“You didn’t ask where it came from?” Grey asked. “Who might’ve owned the research?”
“I was desperate to find something, anything, that would further our work. And telomerase! Dorian assured me he was an honest businessman, and that he paid a fair price. I—yes, you’re right. I was naïve, and blinded by my hope.”
“Some call it ambition,” Veronica murmured. “Now that I can identify with.”
Grey said quietly, “What happened next?”
“I received a visit from Dorian’s messenger. He opened a carrying case and gave me a small, hermetically sealed metal container. Inside was a test tube.”
J
ax signaled to the bartender for another hit of Jack. All drinks have their places, he mused. Wine was for seduction and swanky restaurants. Gin martinis, for social functions and high-end nightclubs. Cuba Libres: beach bars and low-end nightclubs. Tequila was for Mexico and bars with ugly women. As Jax’s Kiwi friend once told him, if you don’t see anything you like, have another tequila. If you still don’t, repeat until you do.
Vodka was for Scandinavia, Russia, and bars patronized by females from any of said countries. Frozen drinks, drinks with fruit flavors, mixed drinks with more than two ingredients that weren’t martinis: to be quaffed only during torture. Beer—all times and places not covered by the above list.
Stuck in a living Kafkaesque nightmare and unable to escape the implacable minions of a psychopathic dwarf and his deranged bald employer: strictly the realm of Jack Daniels.
Jax knew he was being tracked, but he’d be damned if he knew how. And he knew more ways to track someone than he knew ways to curse in foreign languages. He’d exhausted his resources and concluded either Al-Miri really was a wizard, or he was using a new technology.
How many days had he been on the run? Maybe not that many, but it felt like an entire chapter of his life.
He stood to use the restroom, and took a moment to gain his equilibrium. It was rare for him to be this far gone, and he was thoroughly enjoying it. He might not in the morning, but hey, that was the price of admission.
His shoes stuck and smacked against the various unpleasant substances coating the floor of the dive bar. The place was a low-ceilinged, wood-floored shack that would probably fall over if he pushed hard enough on one of the walls. The bar smelled like the floor felt: beer, vomit, sweat, probably some urine mixed in from those special patrons who just couldn’t hold it. A couple of indolent ceiling fans circulated the foul air.
Jax wanted off this continent. He wanted to be back in the nether regions, somewhere he didn’t have to worry about rules, laws, or police he couldn’t bribe with ease. He had shaken off the people following him on three different nights, in three different states, and they kept coming.
He couldn’t risk a scene at a United States airport, or involve United States police. He didn’t have the right contacts here. So he was heading south, or north, he hadn’t yet decided. Each route had its advantages. The Canadian border was easier to cross in a pinch, but Mexican officials asked fewer questions. Whichever he ended up choosing, he was then going across the pond, and then across another. If they wanted to follow him to his turf, then it was game on. He’d hire a small army, hole up on top of a mountain next to the Taliban, and blow whoever came after him back to Oklahoma.
In the meantime, he was sticking to the worst places he could find on the way, the doormats of America, places where his exotic pursuers would be far more unwelcome than he was. He was presently on the outskirts of Memphis, on one of the long flat strips of forgotten highway that ringed the city. The battered pawn shops and bars, the low-hanging wires and cracked pavement, the broken street lights and barefoot mothers on the corner: he might as well have been in Guatemala City.
When he returned to his seat an enormous, leather-clad biker with a foot-long goatee had claimed the seat next to him. After the incident in West Virginia, Jax picked up a used chopper and stuck to biker bars and hotels in the worst parts of towns. If a bunch of Arab assassins showed their faces in this bar, they’d have fifty armed and xenophobic ex-cons to deal with.
Jax signaled to the bartender again, this time for two. The biker slapped him on the back, and asked Jax what he was riding. They discussed the lifestyle and the biker bought the next round.
The man belched, patted his piñata-sized gut and asked Jax where he was from. Jax knew his words were slurred. “Oklahoma.”
The biker pointed at the underside of Jax’s left forearm, where a khaki-colored snake curled around a ruby cross. “You religious?”
“Nah, boss. The church’s good for a couple of laughs, some quality architecture. Not much good at explaining anything.”
The biker was still looking at the tattoo. “Uncle Sam’s playpen?”
“I was with a merc unit for a while. The tat was the thing to do.”
“No shit? Where, like Iraq or something?”
“All over.”
“You a bad-ass or somethin,’ brother?’”
Jax shrugged. “You do what you gotta do. I prefer a cold beer and a willing woman.”
“Looks like you’re cozyin’ up to a bottle of Jack tonight.”
“The beer tastes like goat piss, and I don’t see any willing women.”
The biker made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a growl. “I ain’t never met a merc. I thought that was a foreign line of work.”
“Americans make the best mercenaries. They’re innate capitalists.”
The man averted his eyes and chuckled in that hollow way people do when they don’t get the joke. “Pay’s good?”
“Very.”
“Maybe I could get in on that?”
“You have any training?”
“I been bustin’ heads in every goddamned town from here to New Orleans for thirty-five years, brother. That training enough for you?”
Jax slammed his glass on the wooden bar and asked for two more. Route decision: made. “I suppose it is.”
“I’m serious. I want in on some of that action.”
“It might require a relocation.”
“How’s that?”
“Not many dirty wars in the U.S. right now. You could head south, though. There’s always room for another merc in the jungle. Pay’s shit compared to some places, but the perks are phenomenal. It’s a good place to bust your cherry.”
The biker’s chest puffed out, and he wiped a teardrop of sweat from his forehead and shook it off his finger. “South, huh? You mean spic-ico? I’m good for twenty of those pint-sized bastards.”
“Further south. Where the real stuff goes down.”
He frowned. “How far south?”
“Nowhere you can’t ride to.”
“Shit, though, man. What, I just show up?”
Jax drummed his fingers on the bar. “I know some people. I can make some calls. Gringos, too. Someone always needs help down south.”
“No shit?”
“I’ll make the call in the morning. I’m headed that way myself, tomorrow. You can follow me down if it works out.”
The biker grunted towards a couple of men shooting pool ten feet away. “Can I bring two of my boys?”
Jax grinned and held up four fingers to the bartender.
S
tefan’s voice hushed. “It was a single test tube, full of liquid.”
“With an image of a bearded green man and a palm frond staff,” Grey said. “Same as the tattoos.”
Stefan stared at Grey, but Grey signaled for him to continue. “I burned with curiosity, as you can imagine. Perhaps this was a cruel trick? A hoax from a competitor? A misguided attempt at science from one of the radical prolongevitist groups? No matter—I took the test tube straight to the lab. The safe it arrived in was temperature controlled, and I transferred the test tube to a similar environment.”
He cupped his jaw with his thumb and a bent forefinger, and started to pace again. “Please stop me if I become too technical.”
“Wait,” Veronica said, and stood. “Excuse me a minute—I need to run to the restroom. Don’t say
anything
without me.”
Grey’s mind was spinning from Stefan’s story, but speculation was useless. He took the time to stretch his legs, and wandered back to the courtyard. He saw the monk under the tree, sitting as he had before. Grey watched him as a gust of wind tumbled through the trees like an out of control acrobat. The monastery was a haven, a refuge, yet it had another quality to it, a permanence of isolation that hit too close to home.
He saw Veronica returning, and he walked with her. Stefan resumed speaking once they settled. “The liquid had an emerald hue, with a metallic tinge. It was odorless.” He rubbed his chin again. “We touched on this before, but how familiar are you with the process of aging in human beings?”
“Not very,” Grey said. “I know aging is a complex process, that it’s not regulated by any one gene and, as you said, it’s not an inevitable part of our DNA.”
Veronica looked at him with approval.
“Exactly,” Stefan said. “There is no biological message that commands the human organism to grow old. We do not
have
to age. It serves no evolutionary function. Aging, rather, is a complex combination of factors that involve changes to the molecular and cellular structure of the adult organism, including oncogenic and mitochondrial mutations, lysosomal and extracellular aggregates, hormone loss, and cellular senescence.”
Grey put a hand out. “You just went over my pay grade.”
“After the peak reproductive years, the human organism simply begins to break down. Most major contributors to the aging process begin at the cellular level, culminating with the Hayflick Limit and senescence. It seems the best way to attack aging, as we discussed, would be to periodically repair the cells with telomerase, circumvent the Hayflick limit, and avoid senescence.”
“Which is why the biomeds have been scrambling for decades to isolate and produce telomerase,” Veronica said.
“Telomerase is not a panacea,” he said. “There is still damage to the endocrine system, the immune system, post-reproductive Medawarian diseases, and other things to contend with that may not be solved by the introduction of telomerase. I grant you, however, that those are minor compared to the damage caused by cellular breakdown.”
Stefan looked them in the eye, first Grey, then Veronica. “The liquid in the test tube contained a large percentage of telomerase.”
Veronica gripped her chair. “You’re joking.”
Grey’s face scrunched. “I thought everyone has telomerase.”
“We do,” Stefan said. “It is a naturally occurring substance. A naturally occurring substance that science
has never reproduced
. Let me clarify that statement—we’ve been able to isolate miniscule amounts of telomerase, far less than I found in the test tube, by culturing huge vats of cancerous cells. That process has yielded no viable research, and is a dead end. We don’t understand the full protein composition of telomerase—we don’t know how to make it. Until I received this liquid, I wasn’t convinced it was possible. No one was.”
“How sure are you?” Veronica said.
“When it comes to my science, I do not guess. I rushed a group of scientists to the lab. We don’t know how it was created—but that liquid was, without a doubt, full of the telomerase enzyme.”
For the first time since Grey had met her, Grey thought he was not looking at a calculated expression. Veronica was slumped in her chair, mouth slack, staring at Stefan.
She spoke in a stuttered whisper. “That means—that means that we can…”
“There is even more startling news, but there is also bad news.”
“More good news,” she said greedily. “I want more good news.”
“Another significant roadblock to halting the aging process is the accumulated damage to DNA caused by free radicals. This is a leading cause, as you know, of cancer. Telomerase will not itself cure cancer; in fact, too much telomerase can activate cancerous replication. Are you familiar with a substance called WR-2721?”
Both shook their heads.
“After World War II, United States military scientists sought to create a compound that would combat the effects of nuclear radiation. They developed substances called radio protectors, compounds with enhanced antioxidant properties. These compounds have been refined with time, and one of the more effective radio protectors ever developed is a substance called WR-2721. Vitamins, and other over the counter defenses to free radicals, are almost worthless. But WR-2721 is a powerful weapon against free radicals.”
Veronica said, “Why have I never heard of this stuff?”
“It’s only recently been released for civilian study, and it will be decades before its anti-aging properties on humans are fully understood. The human body needs certain reactive chemicals, and introducing excessive amounts of antioxidants can actually be deleterious.”
Stefan paused again, Grey assumed to get their full attention. He needn’t have bothered. Grey didn’t completely understand the science, but he sure as hell could grasp the import.
“We also identified the presence of a substance similar to WR-2721 in the test tube. On its own, an antioxidant will never be a significant weapon against aging. But combined with telomerase in a chemically viable solution… we also found trace elements of a chemical called ALT-711, or phenacyldimethylthiazolium chloride, which has been shown to restore the elasticity of skin and cartilage in animal trials.”
“My god,” Veronica whispered. She placed her hand on Grey’s knee and squeezed. “If someone hadn’t just tried to kill us over that test tube,” she breathed, “I wouldn’t believe any of this.”
Stefan’s voice had not changed tone; his face had not so much as twitched. He spoke as one who had already accepted the truth of his statements. “Whatever cocktail of science was in that test tube, it would need to undergo far more testing before we fully understand it, and before it would be commercially viable. But make no mistake, my friends—for all intents and purposes, that test tube contained the elixir of life.”
A
l-Miri took long deep breaths that rose from his toes and coursed along his spine and into his stomach. He took twenty-one of these breaths. The calmness of the ritual left him light-headed.