In World City (12 page)

With her marketing package sold and the game of ensuring her financial future at the school played out, Miranda Whitlam became actively uninterested in any company roles she might assume. Whether DNA-based energy liberation failed or succeeded was no longer any concern of hers. She asked the biotech consultant what was currently the single biggest problem that could be tackled by manipulating DNA.

“Longevity,” he answered promptly. “There are billions waiting for anyone who can make something happen there.”

“Longevity,” Miranda repeated, memories beginning to flicker and spark.

“Yes,” the biotech consultant continued, watching her closely, again intrigued by the interest he had awakened. “It's the one area that's wide open to breakthroughs. There's been plenty done in worms and rats, but that's been mainly by breeding rather than direct genetic manipulation, and that kind of work's becoming rather unfashionable anyway – fails to translate as often as not. So there's still nothing to offer humans, despite fortunes in venture capital having been put into the field. Anyone who could guarantee even another twenty years would be made.”

Miranda said, seemingly unaware of any absurdity, “I'd be thinking of forever.”

“But it's blue-skies research,” the biotech consultant continued hurriedly, “And the ethical issues would make your energy project look like a picnic.”

He hesitated; she had handled them like a picnic.

“Still, there's plenty of work going on,” he continued. “Even the pension funds have a finger in it. There's something called the Ageing Initiative that's run by the Lifeline Services Reserve – that's the pension funds' longstop they all pay a percentage into. The Ageing Initiative is allowed to spend on research the small change the Reserve would otherwise just throw on the floor.”

Longevity – that was what that institute of her father had been working on, and the Ageing Initiative was managing it for him. What Miranda had been looking for was already to hand. She tried to remember her way back to that time on the island, trying for some memory of the name of the institute. But, like so much else that had happened there, she had worked to forget rather than remember and the name simply would not come.

“Where is the most important work in longevity research happening?” she asked.

“It's all over the place: universities, institutes, corporate laboratories. It tends to be work that's attached to other projects though. It's difficult to justify in its own right because of the lack of return. But there is one place I know that's solely devoted to it. I was looking into it a while back because of some work I was doing on the Ageing Initiative. The Hollenbeck Institute it's called, run by a man called Joseph Mancewicz.”

The Hollenbeck Institute. Joseph Mancewicz. Prof Joe. Those were the names she had almost obliterated from her memory.

“I want to go and work there,” Miranda said.

From the detached way the biotech consultant was talking, it was clear that, even if he had been looking into the Ageing Initiative, he had not looked deeply enough to find her father in there. And she wasn't going to give anything away. She wanted to know how she was placed, entirely independent of the fact that she could have her father buy her a way in at any time.

The biotech consultant raised an eyebrow. Surely Miranda Whitlam must know that going to work in a place like that at age fifteen could only mean years as a technician and nothing else. Research was not like the corporate executive ladder. The corporate ladder was a thing apart right from the beginning, picking for its climbers a way up through a succession of conference rooms and plush hotels. Research, on the other hand, meant practical work and tying herself to a prescribed task was the last thing that one of the school's pupils should be doing, never mind one of its most able. She needed to be learning to manage people who ran research groups, not working analysers or pipetting stations.

The biotech consultant put this to her and put it to her again on several subsequent occasions, but she remained unmoved. Uncharacteristically unsure of himself, the biotech consultant went to see the principal. She listened carefully and asked some questions. To her credit she concluded, “It looks to me as if we have an original on our hands, someone who wants to understand the world, not just work it. See if you can get a studentship organised for her, something linked with the university.”

*

Miranda told her father what she intended to do and that on no account was he ever to talk about her to anyone from the institute. She was going into this as a complete outsider, free to succeed or fail. On being introduced again to William Burger, now assistant director, she said, “Thanks for the Christmas cards,” then made it clear, both to Burger and Prof Joe, that there was to be no further mention of any connection she might have with the institute, other than in her role as a research student.

As the biotech consultant had predicted, Miranda was set to work in a strictly technical capacity, which role she assumed with the same detached, practical attention she had brought to her initiation of a new phase of global energy production. But the depth of her questioning and evident ability set her far apart from her peers. In her own right, she soon merited the individual attention of the director.

Professor Joseph Mancewicz was a fabulously old German-Swiss whose research publication list began some decades before anyone else in the institute had been born. Miranda was interested to observe the skill with which he buoyed up the work of the institute on a regular supply of credit from each of the giant pharmaceutical combines centred in the city, whilst at the same time using Ageing Initiative funds to maintain complete independence from them. At her first full talk with him, which took place in his office overlooking the Rhine, Miranda watched the sunlight from the open window cast shadows in the mobile lines on his ancient face.

He said to her, “So, you want to make people live forever, eh? – Forever and ever, amen. Well, let's not think about that yet. Let's think about one hundred years more. What about that? But even that is no straightforward problem, Miranda. The difficulty is that we are programmed to die and we are programmed to die because the great god, evolution, requires it of us. If DNA had not learned how to kill us, there would have been no evolution. If death had not been learned, the most there might be crawling around on this planet would be little primal blobs. But those little primal blobs learned how to die. And everything followed, including you and me. No, Miranda, death is the oldest wisdom we carry inside ourselves, and if you want to make changes to that, well...”

“We do work on longevity here, don't we?” Miranda challenged. She was uneasy with the limits the Professor seemed to be accepting.

Prof Joe held up placating hands. “Yes, yes, indeed we do. We do longevity research and we are now one of the few places that could truly be said to do so. You will, of course, be aware by now that we work with animals.”

Miranda nodded. She had been faintly shocked at first; animal experimentation was something barbaric, consigned to a bygone era, like children working in the mines.

“Yes, indeed. After all, how can one not work to lengthen life without having lives to lengthen? Most other places use theoretical or laboratory-based systems. But I need to know that I am actually achieving something. Of course, the animals are why the drug companies keep us at arm's length, even though it was from the drug companies that the animals came in the first place. But it is not what they want for their public image now. Molecular modelling and isolated cell systems are what they like. Nobody has heard a cell scream, you see, and they are not soft and furry. But yes, we do use animals, and quite a nice life they have too – twice as long as if they were in the wild and were lucky enough to die of old age. I still don't much like it, but there it is.”

“But if you can get animals to live twice as long, why can't you apply that knowledge to humans?”

“Think a moment, Miranda. Think about what I told you. I said that death is the oldest wisdom we have, so where can that wisdom be locked up? In our DNA, of course. We have to work on DNA to make the gains we do. And it is to do such work that you have come and joined us. But you see the problem? We have to work on DNA, so, ultimately, we have to work on the germ cells, the source cells from which each organism grows. Now, who is going to allow us to do that to people?”

“So, why bother to work on animals, if you're never going to be able to apply what you find to humans?” Miranda countered, “Rats don't care about living to a hundred.”

Prof Joe's gaze seemed to slide past her and the light in the room dwindle.

“They care about not dying and so do I. That is the devil's bargain that DNA has struck for us. We must die, yet death must be made terrible so we struggle to avoid it at all costs. Every way you lose. But, no, you are right, Miranda, the rats do not care about living to a hundred. They only care about living to the next moment. But, you see, there is a possibility that, by working on their DNA, and on the effects that it has, we will find something that can be made to work in humans without risking any interference with the sacred germ line. That is why the drug companies continue to hold onto us, even if it is at arm's length.”

*

Prof Joe lived another fourteen years and Miranda Whitlam had a post at the institute all that time. Towards the end, an increasingly bitter wind seemed to blow through his words. He would make pronouncements to people he passed in corridors like some Greek seer or Old Testament prophet, awesome but only just tolerated. He said, ‘Mankind is condemned to be free – free to examine its own puppet strings.' And, ‘All that we are is determined, yet we are entirely unknowable.' Sometimes he would become enraged. ‘Who are these damn fool evolutionists that they think they know everything? What good is their theory when there is no argument against it? What good is argument when you want to know the truth?' And then, ‘Of course evolution happens. You only have to look at the cluttered old attic of the human genome to see that it happens. What else but evolution could make such a mess?'

Miranda took less and less notice of all this. She was more interested in the research and her compelling need to develop a programme of work she could call her own. Prof Joe's more bitter utterances were, in fact, peculiarly reassuring to her. They confirmed that the DNA she had gone in pursuit of was every bit as central as she had believed. Here indeed was something she could reach out to and change, and so change the entire world she was enmeshed in.

Miranda was also interested in William Burger, who soon became director in all but name. He was the main organising force in the institute and he was okay to have dinner with. He took Prof Joe's line that animal experimentation would provide the key to the life extension they were seeking. In this and in the words she recalled her father saying about scientists and doctors – words she was only now beginning to understand – Miranda recognised the opening for her own line of work. She studied for a medical degree and concentrated on developing a programme for applying the institute's discoveries to humans. To the institute, however, she was careful to present this as being merely complementary to the main thrust of the work begun by Prof Joe.

And in such time as she allowed herself, she got to know the city, with its drug-company towers and the old town where Erasmus had worked high above the great curve of the Rhine. She liked to take the tram out to the castle ruins at Dornach, especially on winter afternoons when the clouds were low on the Jura and the morning's frost was still on the ground. Occasionally she visited her father when she could be sure he would be alone. He clearly found her a puzzle, but had developed a growing respect for her. He saw her as someone clearly capable of handling the world he was so much in control of himself, yet interested in something entirely different. She also provided a thread of continuity in his rather chaotic personal life.

William Burger's attentions became gradually more pressing and she consented to an affair, even though he was by now married. When he became too serious, she ended it. Prof Joe died, and there were rumours he had taken his own life. But nobody pursued the possibility; he had been ninety-eight years old.

Shortly before he died, Prof Joe said to Miranda, “I have kept my promise not to mention who you are, Miranda, but I am now far too old to keep promises. And in any case, you are a well-established member of our team and your history and background before you joined us are of no consequence. I have had a long time to think about it and I still think that I chose to be a threat to your father for purely ethical reasons rather than out of any concern for the advancement of my own plans. Financially, your father was always very close to the edge. I did not want to see the institute put at risk. That was why I tried to wrest it from his grasp. I felt he was a danger to his own creation. I say to myself that perhaps I am just making up excuses for a selfish takeover, but I always end up thinking that I did right. Anyway, after he had won his battle, he seemed to lose interest and left me to do much as I would have done if he had failed. So I think I acted for the best and it all worked out well. Take it or leave it.”

Miranda took it. Working with Prof Joe, she had trusted less and less the story of cynical plotting her father had believed was behind the upheavals of her childhood. Neither had she ever allowed herself the slightest resentment of Prof Joe for having evicted her from her childhood home. When she thought about it at all, she simply saw those events as things that happened – part of her growing up.

After Prof Joe died, the head of the pharmaceutical companies' funding committee said, “Living to ninety-eight, old Joe was the best advertisement this place had for the work done here. But we don't see it going anywhere, we can't afford it anymore and the ethical issues make it a no-go area anyway. Sorry.”