Turnabout (19 page)

“But the mice and rats and monkeys also stopped unaging with the Cure,” the male doctor added. “So correlations aren’t . . . perfect.”

“You’ve got to start working on this again,” A. J. said threateningly. “Melly’s only got another fifteen years. Before she gets back to zero, you’ve got to find some way to help. And you’ve got to let us know what you’re doing—”

“No.” Melly shook her head slowly. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life worrying about
that. But I’m not sure you should keep messing up other people’s research.”

“What?” the male doctor asked in surprise.

“Think about who your grandparents picked for Project Turnabout. We were all ready to die. Cheating death was more confusing for us than joyous. And then, for practical reasons, we all agreed to be cut off from the people who meant the most to us. . . . What if they’d given PT-1 to a bunch who were fighting to live, who had people and causes to live for?”

The two doctors looked at each other thoughtfully.

“But why did you two want to live when the others didn’t?” the female doctor asked. “You were as close to death as any of them.”

Melly frowned. It was hard to analyze her own motives, especially since they’d changed over the years. She tried to think of something that had been constant throughout her entire second lifetime. And then she had it.

“I think I was just determined to prove that I could make it outside the agency,” she said. “During my first lifetime I’d just done what people told me to do, been who they expected me to be. Once I realized I had another life coming, I had to prove I could meet the challenge.”

Anny Beth nodded. “And I had such a bad life the first time, I had to prove I could manage not to mess up again,” she said.

A. J. tilted her head thoughtfully to the side. “It’s going to be real interesting living with you two,” she said.

The doctors were looking horrified.

“So we’ve been wrong all these years?” the female doctor asked. “You think we should offer PT-1 to just . . . just anyone who wants it? Voluntarily?”

“Why not?” Anny Beth asked. “As long as they knew the risks.”

The male doctor buried his face in his hands. “My life’s work,” he mumbled.

Melly felt a surge of sympathy. She knew how hard it was to give up ideas that had lasted a lifetime. She hurried to console him. “Maybe you haven’t been all wrong. In the early part of the century, with all the overpopulation problems, PT-1 would have been very bad for society. But now—don’t you think people would be less self-obsessed if they had a longer time to live? If they weren’t scrambling to make their mark on the world before they’d gained any wisdom about what kind of mark to leave?”

“We’ll . . . we’ll have to think about all of this,” the female doctor said.

“Can we go home now?” Anny Beth asked. “There’s a cool trail we’d like to hike this afternoon, and poky old Melly over there always wants to be in
bed in time to get up and see the sunrise the next day. . . .”

“Sure,” the male doctor said. “Just—you’ll stay in touch, won’t you?”

They all shook hands, a strangely formal ending to their meeting. As they walked out to the car A. J. shook her head.

“That was not at all the way I expected things to go,” she said. “I was ready to scream and yell about getting them to tell us everything, and not letting them keep you there. I had the president’s office number programmed in on the portable in my purse, in case I had to bring in the heavy hitters—”

Melly stopped short, in horror. “So you would have blown our cover.”

A. J. put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Good grief, no. Don’t you think the president of the United States is capable of secrecy? You guys have seen the public face of this society. But believe me, there’s more. And we’re going to live in secret for the next two decades.”

Melly turned and faced her. “Is that really okay with you?”

A. J. nodded. “It’s what I want. I swear. On the graves of my ancestors. At least—the ones who are really dead. That I know of.”

They all laughed.

They got into the car and leaned back in comfort.
It would only be a couple hours to home.

“But I’ve got to ask you,” A. J. said suddenly. “How can you stand not knowing what’s going to happen at the end, when you turn zero? How can you not be grabbing those doctors by the collars and begging them to find out for you?”

Melly shrugged. “Life’s full of uncertainty. Whether you’re aging or unaging.”

Anny Beth nodded her agreement.

A. J. squinted over at them. “I never know with you two—is that teenage profundity or the wisdom of two lifetimes?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Melly said. “It’s just something I thought.”

They reached the crest of the hill, and then the entire valley lay at their feet—the vista Melly had been longing to see again for her entire second lifetime.

“So,” Anny Beth asked, “was it worth the wait?”

With tears in her eyes, Melly nodded. She looked out over the acres of treetops and took a deep breath of the cool mountain air. They’d been living with A. J. for a month now and had been back from the agency for two weeks, but Melly had held off on making this hike until exactly the right time.

“It has to be in June,” she’d told Anny Beth and A. J. “That’s when we used to go there picking blueberries. . . . That’s when it’ll be at its best. . . .”

Now she stood peering out at the valley in silence. It was beautiful, and yet—

A. J. puffed up the trail behind them.

“I’m going to have to get some of that PT-1 just to keep up with you two,” she joked. “Could you have stopped running for a few minutes to save my pride?”

“Would you ever take PT-1?” Melly asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” A. J. said, just as seriously. “What do you two think?”

“I think it’s a personal decision that every human will have to make for him- or herself, according to the guidance of his or her conscience, and God, if he
or she so believes,” Anny Beth said jauntily, as if quoting from a manual.

“Gee, thanks for the psychobabble,” A. J. said. She bent over, panting, then looked out at the view. “Wow,” she said. “I know it’s inadequate, but, wow. No wonder you wanted to come back here.”

The tears began sliding down Melly’s face.

“Memories?” A. J. asked gently.

Melly wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “No. I mean—yes, there are lots of memories. It seems like memories are always most vivid right before I lose them. And I came here a lot the summer I was fifteen. Me and Roy. . . . But that’s not why I’m crying. It’s because . . . because I feel old again.”

“What?” A. J. asked. “After the way you charged up that mountainside?” She looked from Melly to Anny Beth and back again. “Is it just because the memories seem so long ago?”

“No,” Melly said impatiently. “It’s because—” She stopped.

“I think I know what you mean,” Anny Beth said. “It’s that—” But she couldn’t finish either.

Frowning, A. J. shook her head. “You two are going to have to help me out here. I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” She leaned against a tree trunk and waited.

“When I wanted to come here all those years
ago—when I wanted to have a baby . . . ,” Melly started slowly. “I was looking for something. Not just scenery. I wanted to find a . . . a purpose for my life. And now—”

“What?” A. J. asked.

“Now I don’t need one anymore. Everything’s settled. We found you. I’m just waiting to die again.”

A. J. kicked at some leaves on the ground. “You don’t know that,” she said. “Whatever happened to ‘life’s full of uncertainty’? You might do another turnabout, in which case you’d have another whole life to live—”

“But why?” Melly said. “What would the purpose of that be?”

“You found purpose in this lifetime. Surely you could do that again,” A. J. said. But she didn’t sound very sure of herself.

“Maybe,” Melly said doubtfully. “When I was an adult again. But now there’s nothing I’m supposed to do. Before, when I was a teacher and a nurse and everything else, I had a reason for living. And even just a couple months ago we were trying to outsmart the agency, and trying to find someone to take care of us. But now—we’re just playing. Entertaining ourselves. Taking hikes, having picnics . . .”

A. J. nodded, finally seeming to understand. “I have some ideas of things for you to do,” she said.

“What?” Melly asked eagerly.

“I think the agency needs some advice. I think society needs some advice. If the agency really is going to make PT-1 available, or at least its research available, there are going to be all sorts of ethics boards meeting and discussing what this means for society and what humanity should do about it. They may decide to ban PT-1 the way they banned cloning. They may decide to give it to everyone. Either way they’d make a better decision if you two shared your experiences.”

Anny Beth and Melly stared at her in dismay, utterly speechless. Anny Beth was the first one to regain her voice.

“But you promised us privacy!” Anny Beth protested. “We’d make spectacles of ourselves. We’d be just like all those bozos with their own twenty-four-hour video broadcasts, telling the world every thought that crossed our minds—”

“No,” A. J. said. “Neither of you would be like that. You’d be thoughtful and wise and reveal only what needed to be revealed. You could teach our whole society the difference between openness and exhibitionism.”

“We’ve spent eighty-four years trying to avoid being exposed. And now you want us to tell our stories? Just like that?” Melly asked.

“You ran halfway across the country trying to avoid me, and then you sought me out. You promised
Dr. Reed you’d never come to Kentucky, and then you did. You gave up your families, and then you took them back. You vowed you’d never return to the agency, but then you did,” A. J. said. “Shall I go on?”

It made Melly dizzy thinking about all the turnabouts she’d made in the past few weeks. A. J. made her and Anny Beth sound as reversible as, well, teenagers, trying on a different image or philosophy every other day. But it wasn’t that. She remembered Anny Beth saying out in the desert, “You live long enough, you’re bound to have to eat your words one time or another.”

A. J. continued, speaking more softly. “You guys haven’t lived your lives scandalously enough to keep the interest of the tabloid media for long. If you went forward and spoke out about PT-1, there would be a buzz for a week or so, but then you’d be left alone. They’d go on to the next hyped event du jour. And you could take part in the serious discussion of what this really means for humanity.”

Melly bit her lip and looked back out at the sky and trees. “I’ll—” She looked at Anny Beth. “We’ll think about it.”

“Oh, great,” Anny Beth grumbled. “Do you feel better? Making me think—always having to have some purpose.” She turned and shouted out at the scenery, “I just want to have fun.”

The words echoed: “—fun . . . fun . . . fun.” But Anny Beth grinned and nodded at Melly when she turned around.

“Reckon we could try our hands at writing a book or something,” she said. “Maybe we could even do it anonymously, avoid the tabloids entirely. You think?”

Melly thought how strange Anny Beth’s suggestion would have sounded to her the last time she was fifteen. How could she, Amelia Hazelwood, write a book? But now—A. J. was right. She did have things to say. She had a purpose again.

Impulsively Melly threw her arms around Anny Beth’s neck, then included A. J. in the hug too.

“What a family,” A. J. said, laughing.

For a long time the three of them stood on the edge of the precipice, looking out as far as they could see.

Then, “Race you down the hill?” Anny Beth asked.

For an answer Melly took off running, wind in her hair, pulse pounding in her ears, a clear path ahead of her.

Clear, at least, until the next bend in the road.

I picked a fairly obscure scientific theory to explain the unaging in
Turnabout.
So I was stunned when that theory began making headlines before I’d even finished writing the book.

Though I didn’t exactly toe the line scientifically in this book, the telomeres that Dr. Reed raves about during Project Turnabout aren’t fiction. They do exist, and they are indeed like beads on a necklace. They’re repeating sequences of genetic material on the ends of chromosomes. (I realize I probably just lost everybody who didn’t cram for some sort of genetics exam within the past twenty-four hours. To explain: Chromosomes are chains of genes, linked in pairs in the nuclei in your body’s cells. It’s like having a recipe for everything about you in every cell in your body.)

Telomeres don’t have any direct impact on, say, what color your eyes are or how tall you grow, the way other parts of your chromosomes do. Some scientists compare telomeres to the plastic tips of shoelaces—they keep the shoelaces from unraveling. But in most normal human cells, every time the cell reproduces, the telomeres get shorter. If you don’t like the necklace or shoelace analogy, you can think of it this way: It’s like making a photocopy on a copy machine with a shrinking screen—every time you make a copy, part of
the copy gets cut off. As long as the telomeres are there, it’s not that big a deal to lose part of the copy, because the telomeres protect the important stuff. They function like a nonessential frame.

Until you run out of frame, and the copier starts losing part of the picture.

With an explanation like that it’s easy to jump to conclusions—when your cells are almost out of telomeres, you get old. And when they’re gone, you die, right?

Sorry. It’s not nearly that simple.

If you’re really interested in the science behind all this, I’ll explain. If you’re just curious about whether you or your friends or your parents or your great-aunt Enid will ever unage, skip ahead a few paragraphs. I’ll get past the technical stuff. I promise.

Back in 1961 a researcher named Leonard Hayflick discovered that normal human cells in test tubes divide about fifty times and then die. The Hayflick Limit appeared ironclad: If you take cells that have divided twenty times and stick them in the freezer for a year, when they thaw, they divide about thirty more times and then die. In contrast to cancer cells, which can reproduce endlessly, normal cells clearly had some sort of internal clock telling them when to die.