The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  Manners extend only so far, and they begin asking questions.

  “Dr. Carthage, did you alter in any way the underwater video of your team finding Jeremiah Rice?”

  “Why did the lights go out during the reanimation?”

  “How would you describe the relationship between Dr. Philo and Judge Rice?”

  “Doctor, how do you respond to the accusations that your work is a hoax?”

  “Are you a fraud?”

  “NO,” you shout with all your strength. “No, no, no. Everything we have done is fully documented. The video cameras have never paused, the computers have monitored constantly and released the data simultaneously. Our staff is impeccably credentialed, and for every minute of this project’s existence we have set the highest standards, the absolute highest, for precision and integrity.”

  That stops them for a moment. It gives them pause, while you collect yourself.

  One reporter cannot hold his tongue. “Where do you get your money?”

  That triggers another round of shouting. “What is the source of your financing?”

  “Why hasn’t the Lazarus Project filed a Form 990 like normal nonprofits?”

  “Are you in this for the money?”

  “NO,” you cry again. “Who are you people? How dare you make such accusations? Spend ten seconds online, you cretins. Acquaint yourself with my history, my achievements and publications, and be humbled. Meanwhile, please show the courtesy of allowing me to read my prepared remarks, which should allay your concerns. Then we’ll see which, if any, interrogatories remain to be answered.”

  They are silent. You have won the moment. Now is your time.

  Ah, time. Friend and scoundrel. The clock on the atrium’s far wall, bright red and hanging over the security desk, counts on relentlessly. It reaffirms your enduring triumph: the minutes are winding down in Jeremiah Rice’s ninetieth day.

  “Good morning,” you declare once again, your voice regaining its swagger. “Thank you for coming today. Last August, a Lazarus Project research vessel was plying the Arctic seas . . .”

  You lift the first page of your speech and the words stick in your throat. The text is illegible, the letters smeared into one another. Worse, ink has remained on your hand despite the washing, there for all to see. You open your mouth, but the usual flow of words escapes you. In fact you struggle to speak at all. “The Lazarus Project . . .”

  Your hand is filthy. You cannot utter a word. A massive weight of expectancy burdens the air. The universe sits at your feet, awaiting instruction. Yet here you are, in your ultimate moment, marked by an indelible stain.

  CHAPTER 42

  Eye of a Whale

  My name is Jeremiah Rice, and I begin to be hunted.

  I was sitting on the bed whilst Kate packed our last things, when the innkeeper knocked on the door.

  “They’re here,” Carolyn said. “On my street. Two TV vans. And by the looks of it, a pack of those protesters on their heels.”

  “Dammit.” Kate slid the computer into her shoulder bag. “Damn sharks.”

  “It’s okay, you have time. They’re going door-to-door, and they’re still more than a block away.”

  “Fine.” Kate went calm. It gave me confidence, to see her self-mastery intact as ever. “Let me think.”

  “We have a back stairs,” Carolyn said, turning to me. Her forehead wore a crease of concern. She and I had enjoyed lively conversations each morning whilst she brought plate after plate of food until I felt shame. Now she looked me in the eye. “I’d bet they don’t really know which of you they want. If they get too close, you should split up.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I felt like a passenger, unequipped to participate in the decision.

  “No,” Kate said. “Not a chance.”

  “I’m just suggesting—”

  “Do you have a storeroom? Somewhere we can leave our things?”

  “A cellar, sure.”

  “Perfect.” Kate’s face was as serene as if we were discussing what to have for dinner. “Please tell them we checked out. Say we’ve left for, oh, Portland, Maine, to catch a ferry to Nova Scotia. We’ll be back later today, and I’ll settle our bill then.”

  Carolyn waved it away. “My bill should be the least of your worries.”

  In minutes we had secreted our things in the basement, cut through the kitchen to a small sewing room at the back of the house, and wrestled open an old warped door. A flight of whitewashed steps led to the alley. As we hurried down, I considered that this was the second set of back stairs Kate and I had used for an escape in five days. I was tiring of being anyone’s prey. Fleeing was not the right use of my remaining time.

  “Hey, people?” Carolyn said. We turned back. She stood on the top step with hands on her hips, a solidity to her stance like a general surveying his troops. “Jeremiah, be sure to eat enough. Kate, if it becomes necessary, do not be afraid to let go. And remember, both of you: this inn will always be a safe place.”

  We hurried for the first few minutes only. The streets were labyrinthine, our pursuers easily shed. After an hour we were well across the town, miles from the inn. Kate took my arm and held it close. “Let’s be tourists,” she said. “We’ll blend in better.”

  After our experiences on Cape Cod and in Boston, the performance came easily. We strolled. We peered into shops. Marblehead was a quaint town, full of eighteenth-century houses and narrow lanes. With my legs moving, the tremors eased.

  There was something else, too, a keenness. It was as if all my senses were exaggerated; they felt everything however small. A building’s shadow darkened the adjacent alley. The smell of bacon cooking somewhere tugged my appetite. On a sun-drenched window seat, a tabby examined the underside of her paw, gave it a slow cleansing lick, and I felt I might weep.

  At that, I realized. I was taking stock, making an inventory of last experiences. Gerber had never said precisely how much time remained. I surmised from the severity of my spasms that the sand in the upper bowl of the hourglass was nearly gone. How astonishing this world was, though, as rich as it was fleeting. My heart could burst with gratitude. There was not just a glimpse of beauty in this world, like stars here and there in the firmament; there was an orgy of it, an excess like vines smothering a building, an ocean of it in every direction. Yet also I felt a stabbing of loss, that even as I experienced the world in its wildest abundance, it was all falling away from me, mercilessly, forever. Thus did my mind capture each thing, seizing on it to savor it. Kate pointed at a flower, saying its name, snapdragon, and I felt a flood of appreciation: for the flower and its rosy optimistic hue, for how humanity feels compelled to name everything as if there can never be enough names, for her slender finger, for the simple human gesture of pointing, and yes, for what it is that happens to a man when he hears a certain woman speak even as common a word as snapdragon.

  The morning passed in such miniscules, yet I was staggered by them. In a bakery Kate bought herself a coffee around which to wrap her hands, and me a muffin, still warm, with raisins in its middle like secrets. We climbed a hill to an old churchyard where a bell rang the hour as if no centuries had passed. We sat on a bench in the shade, and for a goodly interval neither of us spoke. A breeze stirred the tree overhead, sounding like applause. She reached down and took my hand. The moment needed nothing.

  Oh, but inevitably my left foot began twitching, slightly at first, then wagging side to side. I fiddled my right in a similar manner, feigning that it was extra energy, but Kate stiffened and sat upright. “We’re probably safe now,” she said, glancing at her watch. “How about we start back to the inn?”

  “Fine idea.” I stood too abruptly, though, lacking any other means of concealing my tremors. “We should . . . we definitely should, what is the word I want?”

  Kate stared at her coffee cup. Her lips made a thin line. “Yes,
let’s walk again.”

  We trod on the cobblestones, we angled through the town’s web of streets. She held my arm as ever. We had little need for words. The thing I most needed to say would not form itself into language. Eventually we reached an intersection that I recognized. Two blocks southward lay the inn, the car, commencement of the next chapter. But my time was dwindling and I did not want to run anymore.

  “Kate, I need to tell you something.”

  “Actually you don’t,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

  “I do, though. It’s about my shaking—”

  “There they are.” A young man with a notebook straightened from peering in the windows of Kate’s car. “Wait. Stop.”

  We were running without a word exchanged. Kate ducked up a side street and I followed close behind. My boots skidded on the cobbles, but we dodged through the lanes and the reporter’s calls diminished in the distance.

  Kate pulled me into a dress shop and we waited at the front window as a television van sped past, the station letters written large on its side. Two more cars followed close behind; I presumed them to be the protesters’. A motorcycle buzzed after them, the red-helmeted rider leaning as he hugged the corner. Then we turned, and saw the shop clerk with a hand raised to her mouth. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Please,” Kate said. “We’ll be on our way in one minute.”

  “Hey, Courtney,” the girl called over her shoulder toward the back room. “Guess who just came in?” She raised a cell phone. “I’ve got to text this to Ethan. Can I take your picture?”

  Again we ran. Streets that had confused me suddenly became allies. All the odd angles and switchbacks gave us a maze of paths to follow. We tended downward, away from the inn and the main area of commerce, until a road spilled us out onto a long pier. We sprinted down it till we reached a padlocked gate with a weathered sign: PRIVATE.

  The place seemed oddly quiet after our panic, rows of sailboats floating in silence.

  “They’ll never look for us here,” Kate panted.

  “It says ‘Private.’ ”

  “I can read.” She pulled my arm. “Come on.”

  Trespassing, I was trespassing for the first time in my life. Kate handed me her shoulder bag, then clambered over the stile. Her summery yellow shirt came untucked, I saw a pink flash of skin. “Hand me the bag, would you, Jeremiah? And hurry.”

  I followed her, though ceasing the running had commenced my trembles anew. It took hard concentration to close my hand around the bar at the top of the gate and hold it firmly for the time it took to vault over.

  Already Kate had dashed on, and I hobbled after with my stomach clenching like a boxer’s fist. A wave of hunger swept over me, as intensely as if my lungs felt a lack of air. Could that short race have exhausted all the food I’d devoured that day?

  “Over here,” Kate called from ahead. “Hurry.”

  Yet I paused. What had become of me, that I had allowed circumstances to decay this far? Where was my judicial prudence, my disciplined mind? I bent at the waist, gulping great breaths, and willed myself to think clearly.

  There had been no demonstrations when the Lazarus Project was reawakening little sea creatures. The protests began with me. Although most people had been kind and generous, I had to give weight to the other side’s arguments. I was the one they cursed in the cathedral. I was the one the woman had insulted at the baseball game.

  Carolyn was mistaken. They knew exactly who they wanted, these jackals. I was the one they hunted, I was their prey. Therefore, to take responsibility for my existence, and to protect Kate, it was my duty to act.

  I straightened, my body no less gripped by spasms, but my mind clarified and purposeful. I noticed my surroundings then, the air motionless, the water still, the sailboats all nosed into their slips. Excellent. The world sometimes made such orderly sense. And it was still morning, a whole day of possibility ahead.

  Kate ran back to me. “What’s the matter? We have to hide.”

  “I apologize. Lead on.”

  As she went before, I could hear from behind the thud of a car door slamming. It came from well up the hill, but I knew: soon they would find us. Kate hid behind a sailboat made of some sleek white material, neither wood nor metal, looking as if it could glide through the roughest waters. I ran a finger along the hull and it felt like fine china.

  “What were you doing back there?” she said, staring over my shoulder. “You have no idea what these people will do if they catch you. They have no restraint.”

  “Kate.” I took one of her hands. “I need your attention now.”

  She came back to me then, serene, her powerful calm returning. “I’m listening.”

  Here was my moment, my opportunity to avoid hurting someone by leaving, to prevent another Joan from happening. “Kate, I have tried countless times to recall what I experienced in the time I was gone. Heaven? Hell? Some place of completion or rest? There was nothing, nothing I could . . . return. No, reverse. What is the word?”

  “Remember?”

  “Remember, yes, thank you. Wherever I was, it is totally forgotten.”

  She stood there, holding my hand, waiting for what I would say next. In her patience I felt a surpassing tenderness.

  “That, my dearest friend in the here and now, is what I ask you to do for me.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Forget me, Kate. As though I were a century during which you were . . . you were frozen, yes, and you awakened with a clear heart.”

  She chuckled, and gave my hand a squeeze. “For such a smart guy, you can be quite a dummy.”

  I drew back. “Whatever do you mean? I am trying merely to—”

  “You are trying to be some kind of noble something or other, and you should just stop it. I am a big girl, I do not need rescuing by anyone. If anything—”

  “But if these people are as cruel as you say—”

  “Jeremiah, hear me out a second, would you? My turn?”

  My body wanted to run in a hundred directions. But I concentrated, I willed it to remain still. “Please.”

  “In grad school I spent a summer on a research vessel in the North Atlantic. One morning a whale approached our ship, swam right alongside, black as coal. He floated there, looking at me just like a person would, only the whale’s eye was larger than a dinner plate. After a minute he gave a sour exhale, plunged off into the rest of his day. Then I noticed the captain, standing down the rail. A tough old Scotsman. He leaned my way and said, ‘Fix it fast.’ I said, ‘Excuse me, sir?’ He poked his thumb against his forehead. ‘Fix it fast in your mind, because you may not see the likes of that again.’ ”

  “I am sorry, Kate. I can’t . . . I don’t understand—”

  “You are my whale, beautiful man.” She thumbed her forehead. “You are fixed in me.”

  Ah, her parable. I closed my eyes, trying to collect thoughts that scattered like panicked mice. Was there any way to spare her? I could think of only one possibility. I opened my eyes and let all the world’s colors rush in, beginning and ending with her face. “I believe Carolyn was correct. We should split up. We’ll be harder to chase.”

  She gave me a look, then, an expression I could not interpret. Was it joy or anguish? “Jeremiah.”

  “Yes?”

  “I just wanted to say your name again.” She pressed her forehead against my chest, then straightened, pointing to where the pier forked. “You take the dock over there, hide yourself in the boats till dark. I’ll go the other direction. We’ll meet at the inn, the back door, after the church bell rings nine.”

  “Perfect,” I said, though I had no intention of obeying. I was their quarry, I would lure them away from her. “Excellent.”

  Then she drew near, as if she knew my mind, and curled into my embrace. Kate seemed so small then, warm an
d close. Yet I could feel my heart pounding against her, exhaustingly fast. Her ear was right there on my chest . . . she had to know.

  “Kate, I hope I have not been a . . . some kind of a . . . what is the word?” Language flailed in my mind like fish netted and dropped on a ship’s deck. “A bad thing, then. I hope I am not a bad thing that happened to you.” I pressed her hand, as if the force of my squeeze would express what words could not. “I did not ask for this. I meant no one any trouble. You, Kate, of all people. I meant you no harm.”

  She leaned back to look at me. Her eyes were glistening. “Be assured, Jeremiah.” She reached up to caress my face. “You have caused me no harm.”

  What a moment we shared then, holding one another, silent and still. A few seconds only, yet they were as rich as the entire time since my awakening. But there was a twitch in my face, under her hand. Then a huge tremor climbed my frame, from my toes to the sky, like the deepest shudder.

  I stepped away. She stood straight, regarding me with calm. What more could I say? How might I express everything I felt? My hands leaped and jerked like injured birds, and I slapped them against my chest to keep them still. But they continued, wandering over my person, trembling, until my fingers fastened on just the thing. Yes. Yes. They wrapped around it on my jacket like an organ grinder’s monkey grasps a coin.

  At that moment I heard more doors slamming. A child’s voice cried out, “Over there, I saw them go down there.”

  Kate looked away, then back. “You need to hide.”

  “You mean we need to hide.”

  “Yes, of course.” She took my face in both her hands, and she kissed me. It was her breath I experienced more than her lips, somehow, the awareness of her living self against me. Incomparable, and then it was over. “Now go.”

  It took only an instant. I yanked hard on my coat, I tore the object free, I pressed it into her palm. Peering over the hull, I saw a reporter hastening down the pier.