The Delta Factor (8 page)

Everything moved slower here. Even the car's blinkers ticked more deliberately in this small, hot town. There were so few automobiles that drivers greeted each other as they passed. The dogs saluted cars with their waving tails, lapping up the heat with lolling tongues.

The trees had long since grown high and broad enough to create living canopies over all of Edenton's streets. Deborah took him down the bayside road under a veil of sun-dappled green. The points of land jutting into the bay were anchored by houses older than the nation that claimed them.

Deborah drove back inland several blocks and stopped before a solid, red-brick church building. She turned off the engine, sat back in her seat, and sighed softly.

“What's wrong?”

“I had so hoped this weekend would be okay,” she murmured.

“You're not feeling well?”

“I don't know yet.” She gave her head a tired shake. “Stress can set off attacks, and there's been a lot of that recently. Plus I was looking forward to your coming and sort of staying up nights thinking of everything I wanted to tell you.”

“Do you need to rest?”

“Maybe in a little while. First I need to wait and see what's happening.” She turned to him. “I'm sorry, Cliff.”

“Don't be.”

“But there was so much I still wanted to show you. The lab, my house, these latest trial results.”

“This won't be my only trip down, Debs.”

“Promise?”

“Absolutely.”

She let out a breath. “Okay, then we'll just take this one step at a time. I want to show you around here a little more. I know that may sound silly, but it's important to me. This little town is sort of becoming the center of my world.”

“It doesn't sound silly at all,” Cliff said. “I think the place is beautiful.”

“You're not just saying that?”

“This is a great place, Debs. I could learn to love it here. I know it already.” He looked around. “I just can't help but think, though, that it's a strange place to be making scientific history.”

“We may actually be doing that, you know.” She slid from the car with visible effort. “Come on, let me show you the church.”

She led him across the street at a slow but steady pace. “Scientific revolutions occur when paradigms, the framework we use to study the universe, are overthrown. The discovery of penicillin did this in medicine. A spiritual revolution occurs the same way, but one person at a time.”

“That's what has happened to you?” Cliff asked. “A spiritual revolution?”

She was silent a moment. “It's interesting to realize that we scientists tend to deal in mass and multitudes. The larger the group, the surer our findings. And yet the all-powerful Being deals with the world one person at a time. That should tell us something, shouldn't it?”

“I don't know, Debs. I'm not even sure what you're talking about.”

They passed through ancient wrought-iron gates and entered an old cemetery. “We know for a fact that more than two thousand people are buried here, but we can only account for four hundred graves.”

“We?” Cliff smiled. “You were born a million light years from this town.”

“Call me a recent transplant.” Deborah continued down the path. “The church was built over older graves, and there are people buried on top of other people—not hard to do when wooden tombstones had rotted and people fighting an epidemic didn't have time to bother with records.”

She stopped before a series of flat markers. “Three of these belong to colonial governors who ruled in the king's name before independence. Charles Eden, the man this town was named after, was one of them. The first tombstone over there belonged to Mrs. Pollock, wife of another colonial governor. When she died, the governor told the engraver what he wanted written over his wife's grave. After the tombstone was laid, he came back out to pay his respects, took one look at what the engraver had written, and blew his stack. The engraver had gone into a lot of intimate detail about Mrs. Pollock, things only her husband should have known. The governor decided that while his wife was living she had come to know the engraver a lot better than she should have. So he took a gravedigger's pick and dug out all the parts he didn't want anybody else to see. That's why it's all cracked like that.”

“You've gotten to know this area pretty well.”

“Just tapping at the surface,” she said, and led him toward the church. “This is the second oldest church in the state, and it took thirty years to build. Finished in 1766. There was an early law requiring churchgoers to tie their horses at least three hundred feet from the church door. If they didn't, they were barred from ever holding public office.”

She pushed open the ancient portal and stepped inside. “In the colonial era, each family would bring a footwarmer to church with them, something like a lidded shovel that held hot coals. The mother and father would place their feet on it, with the children spread down the pew. That was the building's only heat.”

Deborah unlatched one of the little gates blocking the pews and ushered Cliff into a seat. “A family would buy a pew and pass it down from generation to generation. The upstairs galleries were sectioned off. They held the servants, transients, and families too poor to afford a family pew. There were a lot of transients here, Edenton being a big port city.”

“I've never been much for history,” Cliff confessed. “But somehow you make this stuff live for me.”

“Too often people look at history and see only
things
. I've learned to look and see what my own world has lost. They are after a claim for themselves or their family; I am after values that never die. This town is full of people determined to justify their quirks and failings by finding refuge in the past. But there are a few here and there who acknowledge the past because it holds things they wish to keep for today. Blair's aunt is a good example—I just met her a few days ago. When I discover someone like her, I feel like I've uncovered a special treasure.”

Cliff inspected his friend's profile and declared, “You've changed, Debs. A lot.”

She did not deny it. “I was born with a restless spirit. And I've never minded that in the least. It has driven me to go and hunt and find and do.” She combed fingers through her close-cropped hair, then rubbed her neck. “I'm tired now, Cliff. My mind tells me it's the disease. But my spirit stays restless. Questing, searching, and now condemning. I am so hard on myself and my weaknesses.”

“You shouldn't be.”

“But I am. I am so ashamed of myself and everything I'm leaving undone.”

“You can't help it.”

“That doesn't matter. I want so much to keep working my twenty-hour days. But I can't. My restless spirit pushes me hard as ever, but my body stays still and simply says no, I won't, not any more. The storm threatens to tear me apart sometimes.”

“Debs—”

“Wait, let me finish. But something is happening to me. As though all this storm has had a purpose. It has forced me to look beyond myself, beyond the world I have spent my entire life studying and analyzing and trying to control. Now control is lost. Now the power of analysis is gone. And what is left is
vision
.”

Cliff shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I know. I know. The whole idea is alien. To me, too. I've been trained to hold everything at arm's length, to tie everything down by the empirical method. But I can't deny the power of my realization. No matter how hard I try.”

Cliff tried for diplomacy. “It sounds like you've found a good source of strength.”

“Yes, I have. And a reassuring knowledge of being accepted.” Her eyes held a gentle light of seeing beyond the church's confines. “Warts and restlessness and MS and all.”

Of the luxury hotels lining New York's Central Park, the Ritz-Carlton was the smallest and least ostentatious. The same was true for its restaurant, the Jockey Club. It looked like the paneled study of an old manor house, and attracted a conservative wealthy clientele. On any given night, at least half the tables were occupied by patrons with paintings on loan to the Guggenheim, the National Gallery, or the MOMA. Conversations were quiet, the service swift and discreet, the prices staggering. The Jockey Club was the sort of place where to ask the price meant not belonging.

They met there because the chairman of Pharmacon lived in a Central Park triplex just up the street. Owen MacKenzie was a regular and was greeted with discreet murmurs and bows from the maitre d'. He had ordered the meeting when Whitehurst had called to report on the press conference.

Whitehurst watched as Cofield took in the surroundings and added them to the list of goodies he wanted for himself. Whitehurst had only contempt for Cofield and his size-fourteen ego. But a man as vain as this one was a man easily controlled, and Whitehurst needed a research director whom he could control. So he put up with the man's insufferable vanity and his unbridled lust for perks and his drive to remain in the limelight. And he waited. One day his own power would be cemented, and then he could bring out the knife he kept hidden behind his smile.

Owen MacKenzie wore his face like a comfortable old shoe, well-worn and long broken in. His clothes fitted his face. His suit cost two thousand dollars, yet looked slept in. His tie was canted at a forty degree angle. He continually spilled cigar ash over his sparkling white shirt. His shoes were hand-sewn, yet had never been polished and were scuffed down to the leather.

Owen MacKenzie knew next to nothing about the pharmaceutical industry. He liked to say that before being offered this job, his only contact with the drug business had been taking two aspirin for a cold. But he was an expert at turning around sluggish companies. His last two employers had been a maker of spark plugs and the nation's largest producer of tin cans. Then the Pharmacon board had brought him in to inject new life into the company. And Owen MacKenzie had responded by setting up Pharmacon's new North Carolina facility.

As was his habit, he kept the conversation light throughout their meal. Only when the plates were cleared away and the snifters of amber liquid set before each gentleman did his face settle into somber lines. “So how did the press conference go?” he demanded.

“Fairly well,” Whitehurst responded, not looking at his companion. Cofield still had a short fuse on that one. “We managed to excite quite a bit of interest within the general press.”

“Excellent. Nothing like a few journalistic fires to get the FDA into high gear. Especially if there's any hint that Joe Public is missing out on a major new relief because of bureaucratic holdups.”

“As a matter of fact,” Whitehurst interjected, “it appears we are actually on the brink of just that.”

“Just what?”

“A major new relief,” Whitehurst replied.

Owen MacKenzie's gaze took on a keener focus. “How major?”

“According to the latest trial results, as big as Zantac,” Whitehurst predicted. “Maybe bigger.”

Zantac was an industry byword for success, the most prescribed drug in the world. The ulcer medicine had chalked up 1993 sales of over four billion dollars.

The chairman fiddled with his napkin. “I didn't cancel my other engagement to endure a sales pitch that wouldn't impress a new GP.”

“He's not kidding,” Cofield said. “This could be really big.”

Owen MacKenzie glanced from one man to the next. “All right. I'm listening.”

Cofield said, “One of our chief researchers is a woman by the name of Deborah Givens. She was originally brought in to head up research into new monoclonar antibodies, but it turns out she has an illness that could get worse at any moment.”

“Which one?”

“MS,” Whitehurst answered. “We didn't know it at the time of hiring her, of course.”

“Right,” Cofield said, recovering the ball. “So we decided to take her off the main research, replace her with somebody who didn't have this risk of not being around to finish the job.”

“We were planning to let her coast for a couple of years,” Whitehurst explained, “then give her the boot. Use her lack of productivity as the reason.”

“Good thinking,” the chairman agreed. “No need to attract any unnecessary litigation.”

“So she comes up with this idea to look into some natural medicines used behind the Iron Curtain,” Cofield went on. “Or what used to be the Iron Curtain. Medicine is so backward there, they're still using roots and herbs from the Middle Ages. We thought, what the heck, it wouldn't cost much, and who knows, she might actually turn up something.”

Owen MacKenzie nodded his understanding. A number of key medicines had been discovered in just such studies of natural healing elements. Digitalis, used for heart failure, came from the foxglove plant. Taxol, a new drug used in the treatment of ovarian cancer, had been recently isolated from the bark and needles of the Pacific yew tree.

“We kept her under a tight rein,” Cofield said. “She's got the smallest lab section in the company, a grand total of five lab technicians, one of which is the biggest man ever created. All of her people are a little odd. Her lab's been sort of the deposit for techies nobody else wanted to touch. So what happens but she strikes gold. And I mean gold.”

“In what field?” the chairman demanded.

“That's just it,” Cofield said, growing excited. His hands refused to stay still. They were everywhere, dancing across the table, touching his tie, rubbing the side of his face, patting down his wire-brush hair. “We still don't know exactly how far we can go with this one.”

“Deborah was looking at a root extract that was claimed to help strengthen the immune system against viral attacks,” Whitehurst explained. “She isolated half a dozen molecules that had not been previously identified.”