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By Root 2442 0

already in the cells, so that the breaks and errors that crept in over time were repaired, and the strands generally strengthened. This much was true; but the longevity treatment was more than this, just as senescence itself was more than cell-division error. It was, as one might have predicted, much more complicated than just breaking chromosomes; it was an entire complex of processes. And while some were well understood, others were not. Senescencial action (aging) took place on every level: molecule, cell, organ, organism. Some senescence resulted from hormonal effects that were positive for the young organism in its reproductive phase, and only later negative for the post-reproductive animal, when in evolutionary terms it no longer mattered. Some cell lines were virtually immortal; bone-marrow cells and the mucus in the gut went on replicating for as long as their surroundings were alive, with no sign at all of time-related changes. Other cells, such as the nonreplaced proteins in the lens of the eye, underwent change that was driven by exposure to heat or light, regular enough to function as a kind of biological chronometer. Each kind of cell line aged at a different speed, or did not age at all; thus it was not just “a matter of time” in the sense of a kind of Newtonian absolute time, working entropically on an organism; there was no such time. Rather it was a great many trains of specific physical and chemical events, moving at different speeds, and with varying effects. There was a fantastically large number of cell-repair mechanisms inherent in any large organism, and an immune system of great and various power; the longevity treatments often supplemented these processes, or worked on them directly, or replaced them. The treatment now included supplements of the enzyme photolyase, to correct DNA damage, and supplements of the pineal hormone melatonin, and dehydroepiandrosterone, a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal glands. . . . There were about two hundred components like these in the longevity treatment now.

So vast, so complex— sometimes Sax finished his day’s reading and walked down to Odessa’s seafront, to sit on the corniche with Maya, and he would pause in eating a burrito and stare at it— contemplate everything that went into its digestion, everything that kept them alive— feel his breath which he had never noted at all, before— and suddenly he would feel breathless— lose his appetite— lose his belief that any such complex system could exist for more than a moment before collapsing into primordial chaos and the simplicities of astrophysics. Like a house of cards a hundred stories tall, in a wind. Tap it anywhere. . . . It was lucky Maya did not require much in the way of active companionship, because often he was rendered speechless for many minutes at a time, rapt in the contemplation of his own evident impossibility.

But he persevered. This was what a scientist did, confronted with an enigma. And there were others helping in the search, working ahead of him on the frontiers, and beside him in related fields, from the small— virology, where the inquiries into tiny forms such as prions and viroids were revealing even smaller forms, almost too partial to be called life: virids, viris, virs, vis, vs, all of which might have relevance to the larger problem. . . . All the way up to the large organismic issues, such as brain-wave rhythms and their relationship to the heart and other organs, or the pineal gland’s ever-decreasing secretions of melatonin, a hormone that seemed to regulate many aspects of aging. Sax followed them all, trying to glean a new view by his later and hopefully larger perspective. He had to follow his intuition to what seemed important, and study that.

Of course it did not help that some of his best thoughts on the subject blanked out on him at the moment of completion. He had to be able to get these thought flurries recorded before they disappeared! He began to talk aloud to himself, frequently, even in public situations, hoping that this would help to forestall the blanks; but