Immortal

by Dean Crawford

  ‘It’s a tiny mite, less than half a millimeter long.’

  Ethan glanced at the picture. ‘The image is magnified.’

  ‘Yes. The demodicids just look like worms with legs that are tiny stumps.’

  ‘Is it dangerous?’ Lopez asked curiously.

  ‘Not at all,’ Willis said. ‘You’ve probably got a few hundred of them on you right now. They live in the pores and hair follicles on your face, and often in the roots of your eyelashes. Women get more of them because of the cosmetics they use. Those little critters just love the chemicals.’

  Lopez blanched, staring wide-eyed at Willis. Ethan, trying not to smirk, stepped forward.

  ‘We’re here on Lieutenant Zamora’s behalf.’

  Willis’s smile faded and his shoulders seemed to sag. He nodded, and gestured ahead to the open door of his office. Ethan led the way inside, followed by Lopez who was tentatively touching her face. Willis closed the door behind them and slumped into a swivel chair behind a small desk, upon which sat a computer and several paper trays. The office had a small window that looked out over a parking lot, the distant green hills tinged with blue in the hazy sunlight beyond.

  ‘I suppose this is about what happened at Glorietta Pass,’ Willis said sulkily. ‘I’ve told the police everything I know.’

  ‘Maybe you have,’ Ethan said, ‘but then again maybe you haven’t.’

  Willis opened his mouth to protest but Lopez cut across him.

  ‘We don’t have time to mess around, Tyler. This man, Hiram Conley, shot you after an argument in which you were every bit as involved as he was. We have a dozen witnesses and all of their statements correlate. You knew this guy and you know why he shot you. Speak up, and this will all be a lot easier.’

  Willis’s feeble defiance crumbled, but he shook his head. ‘It’s not that easy. You don’t know what’s been happening here.’

  ‘Then maybe you should fill us in,’ Ethan suggested. ‘This isn’t about local law enforcement anymore, Tyler. The government is taking an interest in what happened down here, and what you tell us will get back to them. If they think that you’re lying . . .’

  Ethan let the loaded statement hang in the air between them. Willis digested its meaning, and set his coffee cup down on the desk before him.

  ‘I’m not lying about anything,’ he said. ‘The government wouldn’t have any interest in me at all if it weren’t for what Hiram Conley showed me.’

  ‘Go on,’ Lopez encouraged.

  ‘What happened to Hiram Conley’s corpse?’

  ‘We were hoping you could tell us,’ Lopez said, folding her arms and gesturing out of the small office window. ‘Theft of state-controlled corpses is a federal offense. If you’re charged, you can get used to a view of the outside world just like that one but with bars.’

  ‘I never saw what happened to Conley after the ranger shot him, I swear!’ Willis yelped.

  ‘Take an educated guess,’ Ethan said, picking up on Lopez’s attempts to entrap Willis into revealing whatever it was he was trying to hide.

  ‘It’s too dangerous!’ Willis snapped.

  ‘Tell us what you safely can,’ Ethan suggested, ‘at least then we’ll be able to see where it might take our investigation.’

  Willis sighed and rubbed his forehead.

  ‘It started a few weeks ago, when I was coming to the end of a two-year study into an illness known as Werner syndrome.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Lopez asked, already scribbling notes.

  ‘It’s a very rare disorder characterized by premature aging, more so than any other segmental progeria. The disease is caused by a mutation in a gene that causes excessive telomere attrition.’

  ‘So, people with this disorder die prematurely?’ Ethan hazarded.

  ‘They normally develop without symptoms until they reach puberty,’ Willis said, ‘upon which they age rapidly, often appearing decades older. Other symptoms include loss of and graying of hair, thickening of the skin and cataracts in both eyes.’

  ‘Is it curable?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘That’s what I was working on,’ Willis said. ‘A recent study found that mice which were genetically modified to express the genes thought to cause Werner syndrome in humans were restored to normal health and lifespan when vitamin C was put in their drinking water. The work was incomplete but the potential for study was immense. I’d also been studying cellular defense proteins in humans called sirtuins. Drugs that boost these proteins have already been shown to extend the lifespan of mice by about fifteen percent.’

  Ethan thought for a moment.

  ‘So how does Hiram Conley tie into all this?’

  ‘I was working on a number of cellular senescence papers,’ Willis said, ‘trying to understand how Werner syndrome worked and whether it could be reversed in order to slow aging. I’d published a few when Hiram Conley showed up here, real quiet like. He said he had something to show me, and handed me a vial with what he claimed was spinal fluid in it, from a lumbar puncture. It’s not every day that somebody wanders into your lab with spinal fluid, so I agreed to culture it to see what emerged. A few days later I looked at the fluid under a microscope and realized that it was filled with microscopic fauna that I recognized.’

  ‘From where?’ Lopez asked.

  Willis gestured to a small photograph tacked to the wall of his office that appeared to show tiny bacterial cells suspended in solution, imaged with a powerful microscope.

  ‘Back in 1999, scientists working in a cave complex extracted bacterial samples from sodium-chloride crystals formed from prehistoric sea salt. The microscopic organisms were revived in a laboratory after being in suspended animation within the crystals. They couldn’t identify the species and referred to it as strain 2-9-3, or Bacillus permians. What was special about it was that the organisms were two hundred fifty million years old.’

  Ethan blinked.

  ‘The dinosaurs were still around then.’

  ‘The dinosaurs had only just got started back then,’ Willis corrected him. ‘Bacillus permians represents the oldest living organism known to man. In May 1995, forty-million-year-old Bacillus sphaericus were found in the stomach of a bee encased in amber. They were also in a state of suspended animation and were revived in a laboratory.’

  ‘How did Hiram Conley get these bacteria, and from whom?’ Ethan inquired.

  ‘I don’t know. He refused to tell me, except to say that the spinal fluid was his own.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Lopez said. ‘You need to tell us everything, Tyler.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?’ Willis burst out. ‘This is far bigger than any of us. It isn’t about Hiram Conley or any of the others.’

  Willis stared at them for a moment, and then realized his mistake.

  Ethan pushed himself off the wall, his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘What others?’

  9

  ASPEN CENTER FOR PRIMATE RESEARCH

  LOS ALAMOS

  ‘You cover the reception area, I’ll get through the back and break down the doors.’

  The battered old 1968 Dodge Camper in which Saffron sat smelled of axle grease, mould and unwashed upholstery. The vehicle was a wreck they’d found abandoned in a farmer’s yard in Silver City two days before. Colin ‘Hugger’ Manx, a lanky, curly-haired geek whom she swore had never washed in his life, had managed to get it running after a day of swearing and wrench throwing, and had driven them to Los Alamos that morning. In the back of the camper sat two furtive-looking teenagers, the self-named Ruby Lily, a wisp of a girl with blonde dreadlocks, and an anemic-looking boy who called himself Bobby, all greasy black hair and white skin, his narrow chin flecked with spots.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Manx demanded of her. ‘You can’t just stroll in there and expect them to let you into the labs.’

  Saffron shook her head.

  ‘They’ll have a set of doors that contain a mid-pressure area that
people have to pass through. They have them so that contaminants from the laboratories can’t flow out of the building, like a HazMat facility. We’ll use the gun on those.’

  Saffron waited for a riposte from her companions, but nobody responded. She looked down into the footwell of the camper, where an unlicensed sawn-off Beretta shotgun and a handful of cartridges lay at her feet. As if suddenly paranoid, she checked the rear-view mirror. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the cracked mirror. At twenty-nine, she was older than her companions by some years and regarded by them as something of a veteran. Her long blonde hair was tied up in a tight knot behind her head, as it had been for some months now. On the rare occasions when she let it fall it reached almost to her thighs. Her high cheekbones and clear green eyes made her look like a catwalk model who’d survived a particularly heavy night out. To Saffron all she saw were the subtle features that betrayed her grandfather’s influence: the firm line of her lips and the sinister glitter of radicalism that flickered like a distant star in her eyes.

  ‘The shift’s about to change,’ Manx said, his voice an octave higher than before. He gripped the steering wheel more tightly and looked over his shoulder. ‘Everybody ready?’

  Ruby Lily and Bobby nodded dutifully, each picking up a baseball bat lying beside them. Saffron ignored Colin. He’d only joined them because they’d needed someone to fix the vehicle, and now he was acting as though he’d conceived of the entire plan. Saffron disliked him. Her dislike had become even more intense after she’d gotten so drunk with her friends at the commune that she’d been too tired to fend off his romantic advances when he’d stopped by her tent in the early hours. She’d barely made any attempt to stop him, and had actually fallen asleep before he’d finished. She’d briefly woken to realize that her comatose disinterest had provoked in him a sudden and embarrassingly flaccid manhood that had caused him to flee her tent in a hail of frustrated expletives.

  Now, Manx was on a mission to regain his bruised ego.

  ‘You’ll go when I tell you,’ Saffron murmured to him.

  ‘I only take orders from one person, honey.’ Manx grinned, jabbing a finger at his own chest. ‘Me.’

  ‘Fine,’ Saffron said, pulling the shotgun from the foot-well and offering it to him. ‘You’d better lead from the front then.’

  Manx’s bravado wilted as quickly as his stubby white dick had the previous night. He blanched, his eyes fixed on the gun.

  ‘You brought the damned thing,’ he blustered. ‘I’m not carrying it for you.’

  Saffron lowered the weapon back out of sight.

  ‘Best you do as I say then, understood, Colon?’

  Manx avoided her gaze and ignored the giggles from the rear of the van, shrugging and stroking his threadbare goatee beard as he turned back to watch the front of the laboratories on the opposite side of the road.

  ‘Why the hell are we hitting this little place anyway?’ he muttered, trying to draw attention away from her insult. ‘It’s hardly worth the effort.’

  ‘Any place like this is worth the effort,’ Saffron retorted. ‘As long as there’s a single vivisection operation in the United States, in the world, it’s worth it. Would you want to be in there, being tested?’

  She turned as a small knot of people exited the main building, and felt a jolt of apprehension twist her stomach.

  ‘This is it,’ she said, sliding the shotgun into a slim carry-all and opening her door. ‘Ready?’

  More furtive glances from Ruby Lily in the rear seat, and Manx swallowed thickly as he gazed at her, but all three of them moved to exit the camper.

  ‘Go, now!’ Saffron snapped.

  She climbed out of the camper, shouldering the carryall and striding purposefully to the main road, crossing it before descending the asphalt opposite. The white building in front loomed above her, the expensively manicured gardens and beautifully crafted logo mounted on the walls hiding the horrors she knew lay within, of animals poisoned, murdered and dissected so that the mascara of Hollywood starlets wouldn’t smudge so easily. The thought fired her anger as she approached the scientists now ten feet away, their eyes taking in her appearance and that of her companions and the first flicker of panic distorting their features.

  One of them, a young man with a thin beard, turned back for the door.

  Saffron took the carry-all from her shoulder, letting it fall away to reveal the sawn-off as her features contorted into a mask of rage.

  ‘Move another step and I’ll send you home with buckshot in your ass!’

  Five pairs of hands shot into the air. A sixth scientist, a woman with her hair coiled in a bun behind her head, covered her mouth to prevent a scream and promptly collapsed. As her colleagues moved to her aid, Saffron lunged forward, ramming the barrel of the shotgun in their faces.

  ‘Don’t move!’ she screamed, prodding them backward and looking at a meek man with a narrow nose and quivering jowls. ‘You – open the fucking door, now!’

  The man stared at her, his face trembling, beads of sweat spilling into his eyes, but he stood his ground and shook his head. Saffron changed her stance, took one pace toward him and flipped the barrel of the shotgun toward her as she spun the stock. The heavy butt of the weapon smashed up into the scientist’s jaw with a dull crack and sent him spinning away onto the lawns amid blood-spattered cries.

  Saffron didn’t give the man’s colleagues the chance to respond, shoving the shotgun toward them again.

  ‘The door! Now!’

  ‘Okay!’ one of them shouted, turning and walking back to the entrance door and sliding his card through a reader mounted on a panel. He keyed in his access code and the door slid open.

  ‘Back inside, all of you!’ Saffron shouted, turning and gesturing for Manx to grab the incapacitated scientists and drag them into the building.

  She watched as the pathetic huddle shuffled past her into the building before hurrying after them and closing the door from the inside. She turned to her captives.

  ‘The labs. Take me there, now.’

  The scientist who had opened the door smiled grimly, and shook his head.

  ‘You’re screwed,’ he said with cold delight. ‘The cameras will have seen you, and I set my code to lock us in reception here. The police will already be on their way and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  Saffron glanced at the door as Manx pushed the button desperately before looking at her and shaking his head.

  ‘We’re stuck,’ Ruby Lily uttered in despair.

  Saffron glared at the scientists and cocked the shotgun.

  ‘Then we’ve got nothing to lose.’

  Colin Manx’s jaw dropped and he raised a hand to stop her.

  ‘Saff, no!’

  Saffron ignored him and pulled the trigger.

  10

  ‘What others?’

  Tyler Willis sighed as he realized he had been cornered. He reached up and rubbed his wounded shoulder, shaking his head as he spoke, ‘Hiram Conley was one of seven men I’ve been studying over the past eight weeks.’

  Ethan looked at Lopez, who had now begun recording the conversation using a portable device in her pocket. She nodded once at him, and Ethan turned his attention to Willis.

  ‘Tell us everything, from the beginning,’ he said. ‘If there’s some kind of danger in this for you, then the more we know, the better we can protect you.’

  Willis stared at Ethan.

  ‘I want your word. You’re government, right? I want your word, both of you, that you can protect me if this gets out.’

  Ethan was about to speak, but Lopez beat him to it.

  ‘We’ll cover your back, Tyler,’ she assured him. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  Ethan swallowed, uncertain of how they could possibly guarantee his safety when they had no clear idea of who was threatening him and why.

  Willis sighed, and gestured around him at his office.

  ‘This has been my work for the past three years. Along with W
erner syndrome, I’ve been studying the effects and causes of cellular senescence, seeking ways in which to delay the deleterious effects of human aging.’

  ‘Why?’ Lopez asked. ‘What’s the purpose exactly? Everybody dies eventually.’

  ‘Yes, they do,’ he agreed. ‘But the purpose of my work is to understand how we age and how to try to develop medicines that will ensure that people age comfortably, without the debilitating diseases that afflict the elderly. By studying things like cellular apoptosis – programmed cell death – it’s theoretically possible to reverse the process of aging.’

  ‘Surely that can’t work,’ Ethan said. ‘People have to age in order to die, and nothing is immortal.’

  Tyler Willis smiled broadly.

  ‘In fact, that’s not entirely true. We see aging as a process that takes place across our own lifespans, and we see others age as we do. It’s something we’re used to, but in nature not every species ages at the same rate, and for some there is no aging process at all.’

  Lopez raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You mean that some animals live forever?’

  ‘Perhaps not forever, but for long enough that to a human perspective they would appear immortal,’ Willis said. ‘The hydrozoan species Turritopsis nutricula is able to return from a mature adult to an immature polyp stage and back again, effectively meaning that it is considered biologically immortal and has no maximum lifespan. Colonies of sea anemones have been kept in laboratories for close to a century, can regenerate any body part and show no signs of aging. Some koi fish, a much larger and more complex species, have lived beyond two hundred years.’

  ‘That’s not quite the same as a mammal living for that long,’ Ethan pointed out.

  ‘But that’s my point,’ Tyler insisted, ‘delayed senescence isn’t species specific and can occur in mammals too. In May 2007, a fifty-tonne Bowhead whale caught off the coast of Alaska was found to have the head of an explosive harpoon embedded within its neck blubber. The four-inch arrow-shaped projectile had been manufactured in New Bedford, Massachusetts around 1890, making the whale a minimum of one hundred seventeen years old.’