to know that that dumb assed Texan, and his neo-con religious familiars have set back stem cell research by twenty years, at least.”
“Quite true. In the USA, but not in China. I own a laboratory and research facility in the little town of Daxing, not far from Bejing. It’s dedicated exclusively to stem cell research. The results have been extraordinary. My “chinkie” doctors are real smart. I expect to live to 150, at least. My own “home grown” replacement organs are waiting transplant when needed.Y’eh see, my researchers have isolated my own adult stem cells, and morphed them into any type of tissue that might be required, and no concern about rejection. They call it pluripotentiality. I can grow a replacement kidney,, or liver; even a new heart.”
“Your own personal fountain of youth.”
“Naturally. "But, a select few also have access to my 'fountain of youth', as you say.”
“For a price.”
“Of course; a very hefty price. But, tell me. What price can be put on reversing paralysis? Making a person whole again?’
‘That cannot be done. Once the spinal column is severed, it can never regenerate.”
“Ah, but I have done just that.” He let his words hang.
Megan was lost for a reply. Joseph Brown rushed on, sensing that his prey was letting her guard down.
“I’ve arranged for your sister to fly to Daxing. All expenses have been covered off.
She’ll be there a minimum of six months. By the end of her treatment, she’ll walk out on her own two legs. As a further sign of my sincerity, I’ve taken the liberty of depositing $ 50,000 in your USA account.”Joseph Brown beamed broadly.
“Well, you can “un-deposit it. I don’t know what you want from me. I suspect that it has something to do with running my Kenyans off their ancestral lands; turning their rain forest into a wasteland. What is it? Gold, oil, timber, or all of the above?”
Joseph Brown smiled; a puffy-eyed cheshire cat smile without warmth. "Well, as a matter of fact, I do have a proposition, but it has nothing to do with your little savages or this god forsaken cesspool of a rain forest.”
“No, Mr. Brown, the price is too high; and I’m not about to give my baby sister false hope.”
“If I can grow, say, a new kidney, your sister can grow a new spiral column, and no rejection; we use her own stem cells.
"All I ask is that you give me a few minutes of your time, and that you listen to what I have to say with an open mind. Now, that's not asking too much is it? After all, I have come a long way to talk to you."
"Okay Mr. Brown. I'm listening."
Brown smiled. Things were going according to plan.
Joseph Brown looked almost comical; a giant of a man in a safari suit that was a couple of sizes too small to accommodate his bulbous frame; crouched on a flimsy wicker platform just out of reach of the jumping flies.
Megan McPhee squatted down opposite him; supple, muscular; tight. Joseph Brown reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a metal tube. He pulled from the container a scroll of cowhide and unfolded it, and placed it in front of Megan.
Above them a scorpion, about five inches long, slithered across a beam sounding its peculiar "squeak, squeak" as it routinely went about building its nest in the sopping roof foliage.
Megan was troubled.
Joseph Brown’s data and case studies bore irrefutable evidence of the efficacy of his regenerative stem cell therapies. Her beloved sister would walk again! The Moctozoma project represented a once in a lifetime opportunity; and, guiltily she had to admit that having a fat bank account was heady stuff.
Yet she was torn. Leaving the Kenyahn tribe and having to abandon the baby Orangatan, whom she had named Emily, and had come to love like a human baby, was torture. That her two bright young assistants would carry on her work did nothing to assuage her guilt.
Further, she did not trust Joseph Brown. Behind his Dough- Boy smile, Megan sensed a stygian darkness; an abyss of unrelieved evil into which inexorably, she was being sucked.
But above all, Megan would walk out of the Daxing clinic, whole.
She made her decision. She would not sleep that night.
There was no breeze to relieve the cloying fetid air. The encircling jungle though was anything but quiet.
Myriad insects chirped a staccato commentary.The rustling of any number of the eighty species of venomous snakes that inhabited the jungles of Papua New Guinea added an obligato accompaniment to the nighttime symphony of jungle sound. The stomping timpani of a Cassawary offered a sonorous bass support. The Cassawary was an indigenous 130 pound flightless bird, whose dagger-like six inch claws could rip out a person’s guts in seconds. Before the night was over, one might hear the roar of the mighty Tasmanian tiger, thought to be extinct, but thriving in this primodial land.
Megan had put Emily in her bamboo bed for the night. She had fashioned the bed herself for the little primate, and filled it with soft purple orchids for Emily’s comfort.
Emily wouldn’t settle; she was restless and a little scared. Joseph Brown’s rude intrusion and the ominous jungle clatter had unnerved the little ape.
She began to whimper. Megan tried to ignore her hoping she would eventually settle down. She did not. At last, contrary to scientific logic, and a hand-book on child rearing for baby Orangatans, if such a book ever existed, Megan threw off her bed sheet, and exclaimed, ‘ What the hell.’
“Come to Mamma, little girl.” Emily bounced into Megan’s bed, gave her a slurpy kiss, snuggled into her and promptly fell asleep. Megan did too.
Bourque unfolded the weathered parchment.
"Be careful," Brown thundered.
Instinctively, Bourque moved his hands gently over the folio. He was accustomed to handling documents of antique origin. Perhaps Brown's folio was a Biblical codex or Classical manuscript of some kind. In any case, until he knew what it was, he would treat it with deference.
The document was a single piece of cowhide, approximately 3' X 2'. Bourque laid it on top of Dean Tichborne's baroque Louis XIV desk. He secured the corners with the Dean's "objects d'art" which graced his desk. These included a diamond studded letter opener and an oversized 18K gold ashtray which had been bequeathed to the Dean by a misguided patron who divined that Tichborne was the intellectual and spiritual inspiration behind the department's internationally acclaimed reputation. Bourque had always thought the gifts to be singularly appropriate in that the endower had made his fortune in the waste management and sewage treatment business, and was reputed to have picked up the expensive "nick knacks" from the receivers for a bankrupt porno distributor.
Bourque scanned the flattened document cursorily, at first, then with increasing concentration. At last, he seemed to be studying it as one who had become totally absorbed. Bourque sat down on a hard backed chair, one of four utility chairs which Dean Tichborne conveniently provided for the peons to whom, from time to time, he gave audience.
The silence seemed interminable. Joseph Brown ran his meaty fingers along the edge of the Dean's desk. Impatiently he burst out, "So Bourque, what have I got here?"
Bourque looked up. His face had taken on a kind of gravity. Gone was the facade of the cynical gadfly. Very slowly and deliberately Bourque replied, "Your document tells one hell of a story.” Bourque closed his eyes, letting the images on the cowhide impinge on his mind. In the bottom lefty hand corner of the document there was a drawing. It was the picture of an eagle. The talons of one leg gripped the top of a cactus plant which itself appeared to be growing out of the rock. The eagle held a serpent. The serpent's neck was clasped in the bird's mouth, its writhing tail was impaled on the talons of the eagle's raised leg. Across the whole top of the document were a series of drawings depicting the phases of the moon, darker blue to indicate shadow; lighter blue to show the visible portions