Elixir

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.

Toward that end, a special meeting was held in June with Chris, Quentin, Ross Darby, and a couple others to come up with a trade name for investors, research documents, and the FDA application. They met in the conference room where Chris wrote the suggestions on the blackboard. "Tabulone" did not impress anyone, given the product's momentous promise. Quentin said it sounded like an Italian dessert.

"What we need is something striking," Ross said. "Something that suggests what it's for-longevity, but not so literal. You know, something exotic and catchy."

So for nearly two hours they kicked around names until the blackboard was full and Chris was covered with chalk.

Eternity

Vitalong

VitaYou

VitaLife

AgeNot

For awhile they got stuck on puns, odd spellings, until the suggestions turned silly. They then moved on to various associations with time, clocks, life, then Latin and Greek roots, mythological and biblical names. And because the compound was a steroid not too unlike testosterone, they bandied around the -one suffix which produced some goofy tongue-twisters like Immorticone and Methuselone.

Next they played with prefixes like ever- and eva-, which yielded Evagreen, EvaYoung, EvaYou, and so on. That gave way to combos with vita-mega-, and omni-. Breaking the frustration somebody suggested Fuk4Eva and they all cheered.

Finally, into their second hour, Chris moved to the blackboard and in large block letters he wrote:

ELIXIR

For a moment everybody fell silent as they let the word sink in. Then heads began to nod. Ross straightened up in his chair, his eyes wide as he tested the suggestion. "Yes, I like it. Exotic, but not arcane. Overtones of alchemy yet with a sexy scientific X dead center." He slapped the table and rose. "That's it. Elixir," he said as if mouthing a spell. "Elixir. It's perfect, and can't you just imagine the great TV ads and promotional material? Yes! That's what we'll call it. Elixir!"

And everybody agreed.

Elixir.

"Elixir?"

"What do you think?"

"It's catchy."

It was the first time Wendy had visited the lab in years. Chris had brought her in to see the new facilities. Boxes of materials were stacked on the floor, but the structural work had been completed and equipment was functioning.

Wendy feigned interest as Chris showed her all the fancy instruments. In one room was his pride and joy, a mass spectrometer for determining chemical compositions and molecular weights. In another room, looking like something from a science fiction movie, sat the high resolution nuclear magnetometer. "Very nice," she said. "What does it do?"

"Tells us the number of atoms in the molecule, as well as their structural relations. Tabulone is very sophisticated-lots of interesting branches and bondings."

"Why's that important?"

"To help figure out the senescence problem. It's possible the flatness of the molecule lets it wedge itself between the coils of the DNA promoting mutagenesis. If that's the case, we may be able to alter the problem structure. Otherwise, no Elixir."

"But you don't even know if it works on humans."

"Except for Iwati."

She had almost forgotten. New Guinea juju was alive and well and living in twentieth-century Boston. "If he suddenly went off the stuff, would he age?"

"I really don't know. The next step is to see what happens to primates, which means determining dosages. They're just a few genetic steps up from mice, but my guess is that the stuff will prolong their lives, too."

Wendy was happy that Chris was finally out of the shadows and that his sideshow study was now a major scientific inquiry. She could also enjoy his excitement because he seemed like a different person, a great big, handsome, lovable kid. However, while she kept it to herself, all she saw on her tour was scientists producing false hopes of finding a cure for death itself. There were no magic cures, she told herself. People got sick and died. Like Ricky. It was an inevitability that Chris would not accept. A grand illusion. She just prayed that when that discovery hit home, he would not be crushed.

Chris led her to a computer station nearby where he tapped some keys and, like magic, the Elixir molecule appeared on the monitor in different colored balls. Slowly the figure rotated like a bubble dancer, turning itself around in 3-D to show off its endless cheeks.

She put her hands on his shoulders and peered at the monitor. "Pretty. So what do you do with it?"

"If you know binding sites, you can see how atoms fit together, then manipulate the geometry." He clipped off a hydrogen/oxygen stem and added a carbon-hydrogen cluster. "Now we have a different molecule with different properties."

"You're designing new matter."

"More like redesigning old."

"Improving on nature," she said.

He looked up at her with a blank face. "Wendy, you're not going to give me your Imperial Margarine lecture, are you?"

"Now that you mention it…" she joked.

The last stop was the monkeys. They were kept in rows of steel cages lined up along one long wall. Each contained a single rhesus. Wendy stopped at one cage tagged FRED and his birthdate, 3/13/65. He looked at her with quick anxious eyes. It was so unfair, she thought. In a few weeks his head would be in clamps, his body paralyzed, the skull cap removed, his brains exposed and sprouting electrodes to monitor his death. "Poor little guy."

"I know what you're thinking. But if it's any consolation, he may teach us how to prolong human life."

"I don't approve of that either."

"Not exactly a news flash," he chuckled. "But frankly, it appeals to me."

She knew what he was getting at. "Honey, you don't have Alzheimer's."

"You don't know that."

"Nor do you."

"Yeah, but sometimes I almost feel it coming. Yesterday I couldn't remember Stan's extension. There are days I'd call him half a dozen times. How could I forget?"

"That's natural. You're under a lot of stress."

"Then what about forgetting our anniversary last week? The first time in sixteen years that's happened. Or your birthday last year?"

"You're just preoccupied. Besides, Alzheimer's affects people in their sixties and seventies, not forties."

"That's not true, I checked. It could start in the late thirties even."

Wendy stared into Chris's two-tone eyes. As an old friend had once said, it was like two different faces superimposed. At the moment, he was at once the brilliant, cool-minded scientist and an irrational kid. "Chris, you're being ridiculous. You don't have Alzheimer's disease."

"Maybe not. But every instinct tells me it's in the cards. Whatever, the bottom line is that aging stinks. All that stuff about wisdom in the years is a lot of feel-good garbage."

Wendy watched Fred stir the wood chips with his fingers. She felt the tired old debate coming on but pushed it aside. "Just one question: Say it works, say you eliminate the senescence problem. How would people relate if some grew old while others didn't?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead."

"Maybe you should if the future's going to make sense."

Chris said nothing but handed Fred an orange wedge. It was his cue to change the subject.

"And what if it's so expensive only the rich can afford it?"

"That's what they said about penicillin and the polio vaccine, and they're available to everybody in the world today."

"And what about the population?"

"That can be worked out with proper regulations."

"Sure, maybe they can set up a Ministry of Birth."

"In spite of all the doomsday caveats, 1984 turned into 1985. And, by the way, I thought you said just one question."

Wendy was about to go on when movement inside made her suck in her breath.

"What the matter? What is it?" Chris asked.

Wendy smiled and took his hand and lay it on her belly to feel. "One future that's going to make sense."

It was another miserable night. Antoine had called from Puerto Rico to say that another $2.5 million was due July 1. Yes, the apricots had been destroyed in Reagan's fireblitz last year, but he wanted his money no matter what. And Quentin had no choice. But he would have to pay from his own pocket because financial restructuring over Elixir made it impossible to skim funds again. His net worth, some $2 million, was tied up in investments he couldn't touch without his wife finding out. And she was still fuming that he had nearly destroyed her father's name and business. His only option was secret bank loans.

What gave him night sweats was that this wouldn't be another wire transfer. The exchange would take place in person at the statue of George Washington in the Boston Garden at 2:30 on Friday the 1st-in unmarked hundred-dollar bills, twenty-five thousand of them.

"Chris, I think you better come in as soon as possible." It was Vartan Dolat, the molecular biologist Chris had hired from MIT. He was at the lab, and as usual he was exercising telephone caution. His voice was devoid of inflection.

But Chris's heart started to hammer. It was nine in the morning on his day off. "Do we have a problem?"

But Vartan deflected the question. "See you at ten."

Chris arrived and was met by Vartan outside the lab. "It's Jimbo."

"Is he okay?"

Vartan didn't answer but hustled him to the lab while Chris said a silent prayer that he wouldn't find Jimbo withered and dying.

Waiting for them were Stan Chow, Derek Wyman, and Betsy Watkins, a geneticist from Northeastern specializing in human aging. Chris could hear monkeys chattering, but Jimbo's cage was empty. Betsy opened the rear door to the large enclosed pen outside where the animals could move about in fresh air. Chris could see the nontoxic red J painted on his chest. "Is that him?"

Jimbo was sitting on a high perch casually grooming Fred, a male ten years his junior.

"He's quiet now, but for the last two hours he's been jumping around like a kid," Vartan said.

Jimbo saw Chris and hooted a hello.

"I don't believe it."

When Jimbo had arrived four months ago, all he did was sit in a corner or sleep. What movements he made were crimped by arthritis. When put in the group pen, he'd either ignore the other animals or whack them if they approached. Twenty-nine years had reduced Jimbo to a lethargic, flabby, antisocial curmudgeon. Incredibly, he looked reborn.

"He even made a move on Molly," Betsy said.

"You're kidding."'

"He went through some courtship gestures then he tried to mount her. We had to separate them because she's still fertile."

Chris beamed at the animal. "You old gunslinger, you."

Vartan handed Chris Jimbo's vital functions charts. "What's interesting is that he's eating less, yet he's gained nearly a pound, mostly in muscle mass."

Fred decided it was time to play and leapt to the ceiling bars. Instantly, Jimbo was behind him, chattering and swinging across the pen. His movements were slower but still fluid. It was like watching an elderly man on amphetamines.

"Even more remarkable, his blood sugars are down by 80 percent. And so are the protein substances that block arteries, stiffen joints, produce cataracts, and gum up brain tissue."

"All the signs of aging," Chris said.

"Yes. Tabulone seems to have reversed the process. I don't think he'll turn into a juvenile again, but the stuff's kicked him back a few years. My guess is that it will stabilize as with the mice."

Chris was stunned. They just hadn't noticed the effect in the mice.

Not only did Elixir prolong life, it had some initial rejuvenating effects.

Even more bizarre, several witnesses say that before the strange affliction, Quinn looked thirty years younger than his age.

My God! thought Chris, It's what took hold of Dexter.

He had a damaged heart which he knew would kill him soon. Maybe on an impulse he'd tried it on himself and experienced a backward thrust like Jimbo. It must have been like nothing else he had ever experienced. Nothing out of a medicine jar or syringe. The ultimate high: the fires of spring redux.

Betsy Watkins, who had a reputation for being a no-nonsense researcher rarely given to superlatives, was also amazed. "Tabulone appears to restore the DNA to effect a kind of cellular retrogression. I've seen nothing like it before. I don't think anyone has. It's nothing short of a miracle."

"Does Ross know?" Chris asked.

"Yes, he does." Around the corner came Quentin. He was beaming. "The real question is, What's the next step?"

Chris could smell alcohol on his breath and it wasn't even noon. What Quentin really wanted to know was when they could file application with the FDA. "I think we're talking a few years."

"Years? Why so long? I mean, you've got a monkey who's regressed a decade. We should be thinking about moving on to human subjects and all."

"We have protocol to follow. You know that," Betsy said incredulously. "Disconnect these animals, and they'll die."

"Don't disconnect them and they'll go on forever."

Betsy began to laugh, but caught herself because Quentin was perfectly serious. "Quentin, this is a compound that will make you die of old age on the spot if you overdose or underdose. It's hardly ready for human trial."

"Betsy, we supply most hospitals and clinics with Proctizam which is highly toxic."

"Proctizam is an experimental drug for cancer patients near death," Betsy shot back.

"So is Elixir! There are people who would pay dearly to have it the way it is, with all the risks."

Chris could feel the others stiffen. It wasn't just that they were dedicated university scientists not used to corporate bullying. They couldn't quite believe Quentin's suggestion. It bordered dangerously on blind desperation.

"Quentin," Betsy said, "speculation like that is not within the interests of any responsible pharmaceutical company."

Quentin's face flushed as if it had been slapped. He sucked in his breath and recomposed himself. "Well, let's just say I'm getting a tad frustrated. We've got too many important people invested in this project who don't want to wait a bunch of years to see this go to market. If you'll excuse me."

And he walked away, leaving the others wondering what that was all about.

9

"I think your sister's a little paranoid." What Chris really meant was that she was getting wackier. "She carried on about the evils of the modern world for half an hour."

It was a few days later, and Jenny had flown in for a quick visit. After driving her to the airport he had returned home to work with Wendy on the nursery. Pressure from Quentin had him working long days so he almost forgot how good it was to share time with her. Presently he was hanging wallpaper while she was putting up curtains.

"She can get like that. I wonder what set her off?"

"A radio report about drugs at some junior high. She carried on like the Antichrist was dealing in every schoolyard in the country. No wonder Kelly's so screwed up."

"Chris, Jenny's a great mother. She gave up a nursing career for Kelly. Nobody could have predicted her problems."

"Well, she's trying to make up for them with Abigail. The kid's a year old, and she's already thinking about home schooling."

"Maybe it's second motherhood. She's determined to make this one work."

So are we, Chris thought. The old wound was healing. Wendy was loving the prospect of motherhood. And with it, they had moved closer over the months. It was like going back in time themselves, happy in love all over again.

Last month they had learned that their baby would be a boy. So Chris hung paper with sailboats on a field of blue, while Wendy made nautical curtains. They bought a new crib and set up a bookcase with a collection of kiddie stories, a Jack-in-the-box, and a few stuffed animals including a big goofy Garfield cat.

"It's costing her and Ted a fortune," he said.

While shopping yesterday, Jenny had spent hundreds of dollars on toys including an inlaid pearl music box that played "Frere Jacques." While he was fond of Jenny, he worried about her influence on Wendy. It wasn't just the mood swings or neatness obsession. It was her hangups. Some people got worked up over the Russians, others the environment. For Jenny it was how our culture killed childhood innocence. At the slightest provocation, she'd hold forth on the usual demons-drugs, rock and roll, alcohol, TV violence-and how kids didn't have a chance to be kids anymore. Wendy didn't need that kind of talk. It was hard enough to get her to decide to have another child without the hyped-up ravings.

Wendy returned from the other room. "Did you see Kelly's photo-the one at her fifth birthday? It was sitting with the others in the office." She wanted to group early family shots on a shelf in the nursery.

"No."

"That's odd, it's missing."

"Maybe Jenny took it."

"But she would have said something."

"Unless she had one of her spells." Jenny was known to have moments of confusion-vestiges of childhood schizophrenia that slipped through the medication.

"I'll ask her," Wendy said vaguely. She had hung up a watercolor of children at a yellow beach against a sunlit ocean. "What do you think?"

Chris came over and put his arm around her. "Looks good."

"Hey, why don't we go away someplace tropical-just the two of us, before I'm too big to fit on a plane."

"Like where?"

"Anywhere as long as it's romantic and far from mass spectrometers and rhesus macaques."

"No such place," he grinned.

"That's the problem. You spend more time with your monkeys than you do with me. I'm starting to feel like Jane in the Tarzan movies."

He laughed and gave her a squeeze. The suggestion was wonderful. The tough part was finding the time. He would check the lab schedule to see when he could take off a week. "Sure."

"Good. Maybe Jamaica or Barbados -someplace with beaches, palm trees, and a big double bed."

"You have no shame," he said.

"How would you know?"

He could see the glint in her eyes. He kissed her lips. Instantly his body flooded with warmth as she flicked her tongue in his mouth and ground her hips against him. "I'll never kiss Jimbo again."

She laughed and pulled him to the couch. In a moment he was naked and lying across the cushions, an erection poking in the air.

"You're obscene," she said, slipping out of her pants.

"I hope five minutes from now you still think so."

For a moment Wendy's face clouded over as something rippled through her. "Everything will be all right, won't it?"

There it was again, the old wound that just wouldn't heal. In a flash all defenses had dropped.

"Of course, it will. He'll be fine. We'll all be fine." He held out his hand to hers.

The moment passed, and she smiled again.

Her breasts were beginning to swell, and her belly looked as if she had swallowed a football. She climbed onto the couch and straddled him. "Ever do it with an old heifer?"

"Always a first time for everything."

"You're supposed to say you're not old or heiferey."

"You're not old."

"Moo you," she said, and they made love while Garfield looked on with a sly grin.

Chris had anticipated Betsy Watkins's presentation, but he was not prepared for what he heard.

They met, as scheduled, at ten on Friday morning in the lab conference room. Gathered were Derek Wyman, Stan Chow, company chemist, Vartan Dolat, and Quentin. For the last several months, Betsy had taken over the cell studies.

Betsy was a compact woman with a sharp and pleasant face and wide intelligent eyes. She had dark loose curly hair that only emphasized the hard cool substance of her mind. Armed with notes and board chalk, she reviewed recent breakthroughs in the science then launched into a description of how Elixir worked at the cell level.

"Capping mammal chromosomes is a DNA sequence called 'telomeres,'" she explained. "Like the plastic tips on shoelaces, they function to protect chromosomal molecules from proteins that trigger the cell deterioration associated with aging."

She illustrated her point with diagrams on the board. "Each time a cell divides, telomeres of offspring cells become shorter and shorter. In healthy young cells, there is an enzyme called 'telomerase' containing the genetic code for restoring telomeres, allowing cells to divide by keeping the telomeres long. But as the cell gets old, the telomerase activity decreases and the telomeres get shorter until after a half a dozen replications in mice-fifty in humans-the sequence shortens until the cells die.

"But as we've discovered, cells treated with Elixir don't senesce. Instead, telomeres in treated animals held their length while cells continued to replicate. My guess is that tabulone activates the genes that produces telomerase, thereby maintaining a constant supply to keep the telomeres long and cells young."

"How does that jive with the literature?" Chris asked.

"Well, all aging studies hit the same brick wall: how to switch on telomerase production indefinitely." She held up an ampule of Elixir. "It's the magic bullet. It triggers an endless source of telomerase-the Fountain of Youth, if you will."

Betsy's reasoning was brilliant. But it also raised some fundamental questions. "Are you saying, then, that the cells of our bodies are genetically programmed to die?" Vartan asked.

Betsy hesitated to answer because of the enormity of the implications. "No, because that would mean that death is an evolutionary necessity. And, frankly, I don't believe that aging is the result of evolutionary forces," she answered. "And the reason is that Nature is a red-toothed demon that kills off most animals before they reach reproductive age, and those that make it almost never live long enough for aging to have become part of the natural selection process."

Chris felt a warm flow of satisfaction because it was the same conclusion he had reached years ago. More than that, he felt considerable admiration for Betsy and pride that a scientist with such fierce intelligence and authority was on his team.

Betsy continued, "There are so-called 'big-bang' exceptions like the Pacific salmon which seem genetically programmed to spawn and die within a few days. But on balance, death seems clearly to be the result of cell deterioration at the molecular level and not natural selection."

"Which means that aging could be stalled as long as the cells are protected," Chris added.

"Exactly, and tabulone appears to do just that. As long as the antioxidant binds to the DNA telomere sequence, cell death will not occur."

"What about the rejuvenating effect?" Chris asked.

Betsy nodded in anticipation of the query. "My guess is that it reverses the process. Say we started Jimbo on treatment on his twenty-seventh out of a max of thirty replications. As Elixir turns on the telomerase gene, instead of going twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, death!, the replications went twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-five until he reached a steady state. Telomere lengths were restored with each division, and in the meantime he experiences moderate rejuvenation. That's still conjecture, but the important thing is that tabulone is a natural telomerase activator."

Chris was dumbfounded: What Betsy was describing was a breakthrough in cell biology. Under ordinary circumstances such findings would be winged to every major scientific journal. But they were sworn to secrecy.

The next step-Phase 2-was the rapid senescence problem. While the molecular work would be conducted by the others, Chris would concentrate on determining dosages-when exactly senescence began and how to reverse it.

"There's one more thing," Betsy said. Her expression had suddenly darkened. "While our successes don't guarantee prolongevity for humans, we're moving inexorably closer. I need not remind you how stupendous a discovery that is. But it's imperative we consider the higher implications before we blindly push onward."

There was a hushed moment.

"In fact, I suggest we stop right where we are."

"Stop? What are you saying?" It was Quentin from the rear of the room-the first words he had uttered in nearly two hours.

"I know how you feel, but there are some serious moral and social ramifications to what we're doing."

Quentin bolted upright in his chair. "Betsy, let me remind you that this project is guided by FDA protocol and good manufacturing principles as with all our work at Darby."

"I know that, Quentin, but Elixir is not like any other pharmaceutical in history. We're not talking about adding ten years to a person's life but doubling or tripling it."

"I fail to see the problem."

"The problem is we're no longer playing scientist, but God. And, frankly, I don't have the credentials! I'm asking, do we really want to open that door?"

"What door, for godsakes?" Quentin was losing his composure by the second.

"To all the nightmare potentials. If suddenly we introduce a compound that keeps the next generation from dying, the population in a hundred years would be twenty-six billion. Meanwhile, resources run out, the environment is devastated, and wars erupt between the Elixirs and the Elixir-nots-"

Quentin cut her off. "Betsy, your nightmare may be the only hope for patients suffering multiple sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's Disease… or Alzheimer's."

That was intended to ingratiate Chris. But from Quentin it was a smarmy jab. He didn't give a damn about ethics or humanity. His sole interest was his billion-dollar dream.

"The potential impact is unimaginable," Betsy continued, "and we had better think about it while we still have time."

The others nodded in agreement. Sensing a conspiracy, Quentin shot Chris a look for help. But Chris remained silent. "You mean you want to pull the plug because it might be too successful?"

"Yes-because we should be working on improving the quality of the life, not trying to prolong it."

"Prolonging it is improving the quality, damn it!"

"Then we should get Public Citizen or some other watchdog agency to monitor its development."

"Jesus Christ! We don't need to have Ralph Nader and his people hanging over us again."

Four years ago, the medical arm of Nader's consumer group got the FDA to withdraw one of Darby's high-profit arthritis drugs because it caused heart failure in some patients. The very mention of the organization made Quentin apoplectic.

"Please," said Vartan holding up his hands. "Betsy's making an important point. There are too many big unknowns to grapple with. It's only ethical we reassess matters."

Derek and Stan agreed. It was clear that they had discussed matters among themselves already. Only Quentin and Chris were hearing the dissent for the first time.

Chris felt the battle lines divide them. He did not like being on the same side as Quentin. He also felt the rising expectation to say something. It was his project, after all. Suddenly his people were talking about halting a seven-year investment of his mind and soul-and at the very threshold of the kingdom. And they were expecting him to resolve what smacked of being the ultimate conflict between science and ethics.

No longer able to stall, he said, "I think you're both right. Betsy, you raise some troublesome potentials, things we should consider. But unwanted possibilities are no reason to call a halt. Cocaine or heroin are dangerous when abused, but lots of people take them and nobody's twisting their arms. Should we stop manufacturing them because it's become a social problem? Of course not, because of all the legitimate uses in medicine. Even nuclear fission: It's not innately evil, just one of its potential applications."

"That's like saying climb the mountain because it's there: Knowledge for its own sake," Betsy said.

"Yes, but I see nothing wrong with that."

"Not all knowledge is good."

"True, but science shouldn't be prohibited from extending frontiers, especially in human biology. Like cloning, prolongevity was bound to be discovered, so why not do it right? And we're the best team there is."

"Hear, hear!" shouted Quentin and flashed Chris a thumbs-up. The man was a damn fool, and Chris resented the assumption of complicity.

"Then maybe you can tell us what exactly our objective is," Betsy said, "because I've lost sight."

Iwati's face rose up in Chris's mind. Never grow old.

"Our objective is to continue the headway we've made with an eye to moving to clinical. The fact is, the accelerated senescence may stop us before our conscience does."

Another flashcard image-Sam in the hospital, looking up at Chris, wondering who he was.

"If you're worried about it being too successful," Quentin said, "why not modify the compound so that it's good for, say, for ten or twenty years-chemically fine-tune it, kind of?"

Betsy took a deep breath of exasperation. It was a ludicrous suggestion. "Even if we discovered some built-in timers for molecules, activation would constitute mass murder."

"Oh hell, you can work out something," Quentin snapped back. "The point is that if Elixir can add a decade or two to human life, I'm all for it. So is Darby Pharms and so is the human race, damn it! We're not going to have a work stoppage. Period! Besides, we don't even know if it works on humans."

"Frankly, I hope it doesn't," Betsy said, and picked up her things and left.

The meeting was over, and Derek, Stan, and Vartan exited without a word.

When they were alone, Quentin turned to Chris. "What the hell's wrong with her? This might be the greatest discovery in all of science, and she's trying to fucking sabotage it. Jesus! Where the hell did you find that woman in the first place?"

Chris looked at the big pink musk-melon face. The same face that for weeks would mooch into his lab to check on progress, to reiterate how important Elixir was to the company, to remind him how there would be no Elixir project without Quentin. Chris did all he could to keep from whacking that face. "Quentin, I'm sure you have work to do."

Quentin gave him an offended look then left.

Chris's insides felt scooped out. Maybe they would talk, but they were not going to shut the project down. No way. He needed Betsy, but if she became a liability, he would ask her to find another lab.

He was about to leave when he looked back at the chalkboard notes and diagrams. Do we really want to open that door?

And a small voice in his head, whispered: Yes, oh yes.

Dexter had messed up-yielded to a crazy nostalgic impulse. A last-ditch effort to bathe in the fires of spring. But when the time came, Chris wouldn't be so foolish. No way.

10

Quentin arrived at two-thirty and paced in circles around George Washington and his horse for half an hour. In a shoulder bag he carried unmarked hundred-dollar bills. But not twenty-five thousand of them. Over the week he had raised only $1.5 million-a million shy of what he owed.

It was a cool drizzly day, and only a few people were in the Garden. Quentin's stomach was a cauldron of acid. He chewed Tums, thinking that Antoine was being cagey, probably waiting to see if he had brought police or narcs. The thought had never crossed his mind. About three o'clock a kid in jeans and a slicker approached him. "He's waiting for you in the lounge across the street." He pointed to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel then took off in the opposite direction.

Quentin crossed Arlington Street, feeling relief they were meeting in a civilized place. The lounge was dim and only a couple of businessmen sat by the window. A waiter directed Quentin to a table in the far corner where a man sat, but it was not Antoine Ducharme.

"How's the finger?" asked Vince Lucas.

Instantly, Quentin's hand began to throb. The finger had a permanent crook which made Vince smile.

"Where's Antoine?"

"Let's just say it's inconvenient for Antoine to travel."

Quentin sat and the waiter took their orders-a Chivas on the rocks for Quentin, a second Perrier for Vince. Quentin clenched the bag of money between his feet. He could not stop trembling. All he could think of was his daughter, Robyn.

"You got a problem?" Vince asked. "You seem a bit jumpy."

"It's just I'm out of breath from running over," he stammered and mopped his face with the napkins.

The waiter brought the drinks. Lucas's eyes were deep black and totally unreadable. He wore a gray suit, blue shirt, and paisley tie, like a stockbroker. Quentin's heart pounded so hard that he wondered if Lucas could hear it. He called the waiter back to bring some nuts. When the waiter left, Lucas said, "Do you have the money, Mr. Cross?

"Oh, sure." He shoved a handful of nuts into his mouth.

Lucas reached over and pulled the bag over. Quentin started to protest, but choked it back. It took Lucas a few seconds to estimate the contents. "Where's the rest?"

"That's what I want to talk to Antoine about."

Lucas sighed. "Mr. Cross, I told you a long time ago that I speak for Antoine, understand? And he's not happy." His eyes had hardened into flat onyx marbles.

Suddenly a thought occurred to Quentin-an interesting one that sent a ripple through his bowels. He finished his drink and flagged the waiter for a refill. Meanwhile, Lucas watched him squirm and gobble down nuts-his face an uncompromising blank.

"We're both businessmen, correct?" Quentin began. "And you're successful I assume. I mean, you're well dressed and all…" He tapered off.

More gaping silence as Lucas tried to read Quentin.

"As you may recall, I'm the Chief Financial Officer of a very reputable pharmaceutical company-"

"Cut the blah-blah and get to the point."

"Okay, there's nearly a million and a half dollars in there. I know it's short, and I have every intention of paying the balance, but frankly, I simply can't raise that kind of money without serious consequences. But Darby Pharms is on the verge of something with cosmic potential."

The waiter came with more nuts and Quentin's drink.

"How old are you, Mr. Lucas?"

Lucas narrowed his eyes at Quentin without response then checked his watch.

"I'd guess thirty-five." Quentin removed a half-eaten roll of Tums from his pocket and placed it on the table. "What would you pay for a compound that could freeze you at thirty-five for another hundred years?"

Lucas glanced at the Tums then gave Quentin the same menacingly blank look. "You asking me real questions, or is this your idea of conversation? By the way, you've got three minutes."

Quentin felt a burst of panic. "For what?"

"To settle the rest of your debt." Quentin's mind flooded with all sorts of horrors-being dragged to a waiting car outside, or maybe even shot dead right here with a silencer, fast when nobody was looking. He glanced desperately to the table of businessmen at the window.

"They're with me," Lucas said. "You were saying?"

Oh, God. Quentin thought. There was no compromising these people. No extensions. No second chances. It was all he had left. "Look, please. I'm serious. I'm… I'm talking about something historic… Something we're developing while we speak, in fact. It's for real. What if those weren't antacids but pills that prevented you from aging?"

"What's the catch?"

"There is no catch."

"Sounds like bullshit."

"It's not. It works. The stuff exists. I'm telling you, it's for real."

"How many people have you tried it on?"

"Nobody yet, but it works on lab animals-mice and monkeys."

"Maybe you should think about moving to people, because I wouldn't give you a dime till I was certain."

"But suppose it worked? What do you think such a compound would be worth to the company manufacturing it?"

"Sky's the limit, I guess. Why, you people making this stuff?"

Quentin felt a rush of relief. He had captured Lucas's interest. "Yes." Quentin did not mention the accelerated senescence. "We've still got some testing left and FDA approval, then we're rolling."

Suddenly Betsy Watkins's pointy little self-righteous face rose up in his mind. He pushed it down when another face shot up. Ross Darby's. "I need not remind you, that this is supremely confidential." But they didn't get it. None of them did. His back was against the wall with a professional killer glowering at him point-blank. He had no choice, so he told Vince Lucas about the mice and rhesus monkeys in detail. And Lucas listened intently.

"You're talking months if not years to get this marketed. Antoine wants his money today."

"Vince, you're a successful businessman-"

Vince reached across the table and grabbed Quentin's index finger. "Get to your point or I'm going to snap these off one by one."

"M-my point is I am offering you a percentage of Elixir. We can work out the details later, but I am offering you a piece of Darby stock in return for a capital investment that would cover our debt to Mr. Ducharme."

Vince Lucas stared at him incredulously. "You want me to lend you a million dollars to pay off Antoine?"

"No, not a loan. An investment in Elixir."

Lucas smiled. "That's a new one."

"We're talking about the ultimate miracle drug, a little pill that would prolong life indefinitely. And I'm offering you an opportunity to be part of it-part of untold fortunes. It's a chance of a lifetime, literally."

Quentin continued in his smoothest entrepreneurial manner. He produced the capital-raising literature Ross had presented to the small coterie of investors, a video of the lab animals, and legal financial documents should Lucas agree to come aboard. All the stuff he had intended to unload on Antoine Ducharme.

Lucas studied the material, fingering through the figures and graphs. "Looks interesting."

"Interesting! Mr. Lucas, these are road maps to the Garden of Eden!"

"No, Mr. Cross, these are pieces of paper. You could have made up all this stuff and had it printed."

"Then what can I do to convince you?"

"Show me your hundred-year-old monkeys."

"You mean you want to visit the labs?"

"Unless you brought them with you."

Quentin hadn't expected this. He said he could bring him in on Monday after hours. But Vince insisted on today.

"There're too many people around today."

"What time do they go home?"

Of course, he could bring him in after the place closed up. "Tonight at nine."

"You still haven't said anything about money."

"For forgiving my debt, I guarantee you that your million dollars will turn into two and a half million dollars in two years. An increase of 150 percent."

"What if your Elixir doesn't work on people?"

"Then I'll pay you out of my own pocket, even if it means selling my home. That's how much I believe in this." Lucas studied him in more opaque silence. "So, what do you think?

"I think you're going to need this Elixir yourself, the way you're packing in the nuts and booze."

Quentin made a nervous chuckle. "I'd like to add, that this deal must be held in the utmost confidence."

Lucas reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a portable phone. He tapped some numbers. "It's me. Something's come up. Yeah, everything's fine. Stay low. Yeah. Catch you later." Then he clicked off. He handed the phone to Quentin. "Tell your wife you won't be coming home for supper."

"But she's not home."

"She's home, and so is your daughter."

Jesus! People were watching his family while they were here. "Did you think I'd bring the police?"

"It's your track record on payment." He pushed the phone into his hand. "Call your wife."

Shaking, Quentin called his wife to say he'd not be home until late. Then Vince slung the bag of money on his shoulder and led Quentin to the elevator in the lobby. They rode to the top floor alone. "Tell me this," Vince said halfway up. "Can your Elixir keep you from dying? Say, if somebody put a bullet through your head?"

Quentin flinched. "Well, n-no, not really."

"Then here's how this works. I want 300 percent, not 150."

"That's four million dollars!"

"Correct."

"That's an awful lot of money…"

"How much is your daughter's life worth to you?"

"Okay, okay. Four million."

"And I want half next year at this time-two million next July first. Another two the following July. And if you don't deliver, you take a bullet in the head-end of story."

The elevator door opened onto an empty floor.

Vince nudged him out. "And you deliver it yourself in front of me." The door closed with a loud crack.

Vince Lucas led them down the hall to his suite. He unlocked the door and opened it. "So far, your Elixir seems to work."

Two days later Vince flew to Puerto Rico where in a villa on a bluff overlooking the ocean he delivered $2.5 million in cash to Antoine. He did not let on that a million was his own money. Nor did he mention Elixir or the video Quentin had given him or what he had seen in the Darby labs that night. This was his own private investment. If it didn't work out, he could always recoup. Quentin had equity-a fancy house, a summer place, and ownership in the company which he'd take over in January.

But if it worked out, it could be one monster bonanza.

August came and, once again, Chris postponed their Caribbean trip. Things were just too crazy at the lab to get away, he told Wendy. Understandably, she was disappointed.

Then on August 5 Jenny called to say that Kelly had been readmitted to the hospital. She didn't explain why. In fact, she purposely talked down the matter, saying simply that everybody thought it was best. But Jenny's evasiveness bothered Wendy so much that she decided to go out there herself. Jenny protested that everything was fine, but she finally gave in since she was having a first-birthday party for Abigail the following week and Wendy could join them.

"It was so strange," Wendy said the night she returned from Kalamazoo. "Kelly had had another nervous breakdown, yet Jenny pretended she was at a retreat."

"Did you get to see her?" Chris asked as they drove back from the airport.

"Only after I insisted. Not only did she not want to take me to the hospital, she didn't even want to go into the conference room with me. And when she did, she chattered away about the pictures on the walls and how superior the food was to the usual hospital fare."

"Talk about denial!" Chris said. "How was Kelly?"

Wendy shook her head woefully. "Like a zombie. Maybe it's all the medication, but I couldn't believe how she looked. You remember what a big and strong kid she used to be. Well, she was all skin and bones and stooped over. She looked elderly. It was frightening. When I asked how she felt, she looked at me with dead eyes and said, 'Crazy.'

"Jenny heard her and blurted out something about what lovely doctors she had, when Kelly cut her off. 'I was in a coma for three days,' she said. 'I took forty tabs of her Lithium, but they found me and pumped it out.'

"What struck me, Chris, was that she sounded disappointed they had gotten to her in time. All I could think was how she was sixteen years old with so much life ahead of her and she wanted to die. It's so sad, at only sixteen," she said, thinking that Ricky had never made it to six.

"That must have shaken Jenny," Chris said.

"It was hard to tell. She sat there with a twisted grin on her face looking as if she was about to start laughing or screaming. Instead, she got up and left the ward. I made a move to stop her, but Kelly said, 'Don't bother. It's how she deals with stuff she can't handle.'

"A few minutes later when we were alone, Kelly asked how I felt about having another baby. I told her I was happy. She asked if we planned to have any more. I said no. She nodded, then said, 'Our baby's an only child too.' She meant her!"

"God, the poor kid," Chris said.

Wendy nodded. "When I left I hugged her goodbye and said 'Take care of yourself,' and she looked at me as if to ask why."

"Sounds like she's going to be in there for a long time."

"I'm afraid so. I left the ward and found Jenny downstairs in the gift shop buying toys for Abigail and joking with the sales clerk. Then two days later, she had a big party for her. The place was full of parents and small kids, and they all put on hats and sang 'Happy Birthday' and ate a huge yellow Big Bird cake and ice cream. The way Jenny carried on you'd never know that her other daughter was in a psychiatric ward for trying to kill herself for the second time just days before. I felt like Alice in Wonderland."

After a few minutes of silence, Wendy said, "And remember that missing photo of Kelly? Well, it's sitting on Jenny's vanity table in her bedroom among some baby pictures of her. She had taken it."

"Where was Ted in all this?" Chris asked.

"He wasn't around much," Wendy said. "During the party he was at work, and at night he went out with friends. As for Kelly, he keeps his distance-she's Jenny's daughter."

"And you wonder why she tried to kill herself. He wants nothing to do with her and Jenny can't forgive her for growing up."

The month of August passed, and 7.2 million people had died.

Included among the dead were Jack Lescoulie, 75, former Today show host; Richard Egan, 65, actor; John Houston, 81, world-class movie director; Vincent Persichetti, 72, American composer and educator; Lee Marvin, 63, actor; Bayard Ruston, 85, political philosopher and civil rights activist; Pola Negri, silent film star; Jesse Unruh, 64, politically powerful California assemblyman; David Martin, 50, rock singer and bassist for Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs; Joseph E. Levine, 81, movie mogul; Jim Bishop, 79, author of bestsellers The Day Lincoln Was Shot and The Day Christ Died; and Rudolf Hess, 93, the last survivor of Hitler's inner circle.

Except for Hess who hanged himself in Spandau Prison, all the other deaths had all been listed as "natural causes."

Natural causes: A handy medical phrase which to Chris's mind meant that attending physicians didn't have a clue. Almost nobody over 75 was autopsied anymore, because most cases had revealed no clear cause-no specific disease. To satisfy the law, death certificates simply listed "natural causes" which translated as the loss of physiological function attributed to aging.

What those death certificates didn't say was that the cells of the victims had ceased to replicate and, thus, had deteriorated to the point that the vital organs failed.

The process was universal. They had gone to their ends, the rich, the famous, the powerful, unprotected-unprotected, as every other human being who ever lived.

Except Iwati.

September came and went, and once again Chris put off their trip. Maybe they'd go after the baby was born.

On September 18, Sam Bacon was permanently confined to his nursing home bed because he could no longer remember how to sit up.

On the tenth of October, Vince Lucas called Quentin to check on Elixir's progress. Quentin had nothing new to report because these things took time. But the lab team was giving its all to perfecting the serum and winning federal approval by early next year. Lucas seemed satisfied, then asked for the names of the head scientist and his wife. Quentin gladly told him.

During the month of November, 10 million people were born in the world. One of them was Baby Boy Bacon. They named him Adam.

11

Adam Samuel Bacon was born on November 4, 1987 at 8:10 A.M. at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He weighed seven pounds, nine ounces.

Because his head was so large, the doctors performed an episiotomy. Throughout the delivery, Chris held Wendy's hand, whispering words of encouragement and how he loved her. While the doctors stitched her up, the nurses brought Adam to her. She and Chris cried and laughed at the same time.

For several minutes, Chris curled his finger around the tiny pink miniature of his son's, thinking that just a few months ago that hand had been a flat webbed thing inside its uterine sac, but through some ingenious mechanism just the right cells at just the right time had died so that these fragile little fingers could take form. And, yet, as Betsy had insisted, beyond the embryo living cells were not part of the same mechanism. That beyond the womb, our cells weren't programmed to die-just age. No death clock ticked within this little bundle of life.

He closed his eyes to clear his mind of all that. He had become too bound up with seeing people in terms of their cells and DNA. Bound up with thoughts he should not consider.

When he opened his eyes again, he beheld his newborn son at Wendy's breast. It was the most beautiful moment in his life.

Later that evening, after Jenny had left and Wendy had gone to sleep, and all the hospital was quiet, Chris stood outside the nursery window and watched his son sleep, wondering what placental dreams went through his tender little brain. It crossed his mind that the last time he was in a hospital was eight years and three months ago when Ricky had died. He had held Wendy's and his son's hand then, too.

Then his mind was full of death.

Now it was aswirl with forever.

Because of the epidural Wendy had slept most of yesterday afternoon, so Jenny had managed to get in a couple hours shopping. Along with her luggage she had two large bags of stuff she'd bought for Abigail from FAO Schwartz. She had spent another fortune. It was bizarre the way Jenny had taken to her own new motherhood-a near-maniacal compensation. When Chris asked how Kelly was getting along, she offered a chirpy "Just fine" which ended the discussion. Yet she talked about Abigail all the way to the airport and showed him a stack of recent photographs. "I'm so much in love with her," she confessed, "it almost scares me."

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 God'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 hell 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 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.

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 mass from the orifices of Jimbo's body-ears, nose, mouth, and anus. From his penis 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 mass.

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.

"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 carcasses.

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

Vince looked at him with those unreadable black eyes. "I'm listening."

"But it's not legal."

"Now we're home."

The waiter came with a second Chivas. Quentin took sip then explained. "I'm thinking a deep-pocket clientele would pay serious money for an endless supply of Elixir. People who like their privacy."

"Howard Hughes is dead."

"I mean your Consortium."

The suggestion hung in the air. Vince sipped his tea patiently.

"Well, I'm thinking that maybe you and Antoine can approach them with the idea… a chance to live indefinitely, and what they would pay for it."

Vince lay his glass on the table. "The Consortium is not a club for rich hermits," he said. "What happens when the kid who used to drive your limo meets you twenty years later and he's forty-five and you're the same? You tell him you're taking some secret youth potion?"

"By then we'll have worked the bugs out, and the stuff would be on the market. I mean in the meantime. Like, you know, now."

Vince thought that over. "How long to get the bugs out?"

"Three years, four the most."

"Sounds like a trap, if you ask me."

"How's it a trap?"

"Say the Consortium is interested. They'll want a guarantee they can still get the stuff without any hitches or sudden price inflation."

"We'll give them written guarantees."

"Enforced by what authorities?"

Quentin looked at him without an answer.

"Another thing: Say you run out of raw materials again, or the Feds find out you're dealing in illegal pharmaceuticals and shut you down. What happens to your clientele? It's not like some junkie's supplier runs dry and they can tap another. People want peace of mind."

"We can work out some foolproof trust."

"No such thing." Vince removed a single almond from the dish of nuts and chewed it, all the while turning something over in his head. "You say Elixir still works on the primates as long as they get a constant supply?"

"Yes."

"Before you go looking for takers, you might want to see if it works on real human beings. Otherwise nobody's interested."

"That's the problem. We can't just walk into a clinic and ask who wants to volunteer for a longevity study that ends in death."

"Volunteers can be appointed."

Quentin looked at him blankly as the words sunk in. "I see."

"The real problem is at your end-getting people to make the stuff without the FDA finding out."

"Subcontractors," Quentin said. He had already worked that out. Outside jobbers would manufacture the compound-and nobody would know its purpose, and nobody would ask questions. And no worry about protocol.

Vince nodded as Quentin explained. "What about your lab people? Any problems there?"

Quentin finished his drink and ordered a third. "That's something I think we should talk about."

Adam blew a bubble, and Wendy laughed joyously.

It was two days before Christmas, and she was bathing him in the kitchen sink, thinking how full of love she was for her baby boy, who was giddy with laughter as she rubbed the washcloth across his pink little body. It was a small moment among the millions of her life but one she wished she could freeze forever.

She knew, of course, the notion was silly. If you could freeze such moments, how would they remain blissful? Joy was an experience defined by contrasts to lesser moments. Besides, there would be others.

As she dressed Adam for bed, she felt Elixir coil around her mind like a snake. At moments like these, she understood its allure.

She could hear Chris's words: "The trouble with life is that it's 100 percent fatal."

And: "I've never died before, Wendy, and I don't want to learn how."

And: "Think how many books you could write if you had another fifty or hundred years. You could be the Dorothy Sayers of the twenty-first century.

There was almost no escaping it. One night a few weeks ago, they watched a rerun of The Philadelphia Story. Before a commercial break, a young, handsome Jimmy Stewart turned to twenty-two-year-old Katherine Hepburn and said, "There's a magnificence in you, Tracy that comes out of your eyes and your voice and the way you stand there and the way you walk. You're lit from within…" While Chris got up for another beer, he wondered aloud how painful it must be for the eighty-year-old Hepburn, now wrinkled and palsied, to see herself in reruns. She probably didn't watch them, he concluded. Wendy's response was that Kate Hepburn was supposed to grow old and die. Painful as it was, she had no doubt accepted that. As we all must.

It was a good response, like her usual caveats about tampering with Nature, or her old standby: "'Death is the mother of Beauty.'"

With Adam in her arms, Wendy felt that the Stevens line never made better sense. Such moments were beautiful because they didn't freeze. Besides, all the animals had died from withdrawal, which meant it would be years before human testing, maybe never. She could only hope.

The telephone rang, jarring her out of the moment. Her first thought was Chris. He was at a two-day conference on cell biology in Philadelphia. But it was Quentin Cross.

"Chris said you were having trouble landing accommodations in the Caribbean."

"That's what happens when you make plans at the last minute," Wendy said. "Everything's been booked for months."

"Well, coincidentally, we've got a time-sharing condo at La Palmas on the east coast of Puerto Rico that's free for the first two weeks in February, if that interests you. Margaret and I go down every year, but with Ross's retirement and all the things going on, we're going to have to pass this time around. But you guys can go in our place," he said.

"Are you serious?"

Quentin chuckled good-naturedly. "Yes, and it's on us, free of charge."

"Oh, Quentin, I'm speechless. How generous of you!"

"The only catch is that you have to book with the airlines today. I hope you don't mind, but, just in case, I took the liberty of making reservations in your names. All you have to do is call Eastern and confirm. But it has to be today. What do you think?"

"My God, yes, we'll take it!" Wendy said. "And thank you, Quentin. Thank you so much. Wow!"

"Well, think of it as a little token of appreciation for what Chris has done for us-and you, for standing by him all the way."

Thrilled, Wendy thanked him again. After she hung up, she called Eastern and confirmed their reservation, thinking, How considerate of Quentin. Maybe Chris had misjudged him.

13

Every morning at five, Betsy Watkins would drive to the Cambridge Y and swim fifty laps in the pool before going to work.

At forty-eight years of age, she would do her regimen in forty leisurely minutes, letting her mind free-play, while her body kicked into autopilot, guided by the lane lines.

At that hour, especially in the winter, the place was nearly empty but for the lifeguard. By six-thirty a few people would dribble in. But this morning with a sleeting rain, she did her laps alone.

As she swam, she thought about the new position she was taking at the National Cancer Institute in two weeks. She would have started the day after Jimbo's death had Chris not pleaded for her to delay her departure so he could find a replacement. She agreed on the condition that no more animals be sacrificed. Chris swore to it, and no more animals were withdrawn.

At the NCI she intended to study how tabulone deprived cancer cells of the telomerase enzyme, which was not the interest at Darby. And before she left, she would approach Ross again in hopes of getting him to agree to a watchdog agency coming in to monitor the development of Elixir. Quentin was dead set against that, but Ross would appreciate the need for the assurance of ethical practice and accountability. Prolongevity was frontier science fraught with frontier dangers.

On lap forty-four, she thought about her approach to Ross should he stonewall her. It was not beyond her to let the FDA in on what they were doing.

She also thought about Chris-how he was a good man and fine scientist torn between ethical considerations and a near-personal appeal of Elixir. His wife held the opposite sentiment, yet they seemed very much in love. Betsy would miss Chris and those wonderful two-tone eyes.

On lap forty-five, she looked up to see the lifeguard step out for a coffee refill. She flashed the okay.

On lap forty-six, at midpool, she noticed some movement out of the corner of her goggles. Another swimmer was in the other lane moving toward her on a return lap. A man wearing a white bathing cap, snorkle and fins. Betsy preferred swimming unassisted.

On lap forty-seven, she felt a sudden blow to the top of her head. The pain was blinding, and instantly she slipped into thrashing confusion, sucking in water and feeling arms embrace her legs like an anaconda and pull her down. A flash of the white cap. Under the pain and choking anguish was utter disbelief. She was being attacked underwater.

On what would have been lap forty-eight, her mind cleared for a split second. She saw the bottom of the pool rise up, while her diaphragm wracked for air and her arms flapped against the grip.

On lap forty-nine, bubbles rose up around her… so many bubbles… and panic filled her chest… and the weight on her leg… so heavy… all so heavy and dark, and her lungs burning for oxygen against the water filling her throat… and a face in a mask… eyes staring back at her… and the glint of chrome from a SCUBA regulator… black hoses and bubbles… the leaden weights of her limbs… her mind filling with dark water… and she kept swimming… swimming… toward a man with two large black eyes…

On lap fifty, she was dead.

14

Vince Lucas handed Quentin a Chivas on the rocks as he stepped inside his Hampton estate-a building that the designers had fashioned after Monticello.

Dressed in an elegant double-breasted suit with a white shirt and white silk tie, Vince led Quentin inside where a large crowd of people spread throughout the rooms. At the far end of a large and opulent ballroom, a jazz combo played. Waiters and waitresses in black and white worked their way through the crowds with champagne and hors d'oeuvres.

Quentin kept his briefcase gripped in his right hand as he made his way. Every so often he would spot someone he recognized from magazines and television-athletes, entertainers, New York politicians.

At the rear of the building, under a glass ceiling, lay a serpentine pool in small groves of palm and other tropical plants-all fed by fountains and waterfalls that emanated from rock-garden formations leading off to a poolside bar at one end. It looked like a jungle-movie set. Several men and women cavorted in the water while patio guests sat in lounge chairs as waiters moved about with drinks and food. In the distance through the rear glass wall spread the vast black Atlantic, whitewashed by a full December moon.

Quentin had a drink and met some people, then at ten o'clock he was taken to a back room where they entered a private elevator that took them two flights down to a sub-basement where the sounds of the band and revelry could not be heard. They made their way down a corridor with several rooms including a mirrored gym full of exercise machines. At the end was a heavy oak door that Vince unlocked.

Quentin stepped into a room full of men and women around a huge oval conference table-people he had seen upstairs, some from the island.

"Long time no see." Antoine Ducharme.

Quentin shook his hand, thinking that if it weren't for Elixir Antoine would have eliminated Quentin and his family. Now they were partners again.

They chatted for a moment as the place settled down. Quentin asked how Lisa was, and Antoine made a rueful smile. After the bombing of Apricot Cay, she had left him for another man. "The flesh is weak," he added cryptically.

On the far wall was a screen for the slide and video projectors. They had discussed the proceedings several times, yet Quentin's heart was doing a fast trot. Some 30 billion dollars sat around the table. He knew very little about individual Consortium members except that they embodied an exclusive international coterie of power brokers-financiers, foreign government officials, sheiks, retired oil execs, and the like-people whose word could send ripples throughout the stockmarkets around the world or incite international incidents. An untouchable elite who got where they were by being consummate opportunists. And here they were assembled for the ultimate conquest.

Vince's job had been to assemble them with just enough bait. Quentin's job was to sell them the goods with everything he had. And he was well prepared. He stepped up to the small lectern and described Elixir, taking the group through the various stages. He showed them slides of medical charts and procedures, and a video of the mice and the monkeys. The crowd was amazed at the before-and-after scenes of once infirm elderly primates suddenly jumping around as if transported back in time. Quentin explained how the animals could go on indefinitely. About the consequences of withdrawal, Quentin was forthright-or nearly so. As with any patient dependent upon medication, the animals would eventually suffer adverse symptoms leading to death. He did not go into detail.

What sold the group was the video that Antoine had brought.

Vince dimmed the lights, and the screen came alive. The locale was not immediately clear, but several people were shown sitting in a room. Most were black. All of them were in their seventies or older. At first it appeared to be a hospital, but a quick pan of the camera revealed barred windows. An off-camera male spoke in a crisp Caribbean accent. Each of the eight patients wore a first-name tag around the neck. A large woman sat in a wheelchair. They were all dressed in white T-shirts and shorts to reveal their physical condition.

The narrator asked each patient to walk across the room. Three men were bald, one with a full white bush. Some had missing teeth. Skin was loose and wrinkled, eyes discolored and rheumy. Two women were quite frail; one large white woman could barely walk for arthritis and remained in her wheelchair. The rest hobbled a few times around the room as best they could. Two used canes. "Very good, very nice," said the narrator.

To document the dates, the camera zoomed in on that day's New York Times. The first day was December 16. The patients were told to sit again. Without showing his face, a man in white injected a clear liquid into each patient's arms. Before the fadeout, the voice asked each how he or she felt, and all mumbled that they were fine.

The screen went to black for a moment, then lit up on a tight focus of The New York Times.

December 30. The same featureless room. The same elderly group in chairs against the wall. The same clean white outfits. Some stared blankly, a couple smiled. At first, nothing seemed different. But as the camera moved, subtle differences were discernible. The dark wrinkled man named Rodney seemed a bit more alert; his eyes were clearer and more open. He was also sitting straighter, as were two others. When asked, the frail woman named Francine said she felt better than the last time.

January 11. Same room. Same group of eight. But what summoned a response from the Consortium was the appearance of Alice, the fat, wheelchaired woman. She was on her feet and shuffling around the room. When asked about the arthritis in her feet, she said that her feet were "much happier." Likewise, the others circled the room with posture more upright and greater agility. Ezra and Hyacinth, who had previously used canes, now walked unassisted. The camera tightened on their faces which looked smoother and tighter. According to the narrator, each was feeling considerably better, more energetic. Two also remarked that their memories had improved.

January 19. This time their spirits were visibly high. Chatting and laughing, the eight of them walked their circles with smooth, steady gaits-including Alice, now with a cane. She had lost weight, and her face was thinner, her eyes wider. The camera shifted to Robert arm-wrestling with Rodney, the others cheering them on.

January 27. The group of eight was in the middle of the floor dancing to a reggae tape. The transformation was astounding, and the Consortium gasped in astonishment. In a matter of six weeks, each patient had regressed a decade or more. All laughed and swayed to the music, including Alice, who was on her feet unassisted, her hair neatly brushed, her face made up and smiling brightly.

When Vince flicked on the lights, the place exploded in cheers. One Frenchman asked where he could get a liter of the stuff tonight, and pulled out a checkbook. Others had the same response.

Quentin was peppered with questions.

Somebody asked about the fate of the patients, and Antoine said that they were being well cared for, and secure-an answer that satisfied the Consortium. An answer far from the truth.

By the end of the meeting, Vince was taking orders for Elixir treatments at $2 million per year.

Around midnight the conference room cleared out, leaving Vince, Quentin, and Antoine to themselves.

Vince removed the video cassette from the projector. "By the way, your Betsy Watkins had an unfortunate accident this morning."

"What a pity," Quentin smiled.

"And the other problem is being taken care of as we speak."

Quentin felt a rush of relief. All was going so well. In a matter of weeks, they would be in full swing, all obstacles removed. Elixir would be sub-contracted to pharmaceutical firms outside New England, distribution would be handled by Vince and Antoine's people, and international bank accounts would be opened for proceeds. In a handful of years, Elixir would be their billion-dollar molecule.

"Are you familiar with the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde?" Antoine asked.

"No," Quentin said.

"How about the short mystery story 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar' by your own Edgar Allan Poe?"

"Not really."

"Too bad. It's a wonderful tale about a man put into a state of hypnosis at the moment of death, prolonging his life for months. The fun is when he's snapped out of his trance. In less than a minute he rots away into a liquid mass of putrescence."

Quentin looked at him blankly for an explanation.

From his valise Antoine pulled out another video and slipped it into the projector. "Watch, my friend."

Blue sky filled the screen. Slowly the camera pulled back to reveal an ocean horizon, boats floating in the misty distance. The camera canted to reveal Lisa posing at the bow of the Reef Madness. She was just as Quentin remembered her-stunningly beautiful with a gleaming smile and long tight body. Dressed in a baseball cap and a white one-piece suit that fit her like damp tissue paper, she could have been a supermodel posing for a calendar spread. The small rose tattoo on her right shoulder glowed like a medallion in the sunlight. She was laughing and poking a still camera at whoever was taping her.

The scene suddenly shifted to the same barred featureless room of the first video. It looked empty until the camera panned to a darkly clad figure in a wheelchair. Somebody off-camera said something, and the figure raised its head.

"Jesus Christ!" gasped Quentin.

It was Lisa. She was withered and stooped. Her hair was a wispy white film across her scalp, the skin of her face like weathered parchment. Her mouth was open to labored breathing, her lips chapped and split, most teeth missing. One eye was a gaping milky ball, the other eye a jellied slit.

Quentin's hope against hope was that it was trick photography or some fancy theatrical makeup job. But it was real. And it was Lisa-he could make out the rose tattoo. They had conditioned her on Elixir from the same batch that Quentin had stolen some weeks ago from the lab for the elderly patients. Somehow Antoine had injected her either against her will or with the promise of immortality, then withdrew treatments so she would rot.

Enjoying Quentin's reaction, Antoine paused the video on a closeup of her miserable face. "Some things don't age well, especially a cheating heart."

15

I think she was murdered," Chris said.

"Murdered!"

Chris and Wendy were driving to the Burlington Mall to finish shopping for their trip. Adam was asleep in his car seat.

"But who would murder her? And why?"

"I'm not exactly sure, but the line of questioning suggested foul play. I guess they're waiting for the medical examiner's report and following some leads."

Chris had been at a seminar on cell biology at the Heritage Hotel outside of Providence when Cambridge detectives showed up. They questioned him for nearly an hour, wondering why he had left the house at five that morning for an hour's drive to a conference that began at nine. He said he wanted to beat the traffic and have a leisurely breakfast to review the literature.

"What leads?"

"I don't know, but they asked if Betsy had any known enemies. All I could think of was Quentin."

"Quentin? That's ridiculous."

"Maybe not. Once he let slip that some people would pay dearly for Elixir as it is. I think he was sending up a trial balloon to see how I'd react."

"What did you say?"

"That I was opposed to the idea-that it wasn't meant to be the drug of choice for the elite. That's when he retreated, claiming he wasn't serious. But I wasn't convinced. I think he was testing me. He does things like that."

"Why would he take such a chance? He'll be CEO next month."

"Because he's gotten the company into debt up the yin-yang. And because Quentin Cross dreams of building empires, no matter what they're made of."

"That's absurd."

"Maybe, but I think I'm next."

Wendy turned to him. "Chris, you're scaring me."

"And they're scaring me. I think they want me out of the way like Betsy. She was a loose cannon. She threatened to expose Elixir on moral grounds. If she suspected they were considering blackmarketing it, she'd sound the alarm. And that's why they want me out of the way."

"He was just talking through his hat."

"Quentin doesn't talk through his hat. Then out of the blue comes this Caribbean offer-two weeks in a fancy seaside condo with a car and a boat all for free. And all the buddy-buddy stuff about what a terrific time we're going to have down there, and how great the diving is right off the beach."

"How about he was just being generous?"

"How about he's just too anxious to get us down there? He called this morning from New York to say we shouldn't feel bad about missing Betsy's funeral because the company will hold a memorial next month."

"I still fail to see the problem."

"Wendy, it's too good to be true. Quentin is a sly opportunist driven by self-interest, not magnanimity."

"Frankly, hon, I think you're being very ungrateful. He said his friend Barcello offered it to him, but with Ross's retirement and the holidays he couldn't get away. So he passed it on to us."

"Nice coincidence, except I checked. First, there is no diving off the Las Palmas beach-the nearest reef is thirty miles.

"Second, I called a realtor down there about the condo, and there is no Barcello Mendez proprietor, and nobody who's ever heard of him or Quentin Cross. Then I called the number he gave and got an answering service for something called Fair Caribe Exchange, Ltd. which it turns out is headquartered in Apricot Cay-the same island our apricots were from."

"So?"

"About a year ago, Apricot Cay was bombed by U.S. Navy planes because the place was a big-time cocaine center. The point is Quentin was negotiating with traffickers of illegal substances-people who resolve problems by eliminating them."

"How do you know all this?"

"Ross Darby." Chris pulled the car into the parking lot of the mall. "Wendy, I think this trip is a setup. I think the people he's involved with killed Betsy and are planning to do the same to me down there. Maybe both of us."

"If they really wanted to get rid of you, why send you all the way to Puerto Rico?"

"To distance my own death from Betsy's-and Darby Pharms. To make it look like another terrible tragedy for hapless tourists."

"Then why don't you go to the police?"

"Because I have no hard evidence, just a lot of bad feelings. Besides, I'd have to explain Elixir."

She looked at him in dismay. "You seem more interested in protecting Elixir than yourself. Or us."

"I'm interested in protecting us and it."

"By doing what?"

"That's what I want to talk about," he said, "but it'll mean making some changes."

A little before one the next morning Chris entered the rear of Darby Pharmaceuticals. He hadn't used it since New Guinea, but his pistol was stuffed into his belt.

He neutralized the alarm system, then slipped into the main lab. Against the far wall was a locked file cabinet with all the notes ever assembled on Elixir, arranged according to years-from the earliest days of the flower synthesis up to yesterday's notes on the animals. The complete scientific records: chemistry, pharmacology, biology, toxicology-full details of the various procedures, printouts, analyses of purity, spectral data, animal medical histories. Down the hall in another room was a bank of red fireproof cabinets containing duplicate files.

It took him over an hour to remove every last note from both cabinets and load them into two steamer trunks in the van he had rented under a false name. When he was through, there was nothing left from which the company could ever again reproduce the Elixir molecule.

He then went to the lab and removed every one of over two hundred ampules of Elixir from storage and a backup two-liter bottle. He even removed the silastic implants and subcutaneous tubes from each of the animals. What clenched his heart was the knowledge that within a few days they would all die, some horribly. It pained him, but before he left he gave each a lethal injection of phenobarbitol.

He then drove to Logan Airport where he parked in the central lot. He took a cab to Belmont, the town next to Carleton, and walked home in the dark to avoid leaving record of his return.

It was nearly five A.M. when he entered the house. The place was dark and quiet. His car was parked in back. Wendy woke when he entered. So far, so good, he said. But she looked traumatized. She couldn't believe what they were doing, but he had convinced her that it was their only option.

At ten minutes to six, right on schedule, the limo Quentin had hired pulled up the driveway. The driver loaded their luggage in the back. They had brought with them several heavy suitcases. Wendy got in with the baby. She was in shock. Chris sat beside her with one hand on hers, the other on the pistol in case the driver tried anything funny. He didn't.

At six-forty, the limo pulled up to the Eastern gate. The place was swarming with buses and cars. Several tour groups were departing within an hour of each other. Theirs was scheduled for eight o'clock. Chris tipped the driver, then found a redcap to take the luggage inside. Through the windows Chris watched the limo pull away, making note of the plate number in case it circled back. It didn't. The man was just a hire.

While Wendy went to a coffee shop with Adam, Chris brought the two heaviest cases to the men's room where in a stall he wiped each clean of fingerprints, then checked them in lockers. Each contained unopened sets of dishes for weight.

The ticketing area was a swarm of people. The check-in line was long, and he fell in at the rear, his heart pounding. He didn't think anyone would keep tabs on them here. Still, he kept his sunglasses on and his baseball cap low.

As he moved closer to the counter, he spotted a couple with a little girl among the standby passengers. He then slipped out of line and went to the bank of pay phones on the far wall. He punched a bunch of numbers then grimaced noticeably as if hearing bad news.

When he returned, he called the standby couple aside. Under their parkas, they were dressed for warm weather, including the little girl who had already slipped into shorts.

"Look, I've got a bit of a problem," Chris explained to them. "My wife and son and I were scheduled for this flight, but I just learned that we've had a medical emergency at home. My father's in the hospital," he said, hating using Sam as their excuse.

"I'm sorry to hear that," the man said.

"The point is we can't go to Puerto Rico and have to get out of here fast. So, instead of turning in our tickets, I figured you folks can have them at standby prices. There are three of us and three of you, and I don't know where your names are on the list, but there're maybe twenty others going standby."

Chris would have gladly given them the tickets at no cost, but that would have raised suspicion.

"That's very nice of you," the woman said.

Beside her the little girl pulled at her dad. "Does it mean we can go?" she asked hopefully.

Her father looked leery, though the wife was as anxious as their daughter to be on the plane for a Caribbean vacation.

Chris pulled closer to the man. "Since you don't need passports in Puerto Rico, you can fly under our names and not have to worry about getting seats. Once you're there, you're yourselves again. The charade's over."

The man didn't take long to decide. He pulled out a checkbook. "How much?"

The tickets had sold for $1,050. "Make it for seven hundred."

"Geez, that's quite a bargain."

"That's also a long line, and we've got to get out of here," Chris said.

Chris handed the man the tickets with the names C., W., and A. Bacon.

When the man was certain they were legitimate, he wrote out the check which said Thomas and Karen Foley, from Brockton, Mass. Chris thanked him.

Glowing with gratitude at what a deal he had, Foley pumped Chris's hand. "Thank you, and I hope all works out okay for you and your family."

"Me too." Chris said. God, me too!

They rode in pained silence for a long while.

Chris tried conversation, but Wendy didn't respond. She just glared out the window, occasionally shaking her head in disbelief. He could almost read her mind. On the road were people doing normal, ordinary things-going to work, shopping, driving the kids around. Families off to visit friends or relatives. Not running for their lives. And she was thinking that in three weeks they were supposed to have a publication party for If I Should Die at Kate's Mystery Book Shop in Cambridge. At the cusp of the most wonderful time of Wendy's life-motherhood and the first step of a writing career-they were heading for the frozen backwoods of the Adirondacks. It was grossly unfair. And Chris's heart twisted with guilt. His only hope was that once settled into the cabin they would work out a plan of action-maybe consult lawyers-and she would come around.

In the rearview mirror he peered at Adam in his car seat and innocent blue snowsuit. And behind him two steamer trunks full of eternal youth and death.

What have I gotten you into, little man?

Wendy had no idea what they were transporting. He had told her only that he had removed some personal stuff from the lab, not robbed the place clean.

It wasn't until they stopped outside of Albany for lunch when she asked about the two trunks hidden in the rear. It was then Chris told her the truth.

Wendy exploded. "First we fake an airline trip, now it's grand larceny. We're fugitives from the law, goddamn it. Why did you bring this stuff?"

"So it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands."

"I don't care about that, Chris. I care about us."

"So do I, but I told you what they were planning."

"You have no proof they were going to blackmarket it."

"Betsy's death is proof enough."

"That could have been a random killing-some lunatic. Damn it, Chris, I'm not living this way. I'm not living in hiding. You promise me you'll go to the police, or I'll call them myself."

"Honey, please calm down."

"Don't 'honey' me. Give me your word, or I'll call them, so help me God!"

"Okay. Give me a couple days to think it out. Please."

"Two days, that's it. Then you are going to take us back home and go to the police."

"Okay."

"Swear on it."

And for a split second he heard Iwati. "I swear."

A little before six they arrived at the old hunting lodge. The place sat deep in the woods off a logging road on the shore of Black Eagle Lake. Except for the headlights of their car, there was no sign of life anywhere. Just impenetrable black.

The property was still registered under Wendy's maternal grandmother who had bought it in the 1930s. With the mortgage long paid up, it was not easily traceable to Chris and Wendy should they have to hole up for a while. The nearest winterized house was over a mile away, and the nearest town, Lake Placid, twelve miles. Every summer Wendy's parents brought her and Jenny up from their Albany home. Because of the drive from Boston, Chris and Wendy rarely used the place. Jenny and Ted never did.

Unfortunately, the driveway had not been plowed, so they had to trudge through deep snow to reach the house.

Once inside, Chris turned up the heat and made a blazing fire in the fieldstone hearth. The old television still got good reception from a station in Vermont. They found some wine and canned food, and Wendy settled by the fire under a blanket. Meanwhile, Chris set up a makeshift crib for Adam in a bureau drawer. He changed and fed him and had just put him down when he heard Wendy scream in the other room.

In reflex, he pulled the gun and bolted into the living room, half expecting to see somebody coming through the window. Instead, Wendy was sitting straight up, her hands pressed to her mouth, eyes fixed on the television screen and huge with horror.

"It blew up. Eastern flight 219. It blew up!"

The news anchor was describing the explosion: "…had been on route from Boston to San Juan when it went down about 120 miles off the coast of Savannah, Georgia.

"Although there were no witnesses, the plane disappeared from radar at about 10:20 this morning. Wreckage and bodies had been strewn over a large area, indicating to authorities that the plane had exploded before crashing.

"Initial speculation is that the aircraft was hit by lightning. A large coastal storm continues to hamper search-and-rescue operations. So far, there have been no reports of survivors…"

To the right of the announcer was a map of the mid-Atlantic coast with a star in the water indicating the site of the crash. Suddenly the map shot was replaced by another still photo.

"Those poor people," Wendy said. "If it weren't for us-" Suddenly she gasped.

On the screen was a picture of Chris. "Killed in the explosion was Dr. Christopher Bacon, his wife Wendy, and their young child.

"Just hours ago, Boston police issued a warrant for his arrest in the death of a coworker, Betsy Watkins, whose body was found yesterday in a pool at a local YMCA. According to authorities, police had questioned Bacon earlier in the day and released him. But following a medical examiner's report issued later, it was concluded that Watkins had been struck on the head with a heavy object before drowning. Physical evidence was found linking Bacon to the murder scene…"

The caption across the bottom of the screen read: MURDER SUSPECT DIES IN AIR CRASH.

Wendy said something and the announcer carried on with the story, but Chris just stared into the flickering glare of the screen, thinking what a brutal new shape the universe had taken.

16

"You didn't say you were going to blow up the plane," Quentin said. "You killed 136 innocent people. You were supposed to do it on the island-just him, nice and simple. Like with Betsy."

"It was Antoine's idea." Vince said. "He calls the shots."

"That guy's an animal."

"You might want to keep that opinion to yourself."

Quentin was at a pay phone outside a gas station on Route 2 in Concord about three miles from his house. It was Sunday morning, and after a few calls back and forth, he had connected with Vince Lucas at another pay phone someplace on Long Island. It was how they communicated without worry of taps.

"Innocent people die every day," Vince explained. "It had to look like an accident, so nobody asks a lot of questions. If he showed up with a bullet in him, the authorities would be looking for a third party and two unsolved murders from the same company in the space of a week. Which means they'd be wondering if it was an inside job and thinking about you. This way, there are no loose ends."

Quentin hadn't thought about that, but Vince was right.

According to the news, the water was nearly a mile deep with little surface wreckage to determine the cause. The lead theory was a lightning strike. As one commentator had said, commercial jets were built to fly through storms, but a direct hit by a couple million volts could do it. Of course, all it took was three volts from two double-A batteries, a timer, and two pounds of Simtec plastic explosives in the cargo hold below the central fuel tank. And two baggage handlers working for Antoine.

"Now you and your people can move ahead with the stuff, all nice and clean," Vince said…

"Yeah, nice and clean. You took out all the Elixir, too."

"What's that?"

"He had it with him. All of it, including the science notebooks."

"What are you telling me, Quentin?"

"I'm telling you that Chris Bacon cleaned us out. He took every goddamn drop of Elixir, and every goddamn page of notes on how to produce the stuff. The son-of-a-bitch was skipping the country with the whole show. He probably had made connections in San Juan to South America or Europe, wherever. They were on the plane with him. His wife, his kid, and Elixir."

"How do you know it's not all back at his house?"

"It's the first place I got the police to check."

The silence was cut by the hush of the open line. That and the clicking of Quentin's heart in his ear.

"You mean you don't have the formulas to make the stuff?"

"That's what I'm telling you."

"Don't you remember how to do it? All those scientists you got, and nobody knows how to do what they've been doing for a fucking year?"

"Vince, it's not exactly a recipe for baking bread. There are hundreds of complicated steps and procedures. He must have planned it for weeks. Jesus! Do you believe it? We set him up for Betsy, meanwhile he robs us blind."

"What about backup copies of the notebooks?"

"He took those too."

More silence as Vince absorbed the implications. "And where exactly were those backup copies?"

"In the fireproof locker I showed you."

"Two sets of notebooks containing the formulas for endless youth just fifty feet from each other?"

"More like a eighty or a hundred feet," he muttered, and suddenly he felt a hole open up. "Besides, those are reinforced steel fireproof lockers. I mean, they were perfectly safe. You could torch the place and they'd be fine."

But Vince found no solace in that. Fireproofing was not the problem. "What about off-site copies?"

"Off-site copies?" The hole opened wider and Quentin slipped to his waist.

"Copies in safety deposit boxes in banks or your home safe. Second backups in case the place blows up, or some asshole decides to clean you out?"

"Well, not really. It's not company policy… I mean, we never had a need to, you know. Nobody ever steals project notebooks. Our people are very, you know… trustworthy…" He trailed off, wishing he had a place to land, wishing he could edit out the last thirty seconds of the conversation. Wishing he had never said anything about the missing notebooks.

"Didn't you once tell me that he didn't like the idea of marketing the stuff on the side?"

"I guess I did."

"Didn't you once say you were worried he might try to take the patent and run off on his own?"

"Yeah, but I wasn't really serious. I mean, he wasn't really the type. Didn't have the balls for a heist, and all…"

Silence.

"Vince, look I'm sorry. Tell Antoine we'll pay everybody back their deposits. That's no problem. They'll get their money back. Please tell him everybody will get what they're owed."

"Money's not the issue."

"What is?"

"Longevity."

"Sure, of course. I know, I've lost that too, believe me. Jesus, the son-of-a-bitch. But, you know… what can I say?"

"Nothing," Vince said. "Not a fucking thing."

And he clicked off, leaving Quentin standing there in a raw winter wind as cold as eternity.

If Jenny caught the evening news, she would be hysterical. So Wendy drove to a pay phone on highway 87 outside of Lake Placid to avoid leaving records at the cottage. Chris would have gone, but his face might be recognized. He was already thinking like a fugitive.

With the snow it would be two hours before Wendy returned. Meanwhile, Chris removed the trunk containing the Elixir to a small chamber in the cellar where Wendy's parents had stored wine. The room was locked and well insulated. The thermometer read 20 degrees, which was fine, since Elixir could be kept frozen indefinitely without decomposition. The two-liter container he left in the refrigerator upstairs because freezing would split the container. The rest was kept in two hundred-and-twelve ampules fixed with rubber septums for injection needles. Because tabulone was highly active in low concentrations, Chris estimated that he had enough Elixir to keep a single rhesus monkey stable for two thousand years.

A little after two, Wendy returned wrung out. She had reached Jenny.

"What did you tell her?" Chris asked.

"That the police reports were wrong, that you were framed for Betsy's murder."

"How did she take it?"

"How do you think she took it? She was shocked, confused, and horrified," Wendy explained.

"Does she know we're here?"

"Yes." Wendy was so weary that she leaned against the fireplace mantel to keep from slipping to the floor. Her face was colorless with defeat. "I told her we took off when you suspected a plot to get you too." Her voice sounded like a flat recording. "When she finally calmed down she offered to help us."

Chris nodded, thinking how Jenny might be able to do that. "Did you tell her why?" he asked cautiously.

"No, I did not tell her about Elixir." Even her exhaustion could not mask the sarcasm in her voice.

"You did the right thing," Chris said, knowing how hollow that sounded. She didn't care a damn about keeping the stuff secret.

Wendy pushed away from the wall. She wanted to go to bed. "So, what are we going to do?" She asked. "They found your snorkle stuff in the locker room."

"That was planted. It was a setup. I was halfway to Providence at the time."

"And what evidence?"

Chris took her by the shoulders. "Jesus, Wendy, you don't think I killed her, do you?"

For a split second, she appeared to struggle with her answer. "No, but the police do."

"I can't document where I was until later in the day." He had driven straight to Providence and breakfasted on complimentary donuts and coffee in the hotel lobby, then settled in a corner of the deserted bar to look over the seminar material undisturbed. He had spoken to no one, and left no receipts. He had no evidence; nobody could place him there that early.

"Then you have no alibi. It's your word against theirs."

He took a deep, shaky breath. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and pulled her to him. Wendy lay limply against his chest. It was like cuddling somebody who had died. For a long moment Chris held his wife, thinking that this might be the first time in seventeen years that Wendy had ever regretted her marriage to him.

Over the next three days, the crash slipped from lead story. When the weather cleared the NTSB dispatched helicopters and a coast guard vessel to search for bodies and debris.

The mood in the cottage varied from abrasive silence to panic. On some level Wendy blamed Chris for the upheaval of their lives, irrational as she knew that was. Because she had opposed Elixir from the beginning, the latest twist only served as proof that the project was a curse. For seven years Chris had chased Nature to her hiding place, and now they were stuck in these godforsaken woods, exiled from their old lives and the ordinary world. And it had happened at the peak of renewed joy for her. But she resolved that, no matter what, they would fight this, for she would not bring up her baby in hiding.

Chris spent the next few days listing lawyers' names from telephone directories and doing chores. He chopped and split wood. There was an old chainsaw in the cellar, but he feared the noise would draw attention.

Wendy, meanwhile, did the food shopping at a supermarket in Lake Placid. She wore a ski cap and sunglasses even though nobody would know her. But it struck her how even the most mundane chore was fraught with anxiety that somebody would look into her face and recognize an accessory to murder.

She paid for everything in cash which Chris had withdrawn from accounts before they left-over $17,000. They had been listed as dead, so Wendy began to think of herself as nonexistent-a woman with no credit cards, checks, social security number. Or name. It was almost funny. She was a blank of herself.

Luckily, there was plenty of clothing at the cottage. And the utilities had been paid through June by a trust fund, again untraceable. The propane tank was over half full. They could survive for several weeks if need be, though Chris promised to contact a lawyer by week's end, then turn themselves over to the police.

But that wouldn't happen. Thursday night after Adam was down, they watched the evening news. The lead story was the crash of Eastern flight 219 once again. But this time it was not Chris's photo on the screen but a family portrait, and not theirs.

"…Relatives of the Foleys claimed that they were hoping to fly to Puerto Rico on standby. Authorities now believe that Thomas and Karen Foley had purchased their airline tickets for themselves and their young daughter, Tara, from Christopher Bacon."

The Foley family photo was replaced by that of Chris.

"According to authorities, security cameras captured Bacon talking to Foley and his wife…" In jerky black-and-white Chris could be seen huddled with the Foleys, then disappearing into the crowd.

"Meanwhile, friends and relatives have not heard from the Foleys. Nor is there any trace of them in Puerto Rico, leaving investigators to conclude that they were aboard flight 219 to San Juan, and the Bacons were not.

"In a bizarre twist to the story, an all-points bulletin has been issued for Christopher Bacon and his author wife in the death of Betsy Watkins and now the more serious charge of sabotage. According to the NTSB, preliminary analyses of debris show evidence more consistent with a bomb than lightning. Quoting an unnamed spokesman from Darby Pharmaceuticals, the FBI said that Bacon not only had the expertise to construct such a bomb but had apparently stolen the necessary chemicals…"

"Quentin!" Chris shouted. "He set us up."

Wendy let out a cry of despair. On the screen was a photo of Wendy and Chris from a Darby Christmas party two years ago.

"As for the whereabouts of the Bacons, police are not saying much about leads. However, the FBI has entered the case placing the Bacons on the Ten Most Wanted List…"

"My God," Chris said. "How much worse can it get?"

Ross Darby leaned toward the president. "Ron, he didn't do it. He wasn't the type."

"That's not what they're telling me at the Bureau. They're saying he planted a bomb to fake his own death."

Ross and the president were sitting alone in the Oval Office on facing sofas. Of all the visits he had made here over the years, this was the first time Ross did not feel the august thrill of history.

"I know what they're saying, but I also know this guy. I hired him. He's a dedicated scientist, not a mass murderer."

"Well, then, who did it?"

Ross felt a prickly sensation in the back of his neck. "I don't know."

"Well, they've got the best people looking for him."

"That's what I want to talk to you about," Ross said, and he described the Elixir project while Reagan listened intently.

Ronald Reagan tipped his head and smiled. "Boy, could I use some of that."

"So could the republic," Ross said. "Consider the economic impact. Health care for the aging baby-boomers could bankrupt the government in twenty years. If we work out the bugs, Elixir could prevent that."

Reagan thought all that over. "How close are you?"

"Maybe a couple of years, but the problem is that he took it all with him. Cleaned us out of all the science and the compound itself."

"How come?"

"That's what I'm not yet sure about, but he's out there someplace with the secret of eternal youth."

Ross's guess was that Chris had acted on fears for his own life. What bothered Ross was Quentin. He was too anxious to pin the murder and sabotage on Chris. A man wanted for murder does not steal the world's hottest pharmaceutical secrets to set up shop elsewhere. First, he'd need unlimited resources to reproduce Elixir. Second, he'd be nabbed in no time since his face had been broadcast around the world. Besides, it wasn't in Chris's character.

Maybe Quentin's.

"Ron, I'm asking that you do what you can to bring him in alive. If you think your drug war is bad now, this would be Armageddon if the stuff fell into the wrong hands."

When they were finished, Reagan called Buck Clayman, FBI Director, and asked him to use every means necessary to bring in Christopher Bacon unharmed. It was a matter of national security.

"What does this mean for you?" Reagan asked. "Aren't you retiring next week?"

"I'm putting that off. He left us pretty high and dry with debts up to here."

The president walked Ross to the door. "Has this stuff been tried on people yet?"

"Not yet, but the effect on primates was incredible."

"Well," smiled the President, "I know a couple of higher primates who'd happily volunteer."

17

Every morning Quentin would drive his daughter to the Sunny Vale Day School about a half-mile out of Lincoln center. He would then proceed down Main Street which narrowed to a lovely tree-lined road that took him to Route 2 and Darby Pharms just off of the Lexington exit. This morning began no differently.

He had just dropped off Robyn when a school van closed on his rear, flashing its lights. In the mirror the driver waved him over. Quentin pulled into a clearing. Maybe Robyn had forgotten a book or something. Or maybe his rear tire was low.

The man came up to Quentin's door. He was wearing sunglasses and a parka.

"Is there a problem?" Quentin asked.

Without answering, the man swung the door open. Before Quentin knew it, two other men pulled him out of the car and hustled him into the van.

"What's going on? Who-who are you people?" They strapped him in place. "Where're you taking me?"

Nobody answered him.

The driver turned the radio to an oldies station. While the Bee Gees sang "I Started a Joke," Quentin peered out at Lincoln's Norman Rockwell-like center with its country store and white steepled church and red brick library-and he thought how this was the ideal little suburban town where nothing ever happened, and that this was the last time he would see it.

Quentin had never laid eyes on these men before, but he knew why they had been sent. He just didn't know how they'd do it. His only wish was to pass out or have a cardiac arrest first.

For half an hour they rode through back roads until the driver, talking into a radio phone, turned down an abandoned lane lined with dark evergreens. Soon the trees gave way to a frozen marshland. Quentin's eye fixed on a section of ice that had not frozen over, where reeds stood up. He thought about how cold that water was and what the ice looked like from underneath.

The door slid open and Quentin was pulled outside. He was cold and numb, hoping it would be quick. The men rubbed their hands and waited. The man with the sunglasses removed a pack of gum and thumbed out a stick for Quentin. A few chews of Juicy Fruit to make him feel better about being shot in the head and dumped into a frozen swamp.

Then from nowhere came a fluttery sound as a small helicopter dropped to a nearby clearing. The pilot Quentin didn't recognize. But the passenger was Vince Lucas in muffler phones. If they wanted him dead, they would have done it by now.

The cockpit door opened and Juicy Fruit rushed Quentin inside behind the pilot, then pulled beside him. A moment later they were over the treetops and heading full throttle toward Boston.

Quentin settled in place. He didn't know why, but he was going to be spared.

As they approached the spires, the pilot cut over the North End. But instead of tilting toward Logan, he pulled to a thousand feet over the bay to open water. After a spell, Vince poked the pilot who nodded and zipped up his jacket. Then Vince put his hand on Quentin's door latch and began to jiggle it.

My God! Quentin thought. They were going to push him out. Everybody was harnessed in but he. They were going to bank hard at the same time Vince would throw open the door so Juicy Fruit could push him out.

It all happened with such a blur that Quentin could barely process the final moments: The pilot's hand pressing the steering mechanism, Quentin's body suddenly shifting to the door, his hands grasping for something to block the fall, the bright blue sea rising up in his face, the sudden plunge that sent his organs up his throat, the sudden frigid blast. The long agonizing scream in a final expulsion of air…

The chopper landed with a thud.

Very little had registered in Quentin's mind: Not Vince double-checking the lock on Quentin's door, nor the pilot's protest about a Cessna appearing from nowhere and sending them into a sharp turn, nor the fact that they had landed on the heliport of an eighty-five foot ocean cruiser, nor the fact that he had wet himself. All that registered through Quentin's gasps was the face staring at him through the hatch that Vince had swung open.

Antoine Ducharme.

Ross knew very little about computers, including the fancy new system installed a year ago. When he wanted to check financial records, he turned to Quentin to whom Accounting and the Legal Department answered directly. But Quentin was out, so he called his secretary Sally to access the quarterly earning reports for the last two years on his own terminal. She wrote out the access codes and called up the files.

Ross scrolled through tables of numbers and spreadsheets. He took note of certain figures, particularly losses in accounts with foreign pharmaceutical houses. Because Sally might say something to Quentin, he went to Accounting to check backup files with Helen Goodfellow, a confidante whom Ross had hired long before Quentin married his daughter.

She was riffling through folders when she remembered something. "Actually, they're not here. Mr. Cross took them. He was working on those personally and had a deadline, so he just gave me the numbers and said it was okay to sign." She looked at the empty file slots. "I guess he forgot to return them."

"I see," Ross said. "Helen, I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention this to Quentin. He's got a lot on his mind right now."

"Certainly, Mr. Darby."

At 10:30 Ross dialed the number for Werner Ackermann, president of Alpha-Chemie in Geneva, Switzerland where the time was 4:30 in the afternoon. They had been associates for years.

Luckily Werner was in. Ross made small talk, then said, "Werner, I have a favor to ask. Our records are a little off." He explained something of the problem. "I'm wondering if you'd check the first- and second-quarter earnings last year and let me know what you have for a net loss on the R-and-D report." Twenty minutes later Werner called back with the requested figures. Werner asked if things were good, and Ross lied.

All project accounts were under Quentin's control. That may not have made good business sense since it left no checks and balances. But, after all, Quentin was family. What shocked Ross was that checks for over $3 million had been written to two corporations in the Caribbean: Global Partners Inc. in Grand Cayman and Fair Caribe, Ltd. in Apricot Cay.

"Either you're part cat, or that Elixir stuff's for real." Vince popped a wedge of honeydew melon into his mouth.

They were aboard Antoine's new yacht, a huge sleek craft named Regine after Antoine's mother. The interior was larger and more elegant than that of the late Reef Madness. But, like its predecessor, there were bookshelves stocked with mystery hardbacks. Quentin imagined Antoine moving from port to port making drug deals between P. D. James and Sue Grafton.

"They say he's hiding someplace," Antoine said. "Which means he has Elixir and the notebooks. Is that what you think?"

"Yes," Quentin said. "Absolutely."

Outside a cloud bank closed in from the west. There would be snow that evening. Quentin wondered where Antoine would sail to next. He was like a phantom, appearing and disappearing at will. He seemed to have unlimited power and resources.

"How long has he been working for you?"

"Fifteen years."

Antoine wore a forest-green fisherman's net sweater, but his face still sported a tropical tan. He leaned forward. "I am going to explain something to you in very simple terms, Quentin." The intensity in his eyes took Quentin back to that night when with the same heat of expression Antoine had held forth about loyalty and trust just moments before Marcel was hurled to his death. "Every man has one major mission in life-one that he dates the calendar from, understand? A turning point in the progression of his days-the point after which nothing will ever be the same again, and all things that came before are forever gone. Like birth and death, it happens only once. Do I make myself clear, Quentin? Do you understand?" Antoine's face had a rigid fixity. His eyes were like laser beams focussed to score the message on the back of his skull.

Quentin felt parched with fear. "Yes, I understand."

"A mission with no margin for error."

Quentin glanced at Vince Lucas, who stood against the windowed wall of the cabin dressed in black glasses and black leather, looking like the allegory of death from some medieval painting. "I understand."

"A mission whose stakes are beyond mortal. This is yours, Quentin Cross: To find out the names of this Doctor Christopher Bacon's intimates-friends, relatives, his wife's friends and relatives, where they go on vacation, what they do for hobbies and recreation-anything and everything and anybody that could lead us to him. Check your files, talk to your people. Do what you need to do to find him because everything you hold dear in life depends on it. Comprende?"

"Yes."

If the police weren't all over Jenny yet, they soon would be-interrogating her and Ted, tapping their telephone, reading their mail, tailing their every move.

From a call box in Lake Placid, Wendy phoned Ted's work number in Kalamazoo and made arrangements for Jenny to call her from a public phone as they had the other night.

It took nearly half an hour for Jenny to find a phone booth where she would not be noticed. When they finally connected, Wendy got right to the point: "I know what the news reports say, but it's all a setup," she explained.

"So, why don't you go to the police?" Jenny asked.

"Because we have no proof that Chris was out of town when Betsy Watkins was killed, nor that he didn't check a bomb on the plane." Security photos placed him in the crowd with a shoulder bag not shown in the shots with the Foleys. With Quentin's help, the media had already convicted Chris for murder and sabotage. "Jenny, we were meant to die in that explosion. It was meant for us, I'm telling you."

"That's awful! But who on earth would do that to you, and why?"

"I don't know. I don't know. Chris thinks it's his boss Quentin Cross and some criminal element he's tied up with."

"I don't believe it," Jenny said. "Why would he do something like that? I mean, this is unbelievable."

"That's another story," Wendy said, wanting to deflect the subject, wanting not to yield to the panic that she heard in Jenny's own voice. "It's not worth getting into. But we need your help."

"The reports said something about stolen company property."

"That's not the issue."

But Jenny would not let go. "Well, did Chris steal something from them? That's what they're saying."

"Jenny, I'd rather not discuss that. Please, I need help, not an interrogation."

"Wendy, I'm on the other side of town in a different telephone booth from the last time. Nobody's in sight and nobody's listening in."

"That's not important-"

Jenny cut her off. "If you want us to help you, I'd like to know just what we're getting ourselves into. It's only fair."

Exasperation was beginning to fill Wendy's chest. But Jenny was persistent, and she had every right to be. "It's something to do with a secret new drug."

"But everybody knows about the cancer drug. It was on the national news months ago."

"Not that."

"Something else?"

"Yes."

"You mean you won't tell me."

"I'm sorry, Jen, but I promised Chris."

Wendy could hear Jenny's hurt mount in the silence of the open line as she wondered why she and Chris were putting company confidentiality ahead of family-especially when that company was out to destroy them.

All her life Wendy had tried to protect Jenny from pain because of her medical condition and her fragile state of mind, and because she was a bird with a broken wing who could not handle crises but whose life was a concatenation of crises-from a troubled childhood, to jilting lovers, to the death of her first husband, to her daughter Kelly's mental problems, to a second marriage to a man who verbally abused her. Not to confide in Jenny at the moment would simply confirm her suspicion that she was inferior or untrustworthy or incapable of handling critical matters.

Yet, ironically, Wendy was calling to ask for Jenny's help at the worst crisis in their lives. Still, she refused to explain the cause. And Wendy hated herself for it, but she had sworn to Chris not to make mention of Elixir.

"I don't like it, but we're going to hole up at the cottage, I'm not sure how long," Wendy said.

"So, I suppose you're asking for money." Wendy could hear the resentment in Jenny's voice.

"No, we have money. What we need are fake IDs-driver's licenses and social security cards." With them, they could get a post office box, open bank accounts, and apply for credit cards, even passports. "I'm just wondering if you could do that for us through Ted's contacts: We can pay whatever it costs. But we need them to survive."

Ted owned a car dealership, and years ago he had run into some trouble with the law for illegally selling cars overseas. She was hoping he still had contacts who could get them bogus credentials.

There was another long pause as Jenny let Wendy's request sink in. Finally she snapped. "I see-you're asking us to break all sorts of laws that could send us to prison for years, but you won't explain why. All because little sister can't keep a secret, right? Because she might blab to the neighbors or tell the police. But just call her out of the blue for fake IDs, and she's right there like an old dog ready to please."

"Jesus, Jen, it's not that at all," Wendy pleaded. "I hate this more than you know, but they're after us for mass murder. And there may be unknown killers gunning for us. We have nowhere else to turn, and you're my sister."

"Yeah, the same sister you can't bring yourself to trust."

Wendy couldn't believe how Jenny was twisting this around. "If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't be calling you, for God's sake."

"Then, for God's sake, what are you holding back? Unless he really did kill that woman and blow up the plane."

"Damn it, Jennifer, Chris is innocent! He's constitutionally incapable of murder, and so am I, period!"

After another moment of silence, Jenny said, "Well, you can understand my suspicions."

Wendy had scolded her like a child and she could hear the woundedness in Jenny's voice.

Clearly it was important for Jenny to know what her sought-after collusion was rooted in. Wendy looked around her, feeling her resolve crumble. She was at a callbox at a small strip mall just out of the center of Lake Placid. Cars and people were moving about their daily business. Nobody cared about her. Nobody eavesdropped. Nobody knew she was on the FBI's Top Ten List. And Jenny was right: Nobody had tapped these lines.

She just hoped that Chris would understand. In a low voice, she said, "It has to do with an anti-aging substance Chris discovered." While Jenny listened intently, she explained in the barest details, emphasizing the fact that its very success was the cause of all the bloodshed.

"And he took it with him?"

"Yes."

"It's at the cottage?"

"Yes."

"Oh my."

When Jenny seemed satisfied with the explanation she said she would talk to Ted.

"Thanks."

Before she hung up, Jenny had one final question: "Does it work on people?"

"It never got to that stage," Wendy said.

When she hung up, she felt drained and guilty. Yet, curiously, she experienced some relief at having told someone, of getting it out. It was like lancing a boil. She just prayed that her revelation would go no farther than Jenny. She had promised as much, but Jenny did have her spells.

Wendy walked up the street to a market to buy food and hair rinse. She moved down the aisles envying other customers who did their shopping without worrying about police photos. The simplest things in life were suddenly fraught with mortal terror. What kept her going was the illusion that it was all temporary-that life would return to normal so she could raise her son in the open. Jenny had suggested getting a lawyer. But that was risky. Even in the outchance they were exonerated in court, unknown killers were still after them. And living in a police-protection program would be worse than jail. Their only other option was to remain in hiding.

So, at forty-two, the mother of a newborn and the author of the forthcoming mystery novel If I Should Die, Wendy Whitehead Bacon bought herself a Cover Girl hair kit to bleach-strip away the first half of her life.

18

Quentin left the Regine filled with relief that he was still breathing-a realization that produced in him an odd sense of obligation to Antoine. By the time he pulled into his slot at Darby, he knew he would kill to find Chris Bacon and Elixir.

On his desk was the usual pile of work and call slips. He pushed that aside and on his computer he looked up personnel records on Chris Bacon-original letters of employment, transcripts from grad school, letters of recommendation-anything that would yield names of relatives, associates, and the like.

Because of all the sensitive records, Quentin had installed lock-check softwear that would signal if anybody tried to access his files, giving the password of the intruder. As he logged in, a box lit up on his monitor: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS. Shocked, he tapped a few keys, and the screen lit up with ROBYN.

Ross's password. Startled, he tapped a few more codes.

Shit! Ross had called up files of financial transactions from last year. If he cross-referenced, he would discover payments to Antoine.

Quentin collected himself, then called in Sally.

"Yes, he wanted to look over some of the last year's quarterly reports. So I gave him the access codes."

Quentin felt himself turn rigid. "I see."

"Will that be all, Mr. Cross?"

"Yes, thank you."

Sally left, and a few minutes later Quentin walked down the hall to Helen Goodfellow's office in accounting. "Helen, Ross came by earlier today for some files," he said, trying to maintain a tone of casual interest. "Do you recall which ones they were?"

Instantly she turned defensive. "Ross?" she said, pretending to rummage through her memory.

Quentin bore down on her. "Yes, Ross. Sometime this morning."

"Well, yes, I guess he did come by, now that you mention it," she said. "But, gosh, we handle so many files all day than I can't say which ones they were."

Helen, who was in her early sixties and not looking to retire for another five years, did not equivocate well. Her face had darkened as she was struggling to maintain her composure.

Meanwhile, in his mind, Quentin saw himself in the cabin of the Regine with Vince hanging over him like some carrion bird.

"Helen, the efficiency and operation of this office falls under my responsibility, including the handling of its files-which, I need not remind you, are very important and confidential. In turn it is your responsibility to be certain that such files are not casually passed about. Is that clear?"

"Certainly, Mr. Cross," she said, hearing the suggestion that she could be replaced by a younger woman with better recall.

She then moved to the cabinets and went through the motions of trying to determine which files had been removed. "Ah, yes," she said after a brief while. "I believe it was Alpha-Chemie."

Quentin was barely able to squeeze out a thank you.

Ross knew.

Back at his desk, Quentin sat in numb realization, half expecting Ross to come storming in for an explanation. But that didn't happen. Ross had left early without dropping by.

An hour before closing, Sally came in to say that Ross had telephoned to ask that Quentin drop by his house that evening.

For the rest of the afternoon, Quentin attended paperwork and made calls, while in the back of his mind a notion took form. While it was still soft, he took and squeezed it like clay, kneading it, examining it from different angles, pressing here, poking there, molding it until by the time he left, the thing had shaped and hardened like a brick.

After the last employee had left, Quentin let himself into the restricted area of the storage room and into a vault accessible to only a handful of people. It was where they stored highly sensitive compounds such as cocaine, heroin, lysergic acid, and other psychotropic drugs-some in purities approaching 100 percent.

At the rear of one shelf he removed a small glass vial. He slipped it into his pocket and left.

Ross lived on prestigious Belmont Hill in a handsome brick garrison on two woodsy acres set back against tall oaks. It was the home he and his late wife had purchased when the company began to flourish some years ago.

Around nine o'clock, Quentin pulled up the long driveway. Ross watched him get out of the Mercedes, thinking how this would be the last time he would be dropping in like this. After tonight, all would be changed. Sadness undercut Ross's anger and disappointment. After Quentin's marriage to Margaret, Ross had come to look upon him as the son he never had. Yes, he had suffered from pie-in-the-sky ventures that had cost them dearly. But Quentin was bright and aggressive and capable of acting with prudence, Ross had told himself. Now he was a crook.

Ross met him at the door, unable even to feign a smile. He led him into the living room where a small fire burned. A bottle of scotch sat on the bar with a bucket of ice. Quentin helped himself. Ross sat by the fire with a brandy. Since his heart attack five years ago, he was restricted to one drink a night.

"Refill?" Quentin asked. Ross handed him his empty. Quentin's eye twitched. "Police say they're following leads. Wendy's got a sister in Michigan someplace."

Ross sipped his drink quietly.

"We're trying to reconstruct assays on the compound from old notes, except it's like trying to build a car from memory."

"That's not why I called you," Ross finally said. He got up and put another log on the fire. "I'm asking for your resignation, Quentin."

"My resignation? You've got to be joking."

"I'm not joking. I want you out by Friday."

"Why, for god's sake?"

Ross handed him printouts of downloaded files. "Over the last year you transferred 3 million dollars of earnings from overseas clients to corporate accounts in Caribbean banks-bogus outfits with nothing more than an account line. My guess is that you used the funds to pay off your drug pals from Apricot Cay. I'd like to believe it's not true, but the evidence is sitting in your lap." Ross looked down at him and simply asked, "Why?"

A long moment of silence filled the room as Quentin struggled to fabricate explanations. But he had none. Finally he cleared his throat and said in a soft voice of defeat, "They threatened to kill Robyn if I didn't pay."

"You could have come to me. We could have gone to the authorities. We could have done something. God Almighty, Quentin, you had options other than fraud and theft."

"You don't understand."

"No, I don't, because you violated everything that's important-your family, career, your future, your sense of self."

Quentin silently stared into the fire. There was nothing else to say. Next week Ross would begin an outside search for a replacement. Quentin stood up. "I'm sorry about this, Ross."

"You're sorry! Is that it? Is that all you have to say? No explanation why you embezzled money from your own family's company to pay off drug barons? A company I nearly killed myself to build? A company that was going to be handed to you, to build for your own child and grandchildren? Nothing more than a little 'sorry about this,' as if you'd spilled your drink?"

Quentin locked his eyes on Ross's and his face shifted as if something large and dark had passed behind it. "I guess not."

Ross sighed as if his heart were breaking.

Quentin started toward the door then stopped. "I'd appreciate it if you would not tell Margaret. It's my problem, and my job to tell her."

Ross nodded. He had not told her. Nor did he want to. It would be like delivering a death warrant. And he was already at the edge of despair. Seventy-four years old, at the threshold of retirement, and facing the biggest crisis of his life. "One more thing," Ross said. "They're saying that the plane was sabotaged. Do you know anything about that?"

Quentin slammed his glass down. "No, goddamn it! And you're not going to pin that on me, too."

"I'm not pinning it on you, but you've been dealing with the kind of people who don't think twice about killing others."

"Well, you're wrong, Ross. Dead wrong! That was your golden boy, and when the cops bring him in they'll fry his ass."

Quentin left and slammed the door behind him, leaving Ross standing there with tears in his eyes and feeling very old and tired and desperately missing his wife. He turned off the lights, and went upstairs and took a double dosage of Xanax to help him sleep. At his age, sleep was a reluctant friend.

He settled in bed and felt a warm mist fill the pockets of his brain, blotting out the last look on Quentin's face before he stormed out the door-a look that said he was lying.

Tubarine chloride is a salt derived from the curare plant found in humid tropics of South America. A woody shrub (curarea toxicofera), the plant's bark is used by the Jamandi Indians of Brazil and the Kofans of Ecuador and many other tribes as the chief ingredient in the poison of their blowgun arrows. Known simply as tubarine, the chloride is mixed with sterile water before being injected. An overdose causes respiratory failure, which begins with a heaviness of eyelids, difficulty in swallowing, paralysis of the extremities and the diaphragm, a crushing substernal pain, and ends in circulatory collapse, and death. The effect is immediate-within ten to twenty seconds-and the drug remains in the body only a brief time after expiration. Unless there is suspicion otherwise, death appears as a heart attack.

In his pocket Quentin carried a capped syringe containing five cubic centimeters of tubarine, enough to send a bull elephant into cardiac arrest.

He drove around replaying the meeting with Ross until he had worked up the necessary resolve. Then he headed back to Belmont Hill.

Ross's house was black. And being that it was a weekday, the street was dead with no traffic or midnight strollers.

Quentin pulled into the driveway and slipped on the surgical gloves. Because Ross had trouble sleeping, he had come to depend on Xanax. He also had drunk at least two glasses of brandy, making a dangerous combination.

Using Margaret's key, Quentin slipped in through the kitchen. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator. Because the place was old, the floors creaked as he made his way to the front stairs. There he slipped off his shoes, then climbed, stopping with every step to listen. Nothing but the occasional creaks of the house settling. He was nervous but resolute. There were no options, he reminded himself.

"A mission with no margin for error."

"A mission whose stakes are beyond mortal."

Elixir was the one thing separating him, maybe even Robyn, from the grave. Something Ross could never appreciate.

The bedroom door was open, and the light of the clock radio cast a green glow on the hump of Ross's body. It would have to be quick and precise. Fortunately the upstairs had wall-to-wall carpet which allowed him to move with catlike stealth.

Ross lay on his back, the only comfortable position given his lower lumbar problems. From the fluttery sounds, he was in deep chemical sleep.

For a moment Quentin watched the man and cleared his mind of all but his resolve.

no margin for error

Quentin snapped on the light. Without waiting for a reaction, he spread open the lids of Ross's right eye and rammed the needle of the syringe high into the white of the eyeball above the iris, pressing the plunger all the way in.

By reflex Ross's head snapped to the side as he let out a hectoring cry. So as not to tear the eyeball or pop it out of its socket, Quentin let go, horrified at how the needle stuck in Ross's face and flopped as he screamed and convulsed. Ross's hands rose to grasp the syringe but froze in the air, paralyzed from the shocking pain.

Quentin threw himself full-body onto Ross, pinning his arms and legs to the mattress. Ross continued to shriek as his face contorted in agony and his head flopped about with the needle still buried in his eyeball.

Die, goddamn it! Die! Quentin screamed in his head.

Tubarine was rated six out of six on the scale of toxicity. It was supposed to work within twenty to thirty seconds. Ross was supposed to experience total paralysis-total muscle depression. Instead, he was still struggling, his mouth moving, and his lungs still pressing out long hideous squeals.

Then he remembered the Xanax-alprazolam, a muscle relaxant like tubarine. Over the years, Ross had built up a tolerance intensified by the alcohol. Christ! This could go on forever.

To stop the awful cries, Quentin clamped one hand onto Ross's mouth and pulled the needle out with his other-only to find himself inches from his eyes, one huge and gaping, the other spurting ocular fluid. Through his gloved fingers he felt Ross groan. It was maddening. His muscles were supposed to be useless by now. Yet his legs still twitched and his pelvis rose in an obscene parody of sexual intercourse.

For what seemed an interminable spell, Quentin lay on top of Ross's body, until, at last, he felt it go into neuromuscular paralysis. His mouth slacked open and his upper torso relaxed, rendering his diaphragm useless and his lungs dead pockets of air. In reflex, Ross's head twitched to catch a final breath, then settled against the pillow, a final gasp rising from his throat-a corrupt miasma of brandy that passed into Quentin's own lungs.

As Quentin jerked himself off the body, the sudden release of pressure forced a plug of vomit to spasm out of Ross's throat and into Quentin's face.

Revolted, Quentin dashed to the toilet and scrubbed himself clean, fighting to contain the contents of his own stomach, aware that the stench was seeping into his clothes. He removed his shirt and lathered it until all traces of odor were gone.

When he reentered the bedroom Ross was staring directly at him, a thick pudding of vomit on his mouth. Quentin's heart froze as he expected Ross to rise up. But he was dead. Unmoving, unbreathing, unfeeling. His face blue.

Quentin wiped the liquid from Ross's offended eye which was red and swollen but which would shrink to normal by morning once the body fluids had settled. He then turned him onto his side to affect the sequence of events of a heart attack. Vomiting is a symptom, not the cause of death; by reflex a victim would try to keep his throat open. Given Ross's age and heart condition, Quentin was certain there would be no autopsy. The brandy glass in the sink and Xanax on the nighttable made the perfect scenario. Even if there were an autopsy, his body would manifest no visible signs that he died of anything other than natural and predictable causes. Which was why Quentin had targeted Ross's eye. The blood vessels would disseminate the substance throughout his system while the hole would be virtually invisible.

And in two days the obituary would read that Ross Darby had passed away at his home at the age of seventy-four, suffering a heart attack in his sleep, and leaving behind a grieving daughter, Margaret Darby Cross, and granddaughter Robyn, and son-in-law, Quentin W. Cross, who would assume the position of Chief Executive Officer of Darby Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

And God was in His heaven, and all's right with the world.

Quentin turned off the light and went home to bed.

19

By their third week, they had worked out a communications routine with Jenny. She would call every fourth night at a designated time from public phones in Kalamazoo to public phones around Lake Placid.

The good news was that Ted had made contact with a couple of street-wise guys who could get them phony licenses. It would cost two thousand dollars and they would need photos and signatures under new names. Jenny would drive out in a safe car to be swapped for Chris's rented van, which Ted would turn over to a chop shop. Before they hung up, Jenny mentioned that Wendy's book had been published to good reviews, and because of all the publicity it had made some local bestseller lists. "Too bad I'll miss the book tour," Wendy said grimly.

Four nights later Jenny arrived in a two-year-old Ford Explorer. In case she had been followed, Chris met her at a highway rest stop twenty miles away. When he was certain that nobody had tailed her, he led the way to the cottage.

Jenny had brought forms to sign and a Polaroid for IDs. In blackened hair and beard Chris would not be easily mistaken for the TV photos. And Wendy was now a blond and twenty-five pounds lighter than in her author photos.

Jenny had not been to the lodge for nearly fifteen years. Besides the remoteness, it was not her kind of place. Nor Ted's, whose idea of a getaway was Las Vegas.

"Better you than me," Jenny had said, looking around the old place.

"But we had some good times," Wendy reminded her, still amazed at the fact that Jenny had arranged for their new IDs and driven all the way out here by herself and undetected. Sometimes Jenny's reaction was so unpredictable that Wendy felt guilty for ever underestimating her. The element of danger seemed to have given Jenny new resolve. Perhaps new motherhood had created a greater sense of family, sharpening her protective instincts.

"Between the snow and mud, the bugs and mice, this place would drive me crazy. But," she added, "I supposed it's a good place to raise kids. They'd be far from all the rot out there. Unless, of course, you got one of those awful satellite dishes. Gosh, the stuff they're showing on television these days. No wonder kids are so screwed up."

Following dinner, they settled by the fire while Jenny showed them photographs. She had brought maybe two dozen-all of Abigail at Christmas dolled up a variety of different outfits and sitting among mountains of presents. "She's getting so big," Wendy said.

"Too big. Her babyhood is just flying by."

"How's Karen doing?" Chris asked.

"Karen? Who's Karen?"

"Your other daughter," he said, suddenly feeling a chill of embarrassment.

"Kelly."

"Kelly," he said, and slapped his forehead. "What's the matter with me?"

I'll tell you what's the matter, a voice inside whispered. It's happening: Your brain is dying.

Wendy shot him a look of concern. She knew what he was thinking.

Like how you forgot where you left the axe this morning, and how you have to make lists to remind you of things, and how you put the milk in the pantry and the cereal in the fridge the other day, and how simple head calculations you now have to do on paper, and those moments of disorientation when you step into the next room.

Wendy had said it was stress and anxiety, but he knew better. He could almost feel clusters of brain cells clot and die.

His eyes dropped to the photo of Abigail and thought how he would never see his son grow up. How he would never know Adam as a boy or young man. How in two years, if he were still alive, he would look at Adam and not know who he was from all the other alien faces in the world. Like Sam.

A particularly virulent form of Alzheimer's.

He'd rather die first than put Wendy and Adam through that.

"She's better, thank you," Jenny continued with an exaggerated singsongy voice that said she had nothing else to say about Kelly. "But would you believe it that in just five months Abigail will be two years old? I'm going to have a big party. Which reminds me." Without missing a beat, she pulled a bright red package from her bag. "Belated Merry Christmas."

Wendy unwrapped it and froze. It was a copy of If I Should Die. She studied the cover and dustjacket copy and photo. Then she put the book in a desk drawer and left the room without a word.

Perplexed, Jenny looked at Chris. "I didn't mean to upset her."

There was one thing Chris hadn't forgotten. March third. "Tomorrow was to be the publication party."

But the gaps in Jenny's thinking had less to do with pathology than thoughtlessness, Chris concluded.

"Oh, I forgot. Well, it's not like you'll be living in hiding forever. You're getting yourself a lawyer, right?"

Chris tried to shake his mind clear. "We're working on that."

For a moment they both stared into the fire which sputtered and flamed vigorously.

"So," Jenny said finally, "tell me about this Elixir stuff. Does it really work?"

Chris wished Wendy hadn't broken down and told her. "On lab animals it does."

"What does it actually do?"

"It appears to protect them from diseases associated with aging."

"Like what?"

Like Alzheimer's.

Like Alzheimer's.

Like Alzheimer's.

And he saw Methuselah whipping through complicated mazes as if wired.

"Arthritis, cancer, heart disease."

"Oh my, that's wonderful. And somebody thinks it's good enough for people." She rubbed a kink in her neck. "Frankly, I could use a little of that myself. Ted, too. He's pushing fifty."

Chris could hear Wendy upstairs in the baby's room. It was feeding time. He could also hear the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the corner. In a year he could be brain-dead.

"Is it possible to see what the fuss is all about?" Jenny asked. "The Elixir stuff?"

"There's really nothing to see."

"Christopher, I'm not going to tell anybody," she said with mock hurt.

Jenny had driven seven hundred miles with hot IDs for two fugitives at the top of the FBI's Most Wanted list, so he could not in good faith refuse her. "It's just that we've been walking a tightrope up here."

Jenny got up. "I understand perfectly. You're under a lot of stress."

Chris nodded. Stress.

He got up and led her downstairs to the wine closet. He unlocked it and pulled out one of the trunks. Two hundred and twelve ampules had been packed like glass bullets in styrofoam.

"Oh my," Jenny said. She removed one and held it up to the light. "And this can keep you alive indefinitely?"

"It it appears to have some such effects on monkeys." He played coy to discourage questions, but she was impervious. Being a former nurse, she wondered how they had figured out the proper dosages to give the animals. Chris explained it was trial and error until they determined that a fifteen pound monkey was could tolerate 10 milligrams.

"So, for a 150-pound man it would be ten times that, right?"

"I guess."

"So, how long could one of these keep a monkey going?"

"About ten years each."

"That much?"

"It's very concentrated, so it would have to be cut with saline. I'm getting cold," he said, and made a move to leave. The questions were making him uncomfortable. So was the pull of those ampules.

But Jenny disregarded him. "Is it just one shot and they go on and on?"

"More like once a month." He wanted to go back upstairs.

"And if they don't get their monthlies?"

"They die."

"I see." She held up the ampule. "Do you ever get tempted yourself?"

He felt the skin across his scalp prickle. "Nope."

He made a move to close the trunk when Wendy called down from upstairs. He stepped outside the closet to hear her better. A moment later he stepped back in. "One order of zinfandel," he said.

"I second the motion," Jenny chortled, and stepped outside while Chris hunted for a bottle.

He went to secure the trunk, but Jenny had already done that. For a moment it puzzled him that she had taken such liberty. And he would have said something, but she was already on her way upstairs. Just like Jenny: driven by presumptions and tidiness.

Chris locked the door and headed up, thinking about how good the wine would taste. Maybe he'd have just half a glass. If his brain cells were dying, what the hell difference would a little wine make?

The next morning before she left, Chris asked Jenny if she would call the Rose Hill nursing home in Connecticut to check on Sam's condition. She agreed and he gave her the number and some instructions. A little after ten, Jenny drove off in the van. In her handbag she carried the photos of Wendy and Chris and sample signatures. Also, two ampules of Elixir.

On their eighteenth night, Chris drove to a call box outside a fire station in Rumford. The street was dark and deserted. A little after nine, Jenny's call came through. But after a few seconds he could tell something was wrong. Had the authorities cornered her? Did she and Ted fear they were getting in too deeply? Was it a money problem?

"Chris, I'm sorry. It's your father. He's dead."

"Oh no."

"I did just as you said: I identified myself as an assistant prosecutor from Massachusetts…"

"When did it happen?" Chris asked.

"Ten days ago. They said his remains were cremated, which was the home's policy when next of kin couldn't be located. I'm sorry, Chris."

He felt the grief well up in him, but he pushed it back. "Thank you, Jenny." He hung up and headed home, concentrating on driving under the speed limit.

He arrived at the cottage around eleven. Wendy and the baby were in bed. But he knew he would not be able to sleep. He knew he would have to confront the full force of his grief and guilt. So he sat on the couch and turned on the television.

One of the channels was playing The Wild One with a lean, young Marlon Brando swaggering about the screen in tight jeans and a hurt truculent look. Today he was a three-hundred-pound bald and wheezy mound of fat draped in black tunics to hide what time had done to him.

Chris watched the movie with the volume off. The only sound was that of the sleeting rain against the windows. With his glasses off, the picture was fuzzy. But that made no difference, because all he could see was Sam lying in his bed, a pathetic shriveled shadow of the man he had been, dying in an institution made up of hands and feet and mouths moving without sense.

Chris knew that Sam hadn't had long, that his organs would give out as he languished in a vegetative state. But what ate at Chris was that he had not had the chance to say goodbye. That life had turned so bizarre he could not even risk visiting his father one last time.

Blankly he stared at the TV and proceeded to drink a six-pack of beer, one can after the next-brain cells be damned-until his head was a throbbing mass and the geometry of the room took a non-Euclidian slant and the fuzz on the screen sharpened into shapes and forms that pulled him in.

Green. The black and white had turned a dazzling green. He was walking on a vast lawn between Sam and his mother Rose. They were at Campobello, Hyde Park, New York. He could see it with brilliant clarity-the great white house with the high windows. The massive white marble tombstone of FDR. Then he was rolling on the lawn and his seven-year-old legs were cool from the grass. He was wearing navy blue pants with black-and-white saddle shoes and a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap.

"Hey there, slugger!"

Then grass shifted and became a dirt diamond at Goodwin Park in Hartford, and Sam was at the pitcher's mound with a bucket of baseballs and Chris at the plate with his Louisville Slugger. Sam held up a clean white hardball. "What do you say we give this one a run for its money?" And Chris swung with all his might and cracked the ball up to the clouds.

The next moment Sam was climbing aboard the dive boat on a reef off Boroko on the southern coast of Papua New Guinea: his body still lean and bronze, joking about the giant grouper that had spooked him, handing Chris a triton shell. Chris held the shell up to his eye imagining he could see around the curves spiraling forever inward… until he was peering through a window of the nursing home where he spotted Sam in the bed…

Chris climbed through the shell window thinking how odd it was that Sam was sleeping in his navy blue jumper shorts with a white polo shirt and socks and saddle shoes. But Sam's face was not tanned and full, but thin and dry and spotted with age. His hair was a wispy cloud across a sad pink skull. He breathed in short raspy starts through a raw toothless mouth. So that he wouldn't injure himself, Sam's hands had been bound to the sides of the bed. Chris untied one and pushed up the sleeve of his johnny. The arm, strapped with an IV needle, was like a stick covered with old wax paper. Sam looked like a mummy of himself.

"Dad? It's me, Chris."

Sam stirred but he didn't open his eyes. He didn't know Chris's name. He didn't know his own name. Chris removed the syringe from his pocket and inserted it into the IV and pushed the plunger.

It didn't take long. Sam's eyes opened. He looked confused and frightened and Chris's heart slumped. "Dad, it's me, Chris."

Sam nodded and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he smiled. "Hey, slugger, where you been?"

As if by magic, his face had tightened and smoothed out, his lips plumped up and skinned over, and his eyes lit up. From under the sheets he produced a bright new baseball. "What do you say we give this thing a run for its money?"

You betcha!

And Chris woke up.

His shirt was damp with sweat. His head thrummed painfully and his mouth was sour with beer. The television was still on: Young-buck Brando was mounting his chromed stallion.

Chris clicked off the TV, then stumbled into the bathroom and threw up. When he returned to the living room, his eyes fell on a framed photograph of Sam and Rose and Chris in box seats at a Washington Senators game. Chris must have been thirteen.

Suddenly Chris felt grief press up from the pit of his soul like a geyser. He grasped the photo and slipped to his knees to let it come. And it did. He collapsed onto the photo and dissolved into deep wracking sobs-the kind that came with no inhibitions, that rose up in black fury. Chris wept for his father. For his mother. For Wendy and Adam and himself. For the loss of it all. He wept until his eyes stung and his chest was no more than an aching hollow cavity.

"What do you say we give this thing a run for the money?"

Chris's breath stopped short. For an instant he felt totally sober.

No need to act surprised. It's been there all the time, a few layers beneath the skin of things. Like some strange organism with a life of its own, every so often sending up signs of life. Little fetal kicks and rolls, getting stronger by the day. What finally took a jab at old Dexter Quinn.

Chris pulled himself up. His legs felt wobbly like a newborn colt's. But he felt a sudden sense of purpose. Dexter was desperate, he told himself. He had had a bad heart and knew he would die soon. That was a one-shot thing. But not me. Got flagons of the stuff-last a hundred lifetimes.

Chris started to giggle but burped up a bubble of acid.

You're twisting things, buddy boy, another voice cut in. Pulling out of the hat every rabbity reason for taking a leap off a cliff in the dark, hope against hope that you'll end up in the land of milk and honey. The problem is you're fucking drunk. That's right: Gassed, blotto, smashed and filled with guilt and grief up the yin-yang. You're like the guy who convinces himself he's got this special alcohol-resistant radar unit inside his skull that will lead him home in the rainstorm no matter what, but who slams into a tree only to spend the rest of his life in a coma, curled up like a shrimp.

But another voice whispered, "Hey, slugger, what do you say we give this thing a run for the money, Huh?"

Don't want to end up like Dad, now, do we? he asked himself.

Uh-uh, no way!

But what if you miscalculate?

Impossible! He had worked out the dosages long ago.

And what if it doesn 't work?

Iwati never lied. "…on the soul of Jesus."

What about Wendy and Adam? What do you tell your wife?

That could be worked out, he reasoned. She could take it too.

And what if it works and forty years from now your kid wonders why you both look the same age?

Chris was in no mood for speculations. Forty years from now: He'd worry about that when they got there. This was carpe the diem while you still had some diem and brain cells left to guide your hand.

You're crazy drunk and reasoning through a point-eight blood alcohol level. You saw what happened to-

Suddenly his mind hit a void.

He balanced himself against the fireplace and stared into the dying embers, concentrating with all he had to remember the name of that old rhesus monkey. He could see the animal's face. He could see him jumping around the cage like a juvenile. How could this be? He had worked with the animal daily for months.

Jesus! Two syllables. Two bloody goddamn syllables. Think.

Simba. Rumba. Rambo. Jumbo. God Almighty! Help me remember that monkey's name.

It's the beer, he told himself. You're just drunk.

Bullshit! You know what's going on. Just an inch behind your hairline whole clusters of neurons are turning into gumballs. That's right, you're beginning your little bump down Alzy's Lane. Sure, it's bright up at this end, but watch the dark close around you as the rest of your brain sludges up so all that's left of Dr. Christopher Bacon is something connected to a catheter.

He shook his head and the fugue gratefully ceased. Silence.

He stared into the dying hearth for a long moment.

Then a little bright node sphinctered open at the core of Chris's consciousness, and moving on some crazy autopilot he followed it out of the bathroom and through the living room, stopping once to remove the small black pouch from the desk drawer, then proceeding down the hall to the cellar door which he opened, and then he flicked the light switch and quietly walked down the stairs, feeling the musty chill of the cellar air and the hard concrete floor that led toward the thick oak door with the large steel lock whose combination Chris couldn't recite but which his fingers knew, spinning through the right-left turns until the tumblers made that gratifying click that let the door swing open so he could grasp the pull chain of the overhead light which lit up what to the untrained eye was a wall of wine bottles behind which sat two trunks that opened with the keys around his neck.

For a long spell he stared at the rows of clear glass ampules-212, each capable of sustaining a 170-pound man for three years.

Two ampules were missing.

That couldn't be. Maybe he had miscounted when he packed them. God knows that was possible given the condition of his mind. But at the moment he could not have cared less.

He opened the pouch and removed the alcohol pads and syringe.

"Hey, slugger, what do you say?"

His mind dipped as he thought of Wendy upstairs asleep, Adam beside her. But he snipped off those thoughts.

For old time's sake, huh? You, me, and one-point-eight ccs.

Home run, Chris thought, and shot up.

He felt nothing.

Even if there were initial effects, his senses had to compete with seventy-two ounces of beer. Besides, the lab animals did not display any effects until the fourth day. So he staggered up to bed and slept a dreamless sleep until eight the next morning when he woke to a fifty-megaton hangover.

Wendy was downstairs with the baby. He could smell coffee and toast. With his head thudding painfully, he got up and took a shower and passed the day trying to detect any effects from the drug. There were none.

None but the anxiety that gripped him like claws mid-morning when he realized what he had done. There was no turning back. The substance was in his system seeking a stabilizing level which he would have to maintain or risk deterioration. After two short weeks of treatment, withdrawn mice showed aging signs beyond their time. After three weeks, their steps shortened and they died prematurely.

The stuff had immediate genetic effect. He was already dependent. Worse, he would have to tell Wendy because soon he would manifest effects that he could not predict.

Over the next few days he had momentary panic attacks. Yet, on some level, he felt a perverse relief that all other options had been eliminated. He never let on to Wendy and filled his time with chores. Meanwhile, Jenny had come up with the names of three dead people from the Midwest whose social security numbers Ted was having transferred to bogus licenses and other IDs.

On the sixth day, Chris started to wonder if Elixir was working because he still couldn't detect a reaction. On the seventh day it hit like a storm.

He was alone in the attic fixing a leak, when he felt a strange buzzing sensation in his head, as if a hornet were trapped in his skull. Rapidly the hum seemed to light up the frontal lobe of his brain with a strange alertness.

He steadied himself against a beam to gauge the effects. His heart pounded and his arms tingled. Rapidly a sensation of lightness filled his body as if he had undergone a transfusion of helium.

He took off his glasses, feeling a craving for air. As he moved to a vent window, a giddy sensation rippled through his genitals and loins. Suddenly he wanted to move, to go outside and run, leap, jump-anything to release the energy percolating throughout his system. He pushed open the vent and sucked in the cold mountain air.

The view was splendid-the frozen lake, fringed with high dark pines, and in the distance the mountain range with a bank of brooding clouds. A deer was at the lake's edge where the ice made a window.

As he watched the animal drink, it occurred to him how sharply focused the scene was. Everything stood out in stereoscopic clarity. It was shocking because his glasses were dangling from his neck. "My God!" he whispered.

Every day since ninth grade he had worn glasses. Twenty-eight years of nearsightedness that grew worse with age. Not only was the lake in perfect clarity, but the mountain range, too-as if he were peering through binoculars. He turned around and the attic interior was sharp even in the dim light. It was almost magical. He slipped his glasses on, and everything turned blurry.

His muscles hummed to move, so he bounded downstairs. Wendy was fixing a toaster oven, and Adam sat in his car seat babbling. Chris slipped on his pullover and said that he wanted to get some air. Wendy had no immediate chores for him, so he left.

The temperature was 28 degrees, but he felt hot. With his watch cap pulled low he broke into a stiff run. For four miles his legs pistoned him powerfully to the main road. He stopped barely winded and humming to run more. It was astounding. Like old Jimbo running around the open pen.

Jimbo. The name popped up as soon as he went for it.

That was another thing: His mind felt acute and strong. No holes or shadows.

He ran back to the cottage. While Wendy was preparing dinner, he went out back and chopped more wood. After several minutes she came out with a cup of coffee. "You doing your Paul Bunyan impression?"

"Mountain air. Nothing like it," he chuckled. He took the coffee, thinking that it was Wendy's first gesture of reconciliation since they had arrived a month ago. He wondered how long before she finally forgave him, if ever.

"How much more do you plan to do?"

"Another half hour, why?"

"Just didn't want to see you wear yourself out." A small firelight flickered in her eyes. Something he hadn't seen for weeks. She smiled. "I was hoping you'd save a little for me."

"Tell me you don't mean moving a bureau."

"No, but take a shower first." She took his hand and they went into the house.

Chris showered, and when he came out Wendy was naked in bed and under the covers. A fire was burning in the bedroom fireplace.

Chris lay beside her. "It's been so long. Is it still done the same way?"

"Let's see if we can remember."

They did.

When it was over, they lay still and listened to the fire cracking in the hearth. In a few minutes, Chris brushed his lips against hers. "I love you, Wendy."

"Thanks," she said.

"Thanks?"

"I love you, too."

For a second he thought he would cry, having resigned himself to living their lives at prickly odds, their love hardening to anger and hurt. But he didn't cry. Instead, he kissed her mouth and slipped down to her breasts. He then kissed a long slow line down her body until he was nestled between her thighs, moving his mouth over her pubis until she was arching herself against his face and groaning deeply again. He slid up and entered her again, feeling another full surge of passion.

"What's gotten into you?" But she closed her eyes and groaned in pleasure, not really expecting an answer.

Fires of spring, Chris thought and slipped his hands under her, raising her bottom until he was deeply engaged and moving in slow deliberate cadence again. Wendy closed her arms around him and they moved in unison until they came together for the second time.

Chris rolled onto his back. For long slow minutes they lay embraced, the only sound being their own breathing and the fire. They dozed off for a few minutes until a log cracked.

Wendy yawned and stretched, her warm breasts falling against his chest, one leg innocently entwining his. Chris felt himself stir again, and before he knew it he was fully erect under the blanket.

"That was nice," she whispered.

"Was?" and he pulled her onto him.

"You've got to be kidding." She reached down and felt him. "I don't believe it. You get a battery implant or something?"

Chris grinned. "Love-starved."

"It's only been a three weeks."

"Three weeks, four days, and two hours," he said. "But who counts?"

"Thank God it wasn't three months."

Had Adam not wakened, Chris would have gone a third round.

20

He didn't like the idea of Wendy going alone. But after six weeks cooped up in the cottage she jumped at the opportunity to get away. Jenny had called to say their IDs were ready, and Wendy would pick them up in person in Detroit.

Because Jenny and Ted were under FBI surveillance, they couldn't travel. And Wendy looked less like her media photos than Chris did his. At the Detroit bus terminal she would retrieve the material from a locker put there by a trusted employee of Ted's. They had worked out the plans in detail. Nonetheless, Chris was worried. It was the first time they would be apart.

On a Wednesday morning, with Adam in his car seat, Chris dropped Wendy off at the station in Lake Placid.

"I hope you guys will be all right," she said. She held Chris's hand tightly and cuddled the baby.

Chris kissed her. "We'll be fine," he said. "We've got so much wood to chop, you'll be back before we know it."

Wendy gave Adam a dozen kisses. "I'll call from Detroit." She brushed back the hair from Chris's forehead and studied his face. "You look good, by the way. Your skin is nice and smooth, and your eyes are clear. Must be all that exercise."

Chris gave her a lecherous grin. "Just what you give me lying down, pussycat."

She chuckled lightly. "That's another reason I'm going-just to recover."

Chris watched her go into the station. He waited in the car while she purchased her ticket. Already, he was missing her.

As the bus filled up, he glanced in the mirror. She was right: He did look better, although Wendy hadn't picked up half of what he saw. The crowfeet tracks around his eyes had begun to fade. Incipient liver spots on the back of his right hand had disappeared. His hair was thicker. And it wasn't all the wood-chopping-his body had hardened into that of an athlete ten years his junior. His deltoids bulged and his forearms looked like small hams-nothing wielding an axe would do. In fact, the changes were almost frightening. Like some kind of Twilight Zone experience-looking into a mirror with a yesteryear reflection staring back.

Even more remarkable were the interior changes. He felt more agile, stronger, and, yes, more sexual. In a word, younger. And, most important, he could swear that his mind was sharper-that his recall and memory had improved. He'd even bet that his IQ was higher. His only wish was that he could share it with Wendy. But the time was not yet right. When they settled down someplace safe in their new identities.

The long bus rolled out of its bay onto the street. Wendy was at a window waving at them. Chris waved back and uttered a silent prayer. God, send her safely back to me.

Later that day Wendy called to say she had made it safely to Detroit and would meet him Friday night at the station.

The two days passed and Chris took care of Adam and did more chores.

He also took his second shot. It still puzzled him that two ampules appeared to be missing. His only explanation was that he had miscounted that night at Darby.

"'Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, dormez vous? Dormez vous…?'"

Jenny changed Abigail's diaper while she sang to the music box. The silver metal plinkings filled the air like bubbles.

"That's French, and someday I'll teach you, but for now we'll do it in English. 'Brother John, Brother John…" She held a foot in each hand and danced them in the air as she sang and her daughter wiggled and giggled. "'Ding, ding, dong.' Can you say that, 'Ding, ding, dong?'"

"Donk, donk."

"That's it, that's it," Jenny laughed. It was the only moment of peace the whole evening. Before Ted stomped out of the house for his card game with the boys, they had had a big fight. He didn't like how much they had gotten themselves involved with her fugitive sister and her husband. "Their faces are all over the networks," he had shouted.

"She's my sister."

"I don't care if she's the Virgin Mary. If they find out we helped them, they'll put us away for twenty fucking years."

She hated him when he got loud and vulgar. She hated how his face contorted and turned red, and the filthy language that flowed out of his mouth like raw sewage. "Will you please lower your voice? The baby can hear you."

"The baby, the baby. Is that all you think of? We supplied bogus IDs to the most wanted criminals in the fucking country, and you're worried about the baby waking up. Jesus!" He jabbed a finger at his forehead. "Sometimes I think you're not all there."

Jenny deflected that. "Well, it's not the first time you've done something outside the law."

They both knew what she was talking about. In the late seventies, the Internal Revenue Service had caught Ted for tax evasion and sentenced him to three years in prison. Jenny also suspected that he had something to do with a car-theft ring that exported stolen luxury vehicles to Europe and the Middle East.

"You bitch. You just don't let go, do you? The dog shits once, and you just keep rubbing his nose in it."

"Will you please stop swearing. She'll hear you."

"Jesus!" he shouted in frustration. "Now I know why that kid of yours is such a flako." He grabbed his keys and left the house, slamming the door behind him.

She heard him drive off, thinking how for years Wendy had complained that Chris was never home. How Jenny envied her that. She loved it when Ted was gone. He knew nothing about the sensitivity of children-how impressionable they were. That was the problem with men. They created a vulgar and dangerous world unfit for the babies they sired.

Jenny ran upstairs. All the shouting had aroused Abigail. "Don't cry, my little angel, don't cry," she cooed, as she took her in her arms. "Daddy's been bad, but he's gone now. And Mommy's right here."

Jenny dimmed the light and sat in the rocking chair while the music box tinkled softly in the background.

"Don't cry, my little beauty, don't cry. Mommy's going to be your mommy for a long long time," she said, and her eyes fell on the two glass vials sitting on the nightstand.

On schedule, Wendy called Friday morning to say that she had a complete set of new ID's-licenses, birth certificates, and social security cards. Their names were Roger and Laura Glover, and their son was Brett.

He liked the names but couldn't process the fact that when she returned they would no longer be known as Christopher, Wendy, and Adam Bacon. It was too much to hold onto.

In fact, Chris's mind was having problems holding much of anything. His metabolism had kicked into turbo. It was like being on amphetamines nonstop. He could not focus. Were it not for Adam, he would have gone for a long burning run. Instead, he put the baby down and made a mental note that there were three things he had to do that night-three MUST-DOs: Check up on Adam. Pick up Wendy. Take his next Elixir injection.

If another treatment made him even more hyper, he'd take some Xanax-what Ross Darby once recommended for insomnia.

He shot out back to the pile of tree trunks. The night was clear and frigid, the sky pinpricked with a million stars. Low on the horizon of trees rose a fat white moon. Over the last week he had moved to the chainsaw. The sound traveled, but there were too few winter residents about to take notice. Besides, he got a lot more wood cut. It was also much more exciting. He pulled the cord, and the saw growled into action.

In the light from the deck he worked the saw, cutting logs until he had a huge pile. He did that for an hour until his hands felt fused to the machine-as if the muscles of his arms had grown over the grips and up the blade of the rotor, its high-whining barbs powered by the heat of his own blood and blotting out all awareness but the raw pleasure of grinding through the timbers and spitting up dust and smoke and filling his head with a gratifying roar.

He chainsawed until he ran out of gas, then refilled it and continued cutting, knowing in the back of his mind that he had passed into some crazed auto-mode.

Someplace deep down a voice whispered of things he couldn't forget-three of them.

Adam.

He snapped off the saw and bolted back into the house. The baby was in a deep sleep still. "Good," he whispered, and shot outside again.

A flick of his arm, and the chain screamed into action, and he cut until the motor choked out again.

You 're forgetting something

Adam's fine, he told himself. So he refilled the tank and pulled the cord to action.

Something else. Wendy. Pick up Wendy… Where, though? Where was Wendy?

Bus station.

Lake Placid.

The thoughts came to him in little periodic bursts. Bursts that were getting farther apart. Lake Placid. Plenty of time.

time

What time?

He put the saw down still idling and ran into the house and checked Adam. His eyes passed by the clock, but nothing registered. Not the fact that it was 9:45 and he was supposed to be on the road by now.

Back outside he revved the saw then screamed through another ten-foot trunk of oak until he had neat fat logs in a pile.

forgot something else

time

Adam

something else

He turned it off the chain saw and looked around as if expecting somebody to step up with a cue card. He walked toward the lake. The surface was a brilliant sheet dusted with diamonds. It was a magical scene, and for a long moment he just stood by the banks taking it all in, his head still buzzing from the saw.

Without thinking he plopped onto the ground. He was sweating profusely, his shirt icy against his skin. He rubbed the cold metal band of his watch. In the moonlight he noticed the small hand on the eleven, the long one on the three. But it didn't register because he felt faint.

He got up hoping that movement would help. Guided by the moonlight, he began walking but instead of heading toward the house he moved into the woods without thought. Deeper into the thick he stumbled until he was totally disoriented and feeling fainter, driven onward in hope of remembering just what he had forgotten to do.

Wendy.

He braced himself on a tree. "Where's Wendy?" he said out loud.

Coming home

"Have to get Wendy. Almost forgot."

You forgot something else

He turned and saw the moonlight through the trees and he felt his body jolt.

"It was horrible. He just shriveled up like that."

"Oh, God, no. Nooooo…"

He stumbled toward the moon, thinking it was the warm bright lights of home, with Wendy inside and Mom and Dad and baby Adam all by the fire. And a big bed.

and in the big bed was…

gotta get back before it's too late.

not enough time.

gotta take my shot.

no, not the insulin

ELIXIR

ELIXIR

He saw the bed, open and clean white glistening sheets so wide and smooth… I want to go home. Not feeling good. Body sore. Hurts me.

me hurt

He flopped on the bed and spit out a tooth. The tip of his tongue found the gaping hole. He put his finger inside and felt another wiggle. His teeth were breaking off in jagged pieces. It was horrible. They filled his mouth and he spit them out.

His head ached. He pulled off his gloves and ran his fingers across the scalp. Large clumps of hair came off in his hands. His head felt cold. He was going bald by the second.

In the moonlight he saw his hands.

His hands, they screamed with pain, and before his eyes they shrivelled up to small knobbed things. He brought one to his face. It had gotten tiny and dark. His fingers hurt, but he barely felt the pain. His face felt totally unfamiliar. It was full and flabby, the creases too deep, the flesh under the chin too loose, the neck too thin. It was like touching somebody else's face. And his head all smooth with thin fuzz in the back.

Then the pain erupted. And he suddenly saw himself from above, lying on the bed of snow in a clearing, his body convulsing with agony as he began to shrivel up and die-like Methuselah and Jimbo-

Like Dexter Quinn-

Like Sam-

But then the pain stopped and he felt his mind slow down as if under rapidly dimming power-a thing old and weary and barely able to process the few sad moments left, wishing it would get itself over with, wishing he could for one last time see his wife (don't let her find me like this), sensing himself going down a long spiral stairwell, not bumping his way step by step but moving smoothly because he couldn't walk since his feet were all gnarled and twisted which explained why he was slouched up in a big metal chair with wheels on the side locked in place and on this special escalator that corkscrewed down toward a small ball of white light at the bottom that grew larger and brighter as he descended, his poor eyes fixed in horrid fascination on the glow which in no time became a dreamy white light, not hard or harsh, but like fog lit up from within-a warm incandescent blankness that closed around him like a shell, the interior growing dimmer and quieter until all he registered was the soft raspy sigh of his last breath before the long long night closed down on him.