'What?'
'Listen to this.' She read aloud:
'Microbial life in the deep seafloor is widespread, to depths of at least eight hundred meters into the bottom sediments. Samples indicate that methanogenesis occurs at the deepest sediment layers where carbon dioxide and hydrogen are converted to methane. The depth limit of anaerobic life in deep-sea sediments is not known. Most striking we have discovered that methane-producing Archaea divide every few thousand years, maybe one hundred thousand years. Their life span, if we could call it that, is unparalleled, indicating a DNA stability unknown in terrestrial life. Notably we have discovered a gene isolate in one species of methanogenic Archaea that differs by twenty-four percent from its nearest relative.
'Then he goes on,' and Haley continued to read:
'Popular magazines have picked up on the longevity of Arcs and put it in much more poetic terms describing them as living in time with the slowest rhythms of the earth or as living in
'geologic time’. Interesting that the basic truth is not obscure.
'He actually mentions Discover magazine instead of a science journal. There's a little tongue in cheek there.'
Sam was silent a moment. 'Archaea, it says?'
'Ben wrote his own comment on the article. 'Archaea are the longest-lived life-forms on the earth. And they are closer to humans, DNA-wise, than are bacteria. The truth is under our nose in popular magazines and in numerous more serious journal articles.
''They live in geologic time,'' she quoted again. 'That would mean these microbes are thousands and thousands of years old. At least. Geologic time implies millions of years old.'
Sam could see Haley's mind was spinning. She was determined not to be overly dramatic, but she knew better than anyone that Ben Anderson always chose his words carefully.
'What is it?' Sam asked.
'I think I get the concept of what Ben was doing, if not the details.'
'Tell me.'
'If a gene releases a protein that, say, translates to a pep-tide hormone that performs a vital function, and we can duplicate the protein or its function in medication, then maybe we affect aging. But how do you use a gene from a deep-sea microbe to help a human being?'
Sam shrugged.
'Here. We need to give you a wig, make you blonde, and put some age on you,' Sam said.
Haley was still concentrating on her discovery.
'The answer is you don't use the gene. But Ben seems to be replicating gene functions with organic molecule products. In Ben's case he's allowing bacteria infused with the gene of interest to make the organic molecules that become the medicine. Yet he's still talking about a microbe and you would think its gene would not produce human-compatible proteins.'
'So,' Sam said, 'to know what Ben's doing, we'd have to know something about how certain of the microbe's genes function?'
'To understand it, we would. I suspect what he is doing is letting genes express their products, which would be proteins and then using them as medicine with the caveat that the proteins may ultimately be broken down into pro-hormones, hormones, enzymes, or the like.' She explained how that worked.
Then Haley referred back to the notes while Sam splotched her face. 'He calls these microbes 'Archaea.' He does have these two hundred eighty other genes he was studying.
So maybe he found homologous genes in microbes, animals, and humans.'
Sam nodded. His makeup job looked nearly completed. Hers had a ways to go. 'It would be astonishing if we could use ancient microbes to lengthen our life spans.' He applied a finishing touch. 'People might kill for that.'
'I just realized something else that makes sense,' Haley said, trying to work on her makeup and talk at the same time. 'Archaea microbes live in the bottom of the sea, down where the ocean cleanses itself. How about that?'
They hadn't shot him.
Ben didn't expect that they would until they got their information. They seemed unsure of themselves, which gave him the advantage, since he was completely sure of himself.
No one was going to get a whiff of ARCLES, unless and until proper safeguards for the public were in place.
They could try torture, but he had a glass capsule up beside his molars and it was filled with enough ricin to kill ten people almost instantly, and there was no known antidote.
Game, set, match-or checkmate, if one preferred chess to tennis.
Ben should have been grateful to be tied up in a chair and not tortured for what he knew. Instead, he sat there wondering why they weren't hurting him, or at least shouting questions at him.
There has to be a reason.
They already have the information? Impossible.
The drugs and torture were still to come? Most likely. And soon.
His heart beat faster and he could hear it and didn't like it. He listened for sounds but heard nothing except the faint blare of bluegrass music in the distance. It sounded obscene in the face of his impending doom.
He needed to urinate, and that bothered him as well. It had been many decades since he'd peed his britches and he was probably about due for diapers in another decade or two, but he hadn't been planning on it this weekend. Sons of bitches were being downright uncivilized.
His sole comfort was that old man Sanker would by now be hysterical with frustration.
Unless Sanker himself was behind Ben's current imprisonment. If so, it wouldn't take long to discover that Ben's secrets would not be easily won.
Despite the jocular thought of Sanker, Ben was seriously frightened. If Sanker weren't behind this abduction, then at least two well-resourced parties were after him and ARCLES. At this point he had lost control of his life except to end it, which was not the sort of choice he wanted.
For mental exercise he went through the possible identities of his captors: Sanker; Frick independently; federal agents, renegade or not; foreign oil interests or other nationals; even American Bayou, which could have gone around Nelson Gempshorn and taken him. Then the chilling thought occurred to him that Nelson could be in on it. Nelson was a bit of an odd man and never completely revealed himself, or so it seemed. The possibilities were nearly endless and there was no use speculating.
All the while, Ben had been working hard on the arm restraints and intermittent effort seemed to be loosening the duct tape. He began twisting an arm, and although it was painful, he continued in the effort, stripping the hair from his skin and no doubt turning them lobster red. He figured he was now stretching the tape and getting his arms a good half-inch from the leather of the chair. Now he rolled his arms and rocked them, to and fro.
The music grew suddenly louder, as if someone had opened a door. Ben heard someone fiddling with a lock. He wished he weren't wearing the damned blindfold.
'I don't understand why we have to move him,' someone was saying. It sounded like Stu.
The door swung open.
'Okay, old man, we gotta go.' Definitely Stu Farley.
'Before we go, I want you to listen to me.' This was another voice entirely, with a heavy accent. Ben imagined an Arabic speaker. His gut tightened down as he realized he really did not want to die. 'If you would answer the questions thoroughly'-the voice was measured and calm, but there was not the slightest hint of humanity in it-'we would not need to strap you to a table and jolt your body with electricity with large probes in your rectum and smaller probes in your bladder. And if that does not loosen your tongue, to inject you with a paralytic and slowly dissect you while you watch in mirrors and feel the pain. I do not need to dramatize this kind of agony. Consider what I've said while we move you. Consider whether you will talk.'
Ben felt the glass capsule with his tongue.
A heavy hand grabbed his jaw and someone shoved rubber between his teeth. In a panic he tried to feel for the glass. Pliers grabbed his tongue and the pain was excruciating.
Fingers slipped inside his mouth and suddenly the glass capsule was gone.
The Arabic speaker grunted. 'He thinks we're amateurs.'
