The ape’s mouth began to work. First one, then another, then a cascade of teeth fell out. Its face was a study in black fury.

“Effective age fifty-five.”

“What’s the human equivalent of a fifty-five-year-old rhesus?” Sarah asked. They had logged the equivalences only as far as thirty years. Older apes of the species were unknown.

“I figured it at about ninety-two if the scale is a straight linear regression,” Phyllis replied. “That would mean he gets to a hundred and thirty-seven equivalent age before death.”

Long gray hairs were falling like rain around his head and off his shoulders. Slowly, a hand came up to touch the sinking lips. As the hand moved, the fingers grew disfiguring arthritic knobs. The monkey began to sway, and his body started curving to the right.

“That’s scoliosis of aging,” Phyllis said.

There came a heartrending, infuriated howl. All three of the viewers stirred. Sarah wondered if the feeling that they were intruding into something forbidden affected the others as well. The ape had been a good and loving friend to the whole lab. Had those he loved the right to bring him such suffering? And yet . . . and yet—Sarah wondered if death was such a certainty, if the gates of Eden were really locked forever. It was simple, wasn’t it? A matter of finding the key. Once the gates swung open, man’s ancient, lost war with death would be won. ‘We need not die,’ Sarah thought. She folded her arms and looked with cold determination at Methuselah’s remarkable destruction. His life was a fair price for such an enormous gain to humanity.

“Effective age seventy. Rate one point nine five years per minute. Equivalent age one hundred twenty-one.” A last, despairing grimace of defiance crossed his face.

Then it happened on tape just as it had in reality two hours ago. Methuselah fell onto his side, a terrible look in his eyes. His mouth worked, his arms slashed the air.

Wrinkles and fissures raced through his skin. The face withered like a drying apple. The eyes glazed over with layers of cataracts and then closed to slits. Hands and feet balled to fists. The skin began slackening on the bones.

The whole skeleton, slowly moving, was visible beneath the loose skin.

“Effective age eighty-five. Rate two point four zero years per minute. Equivalent age one hundred twenty-nine.”

There was a long, rattling sigh.

“Life signs terminate,” Phyllis said.