“As I understand it, your husband’s primary work involves something called archaea.”
“Yeah. Particularly those archaea that have the capacity to affect HGT.”
“I’m afraid it’s all over my head.”
She swung her feet off the footstool and sat forward on the armchair, suddenly less the pop princess that her T-shirt declared and more like a ninth-grade science geek. “There are three domains of animal life on Earth. Eukaryotes, which is us and all the higher animals. Then bacteria. You know bacteria. And then microbes called archaea. Until like 1978, archaea were thought to be bacteria. But bacteria are ester based, and archaea are ether based, very stable compared to bacteria, and with all sorts of properties that bacteria don’t have.”
“You’re really into this,” David said, surprised.
“I am totally into it. I’m the boy toy the dickhead wanted me to be, but I’m also who I am. You got that?”
“I’ve got it. What does HGT stand for?”
“Horizontal gene transfer. It used to be thought genes can be passed only vertically, from parents to their offspring, and that’s by far the primary route. But thanks to molecular phylogenetics, we can compare nucleic acids—DNA and RNA—from different species and track the origin. Archaea can fuck with your genome and insert material from another species, from other animals, even from plants. That sounds like a shitcan horror movie, but it’s only nature at work, it happens all the time. There are a lot of ways this thing can revolutionize human life for the better if it can be harnessed. Lukas, the stupid sleazy tail-chasing perv, was a hundred miles ahead of everyone else who’s racing for this particular finish line.”
“For the better—how?” David asked.
She eased even farther forward on her chair. “Are you looking at me, like you were before, or are you finally looking into me, at the me inside this bod? You see me clear?”
“Yes.”
“You asked ‘better how’？ Among other things, life extension and the reversal of the effects of aging. Lukas wanted to live forever and be always young, always stiff, the idiot. Maybe archaea HGT will be used to import genes that extend the human life span to two hundred years with a youthful appearance, which isn’t forever, but it’s a fucking big deal. Do you realize the billions upon billions that would flood to the company that makes the breakthrough?” She was so agitated that she could not remain in the chair. She got up to pace. “You see what I’ve lost because my genius perv husband couldn’t keep his pants zipped, because he thought every woman wanted him, because he couldn’t even conceive that he might hook up with some crazy bitch who wouldn’t adore him, who’d instead gut him like the pig he was? Without his guidance, the research goes on, but half-assed and slow. He was that smart. So not two years anymore. Maybe ten. Maybe never. There’s some value in his patents, but I’ll have to fight the shitty university, which has an interest in them. The administration there is a band of thieves, and they have all the money in the world to fight me in court, the bloodsucking leeches.”
David floated some optimism at her again. “Just because he broke the rules doesn’t mean he’s dead. There could be another explanation.”
Her phone rang.
She plucked it off the table that stood beside her armchair. “Yeah? Yeah, speaking.” She listened and then said, “Man, this sucks. Where was this?” Maybe she hadn’t received the worst news, but it wasn’t good. She stood pouting like a child. “Was he alone?” Her pout turned into a scowl, and Wolfman whimpered, psychically sharing her distress. “So did you get him out of there?” The answer was lengthy, and Linette grew impatient with the caller, evidently interrupting. “Listen . . . no, you listen to me. You better believe there’s a crazy bitch in this somewhere. He’s into edgy situations with sluts who have a screw loose. You better operate on that assumption.” Wolfman slumped onto his side and continued whimpering. “I want to know who the bitch was. You find her or I’ll be all over your ass in the media, I’ll never stop. This is a damn outrage. It takes thirty-six hours to get to this, to this? Thirty-six hours, when I told you it was a life-or-death emergency already Sunday night?”
She didn’t wait for a reply, but terminated the call and threw the phone across the room. It cracked off a wall and rattled to the floor.
David got to his feet. The atmosphere in the house and this woman’s unrelenting attitude were oppressive. He felt trapped.