Growing Young: An Old Man Who Suddenly Becomes Young Must Help the World Accept an Age Cure.

CHAPTER 1

Someone has devised a way to regain youth, " the private message read. With it came a prepaid New York to Washington maglev reservation and an invitation to dinner.

As a result, Dr. Mark Langer hobbled into the tenth floor restaurant’s foyer in the World Munitions Building at Friendship Heights, Maryland. He smelled a soft, sweet scent and admired a bed of the white, yet pink-throated song-flowers that geneticists recently developed. Several blooms together hummed a delightful chord by squeezing air through their fibrous larynxes.

Watering caused the flower stems’ pressure, he understood.

Thankfully, the foyer contained no mirror. His lanky, eighty year-old reflections wouldn’t be as refreshing as flowers.

Suddenly Mark’s heart raced. He staggered and braced himself against a black wall.

Gasping for air, he struck his breastbone as hard as he could with a fist. He collapsed on a padded, black bench and fumbled for his pulse—and took a half-minute to find it.

No more racing, however. No flabby wavering of the lower half of his heart, either. Only the irregular beating he became used to over thirty years. Uneven, but slow enough, and finally strong. He leaned his head back against the wall and breathed deeply.

Close.

His blow paralyzed a control node for a split second and let the heart’s electrical system reset itself.

He swallowed two digitalis pills and told himself to have an automatic defibrillator inserted in his chest wall as soon as possible. Death had missed. This time.

Arthritis bent and crippled his tall, thin body. A decrease in stamina accompanied his white eyebrows and thatch. He wavered when he walked. Thus retirement. He now waited for a more successful sweep of the old gentleman’s sickle.

An end was hard to accept. Mark squirmed, plagued by memories of scrawny boys who pimped for their sisters in the Levant and of the everyday swollen bellies and staring eyes in most tropical ghettos. What right did he have to whine? He sighed.

After five minutes, he struggled to his feet and dragged himself into the restaurant. Jared Hull, please, he told the maitre d’ and then slipped his internal passport into the card reader. I believe he’s the owner of this company.

Mark still felt weak. The heart spasms had cut oxygen to his body.

A follow-me light blinked along the tiled floor. He limped forward.

Who was he, anyway, some simple-minded, old geezer with nothing better to do than play Ponce de Leon and chase after the waters of eternal life? Still...

On his right, the restaurant opened onto giant windows facing south. The lights of Washington, capital of the North American Federation, blazed on a black carpet. Searchlights showcased the old capitol building and the needle-like Washington monument.

No smog tonight.

Each time Mark returned to civilization from the hellholes of the world, he noted environmental improvement. He’d luxuriated in comparative heaven while he lived in New York the six months of his retirement.

He wound his way through tables set far apart. A thrilling run of melody, played by woodwinds, whispered down from overhead. A forest glade’s spring scent reinforced the harmony. Mark recognized the two-sense work of Chou Hu-Feng. A redhead clad in emeralds and not much else smiled amiably at him from one of the tables. He winked at her.

Retired from the lonely top of the World Health Organization, without family, and physically failing, Mark knew he was an easy target. He risked his life by coming. Still, the restaurant’s atmosphere put him in a slightly better frame of mind.

Dr. Langer?

A thin man rose from a seat in a windowed alcove.

Jared Hull looked thirty-five. Coarse black hair hung to his shoulders and brushed against a dark blue Nehru jacket buttoned tightly at his neck. He had the soft, rounded mouth of a voluptuary and a receding chin, but his eyes never shifted. His clumsy handshake was firm.

I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for both of us, Hull said, gesturing at a waiter who deposited plates on the table. I’m told you like uncooked vegetables and salads.

In the tropics, where I’ve spent much of my life, safe greens are a rarity. Thank you.

Mark glanced out at the view as he sat. Enjoy this moment. You may not have many more.

Hull’s tenor voice quavered. Now he took a sip of red wine and cleared his throat. Let’s dispense with small talk, he said. I have evidence of human rejuvenation. You must find for me the doctor who developed a cure for age.

Mark picked up his fork and dipped a crisp piece of lettuce into a bowl of salad dressing. Why? he asked. Do you expect to package and sell elixirs with your guns?

I don’t believe the treatment’s a scam.

A touch of red marred the corner of each of the wealthy man’s eyes. Not a disease. Something neurological?

Hull studied Mark for a long moment. Then he smiled. Surgeons transplanted my brain into my nephew’s skull, he said.

Mark’s rotten heart jumped.

I am really Harold, not Jared. And I’m not young.

Mark thought the report either true or Hull mad. I can’t imagine awakening with new arms and legs and seeing through different eyes.

I didn’t awaken, Hull replied. My brain was conscious during the operation. A fleshy cheek twitched. Instead, new organ after new organ, alien limb after alien limb gradually reported.

Not the usual transplant.

No. Hull glanced, unfocused, over Mark’s shoulder. I’m the only ‘success, ‘ the doctors say, the only sane survivor of the procedure.

Mark shifted uneasily. Why should I believe this?

Hoyt Whipple was the chief of the surgical team at Mt. Sinai. Call him.

The donor had been Hull’s own nephew? How convenient. The young man probably had the same blood type and could innocently inherit the business when Harold died.

Mark leaned forward. Why aren’t you up for murder?

Hull shook his head. I was ninety and blind. I’d been flat on my back for six months. He placed a finger on his cheek and stopped an involuntary tic. How could I have done in the little bastard?

Hull’s eyes gleamed; his half smile revealed white teeth.

Mark felt a jolt of fear. Odd for a man in his ill health to fear another, he thought. The only danger that really mattered occurred in his own body.

A robber broke into Jared’s condominium, Hull said. He shot my nephew in the head. Luckily for me, the boy’s hind brain kept his body going. Jared’s living will, which donated his body to science, took over. He became my host as well as my heir.

Mark’s stomach churned. He tasted bile.

The local police suspected me, as you do, Hull added. They could prove nothing.

Why more youth, then? Mark asked. After the new body, why seek another rejuvenation?

My body is young but my brain isn’t. It’s ninety-five and loses neurons every day. Hull now spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. I must have that treatment, whatever it is, and soon.

Mark leaned back and glanced at the shifting blue and ivory patterns on the ceiling. He listened for a moment to the lovely background music, breathed a woodsy fragrance, and noted happy nearby diners, solicitous waiters.

He did not like Hull.

What’s your evidence of an age cure?

Hull motioned to a waiter. Clear the table, he directed. Bring the hologram platform.

Mark speared a slice of water chestnut before his plate was whisked away. He rolled his chair beside Hull’s, his back to an angled window, and crunched the morsel between his teeth.

I’m wealthy, Hull said. He waved at the expensive restaurant and touched the nearby wall. Among my resources is a capable research associate. He sieved the Web and looked for minnows—for ways to increase my neurological health. He caught several big fish instead.

Mark smelled a tangy, cologne scent. The musk of a rat that eats its own kind would have been more appropriate. He moved his chair away from Hull’s.

Two waiters lifted a black box the size of a monitor onto the table. Two sides were missing. They edged it around until the device’s open center faced Mark and his host. Motes of dust glinted within the cavity. Hull popped the standard video coin in a slit.

Abruptly, Mark observed the three-dimensional head of a yellowed, aged man.

Hull slowly rotated the hologram via a button on the side. Japanese police questioned international crime lord Harvey Fukuda two years ago. Here he was.

Fukuda’s ancient eyes gleamed dully; his facial movements were stiff. The man’s skin looked puffed up with retained fluid. Red patches blotched his cheeks. Kidney failure, Mark guessed.

Fukuda ran Southeast Asian crime and chaired the Global Syndicate Council. Last June he disappeared.

The image faded and another took its place. This hologram is of Harvey Fukuda only three months ago. A recording was taken when he showed up at a bank’s automated, large-transaction teller to withdraw a billion yen. His retinal patterns and DNA matched the old man’s.

Mark stared. Skin fit tightly over Fukuda’s cheekbones. Stubble darkened his skull. Live, black eyes gleamed behind oriental folds. The man glanced up at the camera and smiled. His teeth were white and gums a healthy pink. This Fukuda was in his mid-twenties.

Notice the small ears that lie flat against his skull? Hull asked. They are identical to those of the other image. I’ve had the interference patterns of the holograms matched.

There are bound to be look-a-likes in the twelve billion people on this planet, Mark said. The Japanese police, or their informants, could have lied about the retinal and DNA measurements.

My researcher found other strange reappearance’s, Hull replied. Phillipe Rainey of the Pasteur Institute, Sergei Lermontov of the Slavic Secret Service...

I knew Rainey well, Mark interrupted. Let me see him.

Mark remembered the fun days twenty-five years earlier, in tropical Africa, when Phillipe, a female colleague, and he searched for the animal source of a mutant HIV virus. They had been friends ever since, until Phillipe’s death.

Mark studied the long face of the old French doctor once considered the world’s greatest expert on the human immune system. That’s Phillipe, he said. "He lost a lot of weight since I last saw him. A wasting disease?»

He was eighty-two at the time of this image. He died soon afterward, from cardiac arrest according to the death certificate.

Hull paused. Now look at him four months ago.

A youthful Phillipe smiled at Mark!

After a moment, Mark leaned back. His chair scraped against the window. No one has figured out how to beat death before, he said. Your identities are hard to accept.

I’m told that many fish, amphibians, and reptiles appear not to age, Hull replied. "The animals continue to grow until they die of violence or disease. Lizards regenerate their tails. Modern technology has done wonders in other fields. Why not make human aging obsolete? Why not generate new flesh and bone?»

Success is improbable.

Hull shrugged. My research associate’s evidence is persuasive to me. He has been unable to locate the treatment center, however.

Hull signaled waiters to remove the hologram platform and replace their plates. I’m told you know the international medical community better than anyone. Identify the doctor who has developed a regimen that restores youth.

I’ll look into it, certainly, Mark thought. But not for this murderer. He shook his head.

Your cardiologists gave you six months, Hull murmured. If you hurry, I might have you treated, too, before your heart seizes up for good.

The son of a bitch.

Sorry, Mark finally answered. I’m not working for other people during my last days.

Hull picked up a tiny fork. He extracted a snail from its shell and dipped it into golden garlic-butter. Your loss, he said. Good-by.

After a long moment, Mark nodded, stood, and left.

CHAPTER 2

At ten in the morning, the day after he returned to New York, Mark Langer shoved two bags into the back seat of his rented, yellow sports coupe and then drove north out of Manhattan. He’d taken his medications, wore a comfortable, gray jumpsuit with handy pockets, and looked forward to the day.

Hull might expect Mark to hunt down the age cure rumor despite his refusal to work for the billionaire. Would Hull shadow him through Web tracers?

He’d worry about that bastard later. And he’d take care of the defibrillator later.

Mark drove along avenues walled by multi-colored, block-long buildings, windowless for four stories—an architectural requirement since the civil disturbances of the twenty-fifties. The interwoven blues, yellows, and reds of the walls kept his spirits high. Light, hydrogen-powered traffic produced no pollution, only water vapor. He admired clean sidewalks and gutters.

The network of glistening tubes that branched from, and connected to the fourteen story towers had become limbs of a civic Banyan tree. Mark smiled to himself. Modern megacities exchanged the bravura of skyscrapers for efficiency and Achiever safety.

Another spring day without air poisoning and without the rain that had pelted New York from the global warming of the last fifty years. How wonderful to be alive in a cooling world, busy at reform.

He turned onto the highway to Boston and noted the recently installed laser fences, fizzing and arcing from occasional collision with moisture or bugs. The rays kept out animal and human wanderers. To his left, traffic lanes and guide rails for automated truck and bus trains rose from belowground stations.

Mark’s coupe picked up speed, whizzing silently over the toll transceivers embedded in the road’s surface. The road tax would cost a month’s pension check, he knew. But why worry about money now?

The age cure was most likely a fabrication, a con by someone, perhaps Hull’s own research associate.

But he wanted Hull’s story to be true. When he thought of fraud, his heart began to skip.

Only atrial flutter, he assured himself.

The worst aspect of advanced age was not how easily he grew exhausted, nor the increasing list of drugs required to keep him alive. Most terrible was the realization that he had no further chance to do something significant in the world.

He remembered the maitre de’s pitying smile, the redhead’s uncaring glance, and Hull’s casual dismissal. He wasn’t worth anyone’s time—except perhaps to Hull as a hunting dog.

A gigantic truck train swooped past. Moisture from the exhaust spattered his windshield. His wipers started. The aerodynamic shield at the start of the goods’ wagons created a wave of air that pushed his vehicle. Now, the suction of the train’s passing made his car yaw. He took his hands from the wheel. The car swerved back into the middle of the lane and locked-on the line of imbedded transceiver aerials.

The elevated interstate passed through twenty kilometers of cream-colored, eight story tenements. Mark had a good view of the grid of streets below. It was clear of vehicles except for garish buses and gray trucks that shuttled between warehouses, stores, and feeding centers. Clinics, small green parks, and an occasional school broke the monotony of identical tenements. He saw ration outlets and hostels for single Welfies, but few people.

June Visic up at the Harvard Biology Lab would level with him. He had called her following his dinner. She promised to think about Hull’s challenge and give Mark all day.

Yet the conversation had been stiff. After all these years, did she still carry a grudge?

He passed a blighted border zone, poisoned and mined to keep squatters out, and broke into open country. To the east, over dark blue Long Island Sound, a vee of ducks flew north. To the west, newly planted fields, brown and rumpled, stretched to the horizon.

A great town clearing fifty years earlier returned land to farming. Coupled with that reform, the federal government remodeled megacities to hold some eighty percent of the population. As a result, food production surged. At the same time, developed societies approved coastal nuclear power plants that reduced water to hydrogen and oxygen. Industry, transportation, and power plants changed their energy sources from coal, oil, and natural gas to hydrogen. The northern hemisphere’s blanket of carbon dioxide dissipated.

He remembered the riots and the local revolts that wracked the country as a result of the forcible relocation of populations and the seizure of property.

He’d been young then and most of the time in the tropics, where governments initiated few reforms. Poverty and political inefficiency—or kinder hearts—had stretched out needed measures. Single farmers inefficiently planted crops on slivers of land. Coal burning still blighted air.

Nevertheless, give humanity another hundred years and the world would be a garden, Mark thought. Populations stabilized. The Northern Hemisphere’s environment recovered. And the tropics slowly conformed. Authoritarian types learned that automated missile defenses defeated aggression. Humanity passed through winter into a new springtime.

How terrible to die just when flowers budded.

At noon he pulled into a fueling stop north of New Haven, where the road left the coast. He steered onto the off-ramp, paused at a guide rail crossing, and then passed a marshaling yard where a two-story bus from New Haven coupled with a train of other buses going back to New York. Blue advertisements crawled along the yellow sides of the buses.

He parked at the restaurant, a low, gray building surrounded by a dirt mound, and stood near his car for a minute. The bitter sting of ozone and a reek of burnt oil hung in the air.

The New York City train of buses, with the New Haven component fixed behind, coasted under a small, black platform. Mark shielded his eyes at the blue-white flash of a high-powered laser that swept like a spotlight behind the train’s aerodynamic shield. The laser would spear the unemployed that thought to steal a free ride. Some referred to the process as lice removal, he knew.

Your internal passport, please.

The Transportation Authority guard, a heavy-set, doughy-faced female, frowned at him from the open door of the restaurant.

Mark passed her the card.

Not many drivers these days.

The guard wore a blue uniform. A leather strap arched across her ample body, from shoulder to hip, a holstered gun hanging from the attached belt.

I’ve recently returned from a long spell in the tropics and wanted to see America again, Mark replied.

She held a reader close to her small eyes, checked a remote computer by satellite to see whether an authority wanted him, and returned his card. Come in and eat, Dr. Langer.

Gray tables lined the wall next to small compartments that opened to let travelers slide out plates of food. Gray, straight-backed chairs sat behind the tables that were also anchored to the concrete floor. The diner was odorless and devoid of other people.

May I join you? he asked the guard, noticing a hardly disturbed plate of vegetarian lasagna on a table.

Okay. I’m Marjorie.

Mark used his passport to charge his meal.

Well, what do you think of our country these days, now that you’ve driven a little? she asked after his first bite of green salad.

We’re pulling down hill, he replied. In New York, the streets are clean. Out here, the countryside is beautiful. Everything works.

That’s an Achiever point of view, she said and bit into her roll.

When he frowned, the guard stared at him for a long moment and then shrugged. One nasty thing you Achievers don’t see is the harm done by The Bargain. Marjorie waved her arm and grimaced. You know, the fertility suppressant that’s in all free rations. Those of us who aren’t college educated Achievers are pretty pissed off about it nowadays. "

But it’s only fair! Those who don’t work get a free ride for life. They just can’t have children.

Automation takes more and more jobs. The Bargain’s not voluntary. Marjorie sat still, holding a fork full of lasagna. Each year more workers become Welfies and have to eat fert supp in their rations.

Mark put his hand on his chest and coughed hard. The dangerous flutter stilled. In the tropical countries, where I’ve spent most of my life, he said, the poor jump at the Bargain. They gladly trade infertility for welfare.

Our unemployed young people do, too, Marjorie replied. But many gradually realize they will never find that job, move into their own cubby, and get off fert supp. Their fault, maybe. They wouldn’t or couldn’t keep up with the school programs.

She finished her bite and put the fork down. Welfies yearn for a family life and children just like the employed do.

Marjorie’s face worked. She wiped her eyes and then defiantly fixed them on Mark. The rest of us who did our lessons, but whose test scores weren’t good enough for an Achiever school, see lay-offs every day. We see our friends taking rations.

Marjorie leaned forward, her hand resting on her pistol—by accident, Mark hoped. We know what you Achievers are up to. You’re sterilizing everyone who isn’t smart, who isn’t like you.

Mark didn’t move. He kept his eyes on hers.

What about my little girl? Marjorie almost shouted. Josie’s beautiful. Corn-silk hair. Blue eyes. Everyone loves her. But she’ll have to eat rations at eighteen, earlier than that if she gets pregnant and then abort the baby. She’ll probably never be a mother. I won’t have any grandchildren.

The woman took her hand off her pistol, leaned back, and wiped her eyes again. There are other things that count besides brains, she muttered.

According to the statistics Mark had seen, Welfies comprised only twelve percent of the North American population of seven hundred million. A stable percentage. As old families died out, new ones fell into the quicksand of unemployment.

The general population’s average IQ and motivation level rose.

Lots of personal sadness there, but no overt meanness. And the numbers were small. Nothing to worry society’s planners. Better than starvation, riots, and civil war, they would say.

He smelled sour sweat. His or hers?

You Achievers don’t know what it’s like to have no hope, to realize you’re set aside for life, Marjorie said. I can’t ever take my boss’s job. I need stat analysis to forecast crime patterns. Instead of climbing, I’ll sink. Fancy new surveillance equipment that can talk will replace me soon.

Her lumpy face sagged.

You speak very well, have a good vocabulary, he said.

I’ve always read, believe it or not. No math, though. Josie doesn’t have it either.

Marjorie shoved her food aside and stared morosely at the table.

She touched her silver badge and rubbed a finger up and down its embossed surface.

Mark looked up at the sound of a bus train whooshing by at four hundred kilometers an hour. He glanced around at the gray, sterile lunchroom. No color, no music, no thrilling scent of flowers.

You’ve a wife?

She’s fighting senility in a rest home, poor creature.

At least he wouldn’t follow his wife’s route to death. His heart failed, rather than his brain.

You must have children. Marjorie said, calmer now. Will you go live with them? You should avoid the old folks’ social security barracks. It’s a mean place.

Maybe I can join a collective, he answered. I think I’d be more at ease with other old people than with my children and their children. I’ve been gone too long.

Actually, he’d become used to loneliness. A purpose, or a cause, was a cure for having no close family. Worrying about the world’s health had carried him for a long time.

Mark stood up and shoved his dirty tray back into the automat. Thank you for letting me eat with you, Marjorie.

She didn’t smile.

CHAPTER 3

The next morning, after calling ahead, Mark followed an arrow on another tenth floor, this time in the Harvard Biology Laboratory offices. Down the green hall, a pale, buxom woman peeked around a door, strode out, and grinned at him. You’ve changed since you were fifty-five Mark, June Visic roared in her old, open-field bellow. But I’d still know you anywhere.

Mark touched his chest, where pain rose. Not in his heart, though, but in his solar plexus, from anxiety. Worry over memories, over how this would go.

He stopped a meter away and looked June up and down. Squint lines outlined her dark eyes; resolution was stamped around her mouth. Her skin appeared drier, lips less full.

My, my, he said, you could still have a lot of fun with me.

She grabbed him around the shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. You old lecher, she said, and then stepped back.

The pain disappeared. His muscles relaxed. After all those years she had lost her anger. And the magic that he had once felt didn’t return.

June had fixed herself up for his visit. She wore a pale yellow dress, buttoned down a front tailored to her large breasts. He caught the faint fragrance of gardenia.

She managed her weight well, he thought. only a few pounds thickened her waist. She rinsed her hair. The glossy, brunette coiffure showed no gray.

Best of all, she retained the earnest, questioning look on her pale face that he remembered from Africa, from the virus hunt with Phillipe Rainey.

June hooked her arm in his and escorted him into her office. It was large, done in soft blues, and possessed a nook furnished with a divan, two chairs, and a table set with a coffee service. Large windows overlooked the Yard.

Oh, boy, he said after choosing a chair. You rate.

Full professor, she replied smugly, and recommended for the Nobel two years running.

June fussed with the coffee. Finally, she sat on the divan. We’ll eat lunch at the University Club, she said. Uriah Schwartz may be there.

The second Einstein?

He’s screwing around with some method of traveling at the speed of light.

Mark slapped his knee. What a time to live! he exclaimed. We’ll soon explore the galaxy.

Uriah’s discouraged these days, because of his age, probably. He’s seventy-six. Maybe you’ll cheer him up.

Let’s keep my hunt a secret for a while, June. There’s nothing worse than false hope.

She nodded and sipped her coffee. My good luck at being here, my fame, all my rewards don’t measure up to those days in Africa, she said, her eyes large and fixed on him. Those nights on the Plain and in the Gorge. I had a gorgeous time.

Wouldn’t it be great to be full of juice again?

Her eyes misted. I was in love with you, but you couldn’t stomach another wife with an independent agenda.

Mark reached across the table and squeezed her hand. He smiled. Sunny memories flitted across his consciousness. You won’t remember Phillipe Rainey, of course.

She guffawed. He’s dead, Mark.

At the dinner I told you about, I saw a recent hologram of him. He looked twenty-five and had the laughing-cavalier look that almost stole you from me.

He was sixty when we chased around Uganda together, would be eighty-five now. You’ve been fooled.

Maybe.

She studied him. Do you still have your atrial fibrillation, the flutters, as you called them?

Mark nodded. My electro-conductive system has lost perhaps sixty percent of its cells. I experienced my first ventricle upset a few days ago.

She stared at him, expressionless, for a long moment. From what you said on the phone, she finally said, this Hull character wanted you to investigate the medical profession, not microbiologists.

As I think you agreed, any successful treatment would have to be DNA-related.

Did you call that surgeon, Hoyt Whipple? Was Hull’s story true? Did he really have a brain transplant?

’Body transplant’ is a more precise term if you consider that identity resides in the brain. Yes. Whipple said Hull has a fanatical will. The nephew was a heroin addict. Hull felt his new body’s hunger when it awoke. He managed to break his need for the stuff in a few weeks. That’s on top of mastering shorter arms, a different tongue, lips, and everything else.

He sounds formidable.

Have you thought more about my question? Could rejuvenation occur by manipulating DNA?

We can transplant better genes into bone marrow and have them produce new cells. We can get rid of inherited diseases like sickle cell anemia. We can produce many kinds of tissue from undifferentiated stem cells. Yes, something like rejuvenation is theoretically possible.

Mark stared at her. His heart thumped faster.

I work with snails and haven’t studied the human genome. The interplay of genes, binding proteins, and cytoplasm in our cells is much more complicated. My key word was ‘theoretically. ‘

At Mark’s continued silence, June stood. We’ve talked about the possibility, all of us in the field. Hell, we can cure genetic diseases that attack many systems and correct malformed individual systems, all by somatic gene therapy. But no one has stood over us and addressed the complete body. Lots of individual papers, no overarching one. Yet a combination of therapies could be possible.

She began to pace. "The idea scares me, Mark. Humans are used to a cycle of birth, doing, and then death. What would replace that cycle? Some form of stasis? Would I keep my job forever and bar my young post-docs from advancement?

As it is, the vigorous replace the weary, the adventurous push out the conservative, and the hungry elbow aside the full. Extended life would ruin us.

If a cure for age is possible, someone will develop it, Mark whispered. You know that, June.

I think we all must die, for the good of the species.

If you were about to go soon, you might modify your position.

She stopped, arms akimbo, at the end of the divan, her expression stiff. Her face then crinkled. "Oh,