Part 5 (1/2)

She was going about her work with more energy every day, and I'll be blasted if I didn't catch her casting a lingering Marilyn Monroe sort of look at me when Greco's back was turned.

”Shall we fire her?” I asked El Greco when I told him about it.

”What for?”

”She's disrupting the work!”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

”The work isn't worth a d.a.m.n anyhow,” he said moodily. ”We're not getting anywhere, Virgie. If it was only a matter of smooth, predictable rates--But look at her. She's picking up speed! She's dropped five years in the past couple weeks.”

”She can stand to drop a lot more,” I said, annoyed.

He shrugged. ”It depends on where. Her nose? It's shortened to about a fifteen-year-old level now. Facial hair? That's mostly gone. Skin texture? Well, I suppose there's no such thing as a too-immature skin, I mean short of the embryonic capsule, but--Wait a minute.”

He was staring at the doorway.

Minnie was standing there, simpering.

”Come here!” he ordered in a voice like thunder. ”Come here, you!

Virgie, look at her nose!”

I looked. ”Ugh,” I said, but more or less under my breath.

”No, no!” cried Greco. ”Virgie, don't you see her _nose_?” Foolish; of course I did. It was long, beaked--

Then I saw.

”It's growing longer,” I whispered.

”Right, my boy! Right! One curve at least has reversed itself. Do you see, Virgie?”

I nodded. ”She's--she's beginning to age again.”

”Better than that!” he crowed. ”It's faster than normal aging, Virgie!

_There are aging demons loose too!_”

A breath of hope!

But hope died. Sure, he was right--as far as it went.

There _were_ aging demons. We isolated them in some of our experimental animals. First we had to lure Minnie into standing still while Greco, swearing horribly, took a tissue sample; she didn't like that, but a hundred-dollar bonus converted her. Solid CO_{2} froze the skin; _snip_, and a tiny flake of flesh came out of her nose at the point of Greco's scalpel; he put the sample of flesh through a few tricks and, at the end of the day, we tried it on some of our mice.

They died.

Well, it was gratifying, in a way--they died of old age. But die they did. It took three days to show an effect, but when it came, it was dramatic. These were young adult mice, in the full flush of their mousehood, but when these new demons got to work on them, they suddenly developed a frowsy, decrepit appearance that made them look like Bowery b.u.ms over whom Cinderella's good fairy had waved her wand in reverse. And two days later they were dead.