Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

The reason my thoughts went looking that night for a connection between lust and extinction, desire and death, was obvious. For some time now our research team had been working to find a cure for hadesitt, the deadly sexual disease that had broken out just before the war, decimating the population of Africa before reaching us in both the western and eastern confederations, as HIV had done almost a century earlier. We had already managed to prolong the lives of certain patients with the medicine HADES1, and slightly lowered the mortality rate in other groups, but it was still up at 90 per cent and we were working with what we hoped was an improved version, HADES2. In connection with this we had been looking into the ways in which the disease spread. It came as no surprise for us to discover that those who had oral sex often, and frequently changed partner, ran a markedly greater risk of being infected with hadesitt than others. It was not until I began to analyse the second column of figures that a further — and quite remarkable — aspect of the study struck me.

We had assembled a smallish group of deceased prostitutes and porn actors, some of whom had died of hadesitt, others from different causes, in search of signs that the mortality rate and the danger of infection had fluctuated over time. The reason for this was that the hadesitt virus had not only developed a resistance to medicines but other survival strategies too, as every living organism does in the compulsive pursuit of eternal life. Since, as previously noted, the death rate from hadesitt was over 90 per cent, it was surprising to note that those who had more than the average amount of sex seemed also to have a longer average lifespan than the rest of the population. Bearing in mind both that this group was more vulnerable to hadesitt and the unhealthy lifestyles of many prostitutes one would have expected them to live shorter, not longer lives.

Of course, it’s not unusual for researchers to see mystical connections and patterns in their data, often related to something that has no connection at all with the hypothesis being tested. Many of my colleagues have been quite properly ridiculed for pursuing research they’ve come across in this way. If you throw a dice to test out a hypothesis that you can influence telepathically to land on four, and it turns out that it lands with an unnatural regularity on five, then there is an obvious temptation to claim that what you were testing was whether the dice would land on the number you were thinking of, plus one. Ethically speaking, of course, that would be rubbish. The rule is: test what is to be tested, answer the question that has been asked. Any answer can be misused by changing the question so that it fits the result, thereby giving the researcher an apparently sensational breakthrough in a wholly different field. And that was exactly what happened to me that night.

I thought of nitric oxide and norepinephrine and in a dreamlike and yet clear-sighted moment spotted a connection. A connection I knew I could not dismiss, not even if it meant falling headlong into the classic trap. I also knew I could not tell anyone about the researcher’s sin I was about to commit.

I flushed the toilet and went to the living room. Light from the last working street lamp on Rainerstrasse filtered in through the rain that ran down the glass. It fell onto the photograph of my brother Jürgen on the wall, onto the elephant rifle hanging above the fireplace, and on the pen Klara had given me as a birthday present one year. I picked up the pen, found a sheet of paper and noted down my wild ideas. Then I crept back to bed, where Klara was still sleeping in peaceful innocence. I looked at her face — calm and still beautiful — but ageing much too fast, before turning the alarm clock back an hour and a half, as though it were a symbolic act.

After I let myself into the laboratory the next morning, before anyone else had arrived, I at once began studying the figures more closely to test out my new hypothesis.

Three months after the night I had first thought of the link between sex and increased lifespan I was sitting in the office of my boss Ludwig Kopfer, the administrative director for Antoil Med. He had been listening to me for some two hours, almost without interrupting. Now he clasped his hands together and looked at me over the tops of his spectacles. They were without arms, the kind that just pinch over the nose; I think Sigmund Freud wore a pair.

‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ Kopfer said, the way he always does, and without any suggestion that such an interruption would in fact be tolerated. ‘But what this boils down to is that a compound of nitric oxide and norepinephrine can retard the ageing process and combat disease. And this is something that happens at the cellular level. That in theory this component can completely halt the ageing process.’

‘We know that nitric oxide and norepinephrine affect the blood vessels in the genitals of both men and women during sexual arousal; but they’re also important for the autoimmune system. It’s the combination of norepinephrine and a couple of other substances that retards the ageing process. And I haven’t found any reason why the right combination shouldn’t be able to halt the process completely.’

‘As in—’ he whispered the word — ‘immortality?’

I coughed. ‘As in preventing the body from degenerating with age and ultimately dying from some otherwise harmless illness. There are numerous other ways in which to die.’

‘Immortality,’ Kopfer said again, as though he hadn’t heard me, leaning back in his high-backed chair and looking thoughtfully through the window. ‘The search for the holy grail!’

For a long time neither of us spoke. Outside, the smoke from Dusseldorf’s factory chimneys rose silently into the air. It was strange to think how, fifty years ago, these had almost disappeared. Finally Kopfer spoke.

‘You realise what you are asking for, Herr Jason?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You risk ruining the reputation of the whole company.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘So what if I say no?’

‘Then I’ll hand in my notice and take the material to one of our competitors.’

‘You can’t do that — the data you’re basing this on is the property of Antoil Med and we’ll sue not just you but the company you take this to.’

‘Naturally, I won’t use any of the material from here, I’ll get new data. And now that I know what I’m looking for, better data. And no one can take the idea away from me, because that’s in here.’ I tapped my temple with my index finger.

I could see Kopfer muttering something inaudible, and then he sighed loudly. ‘But eternal life. Good God, Herr Jason.’

‘Of course, there are years of research remaining before we’ll know whether I am right,’ I went on. ‘But I’m willing to stake my reputation and my career on it.’

‘Of course you are, and if you are right then a Nobel Prize in either medicine or biology awaits you, probably both. And if you’re wrong, then you can just start all over again. But for the company...’

‘The company won’t double its value times a hundred if I’m right, it will do so a thousand times. In other words, if there’s a two per cent chance I’m right then it makes rational financial sense to go for it.’

‘For the Eggen family and the other stockholders maybe. But to put the livelihoods of our workforce at risk like that...’

‘The risk to workplaces here will be greater if a competitor gets to develop the medicine. It will replace between sixty and seventy per cent of all other medicines. The branch is facing a bloodbath. The only question is, Herr Kopfer, which side of the bloodbath will you be on?’