"Elixir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Braver Gary)

4

"Oh, look, it's Auntie Wendy and Uncle Chris," Jenny chortled to the baby bundled in her arms.

It was their first time meeting Abigail, now four months old. As usual, Jenny was in high spirits despite air turbulence that had kept the baby fussing all the way from Kalamazoo. Jenny was just what Wendy needed to jump start her spirits. With Chris working around the clock, she had become bored and lonely. What she couldn't predict was how it would feel to have a baby in the house again.

Traffic was light, so they made it back to Carleton in half an hour. Chris and Wendy lived in an eight-room central-entrance colonial with a wide front lawn that was now covered with snow. The interior was decorated for Christmas, and while Jenny carried on about how festive the place looked, Chris brought her luggage up to the guest room. When Jenny was out of earshot he announced that he was going back to the lab.

"Back to the lab! They just arrived," Wendy said. "I thought we were going to have nice relaxing evening." A fire was going in the living room hearth beside the tree, and she had bought some good wine, cheeses, and pâtés.

"Honey, I'm sorry, but something critical's come up. I've got to get back."

Chris had two different colored eyes-one brown, the other green-that, someone once said, gave him the appearance of two different faces superimposed. At the moment, they appeared to be pulling apart by the distraction in them. It was a look Chris had gotten too often, and one that Wendy had come to resent.

"Can't it wait? You haven't seen her for a year. Besides, it's my birthday in case you forgot."

He had. "Oh, hell, I'm sorry. It completely slipped my mind, really."

But Wendy didn't care about that. Nor did she care how critical things were at the lab. At times she wished the place would blow up for how it had consumed him. And for what? Some foolish delusions about changing the course of human biology. She took his arm. "Chris, I don't want you to go." Her voice was beginning to tremble. She had envisioned a nice warm reunion around the fire. The three of them and the baby. "Please."

Chris slipped his gloves back on. "Honey, I can't. I'm sorry, but I have to. Quentin's been riding my ass to get a good yield."

"That's not why."

But Wendy stopped because Jenny had wandered into the living room with the baby in her arms. Instantly Jenny sensed the tension because she chortled something about how pretty the room was, then began straightening out sofa pillows and lining up the Christmas knick-knacks on a table. That was Jenny: She had an abnormal craving for neatness-emotional and otherwise. At all costs she would avoid conflicts, even if it meant forcing down hurt and anger with smiles and endless bubbles of chatter. There was a flip side to her obsession, however: You almost never knew when something troubled her.

Chris turned to Jenny. "Please don't be insulted, but I've really got to get back to the lab. We've got some time-sensitive tests, and my assistant is home in bed with the flu. It's lousy timing, I know."

If Jenny was offended, she didn't let on. In a good-natured voice, she said, "No-o-o problem. You go attend to your tests or whatever. We're here until Sunday. You'll get enough of us. Besides, you're going to save the world from cancer, right?"

"We're hoping."

Bull! Wendy thought. The apricot synthesis was a bust. It was that damned New Guinea flower that he was running back to.

"That's much more important than sitting around chewing the fat," Jenny continued. "Besides, your wife and I have a lot of boring sisterly stuff to catch up on."

"Jenny, listen, I'm sorry. Really. And Abby." He gave her a hug and kissed the baby on the head.

Then he turned and kissed Wendy on the forehead. "Happy birthday," he whispered. "Sorry."

Wendy looked into those impossible eyes and nodded, but she said nothing.

"Get going, get going. You're wasting precious time," Jenny sang out. "And she prefers Abigail."

Artfully, Jenny had let him off.

After a second glass of wine; Wendy felt better, although she was still disappointed and a little hurt that Chris had cut out on her birthday. No other project at the lab had consumed him so much. Nor had given him such profound satisfaction. And that's what bothered her even more than his absence. It was as if he were having an affair with some dark half-sister of Mother Nature.

When the baby was ready to go down, Wendy led them upstairs. She always felt a little self-conscious about her house when Jenny visited. It had that "lived-in" look, while Jenny kept her place obsessively neat-so much so that you felt as if you'd offend the furniture by using it. As they headed to the guest room, Jenny unconsciously straightened out pictures on the wall or rearranged table items. It was more than an aesthetic reflex. Jenny was positively harassed when things were out of place. Even as a child she had manifested an inordinate obsession for order. She would spend hours arranging things in her room-dolls, books, toys. One day when Jenny had nothing to do, Wendy found her at her desk lining the hundreds of seashells they'd collected over the years into a perfect spiral-the smallest ones in the center moving outward to the largest ones.

On the way Wendy showed Jenny the office she had made for herself out of the spare bedroom. Beside a new IBM PC and printer lay the nearly completed manuscript of a mystery novel she was writing. Her dream was to write herself out of Carleton High's English Department where she had been for eighteen years. By now she was burned out and tired of explaining things to kids.

"If I Should Die. Good title," Jenny said, riffling through the manuscript.

It was the first of a trilogy centered on a feisty forensic psychologist. Wendy hadn't thought out the plot of the sequels, but she had the titles: Before I Wake and My Soul to Take.

"You amaze me, Wendy. I can't tell a story at gunpoint."

Wendy chuckled. "I've had those days."

She watched as Jenny flipped through the manuscript. It had been over a year since they had last visited each other. Since her pregnancy, Jenny had put on weight. Yet unlike Wendy, who was still a size eight, Jenny had always been inclined toward plumpness. Because she avoided the aging effects of the sun, her skin was remarkably pale and creamy. She had their mother's deep brown eyes and dark hair which she wore in bangs and straightly cropped about her neck. With her bright round face and green-and-red plaid jumper, she looked like a Christmas pageant choirgirl.

Something on a page caught her eye. "Ceren Evadas! You put that in here."

"The old line about writing what you know."

When they were girls, Wendy would spin stories for Jenny at bedtime. It was how she forged her big-sister role while polishing her storytelling craft. One of the stories was about two girls who invented a secret hideaway where they could go to escape monsters. She named it "Ceren Evadas"-pronouncing it "serene evaders"-an anagram of Andrea's Cave near their summer lodge at Black Eagle Lake in the Adirondacks. Whenever they got the urge, they would whisper "Ceren Evadas," then take off to the cave. At the end of her novel, the heroine took refuge from the bad guys in such a childhood hideaway.

"What a pleasure it must be creating stories and characters and situations. You have complete control-like playing God."

And the good guys win, and bad guys don't, Wendy said to herself. And children don't die of cancer.

"Too bad real life's not like that." Jenny's face seemed to cloud over and she lay the page down.

"Are you okay?" Wendy asked.

"Me, of course, I'm wonderful. Oh, look at all the pictures." Something was bothering her, but Wendy didn't push.

Jenny moved to a small group of old family photos and picked up the one of Sam, Chris's father. He was posed beside Dwight Eisenhower. "How is he doing?"

Wendy shook her head sadly. "He's fading."

Samuel Adam Bacon-onetime American ambassador to Australia, professor of history at Trinity College, and great raconteur-was now living out the rest of his life in a nursing home in West Hartford, Connecticut. Two years ago he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. His mind, once strong and lucid-a mind that had helped draft important trade policies between the United States and the Pacific nations-had begun to bump down the staircase to nothingness.

"Such a shame. How's Chris handling it?"

"As well as can be expected. Sam is only sixty-four." What she didn't mention was that behind Chris's grief lay fear of the same fate. Every time a name slipped his memory or he misplaced his keys he was certain his own mind was going.

They moved into the guest quarters-what used to be Ricky's room. Chris had dug up the old crib from its hiding place in the cellar, reassembled it, and moved it back in for Abigail. While Wendy watched, Jenny changed the baby and tucked her in. Her hair was like fine silk, and she had big, round, inquisitive blue eyes. Wendy took one of Abigail's naked feet and chuckled lightly. "Her toes look like corn niblets," she said, and let her mind trip over the possibilities.

Jenny seemed to read her thoughts. "Why don't you have another one?"

"Because I don't think I'm ready for another baby. I'm not sure I even want another one."

"Wendy, it's been three years. It's time to move on. Time to start afresh. Chris would love to be a father again."

That was true. Since Jenny had gotten pregnant, he had suggested they do the same. "But I am forty-two, you recall."

"That's not old. A woman up the street from us had her first at forty-five. Look what you're missing. Abigail's the best thing that's happened to me."

Of course, Jenny hadn't always felt this way about children, because her first daughter, Kelly, now fifteen, had had problems since age five when her father died. By seven she required professional help. Today she was being treated for depression and drug abuse. Abigail was a second start for Jenny, who for years had declared that she would never have another child. "They just grow up and break your heart," she had said. Then, by accident, she got pregnant and would have sought an abortion had her second husband Ted not protested. For nine months she was nearly dysfunctional with anxiety. Then Abigail was born, and something magically snapped as Jenny embraced motherhood with pure joy.

The baby made a little sigh as she fell asleep. Then while they stood silently over the crib and watched, Jenny said in a voice barely audible, "Kelly tried to kill herself."

"What?"

"She tried to commit suicide."

"Oh, God, no."

"She took an overdose. But she's in a good hospital where they've got a special ward for young people. It's clean and the staff is very professional." Tears streamed down her face. "We talk freely. And I guess it's good…" Her mood suddenly changed. "Wendy, she hates me. She says I made her crazy. She says she's going to grow up to be like me, living on pills and trying to stay sane." She let out a mirthless laugh. "She's a chip off the old block. She's got my crazy gene. Every family has one, I suppose, and I'm ours."

"Jenny, that's ridiculous! You're not crazy, for godsake."

"I sometimes feel crazy. I do."

"We all do at times. That's human. But you're not crazy, and you didn't make Kelly crazy."

"But something went wrong. I lost control. She's in a mental institution and I can't reach her. Something went wrong. I didn't watch her closely enough."

"Stop blaming yourself. Jim died and left you with a baby."

"Other single mothers manage. I lost control. I should have protected her better. I'm a nurse, for heaven's sake." She took a deep breath and adjusted the blanket around the baby. "But things will be different with her. She gives me strength to go on. She really does."

Wendy hugged Jennifer. "I know, and thank God you have her."

"Which is why I think you should have another."

"Nice how you circled back," Wendy laughed.

But Jenny did not respond as expected. As if talking to herself, she said, "Of course, we still have the 'terrible twos' around the corner, then the 'horrible threes' and 'furious fours.' Frankly, I think five's the best age. You're still the center of their universe, and they're not old enough to be influenced by others or reject you. Five. That's when they're most manageable. Don't you think?"

Jesus! Wendy thought. Had she forgotten when Ricky had died? But Wendy just said, "Yes."

Still in a semi-trance, Jenny gazed at her daughter. "I wish it could last forever." Then, as if at the snap of a magician's fingers, Jenny was back. "Oh, gosh, what's the matter with me?"

Wendy said nothing, suspecting that Jenny had had one of her spells.

When she was younger doctors had diagnosed her as mildly schizophrenic because she would occasionally recede into herself, unaware of her behavior. Medication had helped; so did the passage of time. By adulthood, her condition had stabilized, although she still had occasional blank-out spells.

Out of big-sister protectiveness, Wendy let it pass. "Even if I wanted to get pregnant," she continued as if nothing had happened, "Chris isn't around long enough to get down to business."

"Even big-time scientists have to go to bed on occasion." Jenny took Wendy's arm and headed for the door. "You have to be understanding. He's brilliant, and one day they'll give him a Nobel Prize for his cancer drug." Because it was all so secret, Wendy could not tell her about his real research. Nor could she explain how obscene she found it. Nobel Prize: If only his aspirations were so modest, Wendy thought and turned off the lights.

Quentin's stomach leaked acid when he heard the voice.

Vince Lucas didn't have to explain why he had called. The $2.5 million for the apricot pits was supposed to have been wired to a Bahamian bank by November 1, and here it was the middle of December-two extensions later-and the next payment of equal amount was due in six months.

He had explained to Antoine his problems collecting debts from European jobbers. But the real reason was that Quentin was buying time for Chris Bacon to synthesize the toxogen. All else was in place-the chemical patent, fabulous clinical results, the marketing strategies. And with Ronald Reagan's help, FDA approval was just around the corner. All that was left was a commercially viable yield and he could pay what he owed and be out from under Antoine Ducharme, his Consortium, and his lousy apricots which were costing them nearly thirty dollars per pit-a rate which would make the toxogen astronomically expensive.

But that hadn't happened because Bacon said he needed more time-months more. The fucking golden boy with the youngest Ph.D. from M.I.T. in decades, and he couldn't come up with a decent yield!

What nearly stopped Quentin's heart was that Vince Lucas was in town. His message was brief: Meet him at nine that evening in the parking lot of Concord 's Emerson Hospital which was a few miles from the lab. No mention of money or deadlines. But it would not be a social call. Nor was it like being indebted to legitimate creditors or the IRS. Quentin was beholden to men whose penalty for duplicity was execution.

But they couldn't do that to him, he assured himself. They needed him because he was the only link to the money. Ross knew nothing about Antoine. His sole concern was that his company not be ruled by the whims of Nature-invasion by some apricot-loving caterpillar or a tropical hurricane. If anything happened to Quentin, all deals were off.

Quentin's eyes drifted to the photo on the far wall-the 1932 Eureka football team with Ross standing behind Ronald Reagan who had signed it, "Win one for the Gipper." Two weeks ago, Quentin had pushed Ross to fly to Washington to get Reagan to expedite FDA testing. Ross first refused to exploit his friendship, but Quentin reminded him that Reagan prided himself on helping his friends. It was people like Ross who had put him in the White House-raising millions to support Nancy 's White House decorations including all the fancy china.

Ross had conceded, but he lacked the Darwinian edge. He was not the opportunist Quentin was. Just as well he was retiring soon. He had become soft. He was an obstacle to progress.

A little before nine Quentin pulled his Mercedes into a slot under a lamp post. Only a handful of cars sat in the lot. A solitary ambulance was parked by the emergency room, its lights turned off. Christmas lights in a few upper windows gave the scene a comforting glow. To ease his nerves, he found a station playing Christmas carols. At about nine fifteen, midway through "Here Comes Santa Claus," Vince Lucas rolled up beside Quentin's Mercedes. He nodded for Quentin to get into his car. Quentin went over to the passenger door and opened it hesitantly.

"You're letting the heat out," Vince said.

His heart jogging, Quentin got in and closed the door. "Good to see you, Vince," he chirped and offered his hand like an old business colleague. Vince was wearing leather gloves but did not remove them, nor did he take Quentin's hand.

"Bullshit," Vince said. "It's not good to see me," and peeled onto the road.

Quentin's chest tightened. This was not going to be a good night. The car turned onto Route 2 then cut up a side street toward Concord center.

"Where're we going?" Quentin tried to affect an easy manner.

"For a ride."

"Uh-huh." After a long silence, Quentin said, "Look, Vince, I know why you're here. I explained to Antoine that I need until the turn of the year. There's money coming in from Switzerland. It's just taking more time than expected."

Vince still said nothing. From Concord they crossed into Lincoln not far from Quentin's neighborhood. Houses along the way were lit up with Christmas lights. Quentin tried again. "Vince, we're businessmen. We've got a contractual arrangement which I intend to fulfill, but these things happen around the end of the year, and Antoine knows all that. You'll get the money-"

Vince pulled the car over with a jerk. To Quentin's horror, they had stopped in front of his own house. The Christmas tree was visible through the family room window. The upper floor was dark except for the master bedroom where Margaret was in bed reading or watching television.

"Now, we talk," Vince said, turning in his seat to face Quentin. His face was half in shadows, making his teeth flash white as he spoke. "Antoine Ducharme is two thousand miles from here. The last time you talked, he gave you an extension until December first, twelve days ago. You missed it, which makes you my responsibility now. And I don't do extensions."

"Look, Vince, please… It's all the red tape with money transfers. I swear on my life."

"Your life doesn't have weight." He pointed to the dark upper corner of the house. "Just behind that 'TotFinder' sticker is a pretty pink bedroom with a pretty pink bed where your pretty pink daughter Robyn is asleep." Before Quentin could ask, Vince handed him three photographs, all of Robyn: at her bedroom window that morning, being dropped off at school, at recess.

"Listen, Vince-" he began.

Vince clamped his gloved hand on Quentin's jaw. "No, you listen." He pressed his face so close that Quentin could smell garlic on his breath from his dinner. In a feather-smooth voice he said, "You have until Friday. Understand? The day after tomorrow. If you renege again I look bad, and that I can't live with. Neither can your daughter." He squeezed so hard Quentin's jaw felt crushed. "Two days. Two-point-five million dollars. Plus another two hundred thousand visitation fee which you'll wire to another account. The number's on the back." And he stuffed one of his business cards into Quentin's pocket.

Quentin started to protest, but thought better. He grunted that he understood, and Vince snapped his face away. In dead silence they drove back to the Emerson, as Quentin massaged his jaw and wondered how to manipulate Darby funds, thinking how his daughter's life hung in the balance.

"This is me here," Quentin said as they rolled by his Mercedes. But they continued all the way to the emergency room. "But I'm back there."

When Vince stopped the car, he extended his gloved hand. Quentin took it, gratified that it would end with a gesture of civility. Except that Vince didn't let go. Instead, his other hand closed over Quentin's.

"This is closer."

"I don't follow."

Still holding Quentin's hand, Vince said, "You're going to need to see a doctor."

"What?"

Vince then clamped one hand onto his index finger and bent it all the way back until it broke at the joint with a sickening crack. Quentin jolted in place with a hectoring scream which Vince instantly caught in his glove. Pain jagged through Quentin like a bolt of lightning, searing nerve endings from his hand to his crown and through his genitals to the soles of his feet.

While Quentin yelled and squirmed in his seat, Vince kept his viselike grip on Quentin's mouth. For several minutes he held him until the cries subsided to whimpers.

Quentin's hand had swollen to twice its size, while his finger hung at a crazy angle like a dead root.

Vince then opened the passenger door, and in the same silky voice he said, "The next time it will be your daughter's neck."

And he shoved him out and drove off.

The morning after Jenny and Abigail returned home, Wendy stood naked before the full-length mirror and felt her heart slump. She looked all of forty-two. In her younger days she was a slender size six, and 120 pounds. Now she was two sizes and fifteen pounds heavier. Her waist and thighs were getting that thick puddingly look. Crows' feet were starting to spread around her eyes and mouth, and the smiles lines were becoming permanently etched.

Worse still, she could see herself as an old woman: a hunched and wrinkled thing with flabby skin, thinning hair, teeth chipped and gray, creasing eyes, a neck sunken into the widow's hunch of osteoporosis, her legs whitened sticks road-mapped with varicose veins, her hands patched and knobbed. It was the image of her mother staring back at her, a woman who had died of breast cancer at sixty-eight yet who looked fifteen years older because of a crippling stroke. The image was jolting.

While she had come to accept the grim inevitability, it was no less shocking to apprehend it in her own face. What Chris had dubbed the death gene-that nasty little DNA switch that never failed to click on the long slide to the grave.

But, damn it! Wendy told herself, Jenny was right: Forty-two is still young. And she was still healthy. What benefit was there to wasting the good years left wringing her hands over mortality? No, she couldn't reverse gravity or cellular decay, but she could at least slow the progress.

"The wine is sweet whenever you drink it."

Chris's phrase hummed in her mind.

Feeling a surge, she put on her running suit and sneakers. A few minutes later she was pounding the pavement around Mystic Lake and debating with herself. You're forty-two years old. Twenty years from now you'll be sixty-two. In thirty years, seventy-two. It didn't make sense, not at her age.

But why not? And why not her?

She splashed through shafts of sunlight, thinking that the choices she made now would determine how she lived out the rest of her life: Her grief from Ricky's death would never leave her, but it was time to end the habit of mourning.

Half-consciously she rubbed her hand across her breast as she jogged along. As Jenny said, women over forty had babies all the time.

It was her visit that had done it-seeing Jenny's unequivocal joy. And hearing a baby in the house again-sounds that took her back to happier days. Jenny had given Wendy a pair of earrings, but the real birthday gift was leaving Wendy yearning for the same joy and feeling almost startled into the hope of it. Why not? She was still healthy.

"The wine is sweet whenever you drink it."

Yes! she told herself. YES! And she glided down the path thinking of baby names.

That night Chris peered through the eyepiece of his microscope and saw the landscape of eternity. And it took his breath away.

He was looking at the cells of his own body-cells that contained all the information that made him Christopher Bacon. Cells that should be turning bright blue, dying under his eye-but were thriving.

Eight weeks ago, he had scraped off some flesh from the inside of his cheek. He liquefied the sample and divided it into equal batches, one treated with nutrients-growth factors, hormones, vitamins, insulin, and a lot of other stuff-that sped up replication, collapsing the remaining life of his own forty-two-year-old cells into two weeks. The other he treated with the same nutrients plus tabulone. Within twenty-four hours the surface of each dish was covered with newly replicated cells. From those batches he made subcultures. He kept that up for four weeks until the untreated cells stopped subdividing and died. Meanwhile, the tabulone-treated cells continued to thrive. Two months later they were still replicating. If he had kept that up, he would have produced endless tons of his own cells.

The realization was staggering: The cells of his own flesh were reproducing indefinitely.

That could only mean that human death was not programmed in the genes but the result of a program of cell divisions-a finite process that climaxed in the eventual breakdown of cell walls. In other words, we lived as long as our cells kept replicating. But why did they stop at fifty?

He did not understand the genetics, but it confirmed his suspicion that aging had no clear evolutionary purpose. Traditional textbook reasoning about making room for the next generation made no sense since most animals never made it to old age. They were eaten by predators or died from disease. There was no reason for natural selection to genetically favor demise, Chris told himself. No purpose served.

His eye fell on the wall clock as the second hand made its circuit. Like all his clocks and watches, it was set ten minutes fast, a silly little habit to allow himself to pretend that it wasn't as late as it was-that he had a few more minutes free of charge.

While the radio played softly in the background, Chris watched the clock move inexorably around its course.

And he thought: During the next hour, ten thousand people would die-some by fire, some by floods, some by famine, some by accident, some by another's hand. But most deaths would be from "natural causes" brought on by aging-people over sixty-five. And nobody over 112. But who was to say that the upper limits couldn't be pushed? Or that people shouldn't die but by accident alone?

His eye slipped to the workbench where sat a solitary vial containing tabulone.

As he stared at it, a thought bulleted up from the recesses of his mind: When are you going to try it, huh? When are you going to slip a couple ccs into your syringe and shoot up?

Chris stiffened. Dangerous thoughts, he told himself. Very dangerous.

The kind of speculations he and Dexter Quinn would entertain after the third pint of Guiness. Mental idling that seemed okay when you were feeding a fine buzz-though he still recalled that weird gleam in Dexter's eyes, as if Dexter were giving the notion serious consideration. Chris could understand that: Dex was twenty years his senior and hated the thought of becoming old because he had never married and had no family to carry on. He also had an impaired heart.

"You want to know when you're old?" Dexter once said. "When you can't get it up and you don't care anymore that you can't get it up."

Chris had begun to chuckle when a look of sad resignation in Dexter's face stopped him.

It's when a tooth falls out and you don't go to the dentist. When you stop coloring your hair. When you don't bother about that lump under your arm.

It's when you give up trying to do anything about it. What's called despair: When all that's left is the countdown.

Dexter was closer to the countdown than Chris, but Chris understood the mindset of defeat. He also understood the beer-soaked hankering for eternity. He had felt it himself. Every time he visited his father, it nipped at his heels: the groping for common words, the sudden confusion and bewilderment, the repetition of phrases and simple acts, the fading of memory. A man who once advised Eisenhower could not recall the current president. A man of trademark wit who now muttered in fragments. A man who last Memorial Day had to be reminded who Ricky was. What chilled Chris to the core was the thought that the same double-death was scored on his own genes.

It was too late for Sam, but not for him.

While he sat at his microscope, the realization hit him full force:

Admit it! The real reason you don't want anybody to know about tabulone is that you want it for yourself, good buddy. All that stuff about social problems, Frankenstein nightmares, and getting yourself canned-just sweet-smelling bullshit you tell your wife and pillow. You're playing "Beat-the-Clock" against what stares back at you every time you look in the mirror-the little white hairs, the forehead wrinkles getting ever deeper, the turkey wattle beginning to form under the chin. The spells of forgetfulness.

The only thing between you and what's reducing Sam to a mindless sack of bones is that vial of colorless, odorless liquid on the shelf. Your private little fountain of youth.

Those were the thoughts swirling through Chris Bacon's head when Quentin Cross stormed into his lab.

His face looked chipped out of pink granite. He snapped off the radio in the middle of a news story about Reagan pledging an all-out war on drugs at home and abroad. "What's the latest yield with the new whatchamacalit enzymes?"

Quentin had a talent for irritating Chris. He was pompous, officious, and often wrong. And for Chief Financial Officer and the next CEO, he had the managerial polish of a warthog. "Not much better than ethyl acetate or any other solvent."

"Christ!" he shouted, and pounded the table with his good hand. His other was in a cast from a fall, he'd said. Quentin's eyes shrunk to twin ball bearings. "I'm telling you to increase the yield or this company and its employees are in deep shit."

"Why the red alert?"

"I asked what kind of yield."

Quentin was a soft portly man with a large fleshy face, which at the moment seemed to take up most of his space. Chris opened his notebook. "A kilo of starting material yielded only five milligrams of the toxogen."

"Five milligrams?" Quentin squealed. His left eye began to twitch the way it did when he got anxious. "Five milligrams?"

At that rate, they would need nearly half a ton to produce a single pound of the stuff-which, Chris had calculated, would cost a thousand dollars a milligram after all the impurities had been removed. It was hardly worth the effort.

"Try different chiral reagents, try different separation procedures, try different catalysts, different enzymes. Anything, I don't fucking care how expensive."

Quentin wasn't getting it. They had their best people working on it, following state-of-the-art procedures, and spending months and millions. "Quentin, I'm telling you we have tried them and they don't work." He had never seen Quentin so edged out. Something else was going on. Or he was suffering pathological denial. "Quentin, the molecule has multiple asymmetric centers-almost impossible to replicate. We can produce its molecular mirror image but not the isomer."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because nature is asymmetrical and organic chemistry isn't. It's like trying to put your right hand into a left-handed glove. It can't be done."

For a long moment Quentin stared at Chris, his big pink face struggling for an expression to settle on. He looked as if he were about to burst into tears. It didn't make sense. "Quentin, I'm sorry, but it's beyond our technology, maybe even our science."

"Then invent some new technology and science. You're the golden boy here. We're paying you sixty grand a year-fifteen thousand more than you'd get at Merck or Lilly. So, you better find a more efficient synthesis or we'll get somebody who can."

"Quentin, I'm not very sophisticated in the intricacies of international trade, but we're killing ourselves to manufacture a molecule that comes ready-made on trees. And we've got an endless supply of pits and exclusive rights. Please tell me what I'm missing here, because I don't get it."

"Just that we don't want to be dependent on raw materials from foreign sources."

Chris was about to respond when a small alarm went off in the rear lab.

"What's that?"

"It's nothing," Chris said vaguely, but the sound passed through his mind like a seismic crack. "Just one of the connectors." He wanted Quentin gone. The alarm was rigged to each of his control mice. An infusion tube had failed, which meant that an animal had been cut off from tabulone. He couldn't explain the potential consequences because Quentin Cross knew nothing of what Chris was doing back there. Nobody did. But he had to reconnect the animal immediately.

"What kind of connectors?"

"One of the animals." Chris made a dismissive gesture hoping Quentin would take the hint and leave. But he moved toward the back lab door.

Jesus! Of all times. Chris could be fired, even prosecuted for misuse of company equipment. And by the time Quentin got through, nobody in North America would hire him. "It's nothing." He tried to sound casual. But Quentin was at the door. Chris played it cool and pulled out his keys.

Inside were rows of glass cages with eighteen of his longest-lived animals. Each had a metal cannula permanently cemented to its skull with a feedback wire connected to an alarm should there be a rupture. After years of continuous supply, they were totally dependent on the serum, like diabetics or heroin addicts.

Quentin followed Chris inside to where a small red light pulsed.

Methuselah.

He had bitten through the tubing, and the stuff was draining into sawdust. Had it been one of the younger mice, there would be no problem. But Methuselah, the oldest, had been infused for nearly six years.

Chris shut off the alarm and auto-feed and gave the mouse an affectionate stroke with his finger. He still looked fine, but he needed to be reattached immediately. "I have to get him rehooked, so if you don't mind…"

But Quentin did mind. "What are you doing with all the mice?"

"Testing toxicity."

"Toxicity from what?"

"Veratox."

"That's preclinical. We're testing the stuff on people."

"I know that, but these animals have cancers."

"You mean you're trying to cure them?"

God! Why doesn't he leave?

"Look, I've really got to hook him up." But Quentin stayed as Chris reattached the tubing.

He was nearly finished when he saw something odd in Methuselah's movement. The animal sashayed across the cage as if drunk.

"What's his problem?"

Before Chris could answer, Methuselah stumbled into the corner, his eyes bulging like pink marbles.

Then for a long moment, Chris and Quentin stood paralyzed, trying to process what their eyes took in.

Methuselah flopped onto his back as his body began to wrack with spasms. His mouth shuddered open and a high-pitched squeal cut the air-an agonizing sound that seemed to arise from a much larger animal. Suddenly one of his eyes exploded from its socket, causing Quentin to gasp in horror. Methuselah's body appeared to ripple beneath the pelt, at the same time swelling, doubling in size with lumpy tumors, some splitting through his fur like shiny red mushrooms growing at an impossible rate.

"Jesus Christ!" Quentin screamed. "What the hell's happening to him?"

Chris was so stunned that he no longer registered Quentin's presence. Methuselah's body stopped erupting almost as fast as it began, only to shrivel up to a sack of knobbed and bloodied fur as if its insides were dehydrating at an wildfire rate. Its head withered to a furry cone half its original size, the contents draining from the mouth and eye socket. At the same time his feet curled up into tiny black fists. When the spasms eventually stopped, Methuselah lay a limbless, shapeless, dessicated pelt crusted with dark body fluids. A demise that would have taken weeks had been compressed into minutes.

"What happened to him?"

"I don't know." Chris had seen his mice die before, but never like this. Never.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Quentin squealed. "What the hell were you pumping into him? What is that stuff?"

"The toxogen."

Quentin didn't believe him for a moment. "We animal-tested Veratox for a year and nothing like this ever happened."

Quentin's eyes raked Chris for an answer. "I guess the pathology somehow accelerated."

"Accelerated? There's nothing left of him. It's like he died on fast forward."

"I'll do a postmortem," Chris mumbled. "Maybe he had a prior condition, or maybe it's some unknown virus." He didn't know if Quentin would buy that or not, but he played it out and put on rubber gloves, put the remains of Methuselah into a plastic bag, and deposited it in the refrigerator for a necropsy when he was alone.

"I don't know what you're doing in here, but let me suggest you put your efforts into synthesizing Veratox-which is what the hell we're paying you for, and not saving a few goddamn mice."

Then he turned on his heal and stomped out, leaving Chris standing there frozen, the words echoing and reechoing in his head: It's like he died on fast forward.