"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 glass 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 pronunciations? 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 clichés:
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, repetitious 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
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 passing 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 appetite 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 analysis 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 assembled 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 nobody 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.