Transhuman by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page A

any brains at all,” his professor rumbled on. “Including me.”
    Running a hand through his thick mane of dark hair, Luke protested, “That’s not entirely true, Prof.”
    The professor shook his head disapprovingly. “You’ve got to stop being so damned stubborn, Abramson. You’ll never get ahead unless you learn to get along.”
    Luke never learned to get along. He went his own way, often bucking his professors, department chairmen, committee heads, university executives. He succeeded because he was brilliant and saw farther and faster than those around him.
    Slowly, grudgingly, the scientific orthodoxy surrounding him learned to respect Luke’s abilities. Over the years they came to realize that this loner of a cellular biologist was making important strides in basic biomedical research.
    Decade after decade, Professor Lucas T. Abramson took graduate students into his laboratory and turned them into award-winning researchers. He won few awards himself. He didn’t need them. He wasn’t interested in them. All he wanted was to do the work he chose to do with as little interference from the outside world as possible. Stubborn, they called him. Cantankerous. But brilliant.
    Luke demanded very little from the establishment: just a lab to work in, a few assistants to help, and the freedom to pursue his own line of thinking.
    He steered clear of applied research. Despite his unspoken, bitter war with cancer, he never aimed his work specifically at oncology. Luke went deeper, probing into the fundamental cellular processes of the human body.
    He picked up on earlier research on the effect of telomeres on cell biology. It took years of patient, unspectacular experiments, but eventually he was able to show how to rejuvenate aged, decrepit lab mice and make them youthful again—by triggering their telomeres to regrow.
    And then his granddaughter was stricken by glioblastoma multiforme. Luke was devastated by the news. But he quickly realized that by inhibiting the growth of Angela’s cells’ telomeres—rather than accelerating their growth—he might be able to destroy the tumors that were killing her.
    The bureaucracies that controlled scientific research refused to allow him to leap from experiments with lab mice to an effort to save his granddaughter’s life. So be it, Luke thought.
    He went his own way. With his granddaughter. They call you stubborn when what you’re doing doesn’t work. When it does work they call you goal-oriented.

 
    University of Pennsylvania
    V AN McALLISTER’S EXPRESSION was somewhere between disbelief and curiosity.
    â€œYou mean you’ve taken the child out of the hospital and brought her here?”
    McAllister had one of those smiling, bright-eyed faces that still would look youthful when he was Luke’s age. But he wasn’t smiling now. He was leaning his slim rump on a bench in his campus laboratory, facing Luke, who was perched on a lab stool. No one else was in the lab; the previous night’s snowfall had snarled Philadelphia traffic so badly that Luke had been half an hour late for his meeting with his former student, yet still none of the lab staff had shown up
    â€œWith her attending physician,” Luke said.
    â€œIsn’t that … unusual?”
    â€œIt’s all perfectly legal, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
    â€œWhat did her parents say about this?”
    â€œThat’s not important,” Luke temporized. “What I need to do is get the necessary enzymes to activate the genes that will suppress her telomerase production.”
    â€œFor how long?”
    â€œA few days, maybe a week or two. I want to get her to Bartram’s facility out in Oregon.”
    McAllister gave out a low whistle. “Why didn’t you fly straight there from Boston?”
    Luke waggled a hand in the air. “We’re driving. I need to start Angie on the