Altar of Bones (72 page)

S
TEAM HEAT
blasted out of the vents in the east surgical ward’s waiting room, but Zoe couldn’t stop shivering. She sat on the edge of a hard plastic chair, staring at the locked double doors, terrified of what was going on behind them.

She’d driven the Cat right up to the emergency room, and after that it had all been a blur. They’d loaded Ry onto a gurney, stuck IV tubes of blood and other fluids into his arm, and covered his face with an oxygen mask. They’d asked her for his blood type, but she didn’t know it. They asked her if he was allergic to any drugs, but she didn’t know that either. She didn’t even know for sure how old he was. She felt as if she knew him down to his soul, so how could she not know those things about him?

Then they wheeled him away from her so fast there was no chance for her to kiss him or even touch his hand, no chance for her to tell him he had to come back to her. After a while she was brought here to wait, and here she’d been, alone and waiting for a thousand years.

Once, a woman wearing a white polyester pantsuit and carrying a clipboard came into the room just long enough to give her a plastic zipper bag filled with the things they’d taken from Ry’s pockets: wallet, cell phone, a key to their hotel room, cigarette lighter, flashlight, miniature tool set, a coil of wire, and what might be a set of lockpicks.
Typical O’Malley. Always prepared
, Zoe thought with a watery smile that turned into a sob, and she crushed the bag to her chest as if it were a lifeline tossed to her, a part of him to see her through this endless waiting that went on and on and on.

She was about at the point of banging on the doors and screaming for someone to tell her what was going on when they swung open, and
a middle-aged woman in bloodstained scrubs strode through. Zoe got stiffly to her feet, her heart pounding, nauseated with fear. She tried to read what was coming in the woman’s face, but all she saw was exhaustion.

“The bullet entered and exited cleanly,” the surgeon said. “There was some muscular damage, but he should recover full use of his shoulder with the proper therapy.”

Zoe’s voice was hoarse, as if she’d spent these last hours screaming. “So he’s going to be all right then?”

The doctor seemed to hesitate a second, then said, “As these matters go, the operation was relatively easy. What’s worrisome is the virulent bacterial infection that has invaded his system. I understand he fell into a pool of stagnant water right as he was shot?”

Zoe nodded numbly. Had she told someone that during the controlled chaos down in the emergency room?

The surgeon shook her head, sighing. “The water, the earth, the air we breathe here—it’s all filled with untold amounts of toxins. Our smelters release two million tons of sulfur dioxide alone into the air each year. We have endless acid rain, no plant life, no birds, and the heavy-metal pollution has become so severe it is now economically feasible to mine the very soil we walk on.” She shook her head again. “One really should not live in Norilsk.”

“But I thought you …” What was she saying? “Is he going to die after all?”

The doctor hesitated again. “His situation is extremely critical. And, yes, to be frank, he very well might die from this infection. As I said, it is a highly virulent and toxic bacteria. However, the next few hours should tell us more. He’s getting a high-dose antimicrobial therapy of vancomycin, chloramphenicol, and sulfa drugs to interrupt the viral process. Much depends on the resistance factors of this particular bacteria and the strength of the patient’s own immune system.”

Zoe thought there had to be a million questions she should be asking, but her mind felt frozen. And the surgeon, her duty done, was already turning away.

“Doctor, wait…. Can I see him now?”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question at least for the next couple of hours. He’s in recovery, after which he’ll be moved to the ICU, and then we shall see how he is doing at that point. The nurse will keep you informed.”

“Thank you,” Zoe said, but the doctor was already disappearing behind the swinging double doors.

Zoe walked aimlessly to a window that looked down on a nearly empty parking lot and a strange forest of rusting concrete pilings thrusting up out of the snow. The plastic bag full of Ry’s stuff trembled in her hand. At first she thought it was her own nerves finally letting go, then she realized Ry’s cell phone was vibrating.

Zoe stared at the phone, unsure of what to do. Should she answer it? It was one of the prepaid cells they’d picked up in St. Petersburg, so who would even know the number?

Her hands shook a little as she unzipped the plastic bag, took out the phone, and flipped it open.
“Da?”

There was a pause at the other end, then: “Miss Dmitroff? This is Dr. Vitaliy Nikitin.”

Zoe let out the breath she’d been holding. “I’m sorry, Dr. Nikitin, but Ry is unreachable at the moment.”

“It is a bacterium,” he said, excitement in his voice.

“What?”

“The red phosphorescent, viscous fluid that you gave me to analyze. It is a bacterium. Rather to be more specific, it has the genes of bacteria, but also of archaea, which is the most primitive of microorganisms on earth. It is most fascinating.”

There was a brief pause, then he lowered his voice almost to a whisper as if he were afraid of being overheard, “Miss Dmitroff, I think it could be real. A true fountain of youth.”

It took a moment for Zoe’s brain to catch up, to remember that the night she’d given Dr. Nikitin the small vial of bone juice to analyze was back in the good old days, when they still thought the altar of bones was mostly a quaint Siberian myth.

Nikitin, though, seemed to take her silence for disbelief. He said, “Remember I told you that Olga … that is, my colleague, Dr. Tarasov
of the Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology, has done some experiments with the longevity genes in roundworms. There is a regulator gene in the worms called daf-2, which controls as much as a hundred or so other genes involved with aging. You can think of the daf-2 as like an orchestra conductor leading the flutes and the violins and the cellos. Each instrument plays its individual part, but they all must also play in concert. Do you understand, Miss Dmitroff?”

“I think so.”

“Because of the nature of the folklore that has grown up around the red bacteria, we decided to inject it into the cells of a few dozens of the roundworms, just to see what if anything would happen, and to our astonishment we observed that the bacterium transported genetic bits of itself into the worms’ daf-2 genes, mutating them. You could say it made the daf-2 a better orchestra conductor. Suddenly we saw the violin cells rejuvenating themselves, cleansing the worms of built-up toxins, repairing the harm done by free radicals. We saw the flute cells enhancing the worms’ metabolism, improving fat transport and food utilization, keeping them fit, stronger. We saw tuba cells fixing broken DNA, cello cells fighting off bacteria that cause infection, and so on. I am vastly oversimplifying it, but you could say the worms’ daf-2 now has all their longevity genes playing in near perfect harmony, keeping them from aging. Forever alive, perhaps, although that remains to be seen.”

Zoe’s heart and breathing had both seemed to stop at the words
fighting off bacteria that cause infection
. “Dr. Nikitin, are you saying the alt—that the red bacteria changes your DNA so you’re better able to fight off infections? Even really bad infections?”

“Indeed. The worms’ natural immunity systems have been boosted to such a level that they can zap an infectious bacteria dead, to mix my metaphors. Like a laser gun in one of your space-war movies.”

For a moment Zoe felt as if the earth had dropped out from underneath her and she was hurtling through space.
Don’t give it to me…
. She had promised him she wouldn’t. On her love, she had promised. But that was before the doctor had said an infection was killing him, before she knew for a certainty that the altar of bones could …

All it takes is one drop
.

“Unfortunately,” Nikitin was saying, “we discovered almost too late that once exposed to light, its properties began to deteriorate. We have barely a tenth of a viable cc left, yet obviously more observation is needed. Right now we can see
what
it is doing, but we don’t understand
how
, and we must be able to do that if we are ever to have hope of being able to replicate and produce it within a laboratory. I need more of it, Miss Dmitroff. Do you understand? I must have more.”

“There isn’t any more.”

“But you are in Siberia now. Didn’t you tell me the fountain originated in a cave there?”

“It’s been destroyed. The cave, everything—it’s all gone.”

A long pause, then he finally said, “That is most unfortunate.” But Zoe could hear the skepticism in his voice. He wasn’t a stupid man.

“Dr. Nikitin, there was more to the legend than just the fountain of youth. A dark side. It is said that those who drank from it in the past became megalomaniacs. So if the bacteria gets inside you and does what you said, your life might go on forever, but you’ll live it crazy.”

“No specific component of the human genome has been identified as a link to that kind of psychosis. To megalomania. But even if what you say were true, if the red bacteria does cause other genetic mutations that compromise the mind in some way, there might be a way to separate the two effects. Keep the positive, counteract the negative.”

Zoe was staring, unseeing, out the window at the black night, but suddenly she focused on her reflection in the glass. The pale blond hair, the broad forehead, and wide-spaced, tilted gray eyes. The Russian cheekbones and pale Russian skin. Her mother’s face.

How much of her is in my blood and flesh? In my cells?

Nikitin was now saying something about mitochondrial DNA, but Zoe interrupted him, “Are your roundworms inheriting it? Are they passing on what the red bacteria does to their genes? Like if a female roundworm was given some of the bacteria and it altered her longevity genes, and then she had baby worms … Have the baby worms’ DNA been altered, as well?”

“The
Caenorhabditis elegans
are hermaphrodites, but I understand
the point of your question. While it is true that some genetic mutations are replicable, this one appears not to be.”

Zoe laid her head against the glass as the relief washed through her. Her mother’s face, but not all of her mother’s genes. Please, God, not the mutated ones that had kept her forever young and turned her mind to poison.

“Miss Dmitroff, if you do in fact still have some of the red bacteria in your possession, I beg that you reconsider. Think of what this could mean to mankind, to the world. Most disease is the result of general aging. Heart disease and cancer are the big killers, with strokes, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and opportunistic infections claiming most of the rest. Parts wear out and begin to act in ways that cause symptoms of disease. But the fact remains that science has not yet discovered an indisputable biological expiration date for human life. If our parts could be rejuvenated, if they could be replaced, if built-up toxins could be removed, then the bulk of the diseases that kill us would never develop in the first place.”

He paused, but Zoe said nothing. Her attention had been caught by a flickering blue light far off down the long road that cut across the barren tundra from Norilsk.

“In the meantime,” he went on, “we shall see how long our DNA-mutated worms live, or if they ever die at all. Yet even so, I would not call it the gift of eternal life. For one can still die if hit by a truck, or by a plane crash or a mugger’s knife. So, no, not eternal life. But rather
infinite
life, in that the cells might be able to go on reproducing themselves infinitely—”

“Dr. Nikitin, something has come up. I’m going to have to go.”

Zoe shut off the phone and dropped it into her pocket as she watched the flashing blue lights of a Norilsk police car turn into the parking lot below.

OF COURSE THEY
would call the police. You don’t come into a hospital with a gunshot wound without their calling the police
.

Zoe knew she would eventually have to deal with the legal fallout of
the bullet in Ry’s shoulder, to come up with a plausible lie, but she wasn’t ready yet. She didn’t want to get trapped coming out of an elevator, so she took the fire stairs down four flights to a deserted lobby. She paused just inside the door, long enough to see two cops get out of their patrol car and go around to the emergency entrance.

Outside, the wind was blisteringly cold, swirling the snow into a gritty, icy mist. She huddled along the side of the building for what felt like a thousand years, waiting until the cops came back out and drove off.

When she was sure they were gone for good, she took the elevator up to the surgical ward again, but she didn’t go to the waiting room. Instead, she crept up and down the hallways, peeking into rooms, until she found Ry.

For one heart-stopping moment she thought he was dead—his face looked so waxen, his lips bloodless. He lay in utter stillness, with IVs snaking out both of his arms, connected to machines that beeped erratically.