The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  He sat forward. “You have leverage with him, I admit, and I repent myself of allowing that to occur. But my patience with your influence is ended. Thus let me be plain. Jeremiah Rice will be standing in this office by four o’clock, or I will ruin you.”

  “Ruin me? What the hell does that mean?”

  “You do not want to learn. Certainly no career and no reputation. But it will be much worse, I will do it with every power I have, and I will not relent until you are broken and destitute.” He tossed the pencil on his desk. “And I will do it for sport.”

  Carthage pumped the sanitizer bottle on his desk, a white glop oozing onto his hand. I did not stay to watch the washing. No amount of scrubbing would make that man clean.

  In the office supply room I found two large moving boxes. I carried them through the control room, where Gerber backed his chair out of my way.

  “Whoa there, pilgrim,” he said. “You look like the wrath of God.”

  I put the boxes on a desk. “Sometimes I would like to tear Carthage right in half.”

  “The man is indeed a work of art,” Gerber bobbled his head in agreement. “So, is he hassling you because you’re bonking the good judge now?”

  “Jesus, Gerber. You sound as bad as Dixon.” I picked the boxes back up, starting for Jeremiah’s chamber. “And no, for your information, I am not ‘bonking’ anyone.”

  “Oh.” He shrugged, wheeling back to his desk. “My condolences.”

  What a place. I could not wait to be rid of it. Meanwhile I punched the numbers to enter Jeremiah’s chamber. Quickly it was clear that one moving box was all I’d need. His toiletries, a handful of books, the few articles of clothing people had given him that he chose to wear, it amounted to less than one box. Between Carthage’s ego and all of the media attention, I’d come to see our project as a big deal, the rebirth of Jeremiah a world-changing thing. To find it reduced to so few possessions was humbling.

  I was on my way out, giving the room a final scan, when I felt the impulse to neaten it. The books formed a tidy stack on a shelf, earbuds on top. Making the bed, I felt something under his pillow. I reached beneath: the stuffed raccoon. First I felt sadness, a pang of loss. Some kind of innocence was gone now, would not be coming back. Then I felt anger, a flare of stubbornness. He had jumped to protect me. Now it was my turn.

  I tossed the extra box in the middle of the room, a clue for anyone who might be interested. But then, videotapes would show everything anyway. Presuming the monitors were still running, that is. There’s not much to document if your subject is gone.

  I would have liked to say a few good-byes, but there was no point in wasting my head start. Also I wasn’t quite finished. There was one more thing I wanted, for Jeremiah.

  The basement was bright, fluorescent tubes hanging in pairs from the ceiling. Pipes angled overhead. I’d been to the project’s storeroom several times, to deposit gifts Jeremiah had received on our walks through the city.

  A new sign hung on the door: LAZARUS PROJECT PROPERTY. NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS. NO REMOVAL OF CONTENTS WITHOUT WRITTEN E.C. APPROVAL.

  Although I wondered how gifts to Jeremiah had become project property, I felt sure “E.C.” would not approve my removal plans. I swept my badge through the reader, but the door did not unlock. I tried again, no luck. Had Carthage already blocked my access? This was a problem. If I went back upstairs, who would lend me their badge, knowing that the project’s mainframe keeps track of every time a badge is used?

  “Oh, come on,” I said, jerking on the doorknob fruitlessly.

  “Allow me to get that, would you, lovely?”

  I turned to be greeted by the crooked-toothed grin of my onetime friend at the project, possibly my friend again. “Billings, you savior. Would you mind?”

  “Shown you the door too, has he?”

  “Not quite yet. Are you the one Carthage was just bragging about firing?”

  “Approximately.” Billings swept his card through the slot; we both could hear the electronic bolt slide back. “I’m half fired, half resigned.”

  I laughed. “We’re in the same club. You’re just a few hours ahead of me.”

  “Although apparently my card still works.” He bowed. “After you.”

  “Always the gentleman.” I went ahead with the cardboard box.

  “Aye, lass,” he said in a false Cockney. “Me ma beat it into me.”

  Someone had organized the room since my last visit. Shelves lined the walls, as well as rows up the middle, with gray plastic bins on them. The bin labels bore unmistakable, perfect handwriting. “So, why did you and Carthage part ways?”

  “Hard to say, Kate. For his part, lack of glamour, I’d wager. For my part, I discovered things in the small species samples I didn’t want a pig like him to possess. Then it was merely a matter of annoying him, and feigning intimidation.” Billings strolled to the far wall, pulled down a bin, poked through the papers inside. “Here it is, lucky first grab.” He snatched a file, shoved the bin back. “I’ll still receive my contractual severance check, with which I intend to treat myself to three decadent weeks in Maui.”

  I stalked the aisles, scanning labels for materials associated with Jeremiah, working from the most recent backward. “Sounds like you have a good plan.”

  “If I borrow a few documents for my next project, yes. Metabolic studies of reanimated species other than the judge. A professional parachute, you could say.”

  I stopped at the end of the row. The label read: SUBJECT ONE ARRIVAL ATTIRE. I slid the bin outward as it tipped heavily.

  “Let me help you there, lovely.” Billings set down his papers, took the bin, lowered it to the floor. “What are we hunting for, might one ask?”

  The bin was sealed with tape, on which Thomas had written the date we reached Boston with Jeremiah’s frozen body. I broke the seal, yanked the lid, saw the topmost items: a well-worn pair of heavily oiled, high brown boots. I picked one up, tracing my finger over the ornate C on the sole. “These.”

  Billings crossed his arms. “I have the strangest sense right now, as if I’d gone to the loo during the intermission of a play, and returned having missed rather critical scenes.”

  “They’re his boots. He wants them back.”

  “You’ll hear no argument from me, Kate. I’m a thief here myself.”

  With the boots in hand, I felt less distracted. “Yes, I’m sorry. You said you’d found things in the small species, things you didn’t want to share.”

  “Indeed I did. Just between us girls?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, it has to do with metabolics.” He grinned. It was the nerd’s smile, I’d seen it all my professional life, whenever someone seeking something difficult or arcane had actually found it. Probably I’d worn that look a time or two myself.

  Billings rubbed his palms together. “What did Borden call it, ‘hibernating bear’? An apt phrase, that. You see, regardless of what species you’ve animated, they always recommence at an astonishingly low metabolic rate, processing food and oxygen almost in slow motion. Very nice, a gentle start on their tummies and the like. The pickle is that whatever mechanisms regulate metabolic rate . . . well, apparently they quite break down during the frozen time, don’t they? Nor does the tempo stabilize once it reaches normal. No, it grows faster and faster, the creature moves ever more quickly, it consumes fuel at an exponentially accelerating rate, and the poor thing just burns right out.”

  “I’ve seen this, of course, with shrimp and so on. What are you saying?”

  “Our man Carthage may be a genius when it comes to reanimating, but he’s built a right sloppy record of keeping things animated, hasn’t he?”

  His meaning hit home. I stepped back, bumping against the shelves. “Oh, no.”

  “And yet,” Billings continued, “no one has done much studying of why the poor creature
s perished, much less what might keep them alive longer.”

  I could barely look at him. “Except you.”

  “We see where that got me. In a basement, stealing files. A shame, too, for the little darlings die off no matter what, sure as the sunrise, and right quickly.”

  I dropped the boots. I felt as if I might drop, too, so I lowered myself to the storeroom floor. “How quickly?”

  “It is an accelerating logarithm, Kate. Oh, I could show you some pretty graphs.” Billings was lost in the findings, his hands swooping in the air. “Once the curve trends upward, it does so elegantly, at a uniformly increasing pace.”

  “How do you know when it has begun?”

  “Extrapolation is risky, my dear. All my data are from minuscule—”

  “How will I know, dammit?”

  Billings gave me a look of surprise, which melted into one of fondness. I felt the fullness of our history together. Nights in the lab finessing samples that refused to cooperate, frigid dives in polar waters, bourbon on the train while we escorted Jeremiah home. Not to mention endlessly commiserating on what hell it was to work for Carthage.

  “Well, well. I may be slow, but hit me with a hammer enough times and it might sink in. Here I am prattling on about graphs, while you . . .” He cleared his throat. “Right. You and I have made a proper muck of things, haven’t we, Kate?”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I’m straight out of a job. And you’re in a far worse predicament, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”

  “I’m terribly sorry.” He sighed. “I suppose it is entirely too late for me to suggest maintaining scientific perspective or upholding professional distance.”

  “Entirely.” I fiddled with one of the boots. “Who else knows about this? Has anyone told Jeremiah?”

  “Not a chance. Carthage didn’t even tell me, until I’d confirmed it myself. I thought I’d discovered a solution, but it turned out to be bollocks. Carthage thinks he has a better answer, but in the lab I’ve already found how his way fails.”

  “So how will I know, Billings?”

  “Indeed.” He coughed into his fist. “Very well. Palsy. If he begins to shake like an old woman with Parkinson’s, or some Bowery drunk fighting DTs, then you’ll know he has taken his place somewhere on that miserable curve.”

  I nodded. My throat felt clogged, but I had to ask. “What if he’s already shaking?”

  “It’s begun already? Well then. I’d say . . . well, monitor other metabolic signs. You know the lot. Increased appetite, diminished need for sleep.”

  I began, the littlest bit, quietly, to weep. “Then what?”

  “I hate to see you this way, lovely. After all we’ve been through. Can’t bear it.”

  “Tell me. Please.”

  “Ah, Kate. There’s no predicting the rate, only the bloody outcome.”

  I cried for a minute or so, letting the tears spot my dress a darker green. Jeremiah. Watching your fingers jiggle on the bench at Lynn. Reading in my house and sitting on your hands. Hugging at the cemetery and your hand flapping.

  Gradually I collected myself. One of the boots had fallen upright. I hugged it into my lap, looking into the opening like it was a leather mouth. “Is there anything I can do?”

  He didn’t answer. When I raised my eyes, I saw that Graham Billings was gone.

  CHAPTER 35

  Winning Lottery Ticket

  (Daniel Dixon)

  That was the day everything turned in my favor. After that morning, life lined up very nicely on behalf of yours truly. If I had anyone to thank, it would have to be the bishop. I mean, at daybreak I’d been without a plan of any kind. Just a raging frustration like I was strapped in a straitjacket.

  Fact is, that bastard Carthage had stumped me in about ten seconds. He knew right where to hit. No security badge, no going inside, no proof to show the world. That green binder might as well be on the moon. I’d spoken to my editor that night. He said he’d be damned if he would take on the likes of Sir Erastus of Asshole without hard evidence. Photos, data, the works. My editor was a damn coward. He also happened to be right. The word of Daniel Dixon against that of Dr. Nobel Contender? I’d be a laughingstock. The fact that I was telling the truth wouldn’t matter a tinker’s tit.

  But the bishop changed the game. Or maybe he just made the game visible to me. I mean, I’d been watching it take shape for months now, always thinking it was about Carthage, or Jeremiah Rice, or window-shopping Dr. Kate’s personal merchandise. Not until the bishop spoke about the author of life and the crowd cheered him like crazy did I realize that this saga was actually all about me.

  Look, when fourteen-year-old Daniel Dixon pulled his parents from that fire, dead of smoke inhalation before a single flame had touched them, his relationship with mortality was permanently forged. That terrible night showed me right up close how the body endures after death, as if all it needs is one good clean breath to sit back up again and tell me to finish my homework. Not to mention schooling me that no matter how desperately we want to believe otherwise, death is the most solid, final, unarguable thing that exists.

  While I coughed so hard I thought my lungs would come out my nose, with each gasp I was becoming the perfect dupe for Carthage. Who better than a sucker who’d spent his whole life wishing there was a way to cheat death?

  All those years as a reporter, though, also taught me to see things as they are. A situation may be foggy at the start, but reality burns it off to amazing clarity. That’s why I was also perfect for discovering that the project was bogus from top to bottom, stem to stern, start to finish.

  The one thing I hadn’t figured out was why. What motivated Carthage to concoct the whole business? He was never short on cash, and already had professional prestige out the wazoo, so why? I plain didn’t know, is what it was. I flopped onto a bench outside the project entry that morning, to chew on that question awhile.

  Of course I sat alone. Daniel Dixon always sat alone. Not self-pity, just a fact. When you’re not supposed to get close to the people you’re writing about because it will wreck your objectivity, and when you’re prickly by nature because you see the world’s flaws too clearly, and hell, when you’re forty-five and fat since childhood, you get to be a goddamn expert at sitting alone.

  At least the entertainment was first rate. I watched old T. J. Wade work the noisy red shirts into a good lather, waving that stupid invitation of Carthage’s like a cape before a bull, and bringing the gang to peak decibels just as the bishop’s limo wheeled up.

  But the control was not complete. When His Excellency wanted to speak, it took Wade quite a few minutes to settle them down. Even then, they kept interrupting with shouts, chants, a manic energy that made me nervous. It felt edgy, like the pot was close to boiling over. I moved to another bench, to watch from across the street.

  After the bishop left, they’d done one more bit of yelling for the cameras. Shut it down, shut it down, neither brilliant nor catchy, but it made the point. As the news teams packed up, I thought of that old tree-in-the-forest question: if there’s no media to publicize a protest, is it really taking place? Captain Handsome went somewhere on a break, but the shouters did not dissolve like usual. They were too het up, bustling around in their red shirts like a bunch of salmon trying to find the way upstream.

  Who should flop beside me on the bench just then but Gerber, looking as rough as if someone stopped his own reanimation halfway through. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I laughed. “You look like you climbed inside a vat of whiskey three days ago and crawled out ten minutes ago.”

  “What day is it today?”

  “Friday. Must have been quite a bender.”

  Gerber dropped his face into his hands and gave it a long groaning rub. A few of the
shouters noticed us, and turned to make some noise in our direction. They kept to their side of the street, though. The bit about blocking traffic had come and gone. Besides, Boston’s finest had arrested more than a hundred of their pals, who sat rusting in cells because the judge refused to set bail till they provided their actual identities. On a sunny summer morning, the sidewalk looked much more inviting.

  “No.” Gerber spoke through his fingers. “Not a bender. Just four straight days trying to figure something out.”

  “Hey,” I said, “you don’t have to worry about my opinion. I figure you’re probably not even in on it.”

  He cocked his head, taking me in with one eye. “What are you talking about?”

  “That beautiful fraud known as the Lazarus Project.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said. He arched against the bench’s back, letting his neck tilt till his face was pointed at the sky. “What are the idiots yelling about today?”

  “The usual. The project, Jeremiah, God.”

  Gerber brought his head back to level. “Their signs are getting better.”

  He was right. Wade had brought them from Magic Markered cardboard to painted boards with good square lettering, held high on wooden dowels. The slogans were sharper, too: SMART ≠ MORAL, JESUS LOVED THE REAL LAZARUS, and GOD IS NOT IGNORANT. My favorite was I’M WITH STUPID, only the T in stupid was a crucifix.

  Gerber let out a long sigh. “Am I wrong or are they louder than usual?”

  “It might be your hangover.”

  “You’re not listening, Dixon. It’s not partying. I have been working around the clock since Tuesday morning.”

  “I thought you saved that kind of effort for NASA. What’s cooking?”

  “Only the toughest thing since we restarted the good judge’s heart.”

  “Come on. The guy’s out gallivanting all over town with Dr. Kate.”