“Working on rejuvenation?” asked Rob. “I don’t think so. That may have been where he started, but I know he’s doing other things on Atlantis. For one thing, he has Caliban.”
“Caliban.” Senta shuddered a little, as though a trace of taliza was still working within her. “That’s a name I haven’t thought about for a long time. When I first met Morel, that was all he would talk about. Caliban can do this, Caliban will do that. He has been working with that animal for many years. Even at the beginning, he said that he would make him do things that no squid had ever done before — he used to make him do tricks.”
“He still does that, and more,” said Rob. “You mean he had Caliban with him when he was here on Earth?”
Senta frowned, her dark brows drawn into a line over her wide-spaced eyes. “I find these things hard to remember. They seem vague, as though they happened to somebody else. I’m sure that he had Caliban then, but I don’t know if it was on Earth or off it. It was definitely thirty years ago, and that would make it three years before Regulo moved his operation away from Earth completely. So Morel must have been working with Caliban here, on Earth.”
“You mean that Regulo has been living in space for all that time — for the past twenty-seven years?” Rob’s face expressed his surprise. “I thought he had gone there much more recently, when he got old. That’s another thing I don’t understand. Morel is supposed to be a big expert on rejuvenation, one of the top authorities in the System. And Regulo is loaded with money, so expense isn’t an issue. Why hasn’t he had rejuvenation treatments? I know some people refuse them for religious reasons, but I doubt if that’s a factor with Regulo — his god is engineering. If that’s what he hired Morel for, why doesn’t he use him? And why does he go around with all the scar tissue on him, instead of using grafts and regeneration treatment?”
“Scar tissue?” Senta was frowning at him in surprise. “Which scar tissue? I don’t remember any scars.”
“It must be part of the memories that you’ve lost,” said Rob. He had stood up and was pacing up and down in front of the window. “He has scars over his whole face. You must have seen them, he got them from the solar fly-by that he did, fifty years ago. Corrie told me all about it. Did you forget all that, too? His face is a nightmare.”
Senta, seated on the sofa, was silent for so long that Rob was afraid of some new attack from her drug addiction. She seemed to have gone into another trance, her face puzzled and thoughtful. Finally, she nodded her head.
“I think I know what has happened,” she said. “You’ve been putting pieces together logically, and they seem to make sense. But you have a piece missing, because Cornelia left out an important fact.”
“Don’t play games, Senta,” said Anson quietly.
“It’s not games.” Senta patted Anson’s hand, while keeping her eyes fixed on Rob. “My memory has bad patches, but I’m quite sure of this. Regulo did get scars from the close approach to the Sun, but they could be removed. And they were removed, soon after he returned to Earth after that fly-by. Removed without trace. When I first met Regulo he was a handsome man. Rob, did Cornelia tell you why Regulo can’t ever have a rejuvenation treatment?”
“No. I didn’t even know that he can’t. I think I started to ask her about rejuvenation and the scar tissue once, soon after I first met Regulo, but something interrupted us and I never got an answer. She told me why Regulo didn’t like bright lights, and I just assumed that he got his scars in the same experience. She never raised the subject with me again.”
“And I can guess why.” Senta was nodding. “Did you ever hear of diseases called Cancer crudelis and Cancer pertinax?”
Rob shook his head. “What do they mean?”
“I don’t know what the words mean,” said Senta. “But they—”
“Ruthless cancer, and persistent cancer,” Howard Anson said. “That’s taking a literal translation. Sorry for interrupting, Senta, but when you have a rubbish heap for a mind, the way I do, you have to use it when you can.”
She smiled at him tolerantly. “You have your uses, Howard. No need to prove that to me. Anyway, Rob, they are two forms of cancer, as you might have guessed.”
“Old diseases?” suggested Rob. “I assume they were once killers, the way that most forms of cancer used to be killers.”
“That’s the difference.” Senta was leaning forward, her manner more lively. “They are not old diseases. They still exist. Very rare, but they are two of the only forms of the disease that can’t be cured — and they are both killers. Darius Regulo doesn’t have scar tissue on his face from the solar fly-by. What he has is cancer pertinax. It’s the rarer form, and it is very slow-growing. But it can’t be stopped, and it can’t be reversed. He has had it getting on for fifty years. It will get him in the end, in spite of the treatments and the operations. He had it already when I first met him, and it was just beginning to get noticeable. That was the main reason why he had to move off Earth — his system couldn’t take full gravity once the cancer had taken firm hold. I doubt if Darius will live to be ninety. You see, the disease acts as a double killer. Apart from the direct effects and the disfigurement it causes, it has a side effect that inhibits the effects of any rejuvenation treatments on the sufferer. They simply won’t work on someone who already has the disease established in his system.”
“That means he’ll lose more than half his life.” Rob thought suddenly of Regulo’s powerful and fertile mind, imprisoned behind the ruined face in a failing body. “Do you realize what a tragedy that is? I don’t just mean a personal tragedy — though it’s that, of course. I mean a loss to everyone. He’s one of the great men of the century. And I’ve never heard him ever complain that he is sick, only that he gets tired easily. He still has more energy than you’d believe, once he starts to work on a problem that interests him.”
“Ah, but you should have known him thirty years ago,” said Senta. She smiled at Anson. “Don’t misunderstand me, Howard, but thirty years ago, before the sickness took a hard hold on him, Darius was a superman. He had the energy of ten ordinary people, for work or for play. It was close to frightening. I never met anyone who had half his lust for life, and I met most of the dynamos, the men and women who make the System run. I know you think he’s something special now, and I’m sure he is; but he’s only a shadow of what he was. The disease is getting him, little by little.”
“You say there’s no treatment for it?” asked Rob. “Not even to slow it down?”
“Oh, there are treatments for both crudelis and pertinax.” Senta shook her dark head. “That’s one of the ironies of it. Joseph Morel found a treatment for cancer crudelis that is effective in every case tried so far. It’s used all the time, and it is called the Morel treatment. But that’s the wrong disease. It is cancer pertinax that Regulo suffers from, and Morel’s regime does not work for that. He tried various forms of it, but when the drugs are used on humans they produce deadly long-term side effects. There’s a subtle difference between the two forms of disease. I’m sure that Morel’s still working the problem, but from what you say about Regulo’s appearance there hasn’t been any breakthrough.”
“Don’t count Morel out too soon,” said Anson. He was lying back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I’ve seen a good deal of his background, and he’s not just bright, he’s brilliant. And in one way at least he’s like Regulo — or like you, Rob, from what I’ve seen. Once he starts to pursue an idea, he never stops until he has it sorted out.”