Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I did not.

‘We get the time we get,’ she consoled me, though it did nothing to stop my tears. ‘And if we don’t get the longest time, what we do get is the best, right?’

I gave up my job to spend more time with Klara, but then changed my mind after a couple of months. Longevity was my special field; surely there had to be something I could do beyond simply sitting and watching my beloved crumble away before my very eyes? So I began to work longer hours and with greater intensity than ever before, at one and the same time hunter and hunted. Then the board decided that the economic downturn meant the company could no longer afford to finance something that offered little hope of short-term profits, and I was diverted to the hadesitt research programme.

I had not told Klara about my discovery. Like the relatives of the rest of the research group, she believed I had gone to Africa to find a cure for a sexual disease. She was just glad to have me home again, and as we sat on the sofa and watched the unsinkable ship sink, I sent a stolen glance in her direction. Saw her lift the cup of tea I had made her to her lips as she wiped another tear from her lovely blue eyes.

The telephone in the hallway rang.

I went out and took the call.

‘The board is giving you the go-ahead,’ said Kopfer.

I exhaled deeply, only then realising I had been holding my breath.

‘But they have certain concerns.’

‘Which are?’

‘They say that as long as the medical commission has no written documentation of the contents of the drug, the proceedings could be long-drawn-out, and it might take several years before they give us the go-ahead to begin testing on humans. Bearing in mind the size of the investment, the uncertainty and the time frame before the medicine starts to generate income...’

‘They want me to tell them the formula?’

‘Yes.’

I looked at Klara in the living room, her neck bent to drink her tea. Self-delusion, naturally. By now I was used to it. For Klara’s neck was constantly bent, its elegance a thing of the past.

‘And if documentary proof that it works on humans already exists?’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What if I am already in a position to prove to you that the compound stops the ageing process in humans?’

I heard Kopfer stop breathing at the other end.

‘Can you do that?’

Klara put down her cup. She loved the tea I made, especially the new flavour I had brought back from Africa.

‘Soon,’ I said, and hung up.

From the street below I hear loud, angry voices. Spanish, Arabic, Berber. But I can’t think about that now. Should I have brought the elephant gun with me, now hanging uselessly over the fireplace back home? No. I’m alone and have no chance to defend myself, no chance of getting away. People want to live, no matter what the cost. Or so they think. For they don’t know the price, they don’t know what the consequences will be. And the humming from the suitcase is getting stronger, more insistent. Tick-tock, the seconds pass, the walking stick approaches. Everything they can take has to go. Scorched-earth policy. Not just for Klara’s sake. Or for mine. But for humanity’s sake. I’m ashamed of myself, but this act of betrayal is the only decent thing I’ve ever done in my life.

Kopfer continued to press me to divulge the formula, excusing himself by saying that he was under pressure himself from the board. But I remained adamant that the risk of someone leaking it for financial gain was just too great.

‘Ralph, making that assessment is not your call.’

‘Maybe so, but I’m doing it anyway.’

‘What I mean is that it is not your right. Your duty is to—’

‘My duty is to God and to the human race, Ludwig.’ I saw how Kopfer almost fell out of his chair at my use of his forename. ‘Not Antoil Med. Not even REC. This discovery is bigger than any company or any individual country. The first to get hold of this formula will try to monopolise it and use it for political gain. The only place I could have gone with this would be the United Nations, if it still existed. I’d rather die than hand over the formula.’

Kopfer looked at me for a long time before rising from his seat and leaving.

I stayed where I was, nervous and shaking.

There had been something sorrowing, almost suffering in that look of his. The same look I had seen on the faces of those doctors who came to us with blood samples from their patients, and we had to tell them they were suffering from hadesitt.

I took regular blood and tissue samples from Klara, lying to her and saying I was sending them to a colleague who was working on a cure for Werner syndrome. In the laboratory I was able to see that the medicine was having the same effect as on the mice; the ageing process was not merely retarded, it appeared to have come to a complete stop.

But the medicine also had a side effect we had first observed in the mice. Melissa reported that they were less active, that they stopped visiting the communal cage, and seemed lethargic. The only lively reaction we got from the mice was the way they bared their teeth at the research assistants when they were being fed. I don’t know to what extent African pygmy mice are disposed towards depression. Nor Klara, come to that. For a while I supposed that her abrupt changes of mood, her apathy and general lack of initiative were due to the thought that she would soon be dead. But I hadn’t noticed any of this before I began putting the medicine in her tea, and if the change didn’t exactly occur overnight it was nevertheless so rapid and obvious that I decided to reduce the dosage. With no apparent effect. On the contrary, it seemed as though her mood swings and her pessimism only increased, and that she had developed an addiction to the medicine. Melissa, too, reported that reducing the dosage of Ankh to two of the mice, which she had done on my advice, had had no effect on their behaviour. This only occurred once we started giving them antidepressants. Fortunately the same result was evident in Klara after I began putting a similar mixture in her tea.

One day Daniel Egger, the white-haired chairman of the board, came to my office. The Egger family owned 60 per cent of the shares in Antoil Med, and I had never seen the head of the family wearing anything other than a tweed suit and trainers and carrying a walking stick, the function of which remained unclear, since Daniel Egger trots rather than strolls when walking.

He sat down, placed his hands on the smooth top of his stick and just looked at me.

‘Imagine,’ he said after a while, smiling and displaying a row of teeth so pearly white you might almost think pearl was what they were made of. ‘In the brain directly opposite me now lies the solution to the question that mankind has been asking itself since the dawn of time. How to avoid death.’

‘Maybe so,’ I said.

‘But that is not the most surprising thing, Herr Jason.’ Egger produced a handkerchief and began to polish the tip of his cane. ‘The most surprising thing is that you are a scientist, a researcher who is prepared to betray the most important principle of science: that knowledge is there to be shared.’

‘You think Oppenheimer and his research team should have shared their knowledge of the atom bomb with Hitler and Stalin?’

‘Oppenheimer at least shared it with his superior, the president of the Western Confederation. And you are under the same obligation, Jason. It is the board and the head of this company which has provided you with the means to make your discovery and paid your wages. Your discovery is our property.’

‘My obligation is to—’

‘God and the human race. Kopfer told me what you said.’