Free First Horseman, The by Clem Chambers Page A

run by old despots and maniacs. For their lives and the lives of their loved ones they would kill millions without hesitation. If I told the world of my discoveries, labs like mine would appear across the globe and humanity would be fed to them. Humanity would become Ouroboros.’ Cardini noted Jim’s blank look. ‘The snake that consumes its own tail.’
    Images of Second World War death camps flashed through Jim’s mind. ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
    ‘No doubt you read the papers.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You see the monstrosities, the evil, the sickening violence? What is it all for? It is for material gain or glory.’ Cardini scowled. ‘Imagine the price some would be prepared to exact to be years younger again, to be, well, to be strong. Those people would stop at nothing.’ He leant forward on his desk, his hypnotic eyes riveting Jim to the spot. ‘I ask you to fund my project because you are young. You do not need the serum to be fit and healthy. You do not need the drug to be young. Not now and not for years.’
    ‘Right,’ said Jim. ‘I see.’
    ‘Of course I will supply you once there is a purpose, if we have not made the breakthrough needed by then to produce the serum as cheaply as the common aspirin. Twenty-eight is possibly a potential physical peak, but I have thought perhaps the early thirties is another period worth preserving.’
    ‘When I’m twenty-eight you can keep me at that age?’
    ‘The serum will do that.’
    ‘Keep me physically twenty-eight years old, no matter how many years go by?’
    ‘Indeed.’
    Jim’s eyes bugged out. ‘For how long?’
    ‘You can be twenty-eight almost indefinitely.’
    ‘How long is “almost indefinitely”? Ten, twenty, thirty years?’
    Cardini didn’t reply immediately – he seemed to be checking a mental calculation. ‘Three to four hundred years,’ he said slowly.
    ‘You’re bullshitting me, right?’
    ‘You see, Jim, this is why I keep my secret. The implications of my research are too great at this stage.’ He smiled. ‘Not a week goes by that an old professorial friend of mine does not die and pass for ever into the void. With their death, a treasury of knowledge is lost for good. It is as if a unique library is burnt alongside the cadaver.
    ‘Each of their threads must be relearnt and picked up by a new mind. Our progress is set back by most of the span of a life with every catastrophic death. Death makes our human progress just a slow crawl forward on hands and knees. I am the first scientist who can pursue his work beyond a few decades. I will continue to discover and build on my discoveries, with the weight and momentum of my knowledge as huge assets magnifying my abilities. With my faculties undiminished and growing, I may serve humanity for many generations more. The possibilities are revolutionary.’
    He held out his giant hands as if he was cupping a large invisible ball.
    ‘I have extended a human boundary and I can use it to transcend the cruel evil of mortality. A lifetime of five hundred years is enough to overcome this tragic impediment. Our life span is the same limit that drives greed and war and hunger. With a life of five hundred years, human potential expands beyond imagining. The petty needs of a short life, which drive so much chaos and misery, disappear.’
    ‘It’s hard to take in,’ said Jim, rubbing the skin around his eye, which yesterday had been swollen and black. He thought of Stafford, his butler, best friend and ally. For a few million he could make the old man young again. He’d write that cheque on the spot. ‘What happens when you take the drug?’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s got to have nasty side effects, right?’
    ‘As long as you keep taking it, there are none, but the effects wear off so you have to remain medicated or the process is reversed. As the serum is metabolised, the ageing process begins again and accelerates. A balance needs to be maintained between rejuvenation and