Free The Immortality Factor by Ben Bova Page B

Jesse was spending the weekend at a friend’s house and I couldn’t find him because he and his friend had decided to take the subway out to Jones Beach and they hadn’t come back yet. I was all of fourteen years old. I was frantic, trying to track him down while the ambulance crew wheeled Momma out of the apartment. Even in the hospital, waiting up all night to hear if Momma would live to see the sunrise, I kept telephoning every half hour to see if Jess and his friend had come home yet. It wasn’t until the next morning that Jess showed up at the hospital with a single daisy in his fist that he had picked from the hospital’s front lawn.
    Well, that was Jesse.
    Now I climbed the creaking stairs of the Sunny Glade Nursing Home, heading for the corner room on the second floor that had been Momma’s home for the past four years. A young attendant in whites smiled at me as she passedme on the bare wooden stairs. I smiled back automatically. I was thinking ahead, beyond this visit with Momma, worrying about tomorrow night’s dinner and Julia.
    It was hard to think of the pitiful shriveled thing sitting up in the hospital bed as the woman who had been my mother. It looked more like the dried and wrinkled husk of some discarded marionette, its strings long cut, its usefulness long over. An oxygen tube was taped to one nostril. Her once-luxuriant hair was dead white and so sparse her scalp showed through. A faded baby blue nightgown hung limply on her emaciated frame.
    The tumors were eating her up, consuming her body and wasting what little strength she had remaining. The strokes had paralyzed her left side and taken away her ability to speak. Yet the fire of life burned in her eyes. Even through her contorted face I could see that Gertrude Marshak was still fighting, still clinging to existence. It was almost as if the pain were the only thing she had left, the only reminder that she was still alive.
    I hesitated at the door to her tiny room. It was barely large enough for her bed, a chair, and the bureau on the opposite wall that held a television set. The window was sealed shut and grayed with years of soot and grime from the nearby highway. There was little to see out there anyway except one forlorn maple struggling to survive in a field that had been paved over and turned into a parking lot. The only bright spot in the room was the vase of flowers standing beside the TV.
    Momma stirred. Her bed had been cranked up and she could see the doorway. One corner of her mouth twitched in what might have been an attempt to smile.
    I stepped into the room, feeling as awkward and helpless as I always did.
    â€œHi, Momma,” I said as brightly as I could manage.
    Her eyes shifted to the swivel table beside her bed. The laptop computer I had bought her rested on it, with the oblong black TV remote control unit beside it. I swung the table in front of her and lifted her right hand to the keyboard.
    HELLO DARLING, she typed slowly. Momma had been an office manager before the accident, and an excellent touch typist. Now, with only one hand working, it was more difficult.
    I pulled the chair to where I could see the blue screen with its white letters and sat down. “How’re you feeling?” I asked.
    HOW SHOULD I FEEL? It was her feeble attempt at humor.
    â€œYou look pretty good,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage. “Better than last week, I think.”
    FEEL ABOUT SAME
    â€œThe flowers look nice.”
    THEY BRING NEW ONES EVERY OTHER DAY
    â€œThey brighten up the room.”
    THANKS FOR THEM     VERY THOUGHTFUL OF YOU
    Her hand looked like a bird’s claw. No flesh on it at all. Skin mottled and gray. But her mind was still alert. I couldn’t help thinking that Momma’s true essence was really in the computer more than the frail dying husk of her body.
    I said, “I had lunch with Jesse last week, the day after his award dinner.”
    I could see