The Immortalists(82)
Luke swings his backpack around to the front and retrieves a black tape recorder. ‘Okay?’
‘Fine,’ says Varya. Luke depresses the Record button, and she begins to walk again. ‘How long have you worked at the Chronicle?’
A peace offering, this bit of dreaded small chat, as they transition to the wider, paved paths that surround the main facility. The path to the primate lab is no more than a repurposed dirt trail. ‘They like to keep us tucked away,’ said Annie once, ‘the savages,’ and Varya laughed, though she didn’t know whether Annie was referring to the monkeys or the two of them.
‘I don’t,’ Luke says. ‘I’m a freelancer. This is the first piece I’ve done for them. I work out of Chicago; usually I write for the Tribune. You didn’t see my pitch?’
Varya shakes her head. ‘Dr. Kim deals with those things.’
Though Annie is a researcher, not a public information officer, she has taken on the latter role with ease. Varya is constantly grateful for Annie’s media savvy, so she consented when Annie suggested they take this week’s interview, which will be published in the San Francisco Chronicle. The primate lab is ten years into a twenty-year study. This year, they’ll apply for a second round of competitive funding. Officially, publicity has no bearing on research grants. Unofficially, the foundations that support the Drake like to feel they’re enabling something important, something that has garnered both public excitement and – in the case of primate research – public approval.
‘Have you worked in a newsroom before?’ she asks.
‘In college. I was the paper’s editor in chief.’
Varya nearly laughs. Annie knew exactly what she was doing. Luke Van Galder is a kid.
‘It must be an exciting job. Lots of travel. No two assignments the same,’ she says, though in truth these things do not excite her at all. ‘What did you study in college?’
‘Biology.’
‘So did I. Where at?’
‘St. Olaf. Small liberal arts college outside of Minneapolis. I’m from a farming town in Wisconsin. It was close enough to home.’
Varya’s outfit is appropriate for the lab, which is devoid of natural light and always cold, but not for the outdoors. The heat is making her sweat, so she’s relieved when they reach the main facility, where the grass is manicured and the trees newly planted. Varya leads Luke across a circular driveway and through a revolving door.
‘Holy crap,’ Luke says when they emerge indoors.
The lobby of the Drake is palatial, with two-story ceilings and limestone tree planters the size of kiddie pools. Its floors are made of imported white marble and stretch as wide as a high school cafeteria. One tour group huddles around the western wall, where videos and interactive exhibits play on flat screens. A second group is being led toward the elevators. The elevators are spectacular – modern glass and chrome cubes that look out over the San Pablo Bay – but the only staff member who uses them is a seventy-two-year-old researcher, wheelchair-bound due to rheumatoid arthritis, who studies the nematode worm C. elegans. Everyone else takes the stairs unless ill or injured, even those who work on the eighth floor.
‘This way,’ says Varya. ‘We can talk in the atrium.’
Luke lags behind her, staring. The atrium, modeled after the Louvre, is a glass triangle that faces the Pacific Ocean and Mount Tamalpais. It also functions as a café, with round tables and a juice bar whose line is already ten tourists long. Varya stops at the farthest table and sits, hooking her purse over one of the chair’s arms.
‘It isn’t always this crowded,’ she says. ‘We hold tours for the public on Monday mornings.’
She keels slightly forward so that only her lower back touches the fabric: a balancing act, threat offset by constant vigilance, as though discomfort is the price she pays for safety. There was a time, as a child, that she lay in her top bunk and propped one dirty foot on the ceiling, just to see how it felt. Her sole left a dark impression on the paint. That night, she feared that tiny particles of dirt would drift down onto her face as she slept, so she stayed awake, watching. She never saw the dirt fall, which meant it hadn’t. If she had fallen asleep – if she hadn’t kept watch – it might have.
‘There must be intense public interest in this place,’ says Luke, sitting, too. He peels off his windbreaker, which is bright orange, like that of a crossing guard, and tosses it over the back of the chair. ‘How many people work here?’
‘There are twenty-two labs. Each one is run by a faculty lead and has at least three additional members, sometimes up to ten: staff scientists, professors, research associates, lab and animal techs, postdocs and masters students and fellows. The larger ones have administrative assistants, like the Dunham lab – she’s studying nerve cell signaling in Alzheimer’s. Of course, that’s not to mention the facilities and janitorial staff. Total? About one hundred and seventy employees, most of them scientists.’
‘And all of you are doing antiaging research?’
‘We prefer the term longevity.’ Varya squints: though she chose a shaded portion of the atrium, the sun has moved, and the surface of their metal table beams. ‘You say antiaging and people think of science fiction, cryonics and whole-brain emulation. But the Holy Grail, for us, is not just to enhance life span. It’s to enhance health span – the quality of late life. Dr. Bhattacharya is developing a new drug for Parkinson’s, for example. Dr. Cabrillo is attempting to prove that age is the single greatest risk factor for developing cancer. And Dr. Zhang has been able to reverse heart disease in elderly mice.’