Race Across The Sky Part 13

Stacey adjusted her red gla.s.ses. "What's up?"

"The Director of Immunology is Dineesh . . . ?"

"Dineesh Pawar."

"I sent him an e-mail request for a meeting, but I never heard back. Can you help me get in with him?" Shane smiled plaintively.

She c.o.c.ked her Sicilian head. "Dennis mentioned you in a senior management meeting. Good feedback coming in."

"Thanks."

"I'll see his a.s.sistant tonight. I'll get you a slot, no worries."

The following day, Shane received notice that a meeting had been arranged in Dineesh's office. He found the Director of Immunology to be a surprisingly handsome man. Six feet tall, with a head full of slicked-back black hair, and perfect white teeth. He could have been, Shane felt, a Bollywood star. He wore a white s.h.i.+rt tucked into pleated black pants. A gold chain was visible inside his collar.

"Alpha-one ant.i.trypsin deficiency," Dineesh considered, standing near his desk. His voice was quite deep. "Mutation of a gene on chromosome fourteen."

"I know a little girl who was born with it."

Dineesh nodded. "Pretty rare stuff. You'd have to address the mutated gene, wouldn't you?" Dineesh shook his head, looking at his BlackBerry. "A thousand f.u.c.king e-mails around here, you know?"

"If we had the beginning of a treatment, would we ever apply for an orphan grant?"

Dineesh's dark eyes snapped up, an amused expression on his face. "For infant-onset alpha-one ant.i.trypsin deficiency? Very rare. Too rare for us, man."

As he walked around his desk looking at his phone, it was clear he had already moved on.

But Shane had not.

Caleb widened his eyes and made a funny face down to Lily.

She was surprisingly smiley for a baby who had slept so little. Something in the humid late August air was ratcheting up the tenor of her wheezing, and June had taken her into her bed at night out of fear.

Despite this interrupted sleep, she was growing, developing, in ways that astonished them all. Watching Lily became house sport; they applauded her, cheered for her, pa.s.sed her from person to person, and she seemed to thrive with their attention. She would glance up at Alice, Rae, John, Juan, tighten her jaw, and a look of determination would sweep across her face, and she would pull herself panting across the wide wood floor.

"It's her personality," John told them, running a hand through his crew-cut white hair. "That's a determined girl."

Caleb never saw her unattended to. He supposed this was as good a way to be a child as any.

As September swept over the mountains, Caleb's teeth began aching. He was nearly forty-four and had not seen a dentist in eight years; he expected some decline in his dental health. But recently he had needed to keep his mouth closed against even the slightest breeze. Brus.h.i.+ng his front teeth had become outrageous.

Caleb knocked on Mack's closed door.

"Yo," came a shout.

Caleb found him s.h.i.+rtless at a small and cluttered desk, facing a window that looked onto the pines across the road. Countless running magazines littered the floor. A bare futon with two crumpled blue sheets lay by the window. Tacked to the wall were maps of Yosemite National Park, in various sizes and details. On the far wall hung a white marker board with training, work, and ch.o.r.e schedules for each of them. Mack was online. Internet access was prohibited to all members, but he had possession of a battered Dell.

"Dude. Barry just sent me the course. It's wicked. It is the f.u.c.king devil."

Caleb took a tentative step closer and peered at the screen. "This is Yosemite?"

"I know spring feels like forever away, but it's only seven months." Mack looked at him with his dancing bright blue eyes. "You ever been there? Yosemite Park?"

"I never have."

"I went in college. Tripped and camped for days. It's so beautiful. Half Dome is from another universe. Whoever climbs it and wins this is going to feel like G.o.d." Mack clicked his mouse and the computer went dark. Then he swiveled on his chair and looked at him. In a very different voice he asked, "What's up?"

"My teeth hurt."

"Front or back?"

"Front."

"Enamel." He flicked his own teeth with a fingernail. "When you mouth-breathe during runs, the air dries out your enamel. All that friction thins it right down to the nerves. Surprised it hasn't happened to you before, dude."

Caleb felt a question emerging. Later he would wonder if it was a challenge. "Why don't you do some reiki?"

"As long as you're running mouth open? It's going to get worse. Better to do some visualizations on running with your mouth closed. After a month or two the enamel will recover."

Caleb swallowed. "I want to take Lily to a doctor."

Mack looked at him. "You do. Where?"

"I want to get her to New York or someplace."

"New York," Mack repeated.

"Maybe there's an expert. Maybe there's a new drug."

"You remember what happened to Hope?"

Caleb swallowed.

"She'd been with us three years when she got that tumor in her t.i.tty. I was healing it, it was disappearing, but she kept on doubting me, kept on asking everyone if she should see a doctor. Doubt is as much of a cancer as a tumor. You remember what happened?"

Caleb nodded. Mack had driven Hope to Boulder Community Hospital and never went back for her.

"When I healed Kevin's diabetes, there were no experts or drugs. But it took half a year. Lily's problems are within her own body. It starts there. It stops there. These are serious problems and I need more than three months to rebalance her energy. Natural healing takes time. But, brother, I'm the reason Lily's still breathing."

"We know that."

Mack stared at him. "Look at you. Your focus is just f.u.c.king gone dude. You fell off Engineer. You're all"-Mack waved his hands in the air-"scattered. Now you want to take them to New York? Maybe you just want to go back there, and they're your excuse."

"No," Caleb stated nervously.

"Maybe that's what you need. To go back to your old life."

"I need to be here."

Mack leaned forward, his face inches from Caleb's. "Then detach yourself right f.u.c.king now."

Caleb took a step backward.

Something wicked flashed in Mack's eyes. "Let me tell you something about history."

Caleb nodded unsurely.

"History is the study of small differences. When explorers discover a new tribe, on some remote island, you know what they find out? That the people with big ears hate the people with little ears. f.u.c.king hate them. The big-eared people teach their children that the little-eared people eat their own babies. They go to war. There's generational violence over ears. Follow?"

"Sure."

"Ninety percent of all worldly strife is caused by small differences. And when you and June get this involved, you create a small difference with everyone else in the house."

"Are people upset?"

"People don't know yet. But relations.h.i.+ps have"-Mack circled his hands-"reactions. If they succeed, other people feel they need one too. It's mimetic desire. If they fail, bad vibes invade our house. Look Caleb, if you feel the need for a one-on-one relations.h.i.+p, that's very cool. You can have that and still compete at a very high level. But not here.

"I like June. I love little Lily. But I don't care how good a runner you are. If you don't get it together, they're gone. I want you out training when June is in here. And in here when she's out." He nodded his head. "I sent Annabelle packing when she was winning in every Fat Race in Colorado, because she was spending time with that mustached motherf.u.c.ker bartender. And June isn't winning any races."

Caleb's stomach clenched. If Mack expelled them, where would they go? He needed to keep them here, while he waited for Shane to tell them what to do. He would agree to anything for that.

Mack stared at him. "'But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?'"

Cowed, Caleb turned for the door. Then, his hand on the k.n.o.b, he turned and said boldly, "She's in her room. Lily is."

When Mack answered, his voice was gentle. "Okay, buddy. I'll do some work with her tonight."

Caleb opened the door, moved straight outside, onto the dirt road, through the field's fallen leaves, into the unfriendly sky, and began to run, out and out, and out, and out.

6.

At midnight, Shane sat in his cubicle, dimly aware of the cleaning lady behind him.

He had decided to open an orphanage. A well-managed operation, with the goal of placing just one orphan: a drug for alpha-one ant.i.trypsin deficiency.

Since his revelation in Nicholas's room, Shane had been overwhelmed by thoughts of Lily. Sometimes in the whine of the refrigerator he heard the wheeze of her breathing. When his foot hurt after a run, he thought of her swollen feet. It was impossible to conceive of continuing to live his life any longer without doing all he could to help her.

So all week he had stayed late, researching orphan grants. It had been days since he had seen Janelle or Nicholas at night; even Stacey left the office before him, casting him an arched eyebrow.

He had begun crafting a formal proposal suggesting Helixia apply for one. He filled it with numbers, charts, examples, projections, all based on profit models he had read online. Slowly he was piecing together a sober argument to conduct trials on Prajuk's drug, which would switch on the gene in the fourteenth chromosome that ordered the liver to begin production of alpha-one ant.i.trypsin.

Orphan grants excited him. Cystic fibrosis and Tourette's syndrome were currently being treated with biologics which had been produced under the Orphan Drug Act. One of the most profound examples was Ceredase.

In 1984, scientists at Genzyme had discovered a treatment for Gaucher's disease. But the small number of people suffering from the condition, a few hundred thousand, gave Genzyme no financial justification to spend eight hundred million dollars producing it. Instead, the company had applied for an orphan grant. The National Inst.i.tute of Health paid for small clinical trials, did very well, and now Ceredase was earning a billion dollars a year.

A billion, Shane whistled. And Genzyme had been granted market exclusivity for a decade.

Only a fraction as many alpha-one ant.i.trypsin deficiency patients existed as Gaucher's, but his math still worked; they could a.s.sume some small profit. If they won a grant.

He had not realized how much he enjoyed putting together a report; it felt good to be so lost in work. That weekend, Shane printed his proposal and showed it to Janelle over a gla.s.s of cabernet.

"I think you make a good argument," she nodded.

"Thank you. So you'd product-manage this?"

"It doesn't matter what I'd do. The challenge is getting someone who matters to listen to you. You're a commercial specialist. I love you but that doesn't carry much weight with Science."

"I'll send it to Anthony Leone."

"Anthony won't read it."

Shane frowned, swirling his gla.s.s. Anthony Leone was Helixia's Director of Science, and one of the three senior executives. He was moderately sized, balding, and tended unfortunately toward floral ties. Anthony had made his millions decades ago but worked six days a week; his belief in the company was unshakeable and inspiring to all of them.

"Why not?"

"Because who are you? The scientist who discovered this drug should have his name on it and present it personally. You need creds."

"Prajuk won't do that."

Janelle shrugged. "You might be kind of f.u.c.ked otherwise."

The following week, Shane sat nervously in his Sorion status meeting. A chart on the front page of their decks displayed its chemical compounds and genetic codes. Though he could not read it, Shane sensed its intrinsic majesty, similar to seeing a poem written in Mandarin.

Anthony was there, watching the team present an a.n.a.lysis of its generic compet.i.tors. Shane studied him surrept.i.tiously. He seemed entirely focused, his hands rigid. He possessed the distant eyes of a mind on a different plane.

When the meeting adjourned, Anthony stood to leave. Dennis joined him by the conference room door. This was a study of biological opposites: tall, charismatic, silver-haired Dennis, and small, distant Anthony. Shane took a breath and walked toward them, clutching his carefully printed proposal.

"This is Shane Oberest," Dennis explained kindly. "Shane's lighting Sorion on fire."

"h.e.l.lo," Anthony muttered, exuding the air of a professor late to his next cla.s.s.

Shane brightened. "Doctor Leone, I was wondering if you'd have time to read something."

He was aware of Dennis looking at him and realized too late that he should have run this by him.

"What is this?" Anthony said, suddenly locking eyes with him.