Forever (22 page)

With no lights save the glow emitted by the
banks of television monitors, computer terminals and fibre-optic
readout, Dr Vassiltchikov was a strange, vivid shade of green. Like
something out of a sci-fi movie.

Or a tiny woman who'd been dipped in
Day-Glo.

At consoles angling off in front of her sat
her two young assistants, one male, one female. Both young enough
to be her grandchildren, which they weren't; both glowing the same
iridescent shade of green as the tiny doctor, who paced incessantly
back and forth like a luminous green phantom. Face, hair, eyes,
smock - green, green, green, green.

'Body temperature of Subject Number One.'
Her voice was clipped and had a thick, eastern-European accent.

'Fahrenheit 97.152,' the female assistant
rattled off.

'And Subject Number Two?'

'Fahrenheit 97.380,' the male assistant
supplied.

'Good, good.' In Dr Vassiltchikov's murmur
was an edge of excitement, and she permitted herself one of her
very rare smiles. Warm satisfaction glowed in her like fragrant,
heady wine, but now was not the time to bask in
self-congratulation. Reward enough that her theory had been proven,
that her efforts at lowering the body temperatures of both Ernesto
de Veiga and Zarah Bohm another fraction of a degree had been
successful. More important, the lowered temperatures had remained
at those precise levels for weeks now. Weeks! And never had her two
subjects been healthier!

Abruptly a faint bitterness crossed her
lips, the bright joy of her achievement rapidly diminishing.

How it rankled, not being able to publish
her findings. How it soured everything, this inability to trumpet
her hard-won achievements to the world!

Ah! To receive credit! International
recognition! Respect!

And to think she had always believed herself
to be above such petty human vanities! For years, love of science
and research, and working for the sheer satisfaction of it alone,
had been enough. But now . . .

Now, in her eighties, with time swiftly
running out, she found herself yearning for those sweet tangible
fruits which should have been hanging abundantly from the tree of
her labours - receiving her due from her peers; perhaps being
nominated for a Nobel Prize; above all, knowing that other
scientists would forever use her discoveries as reference points in
their own work, thus perpetuating what she had begun, their
footnotes ensuring her the one, the true, the only real
immortality!

But enough. Why dwell on the impossible?
Going public with her discovery was out of the question, for a
multitude of reasons.

There was the need to keep her subjects -
her benefactors - utterly secret; there was the controversial
methodology involved; there was also the smallness of most people's
minds to consider.

Her anger and contempt for the rest of
mankind flared up, burned ulcerously. And as if those were not
obstacles enough, then there was always the question of her past...
the damned, damned wretched past!

Now the walls, crammed to capacity with
state-of-the-art electronics, seemed to mock; the super-sensitive
microphones, which amplified the sounds of steady breathing from
inside the treatment room, seemed to emit a chorus of raspy jeers.
Everything - the LED readouts, which, from the probes attached to
both subjects provided instant information on such essentials as
body temperature, blood pressure, pulse, EEG, and the like; the
dozens of computer screens capable of calling up a staggering
encyclopaedia of medical and physiological information - all this
was suddenly reduced to insignificance.

For how could any of it be significant if no
one ever learned of it?

The irony of the situation did not escape
her. She, who had virtually discovered the fountain of youth, would
herself soon die, growing older, more feeble, and looking more like
a prune as she turned back the clock for her benefactors.

She stood there, rigid, thinking - life is a
series of small bad jokes . . . finished off with the biggest joke
of them all. . .

. . .To sleep. . .

. . . perchance to dream . . .

. . . forevermore.

Zarah imagined herself weightless, floating
in the womb whence she came. The womb to which, daily, like
clockwork, she eagerly returned.

Eyes shut, and lying absolutely still, she
imagined the various monitors and probes attached to her naked body
to be the delic- iously sexy reproductive organs of some alien
creature to whom she was bonded by its thread-thin tentacles.

It was almost obscene, the well-being she
felt, and her mood was due to a variety of factors:

The earphones she wore, through which the
newly digitalised, compact-disc release of Lili Schneider's 'Dov' e
1'Indiana bruna?' filled her ears with Delibes's glorious Lakme,
scratchily recorded back in 1946, but technically flawless and pure
now. Oh, but how pure and perfect!

The plastic catheter of the IV to which she
was hooked up, which steadily dripped its solution of
youth-prolonging hormones, cells, and mutated DNA proteins into her
bloodstream, along with, on this day, the thrice-weekly additive of
growth hormone.

And, above all, her well-being stemmed from
the secure knowledge that she was as beautiful, as young, as
unlined and as body-perfect as ever - and would remain that way for
decades more to come.

The windowless treatment room in which she
and Ernesto reclined was by no means stark and sterile. It was
luxuriously soothing. Thickly carpeted, with track lights aimed at
gilt-framed Gaugins and Picassos glowing from the mulberry-coloured
walls. There was not a gurney or a hospital bed in sight: she and
Ernesto reclined on futuristic grey leather loungers which had been
custom-moulded to fit each of their bodies.

And it was in this simple but lush room,
with its computer- regulated environment, where not only the
climate, but the very air itself was electronically controlled so
that it was constantly oxygen-enriched, that Zarah felt most at
peace. From where the world seemed perfect in almost every way.

Here, she was possessed of no anxieties.

No unpleasant realities.

Just utter privacy.

Comfort.

Delicious sensations.

And the knowledge of youth everlasting.

Nothing to speed her pulse, nothing to raise
the pressure of her blood.

Reduced to this state of sheer mental bliss,
her corporeal body seemed, for the time being, at least, to cease
to exist. For she was in her own, her very own, very safe, and
very, very nurturing cocoon . . .

Eyes shut, Ernesto felt himself floating,
his body one entity; his mind, uncooped from its earthly cares,
another entity entirely, one as capable of swooping and soaring -
of reaching out to the furthermost stars in a millisecond - as it
was of drifting indolently, like a lazy butterfly on a breezeless
day, scant inches above the carapace from whence it had been
freed.

How utterly ironic that this daily hour,
spent shackled to the IV, should be when he felt his greatest
freedom. Nothing - no amount of world-wide travel, of crossing any
country's borders with the privileges accorded a VIP of his
stature, not his staggering wealth or the fleets of airplanes and
limousines at his disposal - nothing could generate such a feeling
of unadulterated liberation.

For only here, with unseen video cameras
trained on him, and electronic probes on wires or in the form of
microchip skin patches attached to various parts of his body, so
that his every breath and beat of his heart was monitored, could he
put his mind at rest and indulge in the flights of fancies he so
yearned for.

Never did these treatments make him feel in
the least bit constricted, nor did the claustrophobic reality of
the IV and probes repel or frighten him, for to Ernesto, it was all
a matter of perception - and the way he perceived this forced hour
of medication and meditation was of entering a place where reality
was suspended, regression and progression merged and became one,
and the past could be relived, the present put on hold, the mind
given free reign.

He didn't think it the least bit odd that
some of his best ideas came to him while he lay motionless, the IV
dripping its youth- prolonging solution of cells and hormones and
mutated DNA proteins into his blood-stream.

Ideas. Solutions. Amazing revelations. And
schemes, strategies, abstractions! So much was given birth to in
this void, snatched out of thin air. Snatched like -

- the gift of youth eternal!

Gradually the lights brightened. The music
in Zarah's headphones faded.

Ernesto sighed to himself. The IVs were
empty. An hour had passed.

Reality was reasserting itself.

With a hiss, the stainless-steel air-locks
slid apart and Dr Vassiltchikov marched in, her stride purposeful
and authoritative, her face raisin-like in the unflattering bright
lights. Deftly she slid the catheter needles out of the backs of
Zarah's and Ernesto's hands, tugged on the tubing, and let go.
Automatically, the two catheters rose up into the ceiling and
disappeared.

'I will have the monitors and probes off you
in no time,' she said as she worked. 'Then, when you are both
dressed, I want to take you on a short tour. That way, you can see
our latest research results for yourselves. I think you will both
be quite excited by the progress we have made!'

Sitto da Veiga, Brazil

'Gene-cloning, growth hormone replacement
and now calorie- restricted diets,' Dr Vassiltchikov said, ticking
off each item on her fingers.

The three of them were marching side by
side, the little doctor in the middle, along the glass-enclosed
walkway which connected the central, ten-storey solar-glass pyramid
with the biochemical laboratories where they were headed, and which
were housed in the separate, sealed-off, four-storey cube.

'When you think about it, we have made
thousands of years of progress since the so-called "dark ages" of
placental implants and ewe cell injections. Thousands! But then . .
. ' - Dr Vassiltchikov permitted herself a smile, as if the three
of them were sharing a very private, and very secret joke. -' ... I
do not need to tell the two of you that, do I?'

They stopped at a set of brushed-steel doors
which had neither handles, knobs, nor locks. On each, a large
yellow decal with black lettering had been affixed. The one on the
left warned:

CAUTION

Biological Hazard

Restricted Area

Authorised Personnel Only

And on the right:

DANGER

Carcinogenic Contaminants

Teratogenic Substances

and Radioactive Isotopes

In Use

Producing her plastic identification card,
Dr Vassiltchikov slid it into a slot, a green light glowed, and the
doors hissed apart.

They walked through. Now they were in the
first of three separate airlocks, whose function it was to
completely seal off the laboratory in case of contamination. Twice
more, Dr Vassiltchikov slipped her ID card into an electronic slot,
and at last they entered the biochemical laboratory.

The fluorescent lighting was bright, the
recirculated air chilled. A king's ransom in up-to-the-moment
scientific and technical equipment only added to the unwelcoming
cold, and unpleasantly sterile atmosphere. Determinedly high-tech
with its exposed blue anodised girders and red anodised struts, it
was, thought Zarah as she followed the doctor and Ernesto through
the huge windowless main room, as ugly and utilitarian a place as
could possibly exist.

Along both walls of the sixty-by-forty room
were lab stations, each equipped with machinery outfitted with
various dials, intricate glass tubing, electrical connectors,
computer terminals, monitors, and stainless-steel ventilator hoods.
At each, a technician in a white lab coat was busy doing
unfathomable things.

In the centre of the room was an enormous
island - as though this was some obscene super-kitchen, and the
technicians toqueless chefs - where a hundred million
dollars'-worth of equipment was shared: double-barrelled stereo
microscopes, humming supercomputers, high-resolution video screens,
automated gene sequencers - the list went on and on.

Unlike Zarah, Ernesto found it all
fascinating. For him, nothing was too complex or perplexing.
Nothing sickened or repelled, and he wanted to know everything,
going out of his way to peer through every microscope in use,
asking to have everything explained to him. He regarded the four
new Cray Y-MP2E supercomputers, which ran the entire facility, as
he would the Holy Grail. The endless sequence of numbers on the
automated gene sequencers held him in thrall.

Zarah stirred restlessly and made a moue of
impatience, but Dr Vassiltchikov indulged Ernesto's thirst for
knowledge - in part because she knew which side of her, and the
entire laboratory's, bread was buttered - but also in part because
of the sheer delight he took in everything, the wide-eyed, almost
childlike way he absorbed new-found knowledge, his mind soaking up
information like an eager sponge.

On they moved, until at last they had worked
their way to the far end of the room. Here, six different doors
branched off to other, more specialised, biochemical labs. Dr
Vassiltchikov chose the left-most door. Like the others, this one,
too, was of brushed steel and lacked handles, knobs or keyholes.
There was just the ubiquitous slot for a security card, and a red
and a green light, and another yellow-and-black decal. This
particular one warned:

TOP SECRET AREA