"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.
5
Chris arrived home around nine, still badly shaken. Methuselah's death was like nothing he had seen before. Other animals had experienced accelerated senescence before dying, but over a period of days or weeks-not minutes, and never so extreme. Held in submission for six years, cancer had apparently invaded healthy cells and replicated with explosive vengeance. To make things worse, Quentin was surely questioning Chris's dedication to Veratox.
As Chris stretched out on their big double bed, he knew his days at Darby Pharmaceuticals were numbered. Quentin had all but said he'd replace him, no doubt with some younger talent with hot new strategies on creating synthetic pathways. Now he'd been caught red-handed in his own private project, using company materials, time, and funds. How the hell at forty-two was he going to find a new job when the industry was hiring fresh grad students? How the hell were they going to live on an English teacher's salary?
Chris tried to compose his mind to rest. His eyes fell on the framed plaque on the opposite wall of their bedroom. It was an old Armenian wedding toast etched in beautiful calligraphy in the original language and English-a gift from a college friend on their marriage day.
"May both your heads grow old on one pillow."
For a long moment he stared at the words, then he closed his eyes.
Wendy was taking a shower, and the hush of the water filled his mind like whispered conversations. On the inside of his forehead he watched a closed-loop video of Methuselah erupting in cancerous growths, then shriveling up to a burnt-out pelt.
Who'd want to dip a needle into that?
Just ten wee minutes was all it took.
Like he died on fast forward.
It could take years to work out that limitation-first on mice, then rabbits and dogs, then primates. And that was assuming he could determine the genetic mechanism. Sadly, he had neither the expertise nor the equipment to do what was required. No way to do it alone and undercover.
No way.
No time…
Chris didn't know how long he had dozed-probably just a few minutes, but in that time his brain had dropped a few levels to dream mode. He was at the door of the nursing home, and Sam was sitting in his wheelchair, but everything had an Alice in Wonderland absurdity to it. The wheelchair was too big for Sam, who was the size of a child, sitting in diapers and grinning but still an old man in wispy hair and sad loose flesh. A little boy and old man at once. And he was waving. "Bye Bye, Sailor."
"Hey, sailor, wanna party?"
Chris's eyes snapped open.
Wendy was standing by the bed, naked but for a flimsy negligée.
The room was dimmed and from the tape deck Frank Sinatra filled the room with "Young at Heart."
"I said, you want to party?" She was grinning foolishly.
Suddenly Chris was fully awake. Wendy climbed onto the bed and straddled his thighs.
"My God!" he whispered. "It's the Whore of Babylon."
She laughed happily and kissed him.
"What's the occasion? Fancy meal, expensive French wine, now Playboy After Dark." He had bought the negligée as a Valentine's gift several years ago but had all but forgotten it.