by Neil Hetzner
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Paternal Instincts
It has cost him a lot of money, but Joshua Fflowers has his freedom. He realizes that to many it might not look like freedom. After all, the trillionaire is tethered to a hospital bed with a half-dozen tubes and, seemingly, a one-to-one ratio of medical personnel to tubes to tend them. Fflowers’ health is much better than it was a week ago, but it still is the second worse in his long life. What he has done is risky, but, as he pondered the decision, he reminded himself that every significant act of his life has involved risk. Dr. Blaine, and the rest of the school of doctors sharking about the institute, have insisted that he must stay. But, the Juvenal Institute is not where the old man wants to die.
Despite the many years of living, the many years of ill-health, the horrible boredom of the self-absorption that ill-health brings, Joshua Fflowers still, mostly, wants to keep living. But. But. But, if he is going to die, then, he doesn’t want it to be in any place other than the Airie. His home provides both a haven and a special opportunity for his death.
Risk? At his age? He’ll gladly take the risk.
After signing two sets of papers—one which funded a major program in mind biology resets with a Juvenal Institute staff member as the primary researcher and the other which relieved the Institute and its staff of any and all liability for the problems which have occurred with the rich man’s rejuvenation—Fflowers prognosis becomes so rosy that the Institute can, in good faith and conscience, release him.
Fflowers makes his goodbyes, which are somewhat unnecessary since a significant contingent of the Institute’s regen and rejuve staff is coming with him to the Airie.
Fflowers is absolutely forbidden to have visitors; however, within hours after arriving at the Airie, Fflowers summons Vartan Smarkzy. The old schoolmates spend two hours together.
Smarkzy appears to be forthcoming. He has known Prissi Langue for less than two years. After the fact, yes, he can suppose that a part, a small part, of his interest in her was that there was a resemblance to Elena Fflowers. However, since he had not known Elena at fifteen and his vision is far from what it once was, he wasn’t, nor could he be expected to be, struck by the resemblance, like Fflowers himself has been. When Smarkzy asks Fflowers what he thinks is going on, the trillionaire says that he is persuaded that Prissi is a clone of Elena. When the Dutton teacher wonders how that is possible, Fflowers said because Elena is still alive. When Smarkzy asks how he knows that to be true, Fflowers answers, “Because I’m old, rich and patient. Enough time and money applied to any problem will usually bring an answer.”
“How long have you known?”
“Much too long.”
“Where is she?”
“Where she wants to be…away from me.”
“Africa? Prissi says that she grew up in Africa.”
“Not Africa. She didn’t grow up with Elena. If she had, I would know. In fact, I doubt that Elena even knows that she exists.”
“So how could she be cloned? Who else would have Elena’s eggs?”
When Fflowers smiles, it makes him look like he is in excruciating pain, “You probably were interested in Priscilla not because her looks reminded you of Elena, but because her behavior reminded you of someone else.”
“Who?”
“Laureby’s old girl friend.”
“Roan? Roan’s been dead since the explosion.”
Fflowers’ bitter laugh quickly turns into a wracking cough.
“Vart, who was the smartest person we ever knew?
Smart is all ways. School smart. Science smart. Street smart.”
“Roan Winslow.”
“Gone without a trace. Burned to ashes except for a small fragment of bone and two teeth.
“Priscilla’s mother was named Nora, an anagram of Roan. Elieson. Elide. To pass over or ignore. Nora Elieson emerged from the dust and shadow of Africa about thirty-five years ago. I’ve asked some very good…historians…and they tell me that Nora Elieson has no history. She was a good wife, a good mother and she died in an accident three years ago.”
Smarkzy rebuts, “An unexpectedly dull third, fourth and fifth act for the smartest person we ever knew.”
Joshua Fflowers shrugs his shoulders and twirks his lips down in answer.
“It could be that people change. For example, Beryl Langue, a mediocre scientist for decades with the GN, marries Nora Elieson, and, a decade later has figured out how to grow regenerative wings on guinea hens.”
Now, it is Smarkzy’s turn to laugh and his laugh, too, degenerates into a cough. When the old man gets himself under control, he says, “Some people change.”
Fflowers leans his head back into his pillows and speaks slowly to the VA to adjust the hospital bed. He seemingly doesn’t do a good job with his instructions to the voice activator because the bed fails miserably to execute his commands. Fflowers begins swearing in exasperation. Finally, his hands pat the bed covers until he finds a remote. Still swearing, he pounds on the remote. Like a badly trained dog, the bed refuses to do any of its tricks. It is not until Smarkzy takes the remote, and punches a short sequence of buttons that the bed obeys and Fflowers reclines.
Having suffered through these kinds of Fflowersian misdirections hundreds of times, Smarkzy has patiently waited for the question he knows is coming.
“Which am I?”
Smarkzy doesn’t hesitate, “You’ve changed.”
Fflowers waits. Smarkzy holds up a finger, “One. You’ve known where Elena is and you have left her alone. Two. You seem more interested in understanding Prissi than in possessing her. Three. You are old and sick, but you don’t seem overly concerned with finding out whether the scattered knowledge that Trinity discovered is coming back together again.”
Fflower’s mutter barely carries to the chair where Smarkzy is sitting.
“Sometimes the blind are allowed to see. If only for a day. I am interested in what happens to the girl. You tell me her father has been killed and that she has disappeared. So I’ll ask you what you asked me a couple of minutes ago. What do you think is going on?”
Smarkzy takes his time responding. “I think there is a good chance that she has enemies both because of who she is and because of what she may possess. If she is important to you, then, whoever controls Prissi gains some control over you.”
“I have many enemies.”
“And, if, somehow, she possesses a key to bringing Trinity’s work back into the light, then, almost anyone could be interested.”
Fflowers’ sigh disturbs so much fluid in his lungs it sounds like someone thrumming a thick rubber band.
“I’m tired. Can you help me?”
Smarkzy’s eyes grow bright at his old friend’s request.
“I can try. If Trinity’s work is awakening, then that must in some way involve Elena. Tell me where she is and I’ll go there to find out if Prissi has also made her way there.”
Fflowers’ eyes are shut as if he already has abdicated his role.
“I can’t do that. For twenty-three years, I have known where she is. There even have been periods when I have known what she was doing. More than anything I have ever wanted to do, I wanted to go there. To show myself. To stand before Elena’s fury and her despite. To see the loathing in her eyes. To hear her tell me of how my pride poisoned us and poisoned her. I wanted to go before her and stand still long enough to absorb all of her fury until she herself would grow still. And, when that quiet moment finally came, where her emotions were exhausted, to tell her that since she left, ‘I have been and always will be undone.’
“Vart, I have spent thousands of an old man’s dwindling hours imagining myself in the clearing before her door saying, ‘I am undone.’ But, I can’t go, couldn’t go, shouldn’t go, wouldn’t go. Some harm is sufficient enough. And if I can’t go, then neither can you.”
While the Fflowers’ histrionics have been going on, Smarkzy wonders if the old man hamming and shamming before him is even the slightest bit aware of
his self-delusions. Telling himself that he will pay more attention to that later, but to focus now on getting what he wants, he raises the palms of his hands as if he is about to receive a beneficence.
“A humble megalomaniac. A pentitent, ecstatic in his remorse. When will delusion end? When will myth get turned aside for reality, Josh? The girl needs help, protection. You may have the means to do that. If you do nothing, and she is harmed or killed, then, not only do you destroy her, but you destroy Elena a second time. Where is she? Where’s Elena?”
While Smarkzy has been speaking, Joshua Fflowers’ face has remained closed in a barely breathing death mask. Even after Smarkzy finishes, Fflowers remains as if in last sleep.
“I need to know!”
Finally, the failing man’s lips move and three syllables, quiet as a moth’s flight, drift out, “Brookhaven.”
Vartan Smarkzy hasn’t heard that word in years. Brookhaven National Laboratory had been an immense research facility out on Long Island. As Smarkzy remembers, it had covered hundreds, if not thousands, of acres. The word that Fflowers has spoken would not be enough to find Elena.
“Where?
“Building Eight.”
