Necropolis (12 page)

My eyebrow arched. “Cutting edge?”

He hid a smile. “Sorry.”

A shriek of pain, delight, or both, came from the dungeon.

“No one saw the killer exit?”

“No one in the main dungeon remembers seeing that door open again after Smythe went in, until the body was discovered, an hour later.”

“These witnesses were, at the least, distracted,” I said.

“Sharon would have seen,” said Queenie.

“Who?”

“A submissive,” said Bart. “Bound to one of the St. Andrews facing the door. She swears no one went in or out.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Great. So we have a respected genetic scientist with a kinky side who winds up with his throat cut by a ghost in a dungeon.”

Bart’s mouth wriggled in distaste. In this light, he looked all of his years. “That’s about the size of it.”

“Could our missing Dr. Crandall have been the doer? A professional rivalry taken to the final level?”

Bart shook his head. “Crandall was alibied by four assistants. Besides, from all accounts, they got along famously.”

“So we have no real way of knowing if Smythe’s killing has anything at all to do with Crandall’s disappearance.”

“Right.”

“Great.”

“We’ve got the rest of the research team under surveillance, just in case.”

I nodded, then looked at my watch. “Shit. Gotta go.”

“What, you got a full social calendar already?”

“An appointment with Surazal’s head of research.”

Bart grimaced. “Gavin? Oh, you’re going to love him. He’s a genius, and he’ll make sure you know it.”

“Madame St. Clair, thanks.” I took the surprised woman’s hand and laid a kiss across her knuckles. The giggle that emanated from her could’ve been from a school child. The abrasive old broad must have a deeply-buried soft side.

I turned to Bart. “See you in the funny papers.”

“Hey, Donner,” said Bart, shuffling. “You did good.”

My throat tightened as I walked out.

13

DONNER

T
he building looked like it had been blown from glass. It twisted at impossible angles, a silver sculpture. That people worked within seemed an afterthought. The sun made its spires glow so brightly that I wondered if the glare was a driving hazard to the serfs below. There was an outer morphinium shell over the building’s superstructure that slowly, over the course of the day, undulated and changed shape. You could actually see it flow if you stood there long enough. There were thirty of the same sort scattered around Manhattan, the gimmick being that New York’s skyline was never exactly the same.
 

I crossed the courtyard toward a triple set of revolving doors. Nestled between them was a plaque with brushed copper letters that read simply: THE SURAZAL CORPORATION.

I rode the elevator to the fiftieth floor and the company’s Research and Development Division. A receptionist took my name and blinked out of existence.

The décor was deliberately expensive and deliberately ugly. Visitors weren’t wanted here. Images flowed across the wall opposite me. A scientist. The Blister. A double helix. Captions like “Surazal Corporation—Protecting the World.”

From me
, I thought.

Two men entered, lost in conversation. The first one I immediately placed. The resemblance to Nicole was remarkable. Adam Struldbrug, President of Surazal Corporation. Her twin. One of the most powerful men in the country.

His features were severe but handsome, his thick black hair slicked into place. Something subtle in his coloring suggested Mediterranean ancestry, but he had the same piercing blue eyes as Nicole. His body was so symmetrical that he could have bought off the rack and looked tailored. But the fabric that swathed his limbs was a thousand dollars a yard.
 

As he headed for the elevator, his eyes swept the room, surveying his kingdom. He caught me appraising him. We made eye contact. It was like two stones sparking off each other. Mutual recognition of the thing beneath. The thing in the dark that citizens miss but fellow predators acknowledge. He came over instead of ignoring me, as he should have.

“Paul Donner, isn’t it?” He didn’t offer his hand.

“Your sister keeps you well-informed.”

“No, Mr. Donner, my spies keep me well-informed.”

I nodded.

“You’re not shocked.”

“It doesn’t take a genius to see that Ms. Struldbrug is… a handful.”

He laughed, pleased. “Speaking of geniuses…”
 

He turned to the other, a man powerfully built and bald. This, I assumed, was Maurice R. Gavin, Director of R&D. Gavin gave me an impassive twitch of the head.
 

“I don’t have to tell you that Dr. Crandall’s disappearance is a sensitive matter,” Adam Struldbrug continued. “I wouldn’t have chosen to go outside the company like Nicole did, but now that she has, I trust you will remain discreet.”

“My middle name,” I said.
 

“Should you somehow manage to achieve what we have not and find the good doctor, well, you will be able to… how do they say it?… ‘write your own ticket’ in Necropolis.”

“Good to know.”

He pursed his lips. “You seem rather underwhelmed.”

I shrugged. “After coming back from the dead…”

“Yes, I see. Everything else pales. Quite so. Well, I shall leave you to it. Good luck.”

And with that, he was gone into the elevator.
 

Gavin stepped into the vacated space and extended a hand the size of a ham. The blunt fingers were manicured. “Maurice Gavin. This way, please.” Gavin strode past the desk. I scurried to keep up.

A minute later, we were comfortably ensconced in a burgundy office the size of a tennis court. The left wall was all window, offering a breathtaking view of the Manhattan Bridge and the East River. The burnished surface of Gavin’s desk was empty except for an inset keypad and a rack of data pebbles. The wall behind was covered with photos: Gavin in a hardhat, Gavin with presidents, Gavin winning awards, Gavin anchoring a relay team, Gavin peering into a microscope. The self-proclaimed Renaissance man.

He motioned for me to sit. He himself sank into something befitting an emperor and folded his hands across his chest. He stared at me, waiting for me to start.
Do not waste my time
, the placid gaze said.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I said.

“Morris Crandall is a good friend, and an important employee.” He opened his palms. “Anything I can do.” He had the eyes of a hawk, dark and glassy.

“Ms. Struldbrug said he was working on a project related to the Shift,” I started.

A nod. “Analyzing reborn and normal DNA.”

“So you believe the cause of the Shift is genetic? I’m hearing a lot of talk about how time has reversed itself. The Enders think this is Armageddon.”

Gavin repressed a pained look. “I know the world prefers to believe in fairy tales, to buy clocks that run backwards and dress in antique clothing. But when we finally unravel this, it will turn out to be perfectly rational, and perfectly scientific.”

“Okay. So what
has
happened?”

Gavin drummed his fingers on the table. “We don’t have all the components, of course…”

“So give me what you do have.”

“It’s quite technical. And I’m not sure it’s germane.” His smile was laced with contempt. This guy had you instantly pegged, based on your alma mater and the height of your IQ. Which put me around the level of an amoeba.
 

“Why don’t you let me decide what’s germane? Unless you have some reason to distrust me. Perhaps you’d like to speak to one of my friends on the force to establish my credentials?”
 

Gavin looked like I was an impertinent fly he wanted to swat. “You
have
no friends on the force, Mr. Donner. Except perhaps your old partner. And he is terrified of you. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

He’d taken my bait and revealed that someone—Nicole, her brother Adam, or Gavin himself—had had me investigated. These people either had a lot to protect or a lot to hide—or both. I looked at Gavin hard enough for his smugness to falter. “I guess my report to Ms. Struldbrug will be that you were uncooperative.”

He shifted hotly in his throne. “It appears I’m going to give a science lesson this morning.”

“I was good in science.”

“Obviously,” sighed Gavin, “the Shift is tied to the biology of aging.”

I shrugged. “Obviously.”

“For centuries, scientists have been trying to fashion theories of aging that explained the process. In the 19th century, it was the ‘things fall apart’ theory.”

“We’re just machines. Which eventually break down.”

“Very good. The 20th century brought new theories of aging. The biological clock theory, which asserts that the body has a built-in, pre-set lifespan limit. Then, for a while, it was popular to view aging as a disease, something that could eventually be cured. As most solutions are, it was too simplistic. Some aging processes do resemble that of a disease, but we think the body also has built-in regulators that enforce a lifespan limit.”

“Which is?”

“The maximum lifespan for
homo sapiens
, we think, is around 122 years, give or take.”

“So the ‘things fall apart’ theory is wrong, then?”

Gavin shook his head. “None of them are wrong, per se, just incomplete. The body
does
fall apart. Not surprising, considering it’s under constant attack.”

“Attack?”

“You’ve heard of free radicals?”

“Yeah. They’re bad.”

“Most people don’t realize the delicious irony that oxygen, the thing that sustains us, is also slowly killing us.”

“Huh?”

“The most dangerous free radicals are oxygen-centered.”

“So while oxygen keeps our lungs pumping, it’s also slowly killing us?
”

He nodded. “Oxidized free radicals burn through delicate cell membranes, injuring proteins, lipids… even our DNA.”

“Well, shit. What’s the point of quitting smoking?”

“Oh no, the amount of radicals in cigarette smoke…” He realized I was joking and screwed his mouth sideways. “Antioxidants are naturally-occurring enzymes which minimize free radical damage. Think of them as the body’s toxic waste cleanup crew. Even so, the body still experiences a staggering amount of oxidant hits a day. Add it to other chemical damages, and each genome in each of your cells endures 30,000 damage events
every day
.”

“Each genome?”

“Right. So, if the average adult human body contains about 10 trillion cells, on a typical day your DNA could rack up about 300,000
trillion
hits.”

I whistled. “But not everybody wears out at the same rate, does it?”

“No. Our genes also determine how quickly, and how well, we age.”

“I see what you mean about it being complicated.”

“Oh, we’re not nearly done.”

I was afraid of that.

“We haven’t taken into account the cumulative mistakes theory. When cells reproduce, divide, and replace themselves, it’s called cell doublings. Cell doublings are directly related to the longevity of the species. Look at this chart.”

He hit a button on his desk and scrolled through some holoimages. He finally punched up a little graph:

SPECIES
LIFESPAN
CELL DIVISION CEILING

Mice
3 years
15 divisions

Chickens
12 years
25 divisions

Humans
122 years
50 divisions

Galapagos tortoise
175 years
110 divisions

“Gotta get me some turtle DNA.” Gavin didn’t laugh. “So cells only have so many divisions in them?”

“It’s called the Hayflick limit. On top of that, cell division involves literally hundreds of factors and changes… a lot that can go wrong. And does, incrementally. Eventually cells start dying, making mistakes, even on the genetic level. Since these accumulated mistakes make the body more vulnerable to age-related diseases, one almost always dies well before their cell division limit is reached.”

“So… we wear out, and we have built-in cell limits, and a biological clock that’s running down. Sounds like the deck’s stacked against us.”

“More than you know. Now, as to telomeres—”
 

“Christ. There’s more.”

“Oh yes. We spoke about the genetic component. Each chromosome ends in a series of protective units called a telomere. Think of them like the plastic tips at the end of shoe laces. These telomeres don’t contain genetic information, just an empty number of repeating subunits, which shorten after each division.”

“Each time the DNA reproduces, it’s one unit shorter?”

“These units may serve as counting markers, growing shorter in direct proportion to how near the cell comes to death. Contrarily, cancer cells replenish their telomeres after each division. That’s why cancer grows so wildly out of control.”