!”

Placing a massive hand on Luke's chest, Hightower said, “It's all right. He's in the infirmary. Couple of cracked ribs and a concussion.”

Luke stared at the FBI agent.

Dennis tried to reassert his authority. “All right, I want to know just what the hell you were trying to do out there. Where did you think you were going?”

“No place,” said Luke.

“What do you mean, no place?”

Luke looked around the crowded little room. The two men of the helicopter crew were standing in the doorway, and a trio of tech sergeants, seated at their consoles, had swung their chairs around to watch their colonel and the civilians.

Luke explained. “I just wanted to get far enough away so I could put through a couple of phone calls.”

“Phone calls?”

Luke dug out his cell phone and brandished it in front of the colonel's face as if it were a magic wand. “Yep. The news is out, Colonel. My work's been published on the Internet.”

Dennis's face went pale. “Ohmigod.”

*   *   *

D
ENNIS FLED TO
his office while Tamara took Luke to the infirmary, with a pair of MPs and Hightower accompanying them. Luke saw Novack lying on one of the beds, asleep or unconscious. The other three beds in the minuscule sick bay were empty.

Tamara fussed over his hands, washing them thoroughly, then swabbing disinfectant over his cuts and bandaging them carefully.

“That's the longest time we've ever held hands,” he said to her, grinning foolishly.

She gave him a tight-lipped look. “You could have killed yourself out there.”

“Maybe. But I didn't.”

She led Luke to the examination table. He sat on its edge, and she helped him pull off his pants. Luke wanted to laugh, thinking this would be much more enjoyable if the MPs and Hightower weren't watching.

“You must have a guardian angel watching over you,” she said as she cleaned the clotted blood from his thigh. “Another inch and your femoral artery would have been ripped open. You would've bled to death out there.”

Luke said nothing, but he thought that he did indeed have a guardian angel watching over him at this particular moment. An angel with green eyes.

With Tamara holding one arm and Hightower the other, Luke shuffled to the nearest empty bed and sank down on it.

“You must be tired,” she said.

“Yeah. I didn't get much sleep out there.”

She bent over and kissed him lightly on the lips. He closed his eyes and, smiling, fell asleep.

*   *   *

W
HEN LUKE AWOKE
it was bright morning. Novack's bed was empty, he saw. Nobody else was in sight.

Then Hightower pushed through the door, carrying a breakfast tray.

“You're awake. Good.”

Luke pulled himself up to a sitting position as Hightower put the tray on the swinging table next to the bed.

“Colonel Dennis has been on the phone most of the night. Rossov is on his way here. So is Fisk.”

Jerking a thumb at the mussed bed, Luke asked, “Where's Novack?”

“They took him to Spokane late last night.”

“How'd he get the concussion?”

Hightower swung the table in front of Luke. “He was bothering Dr. Minteer. He fell and hurt himself.”

“With a little help from you, huh?”

Smiling minimally, Hightower replied, “An FBI agent doesn't rough up people. That's against our rules, even if the little jerk is attacking a woman. He just fell and hurt himself.”

“If you say so.”

Luke looked down at the breakfast tray: cup of fruit, scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. Picking up the fork, he asked Hightower, “No breakfast for you?”

“I had mine two hours ago.”

Luke speared an apple slice just as the door opened again and a blur raced to his bedside. “Grandpa!” Angela said, reaching for him with both arms.

Luke hauled her up beside him and saw Lenore and Del at the door, both of them wreathed in smiles.

“Grandpa, we're going home!” Angela cried happily. “Tomorrow!”

“That's great,” he said, looking past the child to his daughter and her husband. “Wonderful.”

Hightower burst the bubble, though. “I'm afraid you'll have to stay until Rossov and Fisk decide what to do about you.”

Luke's elation dimmed. “When will they be here?”

“Later this afternoon,” said Hightower. “They're flying to Spokane on one of Fisk's jets, and Colonel Dennis has arranged for a chopper to bring them here.”

Luke nodded. Shootout at high noon, he said to himself.

Then he realized that Hightower was smiling broadly.

“I'm glad you're happy,” he said, absently hugging Angela.

“You should be, too,” said the FBI agent. “Whatever it was that you sent out on your phone last night, it's gone viral on the Internet. Dennis has been talking to Army brass and White House people all morning. He's sweating bullets. Probably lost five pounds already.”

Viral, Luke thought. Good. The word is out. Angela is fine. Everything's fine. Well, almost everything.

 

Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

“
D
O YOU REALIZE
what you've done?” Rossov snarled.

Luke saw anger in the White House man's face. Anger, tension—and fear.

They were sitting in Colonel Dennis's office. The colonel sat entrenched behind his desk, looking very flustered. Quenton Fisk sat beside Rossov, quiet, cold, his expression unreadable.

Luke answered calmly. “What I've done is show the world that telomerase therapy can be used to kill cancerous tumors.”

“You signed a privacy agreement!” Fisk snapped.

“And you agreed to locking me up in this glorified prison. Sue me and I'll countersue you.”

“The hell you will.”

“The hell I won't!”

Shaking his head, Rossov said, “I don't think you understand what you've let loose. Curing cancer. All sorts of people living past a hundred. It's a disaster.”

“It's a revolution,” said Luke. “What the hell are you so spooled up about? This is the best news the human race has had since … since Watson and Crick unraveled DNA.”

Rossov moaned. “Death rate going down. Lifetimes doubling. That's a disaster, Abramson! A fucking disaster!”

Genuinely puzzled, Luke asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You've ruined Social Security. We're already going broke with Medicare. And the whole insurance industry, too. You've wrecked the American economy.”

“Bullshit.”

Jabbing a finger at Luke, Rossov insisted, “The economy can't survive having a nation full of centenarians! It'll break the bank.”

Luke felt growing anger simmering inside him. These chowderheads don't understand, he realized. They don't understand anything at all.

He rose slowly to his feet. “You just don't get it, do you? You can't stop this. You can't put a cork in scientific knowledge. What I've done is just the tip of the iceberg. We have the knowledge, the power, to transform the human race.”

“And ruin the country.”

“
Change
the country. Change the world.” Luke started to pace across the office, but his ankle flared and he sank back onto his chair. Still, he continued. “We're going to be able to extend human life spans indefinitely, sooner or later. Prevent genetic diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. Stem cell therapies will repair failing hearts, rebuild nerves and any other tissue that's been damaged, regrow limbs that have been lost—”