Shadowfires

Baresco sided with Eric, didn't
want Geneplan to go public, and he convinced the others. If it
remained a privately held company, they didn't have to please stockholders. They could spend money on unlikely projects without defending their decisions.”
    “Such as a search for immortality or its equivalent.”
    “They
didn't expect to achieve full immortality-but longevity, regeneration. It took a lot of funds, money that stockholders would've
wanted to see paid out in dividends. Eric and the others were getting
rich, anyway, from the modest percentage of corporate profits they
distributed to themselves, so they
didn't desperately need the capital they'd get by going public.”
    “Regeneration,” Ben said thoughtfully.
    At the window, Rachael stopped pacing, cautiously drew back the
drape, and peered out at the night-cloaked motel parking lot.
    She said, “God knows,
I'm no expert in recombinant DNA. But… well, they hoped to develop a benign virus that'd
function as a 'carrier' to convey new genetic material into the
body's cells and precisely place the new bits on the chains of chromosomes. Think of the virus as a sort of living scalpel that does genetic surgery. Because it's
microscopic, it can perform minute operations no real scalpel ever
could. It can be designed to seek out-and attach itself to-a certain
portion of a chromosomal chain, either destroying the gene already
there or inserting a new one.”
    “And they did develop it?”
    “Yes. Then they needed to positively identify genes associated
with aging and edit them out- and develop artificial genetic
material for the virus to carry into the cells. Those new genes would
be designed to halt the aging process and tremendously boost the
natural immune system by cuing the body to produce vastly larger
quantities of interferon and other healing substances. Follow me?”
    “Mostly.”
    “They even believed they could give the human body the ability to
regenerate ruined tissue, bone, and vital organs.”
    She still stared out at the night, and she appeared to have gone
pale-not at something she had seen but at the consideration of what
she was slowly revealing to him.
    Finally she continued: “Their patents were bringing in a river of
money, a flood. So they spent God knows how many tens of millions,
farming out pieces of the research puzzle to geneticists not in the
company, keeping the work fragmented so no one was likely to realize
the true intent of their efforts. It was like a privately financed
equivalent of the Manhattan Project-and maybe even more secret than
the development of the atomic bomb.”
    “Secret… because if they succeeded, they wanted to keep the
blessing of an extended life span for themselves?”
    “Partly, yes.” Letting the drape fall in place, she turned from
the window. “And by holding the secret, by dispensing the blessing
only to whomever they chose-just imagine the power they'd wield. They could essentially create a long-lived elite master race that owed its existence to them. And the threat of withholding the gift would be a bludgeon that could make virtually anyone cooperate with them. I used to listen to Eric talk about it, and it sounded like nonsense, pipe dreams, even though I knew he was a genius in his field.”
    “Those men in the Cadillac who pursued us and shot the cops-”
    “From Geneplan,” she said, still full of nervous energy, pacing
again. “I recognized the car. It belongs to Rupert Knowls. Knowls
supplied the initial venture capital that got Eric started. After
Eric, he's the chief partner.”
    “A rich man… yet he's willing to risk his reputation and his freedom by gunning down two cops?”
    “To protect this secret, yeah, I guess he is.
He's not exactly a scrupulous man to begin with. And confronted with this opportunity, I suppose he'll
stretch his scruples even further than usual.”
    “Okay. So they developed the technique to prolong life and promote
incredibly rapid healing. Then what?”
    Her lovely face had been pale. Now it darkened as if a shadow had
fallen across it, though there was no shadow. “Then… they began
experiments on lab animals. Primarily white mice.”
    Ben sat up straighter in his chair and put the can of Diet Coke
aside, because from Rachael's demeanor he sensed that she was reaching the crux of the story.
    She paused for a moment to check the dead bolt on the room door,
which opened onto a covered breezeway that flanked the parking lot.
The lock was securely