‘You could get that anywhere, surely.’
‘The world is run by old despots and maniacs. For their lives and the lives of their loved ones they would kill millions without hesitation. If I told the world of my discoveries, labs like mine would appear across the globe and humanity would be fed to them. Humanity would become Ouroboros.’ Cardini noted Jim’s blank look. ‘The snake that consumes its own tail.’
Images of Second World War death camps flashed through Jim’s mind. ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
‘No doubt you read the papers.’
‘Yes.’
‘You see the monstrosities, the evil, the sickening violence? What is it all for? It is for material gain or glory.’ Cardini scowled. ‘Imagine the price some would be prepared to exact to be years younger again, to be, well, to be strong. Those people would stop at nothing.’ He leant forward on his desk, his hypnotic eyes riveting Jim to the spot. ‘I ask you to fund my project because you are young. You do not need the serum to be fit and healthy. You do not need the drug to be young. Not now and not for years.’
‘Right,’ said Jim. ‘I see.’
‘Of course I will supply you once there is a purpose, if we have not made the breakthrough needed by then to produce the serum as cheaply as the common aspirin. Twenty-eight is possibly a potential physical peak, but I have thought perhaps the early thirties is another period worth preserving.’
‘When I’m twenty-eight you can keep me at that age?’
‘The serum will do that.’
‘Keep me physically twenty-eight years old, no matter how many years go by?’
‘Indeed.’
Jim’s eyes bugged out. ‘For how long?’
‘You can be twenty-eight almost indefinitely.’
‘How long is “almost indefinitely”? Ten, twenty, thirty years?’
Cardini didn’t reply immediately – he seemed to be checking a mental calculation. ‘Three to four hundred years,’ he said slowly.
‘You’re bullshitting me, right?’
‘You see, Jim, this is why I keep my secret. The implications of my research are too great at this stage.’ He smiled. ‘Not a week goes by that an old professorial friend of mine does not die and pass for ever into the void. With their death, a treasury of knowledge is lost for good. It is as if a unique library is burnt alongside the cadaver.
‘Each of their threads must be relearnt and picked up by a new mind. Our progress is set back by most of the span of a life with every catastrophic death. Death makes our human progress just a slow crawl forward on hands and knees. I am the first scientist who can pursue his work beyond a few decades. I will continue to discover and build on my discoveries, with the weight and momentum of my knowledge as huge assets magnifying my abilities. With my faculties undiminished and growing, I may serve humanity for many generations more. The possibilities are revolutionary.’
He held out his giant hands as if he was cupping a large invisible ball.
‘I have extended a human boundary and I can use it to transcend the cruel evil of mortality. A lifetime of five hundred years is enough to overcome this tragic impediment. Our life span is the same limit that drives greed and war and hunger. With a life of five hundred years, human potential expands beyond imagining. The petty needs of a short life, which drive so much chaos and misery, disappear.’
‘It’s hard to take in,’ said Jim, rubbing the skin around his eye, which yesterday had been swollen and black. He thought of Stafford, his butler, best friend and ally. For a few million he could make the old man young again. He’d write that cheque on the spot. ‘What happens when you take the drug?’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s got to have nasty side effects, right?’
‘As long as you keep taking it, there are none, but the effects wear off so you have to remain medicated or the process is reversed. As the serum is metabolised, the ageing process begins again and accelerates. A balance needs to be maintained between rejuvenation and degeneracy. Sadly, the later the treatment starts, the less life can be extended. Perhaps I will live two hundred years more, but if you begin treatment at thirty you may live five hundred or perhaps a thousand more years. I hope to be able to widen the use of the technology so that, within fifty years, the serum will be one of a number of treatments. If I can discover these new solutions, I may go on for yet further centuries myself.’
Jim’s mind boggled. This was either the biggest lie he’d ever heard or the most amazing truth. Maybe the professor’s story was one big pile of bullshit – but he had the evidence of his own eye to prove that it wasn’t. And Cardini certainly didn’t look his actual age.
Jim jumped to his feet. ‘Can you take me to your factory?’
Cardini took a sharp breath. He looked at his watch, then back at Jim. ‘Yes, why not?’ He stood up, unfurling himself to his great height. ‘Then, I hope, you will believe me and become my benefactor.’ He looked down at Jim. ‘With your help we will be able to find a way of producing this panacea for all. Together we will make history. Together we can save the world.’ Cardini smiled, but not in a friendly way. The smile seemed to come from an internal pleasure that was hardly connected with Jim’s presence.
He walked up to Jim and patted him on the back. ‘Come on, let us go, you and I. Out to where the sky lies etherised as a patient upon a table.’
Jim wondered what he meant.
22
For all its speed and technical wizardry, the Veyron was a small car and the professor was crammed into the passenger seat. He struggled to buckle his seatbelt in the confined space. ‘Very good,’ he said, as it finally clicked into place.
Jim fired up the engine.
‘Turn left at the entrance,’ commanded Cardini, ‘then right at the main junction. After several miles I will point out the next turn.’
‘No problem,’ said Jim.
It wasn’t an elaborate route, and a little more than ten minutes later Cardini was indicating that Jim should pull into a road that entered some woodland. At a gate among the trees, Jim spoke into an intercom and it opened. Down a private track out of sight of the road lay a modern warehouse-style building, with a small office area embedded in the left side.
‘I will ask you to say little to the staff you meet,’ said Cardini. ‘They are technical employees and not apprised of the compound being extracted. They believe it to be a vital component of a highly poisonous nerve agent. The result of their work is completed by me in my lab so what is made here is an inert waxy fat, which I alone activate into the final compound. I hope you understand the need for total secrecy.’
‘OK. I’ll try not to put my foot in it.’
Cardini heaved himself out of the car and stretched his long arms upwards. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘I suspect in a few weeks’ time I’ll be in need of further treatment. My joints do not feel as young as they did last week. Such is the battle waged. Come,’ he said, dropping his arms, ‘let me show you.’
A small man in a white coat came out of the office. ‘Ah, Professor,’ he said, in heavily accented tones. ‘Such a nice surprise to see you, we weren’t expecting you.’
‘Good morning, Dr Ramos. This is an associate come to see our work.’
Ramos shook Jim’s hand. ‘Very good to meet you, sir,’ he said.
Jim wondered where Ramos was from. The Philippines? ‘Good to meet you too,’ he said.
‘Follow me,’ said Cardini, striding to the door. ‘Time is not my friend today – or, for that matter, on any other day.’
Jim and Dr Ramos marched after Cardini.
The reception desk was empty and looked as if no one ever manned it. Cardini’s thumbprint opened the door beyond. They followed him through and he unlocked another door.
Dr Ramos grabbed a white coat off a peg and handed it to Jim. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘It’s not necessary but it looks correct.’
Jim put it on. It felt kind of good to be a man in a white coat, like he’d been granted some added level of intelligence.<
br />
They went into the lab. Two white-coated people were at a desk, monitoring screens, and through the window in front of him Jim could see huge steel vessels and piping, filling the space beyond. The white coats rose and stood to attention. They looked as if they might be Filipinos, like the doctor. They were smiling deferentially and inclining slightly forwards.
‘Very good. Please carry on,’ boomed Cardini.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ they chimed back.
‘Let us continue,’ said Cardini. The door ahead of them clicked open for him as he applied his thumb.
‘This,’ said Cardini, impressively, ‘is where we process the blood. We smash the cells into tiny fragments in these three large tanks. Smash them chemically. During each stage of the process, the chemical units that make up the feedstock are decomposed into small component pieces.’ He seemed invigorated by the idea. ‘By molecular standards the chemical pieces are still gigantic, but in comparison to the cells they come from they are tiny. The infinitesimal compounds we seek are among the vast soup of biochemistry, like flecks of gold in a mountain of gravel. Over here, we effectively distil the result,’ he waved his hand to suggest the metaphor was not very accurate, ‘in the same way that you might separate a fraction of oil in a refinery or a paper mill.’
He looked at Jim as if he had judged him and found him wanting. ‘Did you know vanilla is extracted from the paper-making process?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Well, when you distil a tree it breaks down in much the same way as a barrel of oil. One fraction may go to make a newspaper while another will become the flavouring in your coffee. If only the extract we seek was so prevalent.’ He fell silent, then took a sharp breath and continued. ‘That is the kind of process we are using here to find our extract.’ Cardini gestured at a series of pipes. ‘The resultant output is separated into three distillation fractions plus an output of waste. The waste we dry by reverse osmosis and the solids are then burnt or donated for research to others. The remaining pure water is ejected as effluent. The three fractions are then reacted together. The output of this is a complex soup of molecules, none of which we can hope to construct by themselves, mixed together to create a complex of compounds. Come.’ He opened another door.
Jim smelt pears as he went into the room, which contained a large machine, rather like a giant printer.
‘Here,’ said Cardini, ‘the resultant combinations of molecules are laid down on absorbent paper and as it dries the different molecules spread out.’ There was a buzzing from the machine and something inside the huge contraption moved its length, buzzing and grinding along a hidden assembly. A brief silence followed. Then he went on, ‘This is a unique machine built for our project. I admit to being particularly proud of it.’
Jim recognised a kind of giant paper feed coming from a large cylinder above the rear of the machine. It resembled a twenty-foot-wide toilet roll. There was another grinding, buzzing noise as more paper went in.
‘As the molecular printout dries, the machine feeds the result along this bed and downstairs, where the paper is cut to separate the vital fraction. This fraction is removed from the paper and through here the molecule is separated by machine. Follow me.’
‘Atomic force microscopes,’ said Dr Ramos.
‘Microscopes?’ said Jim.
‘Come, come,’ said Cardini. They followed him into a dimly lit room filled with silent white-enamelled machines. Only the breath of air-conditioning gave any indication of activity.
Jim scanned his surroundings. Twenty-five machines were laid on the floor, cables and fine piping snaking away from them. Faint light glowed from their controls.
Cardini waited for Jim to turn to him. ‘There are three floors like this,’ he said proudly. ‘The resultant mix of compounds that comes from the initial distillation process contains a very little of the molecule we require and we have no chemical way of extracting it. What is worse, it has an isomer, that is to say a photographic twin, which is a mirror image of the molecule we want but has no efficacy. The only way to extract our target is by microscopy. A computer-imaging system coupled with these microscopes identifies the compound and the system extracts it with the same tiny element used to see it. The chemical is picked out of the fraction, one molecule at a time. Fortunately, as the size and distances involved are so small, the system itself can work very fast.’
‘Millions of operations an hour,’ said Ramos.
‘Quite so, quite so,’ agreed Cardini. ‘So, with our array, we can make a milligram or two a day.’
‘How much does one of these microscopes cost?’ asked Jim.
‘Many millions,’ said Cardini. ‘Well, they were many millions when we started, now they are a million or two. I’m not sure whether that’s because we have bought so many or simply the march of technology, but they have become cheaper. In any event they are still a very expensive component of the process. They are also somewhat fiddly.’ He threw a look at Ramos. ‘But the doctor here keeps the machines at work as much as is possible. Our efficiency is a remarkable achievement.’
‘It’s nothing,’ said the doctor. ‘A machine is a machine. It does all it can within its man-given parameters.’
‘So there you have it,’ said Cardini. ‘Our little refinery in all its finery.’ He smiled, but not at Jim.
Jim looked at the doctor and then at Cardini. He was bubbling over with questions but knew he couldn’t ask any of them until he had Cardini alone. ‘Amazing,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s get going.’
23
As Jim swung the car round, the tyres squealed and spun a little. He took his foot off the accelerator. ‘Well,’ he said, as he drove gingerly down the long, thin lane, ‘I’m gobsmacked.’
‘And?’ asked Cardini.
‘Remind me why you need me.’
‘Because, Jim, I need to invest a great deal to make this process commercially viable – or, rather, viable for the masses. I cannot open a Pandora’s box by going public. I am caught in a trap. I need a huge investment to make the necessary breakthroughs and the time to do it without setting off a chain reaction of disaster.’ Cardini shifted uncomfortably in his cramped seat. ‘I cannot simply make more serum in the way I am making it now. I must find a donor young enough to give me the ten years I need to discover the answers required. To bring the compound to mass production, I require more resources. I can spend your donations on research rather than production. If you can fund me I have solved my final challenge.’
‘How much do you need?’
‘One hundred million a year?’
‘Ouch,’ said Jim. ‘A hundred million pounds a year?’
‘Dollars, Jim, happily not pounds.’
‘A billion dollars over ten years?’
‘Yes, until the process is perfected. Then the market will fund all that is needed and more, of course. Can you afford that, Jim?’
As he pulled out on to the public road, Jim threw Cardini a glance. ‘I can afford about a century’s worth at that rate.’
‘That’s impressive,’ said Cardini. ‘Almost as impressive as my compound.’
‘No,’ said Jim. ‘My money is not impressive. It’s just bits of paper with ink on them. What you’re doing is so big I can’t get my head around it. My mind’s boggled.’
‘I’m going to see my patron this afternoon to treat him,’ said Cardini. ‘If you come with me, you will see him, the treatment process and the transformation. Then you will understand. Will you accompany me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I am flying from Cambridge airport to the east coast of America by private jet,’ said Cardini. ‘Can you be ready for around three?’
‘Hold on,’ said Jim. He pressed a button on the dash. ‘Stafford,’ he said.
‘Good day, sir,’ came Stafford’s voice over the speaker.
‘Stafford, can you run my passport up to Cambridge airport? I’ve got to go Stateside for a couple of days. Need it by three.’
; ‘Certainly, sir. Is everything in order?’
That was Stafford’s way of asking if he was in trouble. ‘Peachy.’
‘Very good, sir. Please call nearer the time and I shall meet you.’
‘I’ll be at the private jet terminal, I guess,’ said Jim.
Cardini nodded.
‘I’ll call when I’m ten minutes out.’
24
Jim parked under the shade of a tree outside Cardini’s lab. In the direct summer sun, the blue Veyron would heat up like a greenhouse. He got out and scrabbled for his phone. He’d better tell Kate that lunch was off.
Kate’s phone bleeped. She glanced away from her screen to it. In a little speech bubble it said ‘Jim: Cant.’ Her heart sank. She opened the message. ‘Cant make it today, got to dash to the states. Lets do pizza when I get back.’
Where’s the sorry? she thought. ‘Sorry, Kate,’ she muttered, ‘got to go and see one of my millions of gold-digging girlfriends.’
She wasn’t going to reply, she decided. Then she typed, ‘OK,’ and sent it to Jim.
As they entered the building the phone vibrated in Jim’s pocket. He glanced at the reply. ‘I’ve got to do some social re-engineering,’ he said. ‘This trip means I’ve got some grovelling to do.’
‘By all means go ahead.’
‘Sorry,’ Jim typed awkwardly, as he walked after Cardini, ‘I’ll make it up to you. How about extra toppings on that pizza?’
Kate looked at the message. Why didn’t he just call? It was obvious: SMS meant he wasn’t serious. A call would suggest there was a chance he wasn’t messing her around and they might actually meet again.
‘Extra toppings it is,’ she replied. She was deflated. For a few short hours, she’d felt she’d met someone special and that something special might come of it. In fact, she knew she’d met someone special: he had a funny look in his eye that made her want to sneeze – always an early warning that a boy was about to get under her skin, then break her heart.
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