by Ann Benson
As they crossed the meadow, Alejandro could see the dark brown surface of many freshly dug graves; he wondered how many hundreds of bodies lay beneath the surface. Nearing the oaks, he felt the wind rise up against their progress, and once again he had to whip the exhausted, unwilling horse to make him continue. As they flew through the twisted gate to Mother Sarah’s glen, the horse neighed and whinnied in protest, but once they were safely on the other side, the frightened animal quieted, and they finished the journey to the cottage quickly.
He had never been inside the small abode before; he found it neat and clean, and spare in its furnishings. He thought momentarily, This will be a pleasant place to die, then banished the uninvited thought as quickly as it had appeared. He called out to Mother Sarah, but got no response, so he continued his exploration. In a small room off to the side there was a bed of fresh straw, and a blanket folded at one end of it.
In the very center of the small house there stood a heavy oak table made of rough boards. Two benches flanked it on either side. In the center of the table Alejandro found a vial of the familiar yellowish liquid and a bowl of the precious gray powder. Beside them was his journal. It was as if Mother Sarah had anticipated his need, and gifted him again.
He told Kate to sit down on one bench and he seated himself on the other. “Pay close attention, now,” he said, “for I will instruct you in the very cure I used to keep you in this world.”
Kate nodded gravely and followed his movements and words carefully. As she repeated his actions, Alejandro saw how tiny her hands were and wondered if she would have the strength to do what needed to be done. He whispered a silent prayer that God would guide her small hands with His strong ones, then praised the little girl for her quick learning. She was his only hope of survival.
By nightfall he began to ache. His joints grew stiff and his limbs heavy as stone. He lay down on the straw and covered himself with the blanket, wondering if he would ever rise again, and tried to prepare himself for the swift decline he knew would soon follow. His fingers and toes grew numb, and soon the plague took even the simple comfort of vision from him, for as the night deepened, he faded in and out of consciousness, and by morning, he no longer responded to Kate when she called his name.
Thirty-Two
Rosow had still not found any new tracks, and there was no visible evidence that anyone had been in the wooded outskirts of the field. The other teams had all gone off in other directions, and he was beginning to think that perhaps he should take his group out of the area completely and send out a new search bulletin. He was about to order his team to return to the van when one of them pointed to an isolated stone cottage in the distance, barely visible through the surrounding trees. Why would they be welcomed there, if nowhere else? he wondered. But they were already near it, and he decided it was worth a shot. It would be the last place they looked in this particular location if it didn’t pan out. He led his green team away from the perimeter and back onto the field in the direction of the cottage.
Ted’s body was a heavy burden after their exhausting night, which was still in progress. Janie and Bruce half dragged, half scraped it over the dirt and twigs and acorns, straining to make haste, and struggled against the now vicious wind to bring it through the oaks. The gale blew with nearly unimaginable force, shrieking and howling as if to wake the thousands of dead buried beneath the soil of Sarin’s field. By the time they had managed to drag it into the cottage, the garment bag in which it was enshrouded was nearly in shreds. They dropped it with a thud in the center of the cottage’s main room, and ran to the small bedroom.
They sat Sarin in his comfortable chair and placed the body of the dog at his feet. Bruce wrapped Caroline in a blanket and carried her out the door with Janie close behind.
“Make sure we don’t forget anything!” Bruce shouted back to Janie as he ducked through the door with Caroline over his shoulder. She had already gathered up everything she thought they might need, the medicines and utensils, the small flask of yellow water, the pouch of gray dust. She caught up with Bruce, who was struggling against the wind with Caroline in his arms. Not satisfied with trying to keep them out of Sarin’s cottage, it had changed directions, and now tried to keep them from getting away. Clutching each other and their burdens, they broke through as a single unit, a unified force of will, and made it to the other side. When they finally reached the car, Bruce laid Caroline carefully in the backseat and arranged the blanket so it covered her fully.
“I’ll stay here with her,” he said, his breath raspy.
Janie nodded and handed him the things she had carried out with her. She turned and ran back as fast as she could, as she had run to reclaim her briefcase in the alley, but now her feet were powered not by fear, but by exhilaration, for she could feel that they might triumph and she was ready to do whatever she needed to do to make that happen. Anticipating the force of the wind, she threw herself between the oaks, but this time there was no resistance and she tumbled to the ground, rolling in a wild path toward the cottage. The wind had been stilled, and it seemed it would never blow again.
She almost hit her head on the low door as she reentered the cottage. She passed by Ted’s body, lying there like a pathetic sack of stones, and went straight to the room where Sarin and the dog remained. Before Janie lit the match, she whispered to the remains of the old man. “Thank you” she said. “I owe you so much.” Then she struck the match’s dark tip against a mantel stone and reached up to touch it against one of the bunches of herbs hanging from the dry wood of a beam.
She waited just long enough to see that the flame had caught. As she turned to leave, she saw Sarin’s book resting on the bedside table. She picked it up and ran out the door. When she reached the car, Bruce had it running and ready, and as soon as she was in the front seat, they sped off in a wild flurry of acorns.
Rosow watched in bewilderment as the flames leapt up through the thatched roof of the small house, fanned by a furious wind that seemed to rise up out of nowhere. The air around them was still, and he could not understand how a wind could be so isolated, so directed; it sent a long, cold shiver down his spine.
His team was still a hundred meters short of the burning cottage, so he yelled, “Come on!” and waved them into a run. By the time they got there, it was fully engulfed, and throwing off a good deal of heat. The team stood outside the cottage, far enough away so their plastic suits wouldn’t melt, and watched as the roof finally collapsed inward.
Bruce carried Caroline’s wrapped form up the narrow stairs in the restored Victorian building where he made his home. “Let’s get her into the bed,” he said to Janie. “Then we can get a tube going.”
Janie had carried the medicine and the plastic tubing into the apartment, and after Caroline was properly arranged, she went to the kitchen and washed out the inside of the tube. “We could still use a funnel if you have one,” she said. “One with a small end to fit in the tube.”
He opened a small drawer and brought out a small white plastic funnel. Janie tried to shove it into the end of the tube, but it was just slightly too big. “Damn. We’ll need to spread the end of the tube so the funnel will fit,” she said.
Using scissors, she clipped notches in the end of the tube. The funnel slid in neatly. Bruce found some white adhesive tape and wrapped it around the joint.
“All right,” Janie said determinedly. “Let’s get this thing inside her.”
Bruce held Caroline steady as Janie slowly threaded the tube down her esophagus and into her stomach. As soon as it was in place, Bruce taped the funnel to a nearby wall, high enough to promote a gravity drip, and poured the contents of the bowl into the funnel.
They stood next to Caroline and watched as the gray liquid slid quickly down the tube and into Caroline’s body. As the level in the funnel dropped, Janie mixed another “four knuckles” of powder and a “cupped hand” of yellow liquid and added it to the funnel. They took turns mixing and filling until most of the gray powder was gone. Afte
r the medicinal drip was finished, Janie filled the funnel with water several times and let the life-giving liquid replenish what Caroline had lost.
Janie sat down on the edge of the bed. “So now we wait,” she said weakly. She slumped over and held her head with her hands. “I’m so exhausted. All I want to do is sleep.”
“Then lie down,” Bruce said. “Caroline won’t mind. She won’t know.”
So Janie lay down on one side of Caroline, and Bruce on the other. They lent their warmth to the ailing woman, who was by now a mere shade of her former glowing self. As they drifted into healing sleep, they joined hands across Caroline’s body and felt her chest rise weakly as she struggled for each breath. And when they awoke, they would know if “four knuckles and a cupped hand” was as good as the hair of the dog.
Janie thought she was dreaming when she heard the thin voice calling her name.
She lifted her head from the pillow and then rose up on her elbow. Between her and Bruce, Caroline lay quite still, but her eyes were open and she was trying to speak.
Janie quickly got up and shook Bruce’s shoulder. “Bruce!” she said. “Wake up! She’s trying to speak! Oh, my God, I think it worked!”
Caroline’s voice was hardly more than a squeak. “Where are we?” she said.
Janie took hold of her hand. “Shh,” she said. “Don’t try to talk if it hurts.”
But Caroline would not be silenced. “I think I’ve been really sick. I had the most unbelievable dreams.…”
And when they started talking about it, a full hour passed before the entire tale had been pieced together. There was weeping and relief and hysteria and incredible joy that they’d come through it alive and relatively intact. They moved through the details, examining each twist of fortune and turn of fate.
“I’m exhausted,” Janie said when they were finally finished.
“I’m hungry,” Caroline said, delighting her caretakers.
As she and Bruce moved around the kitchen preparing a simple meal for their patient, Janie saw Bruce’s digital calendar on the wall. Something on its numerical display struck a familiar chord, but she was far too preoccupied to pay it the necessary mental attention. As she tended to the joyful task of caring for Caroline, the blip of discord planted there by the date and time kept chipping away at her peace of mind. Finally, the source of her anxiety burst into her consciousness.
She put her hand on the counter to steady herself. “Dear God, it’s four weeks today since Caroline arrived here! She’s not printed!”
Janie was ready to start packing their things. “We’ve got to get on a flight today!”
“Janie, that’s ludicrous. She’s still sick. She’ll never get through the gate onto the plane. And once they figure out what happened, they’ll keep her in isolation forever!”
Janie was frantic. “As far as they know, I’m not printed.”
He put the tray down and stared at her. “You were printed in Leeds.”
“Ethel Merman was printed in Leeds, but Jane Elizabeth Gallagher Crowe was not! What are we going to do? We’ll be arrested if we don’t figure something out.”
“Damn!” Bruce said. “I don’t know if this will work, but there’s something I can try.” He left the kitchen and went to his study, where he immediately powered up his computer. He entered his security code and logged on to the Institute system, something he did nearly every day to check his schedule before going to work. It would arouse no suspicion for him to do so, but he usually limited himself to brief harmless inquiries. What he needed to do now would actually be a crime, another in the long list he’d recently committed.
“I’m going to try to reassign someone else’s body print to Caroline. Then I’ll try to change the name on yours so you can actually use it to get out of England. At least that will buy you some time.”
“Can you actually do that?”
“I’m just about the only person still alive who can.” He tapped some keys on the keyboard and began his search for a print for Caroline. “What time of day did you finally clear the Compudoc?”
“About noon,” she told him.
“Then at noon today, if you haven’t left the country, an order for your detention and printing will be issued and delivered to Biopol. We’ll have to complete this switch before then.”
“If you switch identities, how can you be sure that person won’t be traveling somewhere today? Or doing something else that requires evidence of a print?”
“I’m going borrow a file for someone who’s already dead. I’ve got access to millions of prints through the project I’m working on now. Some of them are not British citizens; we acquired print files from all over the world so we could have a truly random selection.”
Janie thought of her daughter. Betsy … your print out there on the Worldnet.… She grew strangely quiet, and said softly, “I didn’t know prints could be ‘acquired.’ ”
Bruce was distracted by his efforts, and excited by what he was doing, so he made only a cursory comment. “The Institute bought access rights to several million prints in the last few years for research purposes. Even U.S. prints. So much for privacy.…”
Betsy … her mind screamed.
“Bruce, what you told me about in Leeds, the way you can make prints move—can you show me?”
It struck him as odd that she would want to see a demonstration of the technique he was working on, especially now when time was so critical. Something in her voice made him hesitate to proceed.
“Can you find a specific print?” she asked, her tone insistent.
Then he knew; he knew what she wanted. “Janie,” he said, his voice gentle and sympathetic, “I don’t know about this—it might be very traumatic for you … you’ve got a lot facing you already.…”
“Please, Bruce, I just want to see my daughter. She was so young, and I never got to say good-bye to her.”
“Janie. Please think about this. She’s dead. Even if you can see her and say good-bye, she won’t hear it. And we didn’t buy the names, just the prints. I might not even be able to locate her.”
She pleaded with him. “Can you please just try?”
He sighed deeply, knowing he might regret what he was about to do. But he didn’t have the heart to refuse her. “All right. Give me the date, location, and time of her death. Then I’ll need a physical description.”
She forced herself, through aching pain, to visualize her dead child. “Brown hair, blue eyes …” she said wistfully. “She had the most beautiful eyes, with long dark lashes. I was so jealous of those lashes.…”
She paused, her eyes closed, and dwelled on the face of her child.
“Go on …” Bruce said softly.
“She was about five six or seven, maybe even five eight, she grew so fast that last year. She was like a colt, you know, all legs and clumsy energy, but she was just starting to take on the shape of a woman. Her waist had just begun to come in a bit, she had the beginnings of a chest.… I remember how self-conscious she was to put on a bathing suit; I think her body felt very foreign to her. To me she was still my gorgeous daughter.…”
Bruce looked at the clock. “What did she weigh, if you know?” he asked.
“She was average weight, maybe one twenty-five. Not thin, not fat. Just right.”
“I need the date and time and place of her death, and then I can set up the search,” he said. “If you remember.”
“If I remember,” Janie said softly. “I will never forget.” She gave him the information.
He entered everything and instructed the program to search. As they waited for the results, Bruce said, “Are you sure you want to proceed?”
“Absolutely,” she said without hesitation.
The computer announced one match.
As he typed in a few commands, Bruce said, “I can’t be sure this is actually her.”
She smiled and said quietly, “I think I’ll know if it is.”
As the image of a young woman assembled itself
on the screen, Bruce thought she looked as if she were just sleeping. He was astonished by her resemblance to her mother.
Janie was riveted to the image. “That’s my Betsy …” she said quietly. “She was so young!” She reached out her hand and tentatively touched the screen, “Oh, Betsy!” she whispered. “My sweet baby!” She turned her gaze to Bruce. “Can you make her open her eyes and smile?”
He looked at the clock on the wall. “I can try. But this is still so new. I can’t say it’s going to be what you want to see.…” He typed in a long series of commands. “Please don’t be disappointed if it’s not what you’d hoped for.…”
And as if by magic the entire image seemed to soften, when in truth only the eyes and mouth had changed. Janie laughed joyfully through her tears and said, “Oh, Bruce! It’s almost like she’s alive!”
He said gently, “You should say good-bye, if that’s what you want to do.”
Her expression turned sober, and she touched the screen again. “Bye, honey …” and Bruce shut down the image. He put his arm around her and said, “We’ve got to get some prints into the system for you and Caroline.”
She wiped a tear away from the tip of her nose and said to him, “Use Betsy for Caroline.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure. That way her death will serve some useful purpose.”
And it will keep her alive in my heart, she thought to herself.
At eleven forty-five Bruce completed the reassignments and shut down the system.
Thirty-Three
The physician lay on the straw bed in Mother Sarah’s cottage, and beside him the child Kate kept a silent and tearful vigil as the plague filled his body with insidious poisons and his head with terrifying delusions. He thrashed in his sleep, throwing his arms about wildly, as if by doing so he might cast off the burden of his affliction and send it tumbling far into the night, never to torment him again.
He dreamed; he ran like a wounded animal over the wooded path from the clearing outside the cottage, his feet flying as he leapt over the rocks and roots on the forest floor. He dared not look back, lest he slow himself and fall into the grasping clutches of his pursuers. Yet he feared not knowing the progress of the chase, so he turned his head far enough to catch a glimpse of the two figures in urgent pursuit. Each time he looked, the distance between them seemed to have closed, and he tried desperately to quicken his pace in response. He lengthened his stride and pumped his arms, gulping in deep desperate breaths that seared his lungs. He careened and wove and spun his way through the forest with Matthews and Alderón in primal pursuit, darting between the bushes of the ever-thickening underbrush, which closed more tightly around him with every step.
