“I like that,” Elizabeth said. Old Samuel would have liked it too, she thought.
Rhys took Elizabeth to the capsule rooms, where empty bottles were carried in on a giant conveyor belt. By the time they had crossed the room, the bottles had been sterilized, filled with capsules, labeled, topped with cotton, and sealed. All done by automation.
There was a glassblowing factory, an architectural center to plan new buildings, a real estate division to acquire the land for them. In one building there were scores of writers turning out pamphlets in fifty languages, and printing presses to print them.
Some of the departments reminded Elizabeth of George Orwell’s 1984. The Sterile Rooms were bathed in eerie ultraviolet lights. Adjoining rooms were painted in different colors—white, green or blue—and the workers wore uniforms to match. Each time they entered or left the room, they had to go through a special sterilizing chamber. Blue workers were locked in for the entire day. Before they could eat or rest or go to the toilet, they had to undress, enter a neutral green zone, put on other clothes, and reverse the process when they returned.
“I think you’ll find this interesting,” Rhys said.
They were walking down the gray corridor of a research building. They reached a door marked “RESTRICTED—DO NOT ENTER.” Rhys pushed the door open, and he and Elizabeth walked through. They went through a second door and Elizabeth found herself in a dimly lit room filled with hundreds of cages containing animals. The room was hot and humid, and she felt as if she had suddenly been transported to a jungle. As her eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, she saw that the cages were filled with monkeys and hamsters and cats and white mice. Many of the animals had obscene-looking growths protruding from various parts of their bodies. Some had their heads shaven, and were crowned with electrodes that had been implanted in their brains. Some of the animals were screaming and gibbering, racing around in their cages, while others were comatose and lethargic. The noise and the stench were unbearable. It was like some kind of hell. Elizabeth walked up to a cage that contained a single white kitten. Its brain was exposed, enclosed in a clear plastic covering through which protruded half a dozen wires.
“What—what’s going on here?” Elizabeth asked.
A tall, bearded young man making notes in front of a cage explained, “We’re testing a new tranquilizer.”
“I hope it works,” Elizabeth said weakly. “I think I could use it.” And she walked out of the room before she could become sick.
Rhys was at her side in the corridor. “Are you all right?”
She took a deep breath. “I—I’m fine. Is all that really necessary?”
Rhys looked at her and replied. “Those experiments save a lot of lives. More than one third of the people born since nineteen fifty are alive only because of modern drugs. Think about that.”
Elizabeth thought about it.
It took six full days to tour the key buildings, and when Elizabeth had finished, she was exhausted, her head spinning with the vastness of it. And she realized she was seeing just one Roffe plant. There were dozens of others scattered around the world.
The facts and figures were stunning. “It takes between five and ten years to market a new drug, and out of every two thousand compounds tested, we’ll average only three products.…”
And “…Roffe and Sons has three hundred people working here in quality control alone.”
And “…Worldwide, Roffe and Sons is responsible for over half a million employees…”
And “…our gross income last year was…”
Elizabeth listened, trying to digest the incredible figures that Rhys was throwing at her. She had known that the company was large, but “large” was such an anonymous word. Having it actually translated into terms of people and money was staggering.
That night as Elizabeth lay in bed, recalling all the things she had seen and heard, she was filled with an overpowering feeling of inadequacy.
Ivo: Believe me, cara, it is much better to leave all this to us. You don’t understand these things.
ALEC: I think you should sell but I have an ax to grind.