The Hunger by Whitley Strieber Page A

hundred forty-one, taken at the seventy-first hour,” Charlie said. “Subsequently, his blood cells began to lose their ability to uptake oxygen.”
    There was a long silence. “I don’t know what the hell to make of it,” Sarah said at last.
    “That’s putting it mildly.”
    “Let’s see. The time is now eleven-fifteen. My guess is that the board is just about to approve Hutch’s budget appropriation. Us not included. What say we just crack the quarantine on the cages and go home.”
    “Don’t get a heart attack,” Charlie said softly, “they’ll find the money for us now.”
    Sarah sniffed. She folded her arms. “As a matter of fact, I don’t feel one bit like a heart attack. I’m enjoying thinking about the trouble this tape is going to cause him.”
    “The physical sciences are going to be in an uproar,” Phyllis muttered. “There’s something in the old body we don’t know nothin’ about.”
    “Hutch is going to be forced to go right back to the committee and ask for a review.”
    “Let’s hope.”
    “Look, I’m director of this lab, so get ready for some directions. I want to get a thousand K of the computer under key , access limited to us three. We need a nice roomy memory bank to foodle our numbers in.”
    “How do we set it up for billing?” Charlie asked.
    “Don’t worry about it. The administrator will fix it up.”
    “You mean Hutch?”
    Her voice gentled. “I mean Tom. Hutch might not survive this.”
    Charlie applauded expansively.
    They laughed. Sarah looked at the glowing TV screen. The mystery represented by the empty cage was awesome. It meant that the body did indeed contain a secret clock, and the clock could be tampered with. If age could speed up it could also slow down. It could stop.
    All three of them continued to watch the cage even though there was nothing more to see. Sarah found her mind racing from question to question. It was a high moment, the kind of discovery few scientists ever encounter. She was acutely aware that they had made history. Schoolchildren, if such would still be birthed after immortality, would read about this moment. Models of this very lab would stand in museums.
    She stopped herself with a shudder. It was not healthy to think about such things. Her mind turned back to the more immediate questions but the chill remained, a feeling of disquiet that must mask, deep in her heart, the sick dread she suspected was there.
    “The sleep deprivation was the triggering mechanism for the aging acceleration. But what caused him to stop sleeping in the first place?”
    “His whole system collapsed.”
    “That’s not an answer.”
    They lapsed into silence. Sarah suspected the others felt much as she did. She brushed aside her fear, told herself the situation wasn’t threatening.
    The cage on the TV screen had a dark and evil cast to it, almost as if some inhuman spirit now possessed it. Sarah did not believe in old-fashioned notions of good and evil; she told herself that she did not. But she wouldn’t go near that cage unless absolutely necessary.
    There was a noise and a stab of light as the door to the hall was opened. Tom’s angular form appeared, backlighted by the cold fluorescent glow of the hallway. He came in quietly, a doctor among the sick, and put his hand on her shoulder. His stoop told her all that he planned to say. He did not yet know of the tape, and the triumph represented by Methuselah’s destruction.
    Miriam’s worst fear surfaced when she realized that John had entered the house. In all time and in all the world, this was the most terrible thing. He would be fiercely angry in his aging, dangerous as he died. She breathed a charm against him, calling on the ancient gods of her species, seeking in her heart their embrace.
    She hunted him through her cheerful rooms, happy places each. Warm memories of their long time here flooded her. She ran her hand lightly along the back of the rosewood love seat, touched the mahogany