Syndrome - Thomas Hoover (best summer books .TXT) 📗

Knickers was waiting by the door, and she gave Ally a dirty look and some very disapproving barks. By way of penance, Ally took her on an extra long walk, all the way up to Fourteenth Street and back. Then she picked up some tuna salad and steamed veggies from a new deli on West Tenth Street.

As she settled down to eat at the breakfast bar, she felt like a single mom, always eating and doing everything on the run-and all she had to worry about was a friendly dog. How did real working moms do it?

It was just past nine when she poured a glass of Chardonnay and picked up Grant’s envelope and took it into the living room, pausing to put some Chopin ballades on the CD player.

The envelope contained a bound folder that was Dr. Karl Van de Vliet’s curriculum vitae, his resume. It was in fact a minibiography that devoted a page to each of his career turns. His life story was presented from a god’s-eye view, as though it were a novel.

Karl Van de Vliet had done his undergraduate studies at the prestigious University of Maastricht after which he’d migrated to the United States and taken a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of Chicago, top of the class. Following that he went to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow, again studying genetics.

From the beginning he focused his research on the mechanisms that govern human cell reproduction. Along the way he’d become interested in something known as the Hayflick limit-which concerned the number of times a cell could divide before it became senescent and ceased to replicate. This natural life span controlled the aging process of every organism, and it seemed to be nature’s device for nipping undesirable (i.e. mutant) cells in the bud by never letting any cell, unhealthy or healthy, just keep on replicating indefinitely.

However, there were “immortal cells” buried within us all, so-called stem cells that could replicate forever, unchanged. They were present at the very beginning of life and all our differing body tissue was created from them. Some still lingered on in our body, as though to be available for spare parts. If one could figure out how to transfer the characteristics of those cells to other cells, then the possibility existed that we could regenerate damaged or aging tissue in our vital organs. The trick was to figure out the mechanism whereby stem cells managed to cheat time.

His research, which was accompanied by a flurry of scientific papers, was celebrated and encouraging. After three years he was lured away from Yale to become a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, which offered to double his laboratory budget. He was there for six years, during which time he met Camille Buseine, a neurosurgeon finishing her residency.

She had a doctorate from a medical institute near Paris and she was doing research that was similar to his, so the biography said. They married and became a team, and when he was asked by Harvard Medical to found a department for molecular genetics, she was immediately offered a tenured position there too. Harvard considered it a double coup.

His research was zeroing in on the telomerase protein, an enzyme many scientists believed was responsible for suppressing the aging process in stem cells. Could it be used to regenerate tissue?

He was well along on the task of exploring that tantalizing possibility when tragedy struck. Camille, who had worked around the clock during her residency at Johns Hopkins, began feeling weak at Harvard and was diagnosed with acquired aortic stenosis. After a 2 1/2-year struggle, she died during a severe cardiac episode.

My God, Ally thought, that’s what I have.

After Camille died, he left Harvard and its time-consuming academic obligations and went to work full-time at a research institute affiliated with Stanford University. He even formed a paper company to structure the work, the Gerex Corporation. But then there came a second strike against him. He was doing research using embryonic stem cells obtained from the discarded embryos at fertility clinics. After two years of harassment by right-wing political groups, Stanford decided his research was too controversial and terminated his funding.

Three months later, Karl Van de Vliet merged his company with Bartlett Medical Devices and moved his research staff east to New Jersey, to the Dorian Institute. That was five years past, and now his research using stem cells was in third-stage NIH clinical trials.

The official history ended there, though with a strong hint that the final chapter was yet to be written. Then at the back there was a bibliography of publications that extended for eight pages, and included a summary of the most important papers. His work on stem cells and the telomerase enzyme appeared to be at the forefront of the field.

Oddly, however, some of his writings also were philosophical, an argument with himself whether his work could be misused to alter the natural limitations life imposes. One of those papers, from a conference presentation in Copenhagen, had a summary, and in it he pondered whether the use of stem cells to rejuvenate the body might someday give medical science godlike powers.

The Greeks, he declared, had a myth about the punishment reserved for those who sought to defeat our natural life span. When the goddess of the dawn, Aurora, fell in love with the beautiful youth Tithonus and granted him immortality, it turned out to be a curse, since he still reached the decrepitude of age but had to suffer on forever because he could not have the release of death.

But, Van de Vliet pondered, if we could find a way to arrest the aging process in our body’s tissue, might we escape the process of aging? If so, was this a good thing? Or might this be a step too far that would bring on unintended, and as yet unknown, consequences?

Well, Ally thought, I wouldn’t mind having Mom’s mind restored. Or my own heart, for that matter.

All in all, Karl Van de Vliet was clearly a genius. He also was a very complex man. But might he be a very gifted huckster as well?

The inside back cover had a group photo, showing him surrounded by members of his research staff, all in white lab coats. There were two men and two women and each was identified, along with a list of his or her academic credentials. They were standing on the porch of what appeared to be a nineteenth-century mansion, which had large Doric columns in Greek Revival style. The lettering in the marble above their heads read THE DORIAN INSTITUTE.

She put down the folder and went into the kitchen and poured herself another glass of wine, finishing off the botde. Her mind was chinning, but not because of the words on the page. It was that photograph at the back. It was dated less than two years ago.

His Ph.D. at the University of Chicago was granted in 1962. But even if he was a genius and got his first doctorate in his early twenties, he’d still have to be-what? At least sixty years old by now. Probably halfway to seventy.

But in the photo, he looks no more than forty, well, forty-five at most. What the heck is going on?

She went back into the living room and picked up the brochure and stared at it. He had sandy hair that lay like a mane above his elongated brow. He was tall and gaunt, with high cheeks and deep, penetrating eyes. But no matter how you gauged him, the guy hadn’t aged a day since his forty-fifth birthday, tops.

So what’s going on that isn’t in the package?

She checked the digital clock on the side table-the hour was pushing ten-and decided to give Grant a call.

Three chirps, and then, “Yo. Hampton here.”

My God, she thought, he even does it at home. That synthetic bravado was left over from his trader days: You’re the luckiest person alive, just to have reached me. How can I further make your day? his tone implied.

“Grant, it’s me. I think it’s time for that vital chat.”

It took him a split second to recover, and then, “Hey, I was beginning to wonder what happened to you. If you were going to stand me up or what. Not call, like you said you would.”

“Long day. I was up at Mom’s this morning. You knew she was going to tell me, right? About your little surprise visit and proposal?”

“I had a hunch the topic might arise.” His voice seemed to shrug nonchalantly. “I thought you should hear it from her instead of from me. So what do you think?”

“What do I think? I think I’m wondering what you’re up to.”

“I’m not ‘up to’ anything, Ally, except exactly what I told her. Trouble is, I don’t know whether she got it. I wanted to see how she was doing. You know, I’m thinking maybe Dr. Vee can do something for her. But I had to see her first. She seemed pretty distant, but that woman there-what was her name? Marie, Maria, whatever?-said she has lucid moments. So who knows? He might possibly help her. I think I can arrange to get her into his clinic. Bartlett gives me a few perks. It’s the least I can do for her, so…” His voice trailed off expectantly.

“Grant, I need to talk to you about this man. I read the stuff you gave me and I still don’t know the first thing about him.” She paused, about to speak words she never thought she would. “If you want to come over, I’ll stand you a drink.”

“You serious?”

“For my sins.”

“I’ll grab a cab. See you in fifteen.”

It’s begun, she thought. I’m about to let Grant screw up my life one more time.

No. This round, don’t give him the chance. Stay ahead of him.

Sunday, April 5

10:39 P.M.

“I didn’t know if I should have brought a bodyguard” he was saying as he strode in the door, a Master of the Universe with a leather jacket slung over his shoulder. He looked stylish, but then he always did. He casually tossed the jacket onto the gray couch, then gazed around. Thankfully, he didn’t try the New York cheek kiss. “I guess this is not supposed to seem like old times, but somehow it does. Seeing you again. Hey, we’re still blood kin, right?”

“Don’t push it, Grant.” She’d killed the Chopin and put on a Bach sonata. Clear, precise thinking was required not sentimentality. Knickers had rushed to give Grant a hello nuzzle, happier to see him than Ally was. “Whatever this is, it is definitely not old times.”

He sauntered into her kitchen, looking around-trying to act cool, but clearly ill at ease. “You’ve done a nice job on this place, sis.” He was looking over the rustic counter she’d installed. “You get a deal on the space? A bank repo or something?”

“The people who had it wanted to sell fast and I made them an offer.” Not that it was any of his damned business. Why didn’t she treat the question with the scorn it deserved?

She had an old fifth of Dewar’s in the cabinet. She poured him some, over ice, then gave herself a shot of tequila anejo, neat, to sip. She loved the pure agave flavor. The more she thought about the situation, the more she was sure she needed it.

He picked up his scotch, then walked into the living room and helped himself to the couch. “Ally, I know why you’re ticked. And I don’t blame you. I feel crummy about Dad, I really do. I guess I share some of the blame.”

He was trying to sound contrite but the reading did not