Medtech Tanaka's head came up.  In a voice of slow wonder, she said, "What have you people got?"

He nodded to her.  "Not, alas, a fountain of youth.  It may prove to be a fountain of middle age, however.  We don't think it'll do much for anyone under sixty, but from there up it seems to knock off about twenty years.  So far.  Not a single-pronged treatment—sort of a cocktail, really, as it presently stands—but our R&D group has finished virtual and live mammal trials, and we're almost ready to move up to clinical trials on humans."

"Has it been tried on any humans?" asked Tanaka-san.

"Just one, so far," put in Raven-sensei.

"One trial?"

"One human.  Lily Durona, as it happens," said Raven-sensei.  "You can imagine how riveted the whole Group is by the outcome."

"Can you guarantee the results of this treatment?"

"Of course not," said Lord Mark.  "That's why it's called a trial.  But by the time we work through two or three thousand varied test cases, all the bugs should be ironed out."

"You'll never get permissions," said Suze-san.

"On the contrary.  Escobar has reciprocal medical licensing arrangements with Kibou-daini.  Any facility I might buy here would move under the Durona Group's regulatory umbrella from the instant the purchase was registered.  No need to stir things up by reapplying for, ah, anything."  Lord Mark rubbed his double chin.  "If the trials worked out, the enterprise might become self-supporting in as little as two years."

"And after twenty years," said Tenbury, "what happens to people?  Can they go around again?"

Lord Mark shrugged.  "Ask me in two decades."

"Damn," said Suze-san.  "This sounds like a license to print money, you know that, young man?"

Lord Mark made an impatient throw-away gesture.  "A side venture, from my point of view.  It will be safer than the clone-brain transplant, to be sure, but the sort of octogenarian customer who would buy a body of an eighteen-year-old is hardly going to prefer a body of sixty.  We have to do better, somehow.  But this could be another small step in the right direction."

"Will it only work on revives?  Frozen folk?" asked Tenbury.

"Oh, no.  I expect it will work even better on the never-frozen."

Suze-san's wrinkled lips drew back in a fierce smile.  "Who wouldn't choose it over a risky illegal brain transplant, hell.  Who wouldn't choose it over freezing?"

"People are strange," said Lord Mark.  "I make no predictions."

Medtech Tanaka said, "But what about the poor?"

Lord Mark gave her a blank look.  "What about 'em?"