The Black Silent (36 page)

It had even felt good to tell someone.

"I'm tired of waiting to hear what the fountain of youth will do for me. And how it will do it and what it will cost me," Sam said. "Imagine the lines."

She looked up for just a moment and smiled, obviously getting his dry humor. Then she went back to her reading. He saw the reflection of her in the water. She seemed completely engrossed, observing everything and saying nothing for fear that she might miss some subtlety in the sopping wet papers.

A moment before he had been sure that
he
was the object of her interest. Now it was the papers. It was tough losing out like that, he thought, laughing inwardly at his whimsy.

"I'm really interested in this mitochondria stuff."

"You really don't have time to figure it out."

"I'm a scientist. I read this stuff faster."

"Tell me what you see."

"You know the mitochondria are these tiny little things in your cell, like metabolic furnaces, that burn the oxygen you breathe. Each cell has about five hundred of them and it's how you get your energy. All this health-supplement pap that you read about—

antioxidants in the pills, in the wine, in the dark chocolate, in the whatever—is supposed to counter what these little bad boys do when they get old. These furnaces get rusty, to borrow a not inappropriate metaphor, and then they produce the escaped oxygen molecules called free radicals that oxidize your body, in particular your DNA. As you age, your DNA doesn't copy itself quite right because of the oxidation. Hence, everybody wants an antioxidant to stop the deterioration of the DNA."

"I got that."

"Eons ago, mitochondria were actually symbiotic, separate organisms living inside the larger cell of the host. So they've got their own DNA, even though they are inside the cells of our body, and each of our cells has its own human genome."

"So we've really got two sets of DNA. One that is ours and one that belongs to our mitochondria," Sam said.

"Yeah. And get this, Ben tantalizingly suggests in a note that human DNA and mitochondria DNA might have something in common:

"We have all read that Arcs are closer to us genetically than are bacteria. What if the
Arcs

and the mitochondrial DNA and the human genome have something in common?

"You should know that human mitochondria use electrical transference and that they
operate at about two hundred millivolts. We believe that mitochondria operating at one
hundred fifty millivolts do not lose their oxygen-burning efficiency as rapidly.

Therefore, they

age much more slowly. They also produce fewer free radicals when operating at lower
voltage. Therefore, the human that has mitochondria operating at one hundred fifty
millivolts

may suffer less DNA deterioration and live longer.

"We believe that mice on low-calorie diets undergo a change in their mitochondria so
that

they run at lower voltage. We believe the same is true of mice that have their growth
hormone

genes suppressed at birth. We all know that these mice live longer than normal mice. Is
this

making sense? Think this through. I wish I were there to see the light go on behind your
eyes.

Regrettably, if you're reading this, my presence is obviously impossible. There is so
much

more."

"That's pretty fascinating," Sam said.

"It is. The missing link for us now is the nature of the connection between human mitochondrial DNA and Arc DNA. Arcs don't use oxygen. It would be poison to them, in fact. So one wonders how they could have anything to do with us."

"But they don't suffer the DNA deterioration that we do if they can reproduce themselves after thousands of years. And remember what we found in the other note that they had discovered an Arc gene they called Arc Two."

"You are so right," she said.

"I thought I saw something where they are looking for a gene and he thought the answer might be in the Sargasso stew," Sam said.

"What?" She shuffled through the papers. "Yes. Here it is. Apparently they are looking for a gene or, more correctly, a particular Arc with a certain gene. That's strange. They found one gene Arc Two, but are they looking for its source. How could that be? I don't get the Sargasso stew. I'll have to think about that. Something rings a bell, but I can't remember."

Rossitter had their Judas on the speakerphone. Sanker was listening for more than could be heard, hunched over his bar where the speakerphone was mounted. He normally used it to settle bets and the like, or check the stables before post time at the racetrack, especially on weekends. Sanker owned racehorses and had done rather well at them, like everything else that he undertook. This weekend's particular permutation of corporate life at Sanker was fast becoming a notable exception to his usual success.

"How do you know that Sarah James is in danger from Frick?" Rossitter asked.

There was a pause, as if the Judas were thinking over the answer.

Sanker's mind worked feverishly trying to imagine what was at risk, whether they might even be taped by the authorities in some sort of sting operation. Not likely, but then again his sons would swear he was over at the stables at this very moment. Hanging it on Rossitter was a last resort, but necessary, in case of disaster.

"Giving you my sources of information," their Judas continued, "won't help me or you.

So let's stick with the current events. I believe he has her. If Frick were to torture her, that means he'll have to kill her. Eventually. You see? I'm telling you that this result could be very bad for you. You need to act."

"It should be obvious to you that anyone associated with Sanker Corporation is not going to be kidnapping people," Sanker replied, "and if they were to commit such incomprehensible evil, they certainly are not going to tell us or anyone else about it.

Men of this ilk don't go explaining their activities. On the other hand, your allegations are extraordinary, and if you have information, you should do the right thing with it. Tell the state or federal authorities."

"Get off this crap. You're not speaking into a microphone. It's a little late to get paranoid. You're in this too deep. You know there is no way to call the state and stop something that's happening at this very moment at an unknown location."

"We don't know what you're talking about," Rossitter insisted. "You're not telling us anything we can use."

"Well, you better figure it out if you want Ben Anderson's secrets after he's gone. You better get off your ass and stop Frick."

The Judas hung up.

"He's desperate," Sanker said. "This isn't good. He's more concerned about Sarah James than he is about getting us the secrets. I can hear it in his voice. Then again, maybe she is the key to the secret."

"Should we call Frick?"

"Certainly not," Sanker said. "The minute we get involved in the details, we're culpable.

We'll just have to trust Frick to extract what we need." The old man thought for a minute. "You know, it may be much better for us if Frick denies any knowledge of her whereabouts. If he has her, he'll never admit it. Never. Without revealing it to Frick, put a private investigator of impeccable reputation on the phone with you and Frick—he'll be a witness to Frick's denial."

Haley worried that Sanker's men would be at Ben's beach house and she worried that Sam was in no shape to fight anybody or even run away. She optimistically argued to herself that maybe there wasn't a lot wrong other than his bad knee and hip and a multitude of cuts, scratches, and near-hypothermia. At times it seemed he could barely walk, and then when he had to move, he somehow managed to hobble along in a sort of spastic lope.

"We've got to get out of here," he said.

"I know, I know, but this is so pertinent."

She was flipping through pages with one ear out for Frick's men, concerned that at any moment they would come knocking at the door, but literally unable to stop reading. She had found some fairly analytic text and proceeded to a page that seemed out of place:
The gene holding the secret to the marvelous paradox between duplication and re-creation and how to control the benefits of each.

"Here it is. He is talking about the fact that DNA needs to excel at both duplication and re-creation. The incredible beauty of DNA is that it is changeable in sexual reproduction and we make babies. What is more awesome than a baby? A mixing of two people—

Nature at Her most creative."

"God at His most creative."

She smiled. The "he vs. she" joke was not lost on her.

"Anyway, this is profound, what he's saying. DNA's strength in sexual reproduction is also its greatest weakness. It comes apart and changes. But when our body replaces old, worn-out cells, they're supposed to be exact duplicates. In duplication, DNA's changeability is a problem. The copies get blurred, like copies off a bad copy machine. I wonder if Ben's solved that problem somehow. He's hinting at it."

"We really need to go," Sam said. "I'm impressed, but we gotta go."

She took one last look through the papers while Sam gathered his semidry clothes and erased all possible traces of their presence from the Williamses' house.

"Here's another reference to Sargasso stew. I think he's talking about the Sargasso Sea, and I think I know what he means."

Sam had everything together and cleaned up. He was checking the windows for the arrival of any unwanted guests. Or hosts.

"Tell me, but let's get out of here soon." "We looked at an article at the open-air mausoleum near the old Del Haro Hotel."

"The McMillan family ashes are in the marble seats in this shrine in the forest and old graves mark the path. Hard to forget," Sam said.

"Ben and I had walked there while we were waiting for more dinner guests at the McMillan House restaurant and Ben had gene-sequencing data to go over at dinner.

They had used some of Venter's method with help from Venter's lab for analyzing octopuses' genome sequences. It got dark and we were sitting on the family's ashes in the marble seats around the marble table. Anyway, they pulled up on the computer this little article about Venter. Some kind of a voyage on his yacht."

Haley glanced at the computer on the desk in the nearby study.

"I wish I knew the password. We could search for it."

"You probably don't need to. Many home computers don't use a password," Sam said.

Sam turned it on and a password dialogue box came up.

"Oops." Sam fished around in the desk drawer and found the Windows install disk. He put the CD in the computer and then unplugged the computer. Immediately he plugged the computer back in and hit the escape key and F2 key simultaneously.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting into BIOS. We've been here this long, I guess we can gamble on a few more minutes and hope it doesn't kill us."

Another dialogue box came up asking for a password. In about one minute Sam had the back of the computer off and he pulled a pin disconnecting the jumper. Pushing the computer reset button put him into the BIOS. In BIOS configuration he directed the computer to look at the CD before it went to the hard drive, thereby changing the booting sequence.

"I've effectively told the computer to boot off the CD. Voila. No password needed."

Sam installed the new system and used the new system to access the Internet.

"I'd love to know how you used this in your former life."

"Any computer tech could do this, no problem," Sam said. "It's nothing."

"So passwords are baloney."

"You could say that. Especially on home applications."

They found a number of articles. Then they found the one that discussed the Sargasso Sea:

Venter is a pioneer in gene sequencing first on the human genome, when he beat the
federal

Government, and now in beginning to catalog the diversity of the seas. He's on a round-the-

world voyage with a yacht
equipped with gene-sequencing computers. To prove that
human

genes (some 25,000 of them in all) are a tiny minority among millions of other genes on
the

planet, Venter pulled up water samples from the Sargasso Sea. It was thought to be a
relatively unproductive ocean. Using his advanced gene-searching techniques, Venter
isolated 1.2 million genes from no more than a few buckets of seawater. He discovered
1,800

new microbes.

"See that's Sargasso stew. Venter's sequencing methods applied to a random mix," Haley said.

"Why specifically would that be of interest to Ben?"

"You saw something in all these papers about looking for a gene?"

"So I did."

"This is a way to look. Only maybe you look in deep-sea sediment. But I don't think we've figured out the Sargasso stew." Haley sighed. "Maybe the reference is to something else. We'd better go to the beach house. Maybe the rest of his files will tell us something."

S
he put the papers back into Sam's bag. It was cloth, not designed for papers, and it tended to bend and mix the already damp documents. Thinking about the problem, she went into a study, found a big briefcase, stuffed them all inside, and crammed the lid down. It was a wooden briefcase. A little unusual, but it would work.

"I wonder about driving to Ben's," Sam said. "By now they may have heard about the Blazer and there are liable to be cops on the roads, roadblocks." He paused to let that sink in. "How else can we get to Ben's?"

She thought for a moment. "If we want to try hiking the forest at night, we can walk. It's about a mile through the forest along Aleck Bay. There's forest everywhere on the way, with houses intermixed, especially along the beach." Then she paused again, an idea having obviously crossed her mind. "I think there's a boat here we could use."

"We could hide the Blazer down the way from here and walk back," Sam said.