Shadowfires

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 engaged, but after a moment's hesitation she took one of the straight-backed chairs from the table, tipped it onto two legs, and braced it under the doorknob for extra protection.

He was sure she was being overly cautious, treading the edge of paranoia. On the other hand, he didn't object.

She returned to the edge of the bed. “They injected the mice, changed the mice, working with mouse genes instead of human genes, of course, but applying the same theories and techniques they intended to use to promote human longevity. And the mice, a short-lived variety, survived longer… twice as long as usual and still kicking. Then three times as long… four times… and still young. Some mice were subjected to injuries of various kinds — everything from contusions and abrasions to punctures, broken bones, serious burns — and they healed at a remarkable rate. They recovered and flourished after their kidneys were virtually destroyed. Lungs eaten half away by acid fumes were regenerated. They actually regained their vision after being blinded. And then…”

Her voice trailed away, and she glanced at the fortified door, then at the window, lowered her head, closed her eyes.

Ben waited.

Eyes still closed, she said, “Following standard procedure, they killed some mice and put them aside for dissection and for thorough tissue tests. Some were killed with injections of air — embolisms. Killed others with lethal injections of formaldehyde. And there was no question they were dead. Very dead. But those that weren't yet dissected… they came back. Within a few hours. Lying there in the lab trays… they just… started twitching, squirming. Bleary-eyed, weak at first… but they came back. Soon they were on their feet, scurrying about their cages, eating — fully alive. Which no one had anticipated, not at all. Oh, sure, before the mice were killed, they'd had tremendously enhanced immune systems, truly astonishing capacity to heal, and life spans that had been dramatically increased, but…” Rachael raised her head, opened her eyes, looked at Ben. “But once the line of death is crossed… who'd imagine it could be recrossed?”

Ben's hands started shaking, and a wintry shiver followed the track of his spine, and he realized that the true meaning and power of these events had only now begun to sink in.

“Yes,” Rachael said, as if she knew what thoughts and emotions were racing through his mind and heart.

He was overcome by a strange mixture of terror, awe, and wild joy: terror at the idea of anything, mouse or man, returning from the land of the dead; awe at the thought that humankind's genius had perhaps shattered nature's dreadful chains of mortality; joy at the prospect of humanity freed forever from the loss of loved ones, freed forever from the great fears of sickness and death.

And as if reading his mind, Rachael said, “Maybe one day… maybe even one day soon, the threat of the grave will pass away. But not yet. Not quite yet. Because the Wildcard Project's breakthrough is not entirely successful. The mice that came back were… strange.”

“Strange?”

Instead of elaborating on that freighted word, she said, “At first the researchers thought the mice's odd behavior resulted from some sort of brain damage — maybe not to cerebral tissues but to the fundamental chemistry of the brain — that couldn't be repaired even by the mice's enhanced healing abilities. But that wasn't the case. They could still run difficult mazes and repeat other complex tricks they'd been taught before they'd died—”

“So somehow the memories, knowledge, probably even personality survives the brief period of lifelessness between death and rebirth.”

She nodded. “Which would indicate that some small current still exists in the brain for a time after death, enough to keep memory intact until… resurrection. Like a computer during a power failure, barely holding on to material in its short-term memory by using the meager flow of current from a standby battery.”

Ben wasn't sleepy anymore. “Okay, so the mice could run mazes, but there was something strange about them. What? How strange?”

“Sometimes they became confused — more frequently at first than after they'd been back with the living awhile — and they repeatedly rammed themselves against their cages or ran in circles chasing their tails. That kind of abnormal behavior slowly passed. But another, more frightening behavior emerged… and endured.”

Outside a car pulled into the motel parking lot and stopped.

Rachael glanced worriedly at the barricaded door.

In the still desert air, a car door opened, closed.

Ben sat up straighter in his chair, tense.

Footsteps echoed softly through the empty night. They were heading away from Rachael's and Ben's room. In another part of the motel, the door to another room opened and closed.

With visible relief Rachael let her shoulders sag. “Mice are natural-born cowards, of course. They never fight their enemies. They're not equipped to. They survive by running, dodging, hiding. They don't even fight among themselves for supremacy or territory. They're meek, timid. But the mice who came back weren't meek at all. They fought one another, and they attacked mice that had not been resurrected — and they even tried to nip at the researchers handling them, though a mouse has no hope of hurting a man and is ordinarily acutely aware of that. They flew into rages, clawing at the floors of their cages, pawing at the air as if fighting imaginary enemies, sometimes even clawing at themselves. Occasionally these fits lasted less than a minute, but more often went on until the mouse collapsed in exhaustion.”

For a moment, neither spoke.

The silence in the motel room was sepulchral, profound.

At last Ben said, “In spite of this strangeness in the mice, Eric and his researchers must've been electrified. Dear God, they'd hoped to extend the life span — and instead they defeated death altogether! So they were eager to move on to development of similar methods of genetic alteration for human beings.”

“Yes.”

“In spite of the mice's unexplained tendency to frenzies, rages, random violence.”

“Yes.”

“Figuring that problem might never arise in a human subject… or could be dealt with somewhere along the way.”

“Yes.”

Ben said, “So… slowly the work progressed, but too slowly for Eric. Youth-oriented, youth- obsessed, and inordinately afraid of dying, he decided not to wait for a safe and proven process.”

“Yes.”

“That's what you meant in Eric's office tonight, when you asked Baresco if he knew Eric had broken the cardinal rule. To a genetics researcher or other specialist in biological sciences, the cardinal rule would be —