Jase introduced his father briefly but graciously and melted back into the crowd of dignitaries at the rear of the stage. E.D. stepped forward. E.D. had turned sixty the week before Christmas but could have passed for an athletic fifty, his stomach flat under a three-piece suit, his sparse hair cut to a brisk military stubble. He gave what might as well have been a campaign speech, praising the Clayton administration for its foresight, the assembled staff for their dedication to the "Perihelion vision," his son for an "inspired stewardship," the engineers and technicians for "bringing a dream to life and, if we're successful, bringing life to a sterile planet and fresh hope to this world we still call home." An ovation, a wave, a feral grin, and then he was gone, spirited away by his cabal of bodyguards.
I caught up with Jase an hour later in the executive lunchroom, where he sat at a small table pretending to read an offprint from Astrophysics Review.
I took the chair opposite him. "So how bad is it?"
He smiled weakly. "You don't mean my father's whirlwind visit?"
"You know what I mean."
He lowered his voice. "I've been taking the medication. Clockwork, every morning and evening. But it's back. Bad this morning. Left arm, left leg, pins and needles. And getting worse. Worse than it's ever been. Almost by the hour. It's like an electric current running through one side of my body."
"You have time to come to the infirmary?"
"I have time, but—" His eyes glittered. "I may not have the means. Don't want to alarm you. But I'm glad you showed up. Right now I'm not certain I can walk. I made it in here after E.D.'s speech. But I'm pretty sure if I try to stand up I'll fall over. I don't think I can walk. Ty—I can't walk."
"I'll call for help."
He straightened in his chair. "You'll do no such thing. I can sit here until there's nobody around except the night guard, if necessary."
"That's absurd."
"Or you can discreetly help me stand up. We're what, twenty or thirty yards from the infirmary? If you grab my arm and look congenial we can probably get there without attracting too much attention."
In the end I agreed, not because I approved of the charade but because it seemed to be the only way to get him into my office. I took his left arm and he braced his right hand on the table edge and levered himself up. We managed to cross the cafeteria floor without weaving, though Jason's left foot dragged in a way that was hard to disguise—fortunately no one looked too closely. Once we reached the corridor we stayed close to the wall where his shuffling was less conspicuous. When a senior administrator appeared at the end of the hallway Jason whispered, "Stop," and we stood as if in casual conversation with Jason braced against a display case, his right hand gripping the steel shelf so fiercely that his knuckles turned bloodless and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. The exec passed with a wordless nod.
By the time we made the clinic entrance I was bearing most of his weight. Molly Seagram, fortunately, was out of the office; once I closed the outer door we were alone. I helped Jase onto a table in one of the examination rooms, then went back to the reception desk and posted a note for Molly to make sure we wouldn't be disturbed.
When I returned to the consultation room Jason was crying. Not weeping, but tears had streaked his face and lingered on his chin. "This is so fucking awful." He wouldn't meet my eyes. "I couldn't help it," he said. "I'm sorry. I couldn't help it."
He had lost control of his bladder.
* * * * *
I helped him into a medical gown and rinsed his wet clothes in the consulting room sink and put them to dry next to a sunny window in the seldom-used storage room beyond the pharmaceutical cupboards. Business was slow today and I used that excuse to give Molly the afternoon off.
Jason recovered some of his composure, though he looked diminished in the paper gown. "You said this was a curable disease. Tell me what went wrong."
"It is treatable, Jase. For most patients, most of the time. But there are exceptions."
"And what, I'm one of them? I won the bad news lottery?"
"You're having a relapse. That's typical of the untreated disease, periods of disability followed by intervals of remission. You might just be a late responder. In some cases the drug needs to reach a certain level in the body for an extended length of time before it's fully effective."
"It's been six months since you wrote the prescription. And I'm worse, not better."
"We can switch you to one of the other sclerostatins, see if that helps. But they're all chemically very similar."
"So changing the prescription won't help."
"It might. It might not. We'll try it before we rule it out."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"Then we stop talking about eliminating the disease and start to talk about managing it. Even untreated, MS is hardly a death sentence. Lots of people experience full remission between attacks and manage to lead relatively normal lives." Although, I did not add, such cases were seldom as severe or as aggressive as Jason's seemed to be. "The usual fallback treatment is a cocktail of anti-inflammatory drugs, selective protein inhibitors, and targeted CNS stimulants. It can be very effective at suppressing symptoms and slowing the course of the disease."
"Good," Jason said. "Great. Write me a ticket."
"It's not that simple. You could be looking at side effects."
"Such as?"
"Maybe nothing. Maybe some psychological distress— mild depression or manic episodes. Some generalized physical weakness."
"But I'll pass for normal?"
"In all likelihood." For now and probably for another ten or fifteen years, maybe more. "But it's a control measure, not a cure—a brake, not a full stop. The disease will come back if you live long enough."
"You can give me a decade, though, for sure?"
"As sure as anything is in my business."
"A decade," he said thoughtfully. "Or a billion years. Depending on how you look at it. Maybe that's enough. Ought to be enough, don't you think?"
I didn't ask, Enough for what? "But in the meantime—"
"I don't want a 'meantime,' Tyler. I can't afford to be away from my work and I don't want anyone to know about this."
"It's nothing to be ashamed of."
"I'm not ashamed of it." He gestured at the paper gown with his right hand. "Fucking humiliated, but not ashamed. This isn't a psychological issue. It's about what I do here at Perihelion. What I'm allowed to do. E.D. hates illness, Tyler. He hates weakness of any kind. He hated Carol from the day her drinking became a problem."
"You don't think he'd understand?"
"I love my father, but I'm not blind to his faults. No, he would not understand. All the influence I have at Perihelion flows through E.D. And that's a little precarious at the moment. We've had some disagreements. If I became a liability to him he'd have me relegated to some expensive treatment facility in Switzerland or Bali before the week was out, and he'd tell himself he was doing it for my sake. Worse, he would believe it."