Darby stared at the clear liquid in the feeder tubes. "You've discovered a molecule that puts the cellular clock for mice on slow-mo. If you make it work for human beings, you'll have the fountain of youth."
"The operative word is if. Disconnect those tubes, and they'll age to death before your eyes."
Ross eyed a mouse in the nearest cage, its skull sporting electrodes like a tiny diver's helmet. "How old is this one?"
"Chronologically, sixty-two months. Biologically, I haven't got a clue. Like most animals, mice don't age in any noticeable way. They just get bigger. And smarter. Their cognitive powers have measurably heightened."
And in his mind Chris saw his father in two different shoes, tearing up as he struggled to find the right word… to recall his son's name. To block the fog that was slowly closing in.
"What do you think triggers this accelerated senescense?"
"I don't know, but my gut feeling is that it's in the molecule itself. It's huge, which means the problem might be in the binding sites. Maybe something in the compound attaches to neuroreceptors and blocks the natural process of aging, and once it's withdrawn the conditions causing senescence are heightened. Or maybe it works directly on the DNA sequence."
"Any rumors of people rapidly aging in New Guinea?"
"None I know of."
The intensity on Ross's face said he was becoming convinced of grand possibilities. "The first step will be to get a patent on it. That's essential."
Because secrecy was essential they would have to apply for a "composition of matter" patent rather than a "use" patent to avoid stipulating the compound's application as an anti-aging drug. Chris knew that the senescence effects would never pass FDA.
"What will it take to do the job?" Ross asked.
Chris was ready for him, and he ticked off the contents of his fantasy lab: High-speed computers with elaborate imaging software, nuclear magnetic resonance equipment, mass spectrometers, and so on. Ross snapped his fingers for Quentin to take it all down.
"Also, geneticists, pharmacists, physical chemists with pharmacology backgrounds. I can give you names. And test animals, especially rhesus monkeys-very old ones and virus-free."
When he finished, Quentin looked at the list he had taken down. "You're talking major capital investment."
"And it may not be successful," Chris added.
"But I think you're on to something extraordinary," Ross said. "So we'll do whatever it takes. I want you to put together the best team and lab that money can buy."
Chris nodded, amused how in less than two hours he had passed from company crook to messiah. "I'll do my best."
"And the sooner the better," Darby said. "I'm just a couple years this side of my own warranty. You get it to work on old monkeys, and I'm next in line."
"If this works," Quentin said, "you'll be more famous than God and twice as rich."
Chris smiled. Fame and personal wealth were the least of his interests. He was by nature a private person and making enough of a salary to afford his and Wendy's needs. Yes, it would be nice to have a few extra thousand, what with a child on the way and Wendy's decision to take an extended maternity leave from teaching. But sudden wealth would only add an unnecessary edge of anxiety, like what put those Rocky Raccoon rings around Quentin's eyes. Maybe it was no longer fashionable, but he was a scientist motivated solely by intellectual challenges, not financial ones. Even if he could afford otherwise, he preferred L. L. Bean to Armani, a Jeep to a Mercedes, and vacations at Wendy's family lodge in the Adirondacks to chateaux on the Riviera.
Ross had one more question before they left. "Does anybody else know about this? Colleagues or friends?"
"Just my wife."
"Good," Darby said, "and let's keep it that way because if word leaks that we're putting our resources into an anti-aging drug, the media will be on us like vultures and competitors will be scrambling to learn what we've got. Think of this as our own Manhattan Project."
Later, while driving home, Darby's words buzzed in Chris's head. It wasn't the demand for secrecy that bothered him-he was used to that. It was recollection of the first words of Robert Oppenheimer moments after the original Manhattan Project made a ten-mile-high column of radioactive smoke over Almagordo: "I have become Death."
Two
"Old age is the most unexpected
of all the things that happen to a man."
– LEON TROTSKY
8
Chris didn't sleep much for the excitement. In a few months Wendy would give birth to their son or daughter. Meanwhile, Darby Pharms was going all out on tabulone. At times he could not distinguish which buoyed his spirits more.
Wendy's former apprehension about another baby had vanished like a low-grade fever. On the contrary, she happily anticipated the November birth and a year's leave of absence. To add to her delight, she had finished If I Should Die, and a literary agent had sold the manuscript on the second submission. It had garnered a modest advance, but her publisher loved the book and the series proposal. The publication date was February of next year. Wendy was ecstatic-a baby and a book, just months apart. It couldn't get much better than that.
Last week Jenny had flown down for another visit. The good news on that front was that her daughter Kelly was out of the hospital and planning to return to school in the fall. And Abigail was growing into a happy and healthy toddler.
Meanwhile, a SWAT team of workmen had over the months converted Chris's old lab into a state-of-the-art research site. Walls had been pushed out, and the floor space had doubled. Fancy equipment had arrived almost daily from all over the country. Also test animals. Mice they still procured from Jackson Labs. But finding the right monkeys presented problems. There were vendors all over the country, but only one had virus-free "retired breeders"-an isolated colony in the Florida Keys. Chris ordered two dozen ranging in age from twenty-one to twenty-nine-the oldest, named Jimbo, who was equivalent to a 105-year-old man. The younger animals cost four to six thousand dollars each. Because he might have been the oldest virus-free rhesus macaque in the world, Jimbo went for a cool ten thousand.
As director, Chris had also sought out the best talent he could find. But wooing them required special artfulness since he had to make the project alluring without revealing the objective. He explained that Darby had launched a project never before attempted in the pharmaceutical industry. As expected, his recruits were intrigued that a reputable company was investing millions of dollars in a steroid. Unique as its crystalline structure was, steroids was an area very few bothered with today. Intriguing also were the starting salaries-twice what they were earning. By the time Chris was through, he had hired six fulltime class-A researchers-two pharmacologists plus a medicinal chemist, a microbiologist, a protein chemist, and a geneticist. It was a pharmaceutical dream team.
The other good news was that Darby had received a patent on tabulone, which meant that no other institution could research the molecule for seventeen years.
By midwinter, the cancer toxogen had mysteriously dropped off the boards in spite of the initial media blitz. The official explanation was that a blight had killed off the apricot crops. The loss had cost the company dearly, and Chris guessed Quentin took some flak. Whatever the real story, Ross had managed to raise millions for the new lab from select venture capitalists. And he had done so with fantasies of developing a fountain-of-youth drug and turning investors into billionaires.