The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  I fooled with the candle. She gazed out over the water. Grand sailing ships stood at anchor in the harbor, tall masts and crews high in the rigging.

  Suddenly there was a report like a cannon. I jumped but Dr. Philo placed her hand over mine. “It’s all right. You’re in for a treat.”

  Credit her with understatement. I had seen fireworks in my former times, little red poppers we called ladyfingers, or a pinwheel of gunpowder atop a pole. In Lynn, too, we seized upon any excuse for a neighborhood bonfire. Agnes would ride my shoulders as on a pony while Joan held my arm and wished upon the rising embers. Here and now, that night, were marvels of a different order: great chrysanthemums of color, whistlers, drippers, bombs whose fragments exploded anew to spread more lights, orbs of one hue with rings of another like Saturns over the harbor, and my favorite, the white flash followed a moment later by a deep loud boom. At the end there was a chaos of rockets and noises, dozens of detonations in a matter of seconds. We cheered and clapped.

  Afterward, on the street, there were carts hawking balloons, flags, and little cloth animals. We had strolled past one cart loaded with trinkets when Dr. Philo veered back. I ambled up and saw that she had purchased something, the vendor was just giving her the change.

  “This is for you,” she said. “A reminder of our many walks through this city.”

  She handed me a raccoon. The same masked eyes as our trash-can friend, but made of plush cloth. I stood it in the palm of my hand.

  “Thank you, Doctor. I don’t know what else to say. Thank you.”

  Suddenly Dr. Philo snatched it back, holding it against her belly.

  “What’s the matter?” I said. “Have I done something wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I am such a silly girl. Here you are, a district court judge, and I give you a stuffed animal. What was I thinking?”

  “I am touched by it, though.”

  “It’s totally stupid. I apologize.”

  “It is not stupid,” I said. To prove my point, I took the raccoon back, and held it to my cheek. I put its head to my temple. “See? He looks like me.”

  She brightened. “You look ridiculous. Both of you.”

  The next day I felt an unfamiliar agitation. Partly it was indigestion, but this was also a galvanizing of the spirit. My nature is not a restless one, as a rule, but all that morning I could not content myself to wait in the chamber till Dr. Philo came to fetch me.

  The only person working in the control room was Dr. Gerber. He sat as ever, immersed in the world of his computer, with headphones on to shut out the world, and that bicycle helmet to protect him from whatever his imagination thought might strike him unawares. I rapped on the glass, but it had as much effect as if I’d been knocking on the front door of my old home in Lynn. He did not so much as turn his head.

  I put in the earbuds Dr. Gerber had given me, and listened to the first song that played. It was a sweet thing, quiet, almost a lullaby.

  There is a road, no simple highway

  Between the dawn and the dark of night.

  And if you go, no one may follow.

  That path is for your steps alone.

  Suddenly I missed Joan with all my heart. Her impatience with me, her humor, her strong hands. What was this infatuation with the here and now, compared with her loyalty and deep friendship?

  And what sort of man was I, to be awakened all this time and to have thought so lightly on her? My wife was forty-four when I sailed, and I left her neither reserves nor fine estate. How had she fared? Could she afford to remain in our home? If Agnes married, one fine day, who escorted her down the aisle? Which friend of mine had performed that lonely office? How had I been so foolish, to leave them for even one minute? What had become of my conscience? How had I dared to risk so much?

  During the Arctic expedition I missed Joan and Agnes constantly, wishing to share the adventure’s every detail with my wife, yearning to feel my daughter’s fierce animal strength. But those desires had been eased by the knowledge that I would see them in a few months’ time. Now I lacked any such comfort. Now I ached. I had considered asking Dr. Philo to take me to Lynn, to visit my former home. Yet I also feared that the sight would rend my heart.

  Oh, my loves. I ceased the music, fighting tears of shame and regret and loss. I sat on my bed in that chamber, and experienced pangs as though I were being stabbed.

  Banal as it is, nature’s call aided me, for it caused Dr. Gerber to stand and make for the washroom. From the edge of my vision I noticed the silly helmet still on his head. I waited at the window, wiping my face dry with my sleeve. As he returned I pounded the glass with both hands. He looked at me with surprise, then came to the window.

  “Please,” I said, pointing toward the security door. “I beg you.”

  He marched over and poked the combination numbers. I expected him to enter, like everyone else. The rather, Dr. Gerber stepped back and held out his hands. “Well? Are you coming?”

  For the first time I strode through the security door unescorted. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Took you long enough.” He moved toward his desk. “I’ve been wondering when you would wise up about that whole secure-chamber thing.”

  “What is the combination, then?”

  That pulled on his reins. He stopped, digging a finger under the helmet to scratch his hair. “Now there is a question to get a man in hot water.”

  “I have been patient,” I answered.

  “Too patient. Rules were meant to be broken.”

  “That’s not a maxim a judge would normally endorse.”

  Dr. Gerber smiled. “Two-six-six-seven. You press the button that looks like an empty tic-tac-toe game, then two-six-six-seven. And you promise never to reveal who told.”

  “You are an angel, sir.”

  “Not one percent. Remember, though: you didn’t learn it from me.”

  “Learn what?”

  He laughed, wiggling the fingers of both hands. Only then did I notice the sound, a chanting, almost like a distant threshing machine. “What is that noise?”

  “That?” Dr. Gerber motioned me to follow. “Our biggest fans. And now there are more of them than ever.” We reached the elevators, he ran a card through some sort of device on the wall, and the doors opened. “Just press L, and go see for yourself.”

  “Our fans?” I moved alone into the little room, saw the L he described, and pushed it. The doors whooshed closed. As I descended, the chanting grew louder.

  There must have been four hundred of them, all wearing red shirts, all angry. The handsome man with the handheld loudspeaker stood to one side, leading them, raising their pitch. I stood in the atrium, just yards away, stunned.

  So far they had not spotted me; this rage was generated for themselves. Through the glass, the leader’s plaints contained a certain musicality. There was a rhythm to his words, and he concluded each successive phrase on a slightly higher note. When he paused, they cheered. When he asked a question, they shouted answers. When he lowered his head in prayer, they raised their hands in holy fervor. There was a heat to their devotion, a zeal, and it frightened me.

  By contrast, the security guards, three across at the front door, wore faces as blank as stones. Likewise police cars blocked the road to the left, the officers standing with crossed arms. Television cameras clustered on the other side, watching like crows with unblinking eyes. Trucks behind them pointed giant dishes at the sky. I made a mental note to ask Dr. Gerber to explain those trucks later.

  Suddenly someone noticed me, a woman in the front. She shouted and pointed, and the entire company followed the direction of her finger. They surged forward in one mass. The handsome man called to them to stay back, but he was like a goat before a locomotive. The guards drew nightsticks, the police came closer, and I felt a hand on the small of my back.

  I recognized the touc
h immediately. “Dr. Philo.”

  “You should not be here. You are baiting them.”

  “I merely came to observe.”

  Now the police and guards stood shoulder to shoulder. The leader jumped up and down in front of the mob, waving them back with his arms. A photographer dashed into the space between the crowd and the building, snapping in both directions as he ran.

  “You are not invisible, Judge Rice. Come with me right now.” Dr. Philo pulled on my arm, and I followed her lead. She ran a card through a device as Dr. Gerber had, the elevator doors swept open, and she rushed me within.

  “You have no idea the danger you were in,” she said as the tiny room rose toward our floor. “What were you doing down there?”

  “I could not bear to sit another minute in that chamber, waiting for my life to recommence. I heard them, and needed to see. Why do they hate me?”

  “It’s not hate. It’s more like fear, of what you represent. Your existence challenges their faith.” The doors opened and we stepped into the laboratory corridor. “I actually feel sorry for a lot of those folks,” she continued, “because reality is messing with their beliefs. It must be painful.”

  “I have a larger significance to them?”

  “The world is changing in ways they don’t like. You are a living example of that.”

  I nodded. “This is precisely what I have been pondering.”

  “You have?”

  “In my discussions with Dr. Borden, yes. Thus far everyone has treated my reanimation as a scientific feat, without assigning any task for me beyond absorbing this world and being polite. If I have larger significance, I must become the equal of that role. I must make better use of this second life.”

  We had reached the control room door. Dr. Philo stayed me there with a hand on my arm. To me, her touch was most articulate. “Do you know what you will do?”

  “Not yet. I have been fascinated by learning this world. But I know with certitude that I cannot let this opportunity go to waste.”

  “Maybe a good first step—”

  “Hell on a hockey stock,” bellowed Dixon as he charged off the other elevator. “There’s damn near a riot down there. Whoo-ee.” He lumbered past us, waving his notebook. “Hi there, Dr. Kate. They sure had some choice words for you, old Frank.”

  “Why do you call me that?”

  He yanked back the control room door. “That’s for me to know. Meanwhile I’ve got to file some kind of story about that gang out there. Out of control.”

  We stood a moment in the hallway, after which I turned to Dr. Philo. “What should I do now?”

  “Now?” She smiled. “How about visiting patients at the children’s hospital?”

  That was her way, unflappable, and this habit of mind earned both my admiration and my curiosity. Should any matter go awry, from a meal in the lab misprepared to a museum closed, an unduly aggressive stranger or an unexpected downpour, any other person would reveal annoyance, a dollop of upset. Dr. Philo was the opposite. At a bump she would go smooth, toward a wrinkle she showed calm, in calamity she would become as still as dawn. The judge in me, trained by temperament and experience to mask opinion, respected her powers of restraint. The husband and father in me, educated by affection, wondered where her emotions went. Into what interior location did they burrow?

  One night I saw her self-mastery overcome, the remembering of which makes me grin. We were meandering in the North End, where Italian restaurants stand cheek by jowl. My digestion had complained for days after the rooftop restaurant, convincing me to return to the staple of laboratory oatmeal. But my senses remained revived, my appetite for scent and flavor undiminished. Thus, in time and with minuscule doses, did I begin supplementing Dr. Borden’s gruel. Had his original monitoring continued, my overseers surely would have noticed diminished porridge consumption. Instead I enjoyed a measure of dietary freedom, which I indulged modestly and with a sensuality that would have shamed me in my former life. That night in particular, Dr. Philo had introduced me to several foreign delights: the rich flavors of prosciutto, the salty tang of Tuscan pecorino cheese. Afterward we were ambling, with her hand snug in the crook of my arm.

  All at once a huge-bellied man stood before us: an unshaven shadow on his jaw, a black bow tie at his throat, and a red-stained apron around his waist. “Amores,” he said, holding his hands together over his heart. “Va bene.”

  “No,” Dr. Philo said, “we are not lovers.”

  “Si, si,” said the man. He opened his hands and waved them around our bodies, indicating their closeness.

  “Dr. Philo is my friend,” I explained.

  “Guide,” she interjected with a smile.

  “Chaperone,” I added, also smiling.

  “Bodyguard,” Dr. Philo said, raising her free hand in a small clenched fist.

  The man in the apron smiled widest. “Lei pretende,” he stage-whispered. “You pretend.” Then he pushed us closer, and seemed somehow to summon himself to order.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Dr. Philo leaned closer. “Shhh.”

  The man in the apron began to sing. But sing is a woefully insufficient word to describe what he did, what he gave to us. Ha. I confess I am unschooled in the operatic arts. They struck me as too ritualized, too formal. But there on the sidewalk of Boston’s North End, we encountered a tenor of surpassing skill and instrument. He began in the lower registers, the words slow and notes long with vibrato. But his recitation gathered momentum, accelerated, rose in volume and pitch. In less than two minutes he was in full voice, high, clear, and passionate. The music was strong yet he did not strain. I felt myself warming but his face betrayed no embarrassment, only that he closed his eyes in concentration and surrender. On the final phrase he brought his full breath, great volume, one hand held open with the palm upward as if supplicating to the sky. At last he finished, opened his eyes, grinned, whilst people all along the street applauded, whistled, and called “bravo.” He gave a modest bow.

  Then he leaned to whisper. “Amore, signori. Amore.”

  I turned to Dr. Philo, allowing her the first opportunity to protest. But my bodyguard had been disarmed. One hand flattened on her bosom, she was crimson. She was radiant. I found myself stammering.

  A camera flashed. Dr. Philo winced, thanked the aproned man, and hurried me away down the street. I had the sensation that we were in flight. Yet I had no reason to flee.

  That night when I saw Dr. Philo standing by the security door, I waved her inside. I was already abed. She came halfway into the room. “Are you enjoying all of this?”

  “It is a kind and wonderful world you live in.”

  “You live in it, too.”

  “So I do. And what an adventure. I like it here and now. I feel a need to hurry, to experience everything.”

  “We have all the time in the world.” She tugged on a corner of my blanket, remaining at the foot of the bed. “By the way, tomorrow’s a big day.”

  “Don’t spoil the surprise,” I said. “But please remember that I wish to do more than be entertained.”

  “I promise your contribution tomorrow will be extremely important to the Lazarus Project. In the meantime, try to get some sleep.”

  “I certainly will.” Just then I yawned, like a child after bedtime prayers. Silly as it may sound, I remained yet unaccustomed to existence; that yawn brought impeccable pleasure. What an astonishing thing, this reflex sucking of air and the resulting relaxation, this having a body. So numerous are the gestures and sensations we take for granted, whilst this creature, this living machine, is the only friend we have with us our entire lives, fellow traveler on the first step and the last, witness from first breath after the womb to last gasp before the hereafter. I flopped my feet side to side under the covers, and gave thanks for the loyal companionship of my animal self.

  She m
eanwhile had tiptoed to the door and paused, leaning against the wall like a tired child herself. I called out: “Dr. Philo?”

  “Judge Rice?”

  “The feeling grows upon me that you are an attorney pleading a case in my court. Thus your appellation for me seems less apt with each day. Would you kindly consider henceforth addressing me as Jeremiah?”

  She laughed, a song in three notes. “If you’ll stop calling me Dr. Philo.”

  “I cannot do that, though. My manners—”

  “What’s good for the goose, Judge Rice.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means we’re equals. If I’m going to address you as a friend would, then you must do the same with me.”

  “I see.” I lay back. The ceiling was blank. “Hm.”

  “Informality means as much today as formality did in your time.”

  I rose on one elbow. “Well then. We’ve struck a bargain, haven’t we? Kate.”

  She smiled. I’d seen that expression once before, yes, whilst Kate held a surgical mask down with her finger. “Good night, Jeremiah,” she replied. “Sweet dreams.”

  Kate turned the lights the rest of the way down. I stretched to the near table, grabbing the raccoon and tucking it beneath my pillow. The security door hissed closed and I was alone with my thoughts. They flickered and rose as flame does from a candle.

  PART IV

  Plateau

  CHAPTER 26

  Swarming

  (Erastus Carthage)

  Thomas raps twice and leans his head into your office. “She’s waited twenty minutes, sir.”

  “Excellent. Show her in.”

  “May I share one line first, from today’s story?”

  “By all means.”

  “ ‘This is the work of Erastus Carthage, the conquistador of cell mysteries.’ ”