Elixir. Part 13

Probably scares her too, Chris mused.

Because Wendy would be discharged later that day, he returned to the hospital. But the moment he entered her room he sensed something was wrong. Her face had that strained look that even the painkillers couldn't mask.

His first thought was the baby. Yet he was peacefully curled up in her arms. And it couldn't have been complications from the delivery or Wendy wouldn't be dressed and sitting in a chair with Adam. A new bouquet of flowers sat in a vase on her table.

"Is everything all right?"

"Everything's fine." Her voice was flat.

"You don't look it. Who brought the roses?"

"Betsy Watkins."

"That was nice of her."

"Yes, it was."

There was a gaping silence that seemed to suck the walls in.

"Wendy, what's the problem? And don't tell me 'nothing' because I can see it in your face."

Wendy looked up at him. "She said that she proposed calling in an ethical review board, but you were opposed."

Instantly he felt defensive. "I don't know what she's trying to prove, but she had no right to say anything. And we don't need an ethical review board."

"She asked me to convince you to put a hold on the project until one could be set up."

"Wendy, you're not part of the equation. This is Darby business, not a family forum."

"What you're doing is dangerous."

"Can we talk about this some other time? You've just had a baby, for G.o.d's sake." He got up and went to the window.

"It has everything to do with the baby," she said angrily. "You're obsessed with this, Chris, and it scares me."

"I'm not obsessed, just busy."

"No, obsessed, and you've been like this for months. I feel as if I'm married to you by remote control. I don't see you anymore, and when I do you're distracted all the time."

He sighed audibly. Betsy had gotten to her with both barrels, and she wasn't going to let up. "I'm just swamped, that's all-neck-deep in setting up protocols and all."

"Chris, what you're doing scares me."

"I'm doing what all of medical science does-including every doctor and nurse in this hospital. My goal is no different."

"Medical diseases are not the same."

"Not the same as what?" he shot back. "Death is the ultimate medical disease-100 percent fatal."

"I mean viruses and bacteria. They come from the outside. Death is built in."

"So is Alzheimer's." The moment the word hit the air, he wished he could retract it.

The effect was instant. "Is that what this is all about?"

"It's too late for Sam."

"I'm not talking about saving Sam. I mean you."

Chris made a move to leave. "I've got to do the paperwork to check you out."

"Chris, you know what I'm talking about."

He flashed around. "No I don't, Wendy," he said. "Corny as it is, what we're doing is in the name of science and humanity, nothing less." He put his hand on the door handle to leave.

"Think of him," she said. "Think of how you'd relate to your son if he grows up to be older than you. Think about the day your child dies of old age and you're still going strong at forty-two." Her eyes were huge. Like Jenny's when crazed.

"Wendy, what the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"You're thinking of taking it yourself."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" he exclaimed. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard you say." His reaction was exaggerated not in anger at Wendy but at himself for appearing so transparent. "This is scientific inquiry of the highest order, not a Robert Louis Stevenson story."

"Promise me you won't."

"You can't be serious."

Tears filled her eyes and splashed onto the baby. "For his sake, promise me you won't. Promise me!"

"I don't believe this!"

"Promise me."

Chris stood at the door unable to move, transfixed by the desperation in his wife's voice. "I promise," he said.

Then he opened the door and left, wondering if she really believed him. Wondering if he really believed himself.

He returned later to drive Wendy and the baby home. She was still sullen. They put Adam into the crib for the first time in his life. And for the second time in their lives a newborn little boy slept in their home.

Wendy was exhausted, and after Adam went down, she went to bed and was out almost immediately. They did not discuss Elixir again.

Usually Chris drank a couple beers at night to settle his brain for sleep. But tonight he wanted a fast buzz. So, he poured himself some vodka over ice and felt the heat spread throughout his head. On his second gla.s.s he slipped into the nursery to look at his son. The small table lamp fashioned in a big red and yellow clown's head lit the room in soft glow. Adam was asleep on his back, his head to the side, the tip of his finger in his mouth.

Chris raised the drink to his eyes and studied it for a moment. The vodka was clear and colorless. Like Elixir.

Obsessed.

She was right.

And not just scientific inquiry.

Right again.

His mind turned to Sam, and he felt a deadly logic nip him. Wasn't he becoming more forgetful? Sometimes fumbling for words? Sometimes stumbling on p.r.o.nunciations? Sometimes forgetting the names of colleagues' spouses? Forgetting what month it was? Forgetting to book the Caribbean?

Wendy had said it was distraction. Distraction, stress, anxiety. What anybody experienced when riding command. Sure.

Then from the sunless recesses of his brain shot up a couple bright red cliches: Like father, like son.

The spitting image of his dad.

And soon, coming to a theater near you, he thought sickly: The drooling image of his dad.

The room seemed to shift, like that moment of awareness with Iwati by the fire. What if it were beginning-the great simplification-the convolutions of his brain puffing out in micro degrees? He could read the signs-forgetfulness, confusion, repet.i.tious gestures. Those moments when his brain felt like a lightbulb loose in its socket.

Nerves? Distraction? Stress? Maybe. Maybe not. He could see a doctor, but at his age there was no definitive test. Not until it was too late-when you looked in the mirror and you realized what a frightening, unfamiliar thing your face was.

Sure, he was only forty-two, but Alzheimer's could work its evil early. The doctors had said that Sam had an unusually virulent case. Accelerated was the term. If it had already started in himself, there was no known cure. No salve for the terror and the horror. Nothing but nothing.

Except, perhaps, Elixir. It preserved brain cells too. Chris swallowed the rest of his drink, and calculated the dosage necessary for a 170-pound man.

12.

DECEMBER 9.

The morning was appropriately cold and raw. It was the day Jimbo would die.

Phase One of the testing had been completed. With no standard procedures to guide them, Chris and his team had worked out the minimum dosage-to-body weight ratios to maintain a steady state for the animals-levels where chemistry and behavior plateaued, where test-culture cells replicated indefinitely, and where Elixir maxed out, the excesses pa.s.sing through their systems unabsorbed.

Phase Two was withdrawal-the stage everybody hated because it meant sacrificing animals they had become attached to.

First to go had been Fred, age twenty-three. They had weaned him off Elixir for a period of two weeks. At first, the effects were imperceptible-loss of appet.i.te and lethargy. Then one day he curled up in a corner, occasionally whining in pain. He remained that way for two days, then died. The postmortem indicated kidney failure. A twenty-one-year-old female named Georgette was next. After two days she came down with a high fever. After a day of fitful shakes, she lapsed into a comatose sleep and died of heart failure. The only noticeable sign of senescence was that her heart had swollen by 30 percent. Four more animals were sacrificed-all dying within a few days, all by causes attributed to age: kidney failure, heart failure, brain strokes, liver dysfunction. Except for slight withering, most showed no overt signs of senescence.

The night before they withdrew Jimbo, Chris visited him alone. He was the oldest monkey and the one whose death Chris dreaded the most. Over the months, he had come to love him like a favorite pet. More than that, Jimbo was a kind of soulmate-an alter self across the evolutionary divide.

His cage was three times the size of other singles-a special senior-citizen perk. Chris found Jimbo curled up on an old L. L. Bean cushion. Because he was a light sleeper, he awoke when Chris approached. He moved to the bars and pushed his fingers through. Chris locked on to them and wondered if Jimbo was aware of the wonderful changes that had taken place in him over the months. Did he know he was younger, stronger, more alert? Did he remember being old? Could he gauge the difference? Chris hoped so, but thought probably not. Self-awareness and awe were capacities unique to humans.

"You're a miracle, big guy, and you don't know it." Jimbo gazed up with those flat black rainforest eyes. Chris's heart squeezed. "Sorry, my friend."

His mind shifted to a room in Rose Hill Nursing home in West Hartford where last week Chris held the fingers of his father who lay confused by most everything in his waking day. There was more self-awareness in an old rhesus monkey.

Chris fed Jimbo his last supper, then went home and cried.

The mood was somber the next morning when Chris and his team had gathered. Quentin Cross showed up uninvited. As with the other animals, two video recorders would capture the entire process-which they estimated would take four days. Following that, an extensive postmortem a.n.a.lysis would be done on his vital organs.

Elixir was administered to the animals' systems through minipumps connected to refillable implants under the skin. These worked best because needles were traumatic. Jimbo's last refill would have been at nine A.M. Based on the other animals, signs of degeneration were not expected to show for at least twelve hours.

It was a little after one when Chris got a call from Vartan that Jimbo was acting oddly. He could hear his shrieks even before he reached the lab. All the others had a.s.sembled around the cage. "He's experiencing some kind of trauma," Vartan said.

Jimbo was at the top of his climbing structure, trembling and clutching it with both hands. His eyes were full of terror and he was shrieking as if plagued by phantoms.

"He looks possessed," Betsy said, watching in frightened awe.

When Jimbo spotted Chris he fell silent, gaping at him, his ears flattened against his head, a terrified grin on his face, his lips retracted so his huge canines were fully exposed. Then, without warning, he flew at Chris with a shrill screech. Had there been no bars, Chris was certain Jimbo would have torn open his face.

Suddenly Jimbo dropped to the floor and began running in circles, defecating and making yakking sounds n.o.body had heard before, his tail up like a female presenting out of sheer terror. His face was a scramble of expressions, running the gamut of fight/flight programs. He came to an abrupt stop. His eyes, large and opaque, settled on Chris. His mouth opened in a huge O as if comprehending some gross truth.

The next moment, he began to convulse. He flopped to the floor among his own waste matter. His limbs began to twitch as if he were being electrocuted. Then, slowly at first, his face and torso began to wither, the fur buckling as if there were too much of it to cover him. Betsy let out a gasp of horror as Jimbo's skin lumped and crawled as if small creatures were moving under it. She rushed to give him a mercy-killing shot, but stopped, realizing it would make no difference. Jimbo was dead by the time she filled the needle.

What happened next defied belief, but made horrifying sense. Without the prophylactic protection of Elixir, the telomerase genes in the cells of Jimbo's body suddenly switched on, triggering a mad cascade. Multiplying at lightning speed, cancer cells oozed in bright red tissue ma.s.s from the orifices of Jimbo's body-ears, nose, mouth, and a.n.u.s. From his p.e.n.i.s a thin red worm extruded out of the urethra, coiling onto his belly. Simultaneously, a pulsing gorge swelled out of Jimbo's throat and enveloped his head.

Within minutes, cancer cells made up for months of forced dormancy. Cells that continued to grow and multiply long after the animal had died flowed like lava across his limbs and torso until any semblance of his original form was lost to a grotesque and throbbing red ma.s.s.

When it was over, Betsy turned to Chris and Quentin. "Are you satisfied now?" she shouted. "What we are doing is wrong, and that hideous spectacle was a warning. This is bad science. Bad!"

She then turned and left the lab.

DECEMBER 11.

"What do you mean a technical snag?"

"Well, a kind of... you know, side-effect."

"What kind of side-effect?"

Quentin was sweating, but trying to remain cool. "Well, the stuff kills the animals in withdrawal. I don't understand it-something at the DNA level."

Vince Lucas listened without expression and sipped his tea. He was dressed elegantly in a gray flannel sport coat, white shirt, and silk paisley tie. A fat gold Rolex peered out from his wrist. With his slick black hair and tan, he looked like an Italian movie star.

"We're working on it, but unless we eliminate it, it'll never be marketed."

They were sitting in the lounge of Boston's new Four Seasons Hotel. Seven months from now Quentin was scheduled to pay Vince Lucas the first $2 million he owed him for his loan-and his life-the same amount to be paid the following July 1. That was on top of the $5 million he had already wired Antoine for the apricots. Nine million dollars in debt and nothing to show but some hideous monkey carca.s.ses.

"But I think there's something we can do."