The Sixth Commandment (14 page)

Suddenly I had a suspicion that not only the charm, but the man himself might be contrived. The artfully youthful look of bronzed skin, California whites, and hair unblemished by a speck of gray. That appearance might have been a perfectly natural bounty but was, more likely, the result of sunlamp, expensive dental work, facials, and hair dye. And those too-young clothes. I didn’t expect Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker to dress like a mortician, but I didn’t expect him to dress like a juvenile lead either.

Supposing my suspicions correct, what could possibly be his motive? The first one that occurred to me—the
only
one that occurred to me—was that this Nobel winner, this gifted scientist, this
genius
was trying to keep himself attractive and exciting to his young wife. The pampered body was for her. The elegant duds were for her. Even this mess of a room was to prove to her that disorder didn’t faze him, that he was capable of whim and youthful nuttiness. He might be an amusing character, an original personality. But he was not a fuddy-duddy;
he was not.

Irrational? No, just human. I don’t mean my own suspicions; I mean Thorndecker’s conduct. I had seen how swiftly his vigorous exuberance collapsed the night before when his wife was not present. I began to feel sorry for the man, and like him more.

He looked at me narrowly.

“The animals shake you up?” he asked.

“How did you know that?” I said.

“They usually do. But it must be done.”

“I know.”

“I have some brandy here. Join me?”

I nodded. He poured us small drinks from a bottle he took from a file drawer in his desk. He used plastic throwaway cups, and again made no apology or excuse. He took one of my cigarettes, and we lighted up.

“I’d be interested in hearing your reactions, Mr. Todd,” he said. “On or off the record.”

“Oh, on,” I said. “I won’t try to mislead you. I thought the nursing home a very efficient operation. Of course, it only has a peripheral bearing on your application, but it’s nice to know you run a clean, classy institution. Good food, good care, pleasant surroundings, sufficient staff, planned social activities and all that stuff.”

“Yes,” he said, not changing expression, “all that stuff.”

“From what I’ve read of our preliminary investigation reports, Crittenden Hall makes a modest profit. Which goes to the Crittenden Research Laboratory. Correct?”

He gestured toward the stacks of papers on his desk.

“Correct,” he said. “And that’s what I’ve been doing this afternoon, and why I couldn’t show you around personally; I’ve been shuffling papers: bills, checks, requisitions, budgets, vouchers, salaries, and so forth. We have an accountant, of course; he comes in once a month. But I do the day-to-day management. It’s my own fault; I could delegate the responsibility to Draper or Beecham—or hire a smart bookkeeper to do it. But I prefer doing it myself. I want to know where every penny comes from and where it goes. And you know, Mr. Todd, I hate it. Hate every minute of it. This paper shuffling, I mean. I’d much rather be in the lab with Dr. Draper and the others. Hard at work. The kind of work I enjoy.”

It sounded swell: gifted scientist not interested in the vulgar details of making money, but only in pure research. For the benefit of mankind. What a cynical bastard I am! I said:

“That’s a natural lead-in to my next question, Dr. Thorndecker. What kind of work? Everyone I saw in the lab seemed gung-ho and busy as hell. What’s going on? What are you doing in the lab? I mean right now. Not if you get the grant, but what’s going on
now?”

He leaned back in his swivel chair, clasped his hands behind his head. He stared at plaster peeling off the high ceiling. His face suddenly contorted in a quick grimace, a tic that lasted no more than a second.

“Know anything about science?” he said. “Human biology in particular? Cells?”

“Some,” I said. “Not much. I read your application and the report by our research specialists. But I’m not a trained scientist.”

“An informed layman?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Anything in the application or report you didn’t understand?”

“I caught the gist of it. I gather you’re interested in why people get old.”

His ceiling-aimed stare came slowly down. He looked directly into my eyes.

“Exactly,” he said. “That’s it in a nutshell. Why do people get old? Why does the skin lose its elasticity at the age of thirty-five? Why, at a later age, do muscles grow slack and eyesight dim? Why does hearing fail? Why should a man’s cock shrink and his ass sink, or maybe shrivel up until there’s nothing there but a crack on a spotted board? Why do a woman’s breasts sag and wrinkle? Why does her pubic hair become sparse and scraggly? Why does a man go bald, a woman get puckered thighs? Why do lines appear? What happens to muscle tone and skin color? Did you know that some people actually shrink? They do, Mr. Todd, they
shrink.
Not only in body weight, but in their bone structure. Not to mention teeth falling out, a hawking of phlegm, an odor of the flesh like ash or loam, a tightening of the bowels.”

“Jesus,” I gasped, “I can hardly wait. Could I have a little more brandy, please?”

He laughed, and filled up my plastic cup. And his own, I noted. Once again I noted that sudden, brief twitching of his features. Almost a spasm of pain.

“I’m not telling you anything you didn’t know,” he said. “You just don’t want to think about it. No one does. Mortality. A hard concept to grasp. Maybe even impossible. But the interesting thing about senescence, Mr. Todd, is that science was hardly aware of it as a biological phenomenon until the last—oh, let’s say fifty years. Back in the Middle Ages, if you lived to the ripe old age of thirty or forty, you were doing well. Oh sure, there were a few oldsters of fifty or sixty, but most humans died in childbirth or soon after. If they survived a few years, disease, accidents, pestilence, or wars took them off before they really achieved maturity. Now, quite suddenly, with the marvelous advances in medical science, public health, hygiene, improved diet, and so forth, we have more and more people living into their sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and no one thinks it remarkable. It isn’t. What is remarkable is that, in spite of medical care, diet, exercise, and sanitary toilets, very few humans make it to a hundred. Why is that, Mr. Todd?”

“Have no idea.”

“Sure you do,” he said gently. “They don’t necessarily sicken. They don’t get typhoid, the plague, smallpox, or TB. They just decay. They degenerate. The body not only stops growing, it simply stops. It’s not a sudden thing; in a healthy human it takes place over a period of thirty or forty years. But we can see it happening, all those awful things I mentioned to you, and there’s no way we can stop it. The human body declines. Heart, liver, stomach, bowels, brain, circulation, nervous system: all subject to degenerative disorders. The body begins to waste away. And if you study actuarial tables, you’ll see there’s a very definite mathematical progression. The likelihood of dying doubles every seven years after the age of thirty. How does that grab you? But it’s only been in the past fifty years that science has started asking Why? Why should the human body decay? Why should hair fall out and skin become shrunken and crepey? We’ve extended longevity, yes. Meaning most people live longer than they did in the Middle Ages. But now we find ourselves up against a barrier, a wall. Why don’t people live to be a hundred, two hundred, three hundred? We can’t figure it out. No matter how good our diet, how efficient our sewers, how pure our air, there seems to be something in the human body, in our species, Mr. Todd, that decrees: Thus far, but no farther. We just can’t seem to get beyond that one-hundred-year limit. Oh, maybe a few go a couple of years over, but generally a hundred years seems to be the limit for
Homo sapiens.
Why? Who or what set that limit? Is it something in
us?
Something in our physical makeup? Something that decrees the time for dying? What is it? What the hell
is
it? And that, Mr. Todd, is what those gung-ho, busy-as-hell young researchers you just saw in the Crittenden Research Laboratory are trying to find.”

I must admit, he had me. He spoke with such earnestness, such fervor, leaning toward me with hands clasped, that I couldn’t take my eyes from him, couldn’t stop listening because I was afraid that in the next sentence he might reveal the miracle of creation, and if I wasn’t paying attention, I might miss it.

When he paused, I sat back, took a deep breath, and drank half my brandy.

I stared at him over the rim of my plastic cup. This time the contraction that wrenched his features was more violent than the two I had previously noted. This one not only twisted his face but wracked his body: he stiffened for an instant, then shuddered as his limbs relaxed. I don’t think he was aware that it was evident. When it passed, his expression was unchanged, and he made no reference to it.

“Wow,” I said. “Heady stuff, even for an informed layman. And I don’t mean the brandy. Are you saying that the Biblical three-score-and-ten don’t necessarily have to be that? But could be more?”

He looked at me strangely.

“You’re very quick,” he said. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. It doesn’t
have
to be three-score-and-ten. Not if we can find what determines that span. If we can isolate it, we can manipulate it. Then it could become five-score-and-ten, or ten-score-and-ten. Or more. Whatever we want.”

I was staggered. Almost literally. If that spring-sprung armchair hadn’t clasped me close, I might have trembled. After reading his application, I had suspected Thorndecker wanted Bingham Foundation to finance a search for the Fountain of Youth. Everything I had seen of him up to that moment reinforced that suspicion. Older man-youthful wife. Cosseted body and the threads of a swinger. Contrived enthusiasm and the energy of a spark. It all made a kind of very human sense.

But now, if I understood him, he wasn’t talking about the Fountain of Youth, of keeping smooth-skinned and romping all the days of our lives; he was talking about immortality—or something pretty close to it. I couldn’t believe it.

“Dr. Thorndecker,” I said, “let me get this straight … Are you saying there is a factor in human biology, in our bodies, that causes aging? And that once this agent—let’s call it the X Factor—can be discovered and isolated, then the chances are that it can be manipulated, modified, changed—whatever—so that the natural span of a man’s years could be increased without limit?”

He put his feet up on his desk. He sipped his brandy. Then he nodded.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

I leaned back, lighted another cigarette, crossed my legs. I couldn’t look at him. I was afraid that if I did, and he said, “Now jump out of the window,” out I’d go.

Because I can’t tell you how convincing the man was. It wasn’t only the manner: the passionate voice, the deep, unblinking gaze. But it was the impression of personal confession he gave, as if he were revealing the secret closest to his heart, a secret he had never revealed to anyone but me, because he knew I would understand and be sympathetic. It was as moving as a murmured, “I love you,” and could no more be withstood.

“All right,” I said finally, “supposing—just supposing—I go along with your theory that there is something in human biology, in the human body, that determines our lifespan—it is just a theory, isn’t it?”

“Of course. With some hard statistical evidence to back it up.”

“Assuming I agree with you that we all have something inside us that dictates when the cock shrinks and the ass sinks, what is it? What is the X Factor?”

“You read my application, and my professional record?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must know that I believe the X Factor—as you call it—is to be found in the cell. The human cell.”

“Germ cells? Sex cells?”

“No, we’re working with body cells. Heart, skin, lung.”

“Why cells at all? Couldn’t the X Factor, the aging factor, be a genetic property?”

He gave me a glassy smile.

“You
are
an informed layman,” he said. “Yes, I admit many good men working in this field believe senescence has a genetic origin. That the lifespan of our species, of all species, is determined by a genetic clock.”

“It makes sense,” I argued. “If my parents and grandparents live into their eighties and nineties, chances are pretty good that, barring a fatal accident or illness, I’ll live into my eighties or nineties, too. At least, the insurance companies are betting on it.”

“You may,” he acknowledged. “And the geneticists make a great point of that. Perhaps the X Factor exists in DNA, and determines the lifespan of every human born. And perhaps the X Factor in DNA could be isolated. Then what?”

I shook my head. “You’ve lost me. You speak of manipulating the X Factor in human cells, if and when it can be isolated. So …? Why couldn’t it be manipulated if found in the genetic code? I understand gene splicing is all the rage these days.”

“Oh, it’s the rage,” he said, not laughing. “But recombination with
what?
If you isolated the senescence gene, what would you combine it with—the tortoise gene? They grow to a hundred and fifty, you know. As my son Edward might say, ‘Big deal!’ What I’m trying to say, Mr. Todd, is that, in this case, gene splicing does not offer anything but the possibility of extending the human lifespan by fifty years. I happen to believe that my cellular theory offers more than that. Much more. You ask if it’s a theory, I reply that it is. You ask if I have any proof that the cellular approach to senescence is viable, I reply that there is much proof that the X Factor exists in human cells, but it has not been isolated. As of this date. You ask if I have anything to go on, other than my own conviction, that the X Factor can be isolated and manipulated, and I must reply in all honesty: no, nothing but my own conviction.”

I took a deep breath.

“All right, Dr. Thorndecker,” I said, “I appreciate your honesty. But why in hell didn’t you spell all this out in your application? Why did you base it all on that crap about exposing human embryo cells to electromagnetic radiation?”