Dust to Dust

by James M. Thompson

  “So, let me get this straight,” Kevin said. “You have managed to set up two new labs in hopes of someday leaving BioTech?”

  “Well, they’re not really set up and ready for work. I’ve rented two labs under false names, but they are certainly not equipped yet. I’ve been too strapped for funds to finish setting them up properly. It’s taken every bit of money I could scrape together just to afford the rent, especially since it all had to be in cash in order to maintain secrecy.”

  “So, if I can convince my uncle and his patient to advance us the fifty K, then we should be all right,” Kevin said.

  “That would certainly go a long way toward getting all of the specialized equipment we will need to do our experiments on humans,” Kat said.

  “I propose that once we get the money, we outfit the lab in Conroe first. That way, when Sheila finds us a suitable subject we will be ready to go ahead with the next step in our experiments,” Ramsey said. “And the beauty of that is that it is close enough for us to use on Kevin’s uncle’s patient also when the time comes.”

  Kevin added, “And it will save the lab in Mexico to use as a bolt-hole if things go wrong and we have to hightail it out of the country in a hurry.”

  “So,” Kat said, “the first thing to do is see if Kevin can get us the money, and the second thing to do is outfit the lab with everything we’ll need.”

  “And the third and most important thing,” Ramsey said, “is for Sheila to find us a suitable subject to experiment on.”

  “Okay, while Kevin is working on the money, and while you are arranging to get the lab equipment, Burton, I will get on the computer and see if I can figure out just what changes we’ll need to make to use our formulae on a human instead of rats or dogs.”

  Kevin smiled and nodded, but he was thinking. “And I’ll figure out some way to take Captain Sunshine out of play.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Kevin got up from his chair, walked over to Angus’s bed, and squatted down. When Angus looked over his shoulder and up at Kevin, he began to scratch between the dog’s ears where he knew Angus liked it.

  After a moment, Angus leaned his head back and gazed up into Kevin’s eyes and began to lap his hand.

  “I am really glad you came through the procedure so well, big guy,” Kevin said softly. “You look and act great.”

  Angus stopped lapping and nodded his head in agreement.

  Kevin laughed and gave his head another pat. “Man, you are really something, old boy.”

  He stood up, walked over to Kat’s desk, and gathered up the photos and videos of Angus, tipped his head at Kat and Ramsey, and waked toward the door.

  Suddenly Angus jumped up, ran over, and grabbed Kevin’s pants legs in his teeth and pulled.

  Kat chuckled. “I guess the big guy doesn’t want you to leave.”

  Kevin squatted again and said, while looking right at Angus, “I promise I will be back, Angus. I will never leave you.”

  Angus released his pants and sat back on his haunches, his tail wagging slowly.

  Kevin gave Kat and Ramsey another wave and walked out of the door.

  Ramsey got to his feet. “I’m gonna go make some calls and start getting the lab equipment we need ordered. It’ll probably take a few days, so we have some time before we need to come up with the money.”

  “I’ve got some savings that we can use if some of it comes in before Kevin has the money in hand.”

  Ramsey waved a hand dismissively. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, but if it is, we’ll deal with it. I can probably also get a short-term loan from Sheila if we need more than you have.”

  He walked to the door. “I’ll let you know when I find out how long it’s going to take to get the equipment, and I’ll also get you and Kevin some keys and directions to the lab so you can check it out when you get a chance.”

  After he was gone, Angus grabbed his bowl, placed it at Kat’s feet, and sat back on his haunches with an expectant look on his face.

  She smiled and filled the bowl with three cups of his food. “Don’t get too used to all this extra food, big guy. When your metabolism gets back to normal, so will your diet. We don’t want you getting all chubby again, do we?”

  Kat almost fainted when Angus, with a solemn look on his face, slowly shook his head back and forth before he dipped his head and began to gobble his food.

  She sat back down at her desk and said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to your new intelligence, big guy, but I guess we’ll all just have to learn to deal with it.”

  Opening her laptop, she pulled up the mathematical program they’d used to reconfigure the formulae from rats to a dog, and plugged in a weight of 175 pounds. While the program chugged along, she thought, If the human we find deviates appreciably from this weight, we’ll just have to refigure the proportions.

  * * *

  As soon as Kevin got to his apartment, he placed a call to Dr. Tom Alexander. When the receptionist answered, he asked if she could have the doctor call him in between seeing patients.

  While he waited, he began to pack a small duffel bag with enough clothes for a two- or three-day stay, in case it took that long for his uncle to get the money together that they needed.

  Five minutes later, the phone rang. “Hello, Uncle Tom.”

  “Hey, kid. What’s going on? Were you able to make our offer to your partners?”

  “Uh . . . yeah. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “Well, it’s probably not something we want to go into over an open line.”

  “I agree. I’m getting packed and then I’m going to drive down to Corpus and come to see you. I should make it down there around ten or eleven tonight if traffic’s not too bad.”

  “Don’t be silly, Kevin. I figure it’ll take you about an hour and a half to drive out to the airport. When you get there, follow the signs to the private air terminal. I should be able to have my jet there in just over two hours, which will give you time for a quick burger or something to tide you over until you get here. I’ll meet you at the airport here and we’ll go have a nice dinner and you can give me all the details in person, and then you can spend the night and head back to Houston tomorrow if you want, or you can stay a few days and get in some fishing out on the island.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Tom. That sounds great. I wasn’t looking forward to that drive.”

  “I don’t blame you, son. Take care, and I’ll see you in a few hours. I’m not on call tonight, so we should be able to have a good, uninterrupted talk.”

  * * *

  Four and a half hours later, Kevin and Tom were finishing up surf and turf at the Outback Restaurant in Corpus Christi. So far they’d talked in generalities, saving the important topics for when they could be assured no one could overhear them.

  Finally, the meal over, Tom wiped his lips and gestured at the bar at the side of the restaurant. At this late hour, it was virtually deserted. “Let’s have a coffee and cognac in the bar and you can tell me the gory details I’ve been dying to hear all night.”

  After their waiter had served them and disappeared back into the restaurant, Kevin pulled the envelope containing Angus’s videos and photos out of his duffel bag lying at his feet and handed them across the table to Tom.

  “Here are the results of our first non-rat patient. I’ve brought the unretouched videos in addition to a DVD with the same pictures on it.”

  He then pulled a laptop out of the duffel, opened it, and flipped it around so that Tom could see the screen. “Take a look at the photos and then play the DVD.”

  Tom glanced through the photos, and he inserted the DVD and watched, spellbound, as Angus ran and trotted and cavorted like a six-month-old puppy.

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe the changes in him. And this is just over twenty-four hours after the injection?”

  “Closer to thirty-six, but you’re missing the most important parts of the video.” He handed a pair of earbuds to Tom and said, “T
urn up the volume after you put these on. I don’t want anyone else to hear the audio.”

  Tom frowned and shrugged, and then he put the buds in, listened, and watched the video again.

  After a moment, he shook his head. “I don’t believe this! This has got to be a dog trained to give those responses.”

  Kevin smiled and shook his head. “Uncle Tom, you have been like a father to me . . . no, actually, you’ve been better than a father to me. I would and I will never lie to you or try to cheat you. Believe me when I tell you everything on that disc are genuine results of the serum we gave the dog. I’ve known that dog for over a year, and I guarantee it is the same dog and there was no training or tricks involved.”

  Tom slowly took the buds off, ejected the disc, and closed the laptop. “Jesus, Kevin, do you realize what you have here?”

  Kevin leaned back, drained his cognac, and nodded. “Of course I do, Uncle Tom. It’s the fucking fountain of youth.”

  Tom shook his head. “No, Kevin, it’s a hell of a lot more than that. I don’t even know where to begin to try to describe just how momentous this thing is.”

  Kevin grinned. “So, you’ll tell your patient it’s worth a potful of money?”

  “Hell yes, but after seeing this I’m going to see if we can change the deal so that I get a shot at this formula, too.”

  “I think that can be arranged, but think about it, Uncle Tom. We can’t have a bunch of people suddenly getting younger and smarter . . . It would bring entirely too much attention to us. Anyone who partakes of the serum is going to have to start life all over again . . . new identity, new life, and with no connection to their old life at all.”

  At first Tom looked doubtful. But after a moment of thinking about it he nodded. “Of course, I see that. I don’t know if my patient will, though.”

  “That is nonnegotiable, Tom. Certainly with your help he can fake his death and leave all of his fortune to some obscure ‘relative’ for which he can afford to have a plausible life story fabricated.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we’ll have to do. I should be able to convince him of the necessity of doing that.”

  “The other benefit is that if he is as rich as you say, he probably has a lot of enemies who will think he is dead . . . not a bad way to get to quit looking over your shoulder for trouble.”

  Tom leaned back, sipped his cognac, and smiled. “You have really thought this out, haven’t you?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “I am truly impressed, Kevin. I knew you were smart, of course, but I had no idea just how shrewd you are.”

  “Those photos and videos are the carrot, Uncle Tom, but there is also a stick, although it’s just a little stick.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. We have talked it over, and my partners and I feel we need a little good-faith gesture. We’d like an advance of fifty thousand dollars against the millions to come later.”

  Tom pursed his lips and rubbed his chin. “May I ask why?”

  “The short answer is that we want to make sure this man is rich enough to come through with the eventual payoff, but it’s more complicated than that. The truth is that if we are going to keep experimenting on larger animals and eventually a human being, we’re going to need a really secure, really remote laboratory. We obviously can’t continue to work with the lab we’re currently working with, because of too many eyes and too much oversight. To set up a new lab with all new equipment suitable for human treatment is fairly expensive, and neither my partners nor I have that kind of money.”

  Tom crossed his arms. “I could have my patient set all that up for you and you’d be able to get the best there is.”

  Kevin wagged his head. “No, Uncle Tom. We need to have an independent lab, and it has to be in a secret location, otherwise neither us nor our formulae would be safe.” He grinned and spread his arms, “After all, we all realize just how valuable these formulae are, and we wouldn’t want anyone to get . . . ideas about stealing them from us.”

  Tom laughed. “Well, I agree with you on that, and I know my patient well enough to know that if he ever gets the idea that he can take the formulae for himself, then he will sure as hell try to do it.”

  “That’s the other reason for the advance. We need to take very secure precautions against anyone stealing the formula from us. Do you think your patient will agree to the advance?”

  “I don’t even have to ask, Kevin. Let’s go to my house and I’ll put you up for the night, and as soon as the banks open tomorrow, I’ll advance you the fifty thousand in cash myself.”

  “One more thing, Uncle Tom. So far, all we’ve heard is generalities about what he will be willing to pay us to be the second in line for the formula. Do you think you could get him to be a little more specific?”

  Alexander grinned and leaned back in his chair, sipping his coffee and staring at Kevin over the rim of his cup. “Well, do you already have a figure in mind?”

  Kevin shrugged. “You said your man is worth between ten and twenty billion dollars, so let’s say fifteen billion to be conservative. I figure it ought to be worth three and a third percent of his fortune to get up out of bed and be twenty to thirty years younger and smarter to boot. What do you think?”

  Alexander looked at the ceiling, figuring in his head. “Uh, what’s that come to? About five hundred thousand?”

  Kevin laughed. “No, Uncle Tom, you dropped a couple of decimal points. It comes to exactly five hundred million dollars.”

  “Holy shit, Kevin! You don’t think small, do you?”

  “Maybe he’d take it better if you just used the three-anda-third-percent figure.”

  Alexander held up his hands and laughed with Kevin. “Hell no, five hundred million it is, and I’ll tell him I think it’s worth every penny—if you can deliver.”

  “Good, then if I can impose on your jet one more time, I’ll head back to Houston and get started on making preparations for our first human patient.”

  Tom threw some bills down on the table and said, “And if you could, I would appreciate some before-and-after pictures and videos to show my patient.”

  “No problem, Uncle Tom, no problem. Just call me and let me know if he agrees to the price.”

  Alexander stopped and looked at Kevin. “And if he declines?”

  Kevin shrugged. “Then, no harm, no foul. We’ll just have to find another rich, sick old bastard and put the offer to him.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Kevin went straight from the Houston airport to Kat’s lab. As soon as he entered the door, Angus jumped up from his bed and ran over to him. Kevin opened his arms and Angus vaulted up into them, immediately lapping his face furiously.

  “My God, even I don’t get a welcome like that,” Kat said, grinning. “Now I know you are a certified member of Angus’s pack.”

  “Of course I am,” Keven said around Angus’s head. “The big boy knows I love him as much as he loves me.”

  After a moment, Kevin walked over and placed Angus back in his bed, then he reached into his back pocket and brought out a large rawhide bone and placed it between Angus’s teeth. “There you go, big guy. No way was I going on a trip and not bringing you back a present.”

  Angus dipped his head as if to say “thank you,” and then he began to gnaw on the bone in earnest.

  “If you are quite through with the damn dog, perhaps we can find out what happened in Corpus,” Ramsey growled.

  “Okay, Mr. Grumpus,” Kevin said, grinning. “Do you think I might get a cup of coffee before facing the inquisition?”

  “I’ll get it,” Kat said. “You put your stuff down over there next to my desk and take a seat.”

  Kevin took a small case off a strap he had around his shoulder and his duffel bag, placed them next to his customary chair, and flopped down with a sigh. “I’ll tell you guys, private jets are the only way to fly.”

  Ramsey snorted while Kat brought him his coffee. He took a couple of sips, smiling up at her in
thanks, before he sat back and began to tell them how everything had gone with his uncle the night before. When he got to the part about his uncle getting the fifty thousand dollars in cash out of his own bank account, he picked up the case from the floor, opened it, and showed them that it was packed full of hundred-dollar bills.

  “So, he was impressed with the videos of Angus?” Kat asked.

  Kevin nodded. “Very. He even offered to have his patient furnish us with a new lab and state-of-the-art equipment.”

  “No shit?” Ramsey asked.

  “Yeah, but, of course, I told him no thanks, that we realized how valuable our formulae are and that we needed our lab’s location to be kept secret for security purposes.”

  “And what did he say to that?” Kat asked.

  “He said he understood, but then he said something that kinda bothered me. He said that knowing his patient, he felt he would probably try to get control of the formulae for himself once he sees just how great the effects are and realized how valuable the formulae would be—both in terms of money and in terms of raw power.”

  Ramsey frowned. “So, you think we might have something to worry about from this rich guy?”

  Kevin looked at Ramsey. “Burton, do you have any idea what kind of person can accumulate twenty billion dollars? I can guarantee you this guy is as hard as nails and probably as ruthless as they come, and I personally have never met a rich guy who didn’t want to get richer.”

  Ramsey stood up and began to pace around the area in front of Kat’s desk as he thought. “That settles it. We’re gonna have to redouble our security efforts.”

  He turned to look at Kat. “We need to get new laptops and only put on them the false data we’ve constructed for BioTech’s eyes. They can have nothing on them concerning the true formulae.”

  “Why can’t we just erase or delete the real stuff and not go to all the trouble of copying the fake stuff on new computers?” Kat asked.

  Kevin answered before Ramsey had a chance, “Because nothing is ever truly erased or deleted from a hard drive, Kat. There are always ways to recover the data if someone is tech-savvy enough. Other than completely smashing or melting a hard drive, there is no easy or practical way to protect what was once written on it.”