The Immortalist

by Scott Britz

  No one spoke to her. As long as she didn’t look lost, she knew no one would notice her.

  She knew where to go. With her usual quick strides, she advanced to the door of the cold-storage room. She took a deep breath before tapping her badge against the scanner and was astonished to see the light turn green. Good thing it can’t read my mind.

  Inside, it was cold as February. She felt her hand shiver as she opened the glass door of the upright freezer. Gifford had told her the Methuselah Vector stocks were stored here. Where? She saw a solid metal box welded to the bottom of the freezer. That had to be it. Instinctively, she reached for the keypad of the lid lock, then stopped herself. Who set the combination? If it was Niedermann, she was out of luck. But it couldn’t have been Niedermann. Charles would never have entrusted the Methuselah Vector to anyone else in the world.

  She punched six digits—Doreen’s birth date. The lid popped open.

  Inside the box, marvelous in its simplicity, was a small styrofoam tray filled with ten rows of ten plastic tubes—a hundred in all. On its front, someone had neatly written with a Sharpie pen:

  VECTOR aet791homosapiens/“METHUSELAH”

  Batches 23–27, 32, 39–45, 48

  STERILE

  CERTIFIED PURITY

  Aliquoted by human clinical dose: 0.8–1.2 nanograms in 1 cc saline

  Here was the hope of millions, death’s scourge, the fulfillment of thousand-year-old dreams.

  Here were the seeds of a hundred plagues, the suicide of an entire species.

  Either way, it was immense power. Cricket was awestruck as she lifted the almost weightless tray from the shelf. It seemed a sacrilege to touch it.

  But she had worse than sacrilege on her mind. Grabbing the tray, she rushed outside to the nearest bench, to a black microwave oven. She opened it. The tray and its hundred plastic tubes fit easily inside. She shut the door. Her fingers turned the timer dial all the way up and set the power on HIGH.

  “What are you doing there?” called a shrill woman’s voice behind her.

  “I won’t be but a minute,” said Cricket without turning around. A quick jab of the START button, and the oven began to hum.

  “What is that? Who are you?” As the small, gray-haired woman pushed forward to peer through the oven window, a look of horror came over her. “No-o-o! Stop that!” she cried, reaching for the shut-off switch.

  Cricket pushed her away from the bench.

  “Help!” shouted the woman. “Call Security! Call Dr. Gifford!”

  They began to wrestle. Cricket sensed a crowd gathering. The woman’s horn-rimmed glasses knocked against Cricket’s face and fell to the floor. Cricket fought to keep the woman at arm’s length, away from the microwave. The woman grunted and huffed, but was too enraged to speak. She dug her fingernails into Cricket’s arms, tearing little holes in her paper gown. Minutes went by. Confused by the struggle, no one dared to intervene. No one took note of the fateful droning of the microwave.

  Then the oven timer dinged. Cricket let go. A ring of hostile eyes surrounded her. She heard murmurs as the techs jostled to get a look at what was in the microwave.

  Then everyone froze. The air-lock door slid open and a man in a dark gray suit strode forward. Gifford had come in with such haste that he hadn’t donned a jumpsuit. “What’s going on?” His eyes opened wide as he pushed through the crowd and saw who stood at its center. “Cricket!” he gasped.

  “She put something in the microwave,” said the gray-haired woman.

  Gifford opened the oven door. The hundred vials had turned into a steaming pile of plastic goo. “What was this?”

  Then he read what was left of the neat black label:

  CTOR aet7 osapie METH

  He took a wobbly step back from the bench. “Oh, my God! Oh, God, no! No, Cricket! What have you done?”

  “I’ve canceled the Lottery, Charles.”

  “No! This is madness. No!” In a rage he seized the microwave and lifted it above his head, ripping its power cord out of the socket. With a grunt he slammed it against the laboratory bench, triggering an explosion of bottle glass and wood splinters that sent the crowd ducking for cover.

  “Who let her in here?” he screamed.

  Cricket faced him without flinching. Gifford’s bloodshot eyes flared as he spotted her ID badge.

  “You idiots! You goddamned, good-for-nothing idiots! Did no one think to cancel this badge? Oh, fuck! Oh, damn!” He took hold of the badge by its lanyard and tore it away. He threw it down in disgust and swept his arm across the countertop, hurling precision chromatographs and a vertical gel electrophoresis apparatus to the floor with a crash. He kicked at the broken glass plates until they were little more than dust.

  “Call the police!” he shouted.

  “Hancock County sheriff’s on his way up,” said someone.

  With fury in his eyes, Gifford glared at Cricket. “You . . . you know damned well what you’ve done here,” he hissed. “It takes weeks to make one batch of Vector. Two hundred thousand dollars in production costs for every dose. A hundred doses. Twenty million dollars. Twenty million fucking dollars.” He put his powerful hands around Cricket’s neck. “Your career is finished. By the time I’m through with you, it’ll be as though you never existed.”

  Cricket could see a fine web of dark red capillaries running through the white, parchmentlike skin of his face. Small, purplish scalp blotches showed through his thinning gray hair—once so immaculate, now disheveled. “It’s over, Charles. Give up and let me help you. You might still have a fighting chance against the virus. Certainly a better chance than Yolanda or Mr. Thieu. But only if you start treatment now. Come with me, Charles. Come to the BSL-4 lab.”

  His eyes seemed to quiver in their sockets. She knew he could have crushed her larynx if he had wanted to. But just then came the squawk of a police radio. Gifford released his grip. Two tan-uniformed sheriff’s deputies came through the air lock. In the lead was a slender thirty-year-old with a pointed chin and a knobby Adam’s apple.

  “I’m Deputy Sheriff Parkman,” he announced as he scanned the debris on the floor. “We got a call about an altercation.”

  “Arrest this woman!” shouted Gifford. “I want her charged with malicious destruction of property. Twenty million dollars’ worth. Put her in the deepest fucking hole you have and throw away the key. She’s dangerous. No bail for her! Do you hear me? Tell Sheriff Samuels he can expect a phone call from Governor Starkie within the hour. No bail! No contact of any kind with the press! She’s insane.”

  Skeptically, Parkman eyed Cricket’s diminutive frame and compared it to the wreckage on the bench and on the floor. “Ma’am, are you responsible for what happened here?”

  “I am.”

  “Then I am going to have to take you into custody.”

  “No, you’re going to take Dr. Gifford into custody.”

  “Dr. Gifford? This gentleman here?”

  Cricket reached under her yellow gown and extracted her CDC identification card. “My name is Sandra Rensselaer-Wright. I’m a medical officer with the Centers for Disease Control. Under Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act, 42 USC 264, I am ordering that Dr. Gifford be placed under mandatory quarantine. He’s carrying a deadly and extremely contagious disease.”

  Parkman turned to Gifford. “Is this true?”

  “No. She’s a mental case. She has no authority at all.”

  “Look at him,” said Cricket. “Does he look well to you?”

  Parkman took the ID and fanned it with his thumb.

  “Call that number there,” said Cricket. “CDC headquarters. We’ll straighten this out in five minutes.”

  Gifford lurched forward. “Don’t listen to her. She’s admitted she’s responsible for . . . for . . . this,” he shouted, waving his arm over the debris-strewn bench.

 
; Parkman’s hand edged toward his service pistol. “I need you to stand back, Doctor. Please, sir, move back while I make this call.”

  “You can’t be serious. Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes, you’re Charles Gifford, the Methuselah Vector doc. My partner Lasch and I have been detailed to security here all week.”

  Parkman nodded to the other deputy, who began sidling toward Gifford.

  Gifford stepped back.

  Keeping Gifford in the corner of his eye, Parkman placed Cricket’s card on the benchtop and began to key the number into his cell phone. “You do understand, Dr. Wright, that I still have to take you in?”

  “No! Please, you can’t do that! My daughter’s here, and I need to look after her. She’s very sick.”

  “I’m sorry. There’s a charge of vandalism. Hell, more than a charge. There’s pretty obvious evidence.”

  As a voice responded on the other end of the call, Parkman put the phone to his ear. Before he could get a word out, he was interrupted by a thud and a shout.

  “Get him! The doc!” shouted Deputy Sheriff Lasch. He lay on the floor where Gifford had just thrown him. Broken glass crunched as he tried to roll onto his hands and knees.

  Parkman dashed through the crowd. He was too late. For an instant, the back of Gifford’s suit showed as a blur of gray in the air lock. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

  Cricket helped Lasch to his feet, lifting him by his wrist to avoid a sliver of glass sticking out of his hand.

  “Jeez!” said Lasch, gawking at the air lock. “Who the hell moves like that? He’s faster than a goddamn greyhound.”

  Eight

  DETAINEE RENSSELAER-WRIGHT, SANDRA LOUISE, WAS PACING the length of her six-by-eight-foot cell when Patrolman E. O. Gissell, duty officer for the lockup wing of the Bar Harbor Police Station, wheeled up a cart bearing a telephone connected to a long white cord.

  “That call you asked for’s come through.” Gissell’s graying black hair and casual demeanor marked him as a veteran on the force.

  Cricket took the phone through the food slot between the bars and picked up the receiver. “Bob, I need your help. We have an urgent situation at Acadia Springs.”

  On the other end was Bob Keyhoe, back at the CDC. “Where the hell are you, Cricket?”

  “In jail.”

  “So it’s true.” Keyhoe had a reputation for being unflappable, but his tone tonight was pretty near the red zone. “Director Riccardi’s calling a meeting about you. Eden Pharmaceuticals is threatening to file a lawsuit against CDC for willful destruction of property. Twenty million dollars, Cricket. Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?”

  “Forget the lawsuit, Bob. In a day or two Eden will be thanking us for saving their butt. The Methuselah Vector is a public danger. I’ve pulled the plug on tomorrow’s Lottery, but we need to make sure that any further human testing stops immediately. And we need to have Acadia Springs quarantined. There’s a new virus out here we’re calling Nemesis. It’s a hybrid between the Methuselah Vector and human herpesvirus, type 1. It’s highly lethal, Bob.”

  “Charles Gifford says you’re nuts.”

  “Gifford himself is the source of Nemesis. He secretly injected himself with the Methuselah Vector. He needs to be put in isolation and treated—by force, if necessary.”

  “You can’t do that to someone like him. He’s got Washington, DC, buzzing like a hornet’s nest. Half a dozen different agencies are ready to file charges against you.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Bob. He’s destroyed data and tissue samples that could prove everything I’m saying. But it won’t help him. It’s just buying him time. Without treatment, Gifford himself will be dead in a few days.”

  “Do you have any idea how crazy you sound?”

  “You don’t have to believe me. Send someone else out here to investigate. Come yourself, Bob. Check it out.”

  “No thanks. There will be an investigation, Cricket—into your actions. This is what you get for disobeying my direct orders. My advice to you now would be to get yourself a good lawyer—and a psychiatrist.”

  “It that all you have to say?”

  “My hands are tied. I’m sorry.”

  Cricket slammed down the phone. Hearing the sound, Officer Gissell nonchalantly walked over from his desk and motioned for her to pass the phone back.

  “Was that your lawyer?”

  “No. It was someone who should have known better.”

  “You should have called a lawyer.”

  “No lawyer ever did me any fucking good.”

  She plopped down on the thin mattress of the steel bed, curled up her legs, and turned to the wall. She felt beaten. She hadn’t done a thing to help Emmy—only prolonged her misery. She’d been a failure as a mother, and now she was a failure as a doctor, too. She was useless, useless. If only she could have traded her life for Emmy’s. Come on, Death, she felt like shouting. Come here! I’ve got a deal for you.

  And then it seemed as though Death had heard her. She felt his cold hand upon her neck, brushing her gently, playing with her. Her face felt flushed. She got up, startled, and started pacing, as if to get away from some invisible pursuer. Her pulse was like a hammer stroke, pounding all the way down to her fingers.

  Please, God, not now.

  She thrust her face against the bars. “Guard! Guard!” she shouted. “I’m not feeling well. I need my pills.”

  Gissell sighed and came back down the hall with his waddling, John Wayne walk. “What’s this?” He eyed her suspiciously.

  “They’re in a white pillbox you took from me.”

  “I can’t give that to you. They’re not in a prescription bottle.”

  “But I need them.”

  “Sorry, they could be anything. I can’t let you have them without a doctor’s prescription or a prescription bottle.”

  “But I am a doctor.”

  “Sorry, it’s the rule.”

  “What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

  “You want a doctor?”

  “No. Just let me fucking die.”

  Gissell shrugged, and she waved him away impatiently. Faster and faster she paced the cell—two strides per turn, pivoting, pivoting, pivoting. A feeling of dread took hold of her. Dark thoughts: The smell of burning huts. The screams of a dying mother. Étienne crying tears of blood.

  Her ribs felt as if they were caving in, tearing her breastbone in two. Her legs shook so badly she had to sit down. Get hold of yourself. You know what this is. You know. You know. And yet, she was powerless. Worse than powerless. She felt doomed. The walls of her tiny cell seemed to close in on her. Panting turned into gasping, gasping into choking. She tried to call for help, but couldn’t get out a sound.

  Her heart beat frantically—so hard and so fast that she knew it couldn’t possibly go on like that without killing her.

  Weak as a rag, she slid onto the floor. As she lay quivering, it seemed that a robe of ice enveloped her body, paralyzing her.

  No, you can’t give into it. If you give up now, Emmy is as good as dead. You’ve got to keep your mind clear.

  She commanded herself to breathe. She forced herself to sit up and arch her back against the cold steel of the bed frame, spreading her chest wide. In. Out. Hold. . . . In. Out. Hold. The suffocating pause between each breath was agony, but she held out as long as she could stand it. She had to win back control.

  Don’t grovel! Stand up! She climbed shakily to her feet. The room spun around her. She tried to stop the spinning by the sheer force of her eyes.

  Look around you, she urged herself. This is not the Congo. She tried to name everything she could see. Sink. Soap dish. Green wall. Crack in the wall. Bars. Pillow. Blanket. Metal toilet. Sink again. Stopper. Soap dish. Shelf. Dead spider. She counted the bars of her cell door, in groups of three with each t
urn of her pacing. One, two, three . . . four, five, six . . . seven, eight, nine . . . ten, eleven, twelve . . .

  Slowly, the cold mantle of Death pulled away. She stopped in the middle of the cell, closed her eyes, and lightly touched her fingertips to her body. This is me. This is me, she repeated, as she touched her hair, ears, eyelids, lips, chest, elbows . . .

  And then she was alone. The worst was over. She could breathe—slowly. Her heart calmed.

  For a while she went on standing, eyes still closed, listening to her own breathing. She had no idea how long she stood. She had lost all awareness of time. But she was brought to her senses by a rattling of her cell door.

  She opened her eyes and saw Gissell in front of her, holding a ring of keys. The door was wide open.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m taking you to the interrogation room, ma’am. Special request.”

  “I’m to be interrogated?”

  “No. A visitor.”

  “Who?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea, ma’am. Let’s go on up and see.”

  Nine

  HANK HURRIED THROUGH DECONTAMINATION, HAIR WET, shirt untucked. Erich Freiberg had sounded upset. He had signaled through the lab bay window that he didn’t want Jean to overhear what he had to say. So Hank left Emmy’s bedside and rushed out to meet him.

  “How is she?” said Freiberg, as Hank came through the air lock.

  The question cut like a knife to the gut. “Her blood oxygen level has dropped to seventy-two percent,” Hank said morosely. “Jean says when it reaches seventy percent, that’s the end. Maybe an hour from now.”

  “I wish I had something to suggest.”

  “We need Cricket.”

  “We’re working on it. That’s why I came. The district court judge in Ellsworth denied her bail. I’ve got a lawyer down in Portland who’s going up before Justice Grimes to seek an emergency order for release—but that won’t be before nine a.m.”

  “Too late!” Hank shouted. “By then, Emmy’ll be—”

  “I know, I know, Hank. We’re trying. But the governor is coming down hard on Charles’s side.”