Elixir by Gary Braver

Author:Gary Braver
Language: pt
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction - Espionage, Medical, Papua New Guinea, Fiction, Science fiction, Boston (Mass.), Americans, Espionage, Biologists, Thrillers, Elixir of life, Thriller
ISBN: 9780812575910
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2000-03-14T19:30:00+00:00

ELIXIR

ELIXIR

He saw the bed, open and clean white glistening sheets so wide and smooth.... I want to go home. Not feeling good. Body sore. Hurts me.

me hurt

He flopped on the bed and spit out a tooth. The tip of his tongue found the gaping hole. He put his finger inside and felt another wiggle. His teeth were breaking off in jagged pieces. It was horrible. They filled his mouth and he spit them out. His head ached. He pulled off his gloves and ran his fingers across the scalp. Large clumps of hair came off in his hands. His head felt cold. He was going bald by the second.

In the moonlight he saw his hands.

His hands, they screamed with pain, and before his eyes they shrivelled up to small knobbed things. He brought one to his face. It had gotten tiny and dark. His fingers hurt, but he barely felt the pain. His face felt totally unfamiliar. It was full and flabby, the creases too deep, the flesh under the chin too loose, the neck too thin. It was like touching somebody else's face. And his head all smooth with thin fuzz in the back. Then the pain erupted. And he suddenly saw himself from above, lying on the bed of snow in a clearing, his body convulsing with agony as he began to shrivel up and die—like Methuselah and Jimbo—

Like Dexter Quinn—

Like Sam—

But then the pain stopped and he felt his mind slow down as if under rapidly dimming power—a thing old and weary and barely able to process the few sad moments left, wishing it would get itself over with, wishing he could for one last time see his wife (don't let her find me like this), sensing himself going down a long spiral stairwell, not bumping his way step by step but moving smoothly because he couldn't walk since his feet were all gnarled and twisted which explained why he was slouched up in a big metal chair with wheels on the side locked in place and on this special escalator that corkscrewed down toward a small ball of white light at the bottom that grew larger and brighter as he descended, his poor eyes fixed in horrid fascination on the glow which in no time became a dreamy white light, not hard or harsh, but like fog lit up from within—a warm incandescent blankness that closed around him like a shell, the interior growing dimmer and quieter until all he registered was the soft raspy sigh of his last breath before the long long night closed down on him.

Three

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

—ANDREW MARVELL, "TO HIS COY MISTRESS"

21

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