by Jeff Rovin
Of course, that was before West had joined the project.
Things had moved along faster since Gruber had rescued West from the Neanderthal minds and Hunnish souls at NYU. Using Gruber’s research, West had made that all-important breakthrough of stimulating the chromatin in the dead rat and reactivating mitosis. Since then, he’d managed to bring entire animals back for limited stays, though each of them died soon thereafter because West was unable to pinpoint quickly enough what was failing and why.
Willett shut his eyes and exhaled weakly; he could taste his lobster dinner in his throat. He’d been the youngest man ever appointed to this position at the university and did not intend to be the first man in the school’s long history to have to resign the job. As he heard the faint snarls echoing down the tiled corridor, he prayed fervently that Gruber had merely had a heart attack or spilled acid on himself.
As they rounded the corner, their footsteps drew Margot around. She’d been pacing anxiously before room 121, and now she held her hands toward it in a gesture of hopelessness.
“Has anything else happened?” Willett demanded, nervously tugging at the knot of his tie as he stopped beside the radiologist.
“Nothing, Herr Doctor. Only these horrible noises and . . . now and then a scream.”
Emboldened by the presence of the police officers, Margot narrowed her eyes and slid around Willett. After seven P.M. this was her responsibility, her domain. She rapped several times on the door.
“Professor Gruber!”
There was more muttering—West—and then another loud shriek.
“Herr Professor!”
Perspiration forming on his brow, Willett stepped forward and put his mouth close to the door.
“Hans! Herr West!”
The dull thumping of shoes against the tiles punctuated the low, guttural sounds coming from within.
“Let us in!” Willett shouted. “Open the door at once!”
There was another scream, followed by something unintelligible from West. Licking his lips, Willett nodded at the police officers and stepped back as one used his nightstick to break the pane directly above the knob, the other reaching in and opening the door. The officers drew their guns and rushed in, followed by Willett and Margot; what they saw caused them all to stop dead in the doorway.
Professor Gruber was writhing horribly on the floor, his features contorted and white. His gnarled fingers clawed at the floor; his legs and heels jumped up and down as though they were being pumped with electricity. Kneeling beside him, looking back at the newcomers, West had an empty syringe in his hand and a grim expression on his face. Like a child who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he let the hypodermic fall as his expression shaded to shock.
“I—we need to be left alone,” he said flatly. Then, reaching for the stethoscope and slipping it around his neck, he turned back toward the professor.
His eyes ablaze, Willett finally raised a trembling finger and pointed toward the youth. “Get him out of here.”
Scowling from the tart fumes which filled the laboratory, the two officers hustled over and, grabbing West under his arms, yanked him to his feet. He squirmed away from them and bent back down over the professor.
“You idiots, you don’t understand! I have to record his vital signs!”
The blue-suited men pulled him roughly from the scientist’s side, dragging him back toward the door amidst his shrill protests. Ignoring West, Margot strode toward the contorting old man.
“Professor, can we help you? What is wrong?”
“Only I can help him!” West shouted. “Let me go, fools!”
Thinking the professor might be having an epileptic seizure, Margot plucked a pencil from her vest pocket. Leaning forward to place it between his teeth, she screamed when the lanky scientist shot suddenly to his feet. Streams of yellowish spittle began pouring from the sides of his mouth, and his eyes bulged unnaturally. His high-pitched scream spoke of agonies the others couldn’t begin to comprehend.
Wresting himself from the constables, West pushed past the radiologist and grabbed the professor.
“Sir, what is it? Where is it?”
West went to press the diaphragm of the stethoscope to his chest but stepped back when he felt something hot spray against his belly. He looked down and saw the professor’s hands clasped to his midsection. Greenish liquid was shooting from between his fingers—his gastric juices eating right through his body. Obviously, the formula had overcompensated for the cyanide but undercompensated for the Acidulin; he should have given the injection lower in the chest to balance the absorption.
The officers came forward again but froze when the professor’s brow and eyes began to throb and crawl. He began to claw at his temple, raking long bloody lines in the soft flesh. His lids began to tear as the eyeballs bugged even further, blood seeping out from around them. Suddenly, the right eye exploded, showering blood on Margot and West. The woman screamed and backed into the arms of the startled Willett; West simply stared in fascination.
The brain took in too much blood and is hemorrhaging, he concluded. Gruber was wrong after all. The extra .5 cc’s had been soaked up entirely by the brain, which drew not only the blood but the formula in that blood back to it. That would also explain the presence of the formula in his saliva.
Gruber’s other eye burst then, blood spilling forth and also gushing from a gash on the forehead he’d suffered when he first hit the floor. Gurgling horribly, he crumpled at Willett’s feet; then he was still.
The room was silent for a long moment. Taking a deep breath, Willett stepped gingerly across the blood-spattered tiles and lifted his colleague’s wrist.
“He’s dead.”
“Of course he’s dead,” West sneered. “The dosage was too large.”
Margot looked over, her mouth hard. “You killed him. You killed Professor Gruber!”
“No,” he gently corrected her, “I did not kill him.”
West’s features were impassive as he looked from the corpse to the woman. Glancing back at the body, he proudly announced, “To the contrary. I gave him life!”
The inquest was brief, and, by making deals with families who wanted their children to one day go to medical school, Willett was able to keep press coverage to a minimum.
Although West was exonerated, he decided to leave Switzerland all the same. Anything he did there would meet with stern resistance from Willett and intruding eyes from the authorities, and he simply couldn’t work in that kind of Orwellian climate. He needed someplace smaller, more anonymous. A school without a reputation but with a good deal of money, the kind of institution one found in the U.S., in towns where large corporations tried to look good by endowing small schools.
After making a thorough study of the situation, he decided to go against Gruber’s wishes and apply to Miskatonic in Arkham, Massachusetts. That would fill the bill on both counts. As he recalled hearing at NYU, Ogan Chemical had founded the school several years before, the same year it had poisoned the river. The press was a wash, and the river was eventually cleaned up. But the medical school and hospital remained, gems in the Ogan crown.
West had no doubt that he’d be accepted and that the money Gruber had left him would cover his tuition and allow him to continue their research in solitude.
However, there was another reason for applying to Miskatonic. The reason Gruber had told him to stay away. A reason nearly as compelling as the others.
Carl Hill practiced there.
West wasn’t sure whether Gruber had warned him away because he feared what Hill would do to him or what he would do to Gruber. No matter. He had long wanted to meet him, to see firsthand what an antiscientist looked like, a man not interested in the ecstasy of science but in its profits. A man who had not only crossed Professor Gruber but had the utter audacity to paraphrase Gruber’s private notebooks and publish them as his own.
West would miss Gruber, but going to Miskatonic would soften the blow. For the first
time since he had sat at the kitchen table and watched his family fall apart, Herbert West felt free. Purpose had freed him.
As he dashed off a letter to Miskatonic, he couldn’t help but wonder for which accomplishment the scientific community would eventually thank him more: ridding the earth of death or putting an end to the career of Dr. Carl Hill.
CHAPTER
2
Lean and rangy, with eyes like little machines, Carl Josiah Hill took breakfast on his balcony while he scanned the morning paper. The Miskatonic Ledger was only a local tabloid, but he enjoyed seeing his name in headline type. Today, of course, it was only on page six—a lengthy item about the grant and a novice’s inaccurate summary about the powers of the laser drill. But one day it would be page one, and not just in Miskatonic. He’d come up with something that would make headlines the world over and win him every accolade the scientific community could thrust on him. The drill was a good start. With it, he could search more thoroughly and efficiently for the human soul. He had always sworn he’d find it, conclusively, before he was fifty. He had eight years to go, more than enough time. With Dean Halsey in his back pocket and his work bringing distinction to the medical school, it was only a matter of time.
The wind disturbed his gray hair, and he turned slightly so it would blow front to back rather than side to side. He took a bite of dry whole-wheat toast and a sip of coffee. He shook his head.
Hill had taken the pains to explain the instrument carefully, yet the report was still a shambles. He’d said the beam could hypothetically drill through teeth, but he hadn’t said it could be used for dentistry. It would melt fillings and burn through the gum or cheek if the dentist slipped. He’d made a point of explaining how the instrument improved medicine by limiting the amount of blood spilled and thus allowing the surgeon a better view of the diseased area. He’d never said anything about it being painless, which it wasn’t, yet there it was in the quotes. And she had made the purely sloppy error of using the verb “to laze” instead of “to lase.” She lazed, he lased; how could she confuse the two?
At least she’d spelled his name right. Shaking his head, he took some consolation in the fact that he’d been right about her. He knew as soon as she opened her mouth that reporter Phyllis Freeman would not understand. He’d gone on about the drill’s operation for one reason only: he’d wanted her to find him fascinating.
The sliding door opened behind him. Hill didn’t bother turning.
“Good morning, my dear. Sleep well?”
The young woman stretched, sucked in the morning air. “That’s a terrific waterbed you have. I love it.”
That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. She’d seemed to enjoy their lovemaking; was she as dead below the waist as above the shoulders?
She leaned over him, draping her arms over his chest. “Uh-oh. There it is.”
He was glad she could read. He was beginning to wonder.
“So, Dr. Hill. What did you think?”
A barge hooted on the river several stories below; the timing was perfect.
“I think,” he said, craning around, admiring the depth of the cleavage in his too-large bathrobe, “that you are a lovely writer.”
The pert young woman smiled and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thank you!”
As he suspected, she hadn’t listened to that either. He hadn’t said that she wrote lovely prose or that she was even an adequate writer. He’d simply told her that she was lovely, which was the truth.
He patted her hand. “Now why don’t you go into the kitchen and get yourself some breakfast? There is bacon draining on the paper towels and hard-boiled eggs in the refrigerator. You do know how to peel the shells—”
She tapped him on the head. “Of course, silly.”
Silly, he thought as she walked away. The last person who’d called him silly was his niece, and she was seven. It was either a firm young body and a limp mind or a mature mind and a less-than-firm body. Why could he rarely find both? Even the women he paid for were rarely ideal. The escort service trained them to listen; that was as important to their success as staying in shape. In truth, the women were just like bad psychiatrists, only pretending to listen while he talked his problems out.
Then, of course, there was Megan.
God, was there Megan.
Beautiful and spirited, she was not the brightest girl in the world, but she had potential. More, she had lips that turned his loins to soup. And grace. A product of the finest prep schools, she was more poised and confident than any woman he had known, a goddess in need of only one thing: a god.
He shook off his reverie. There wasn’t time to get Phyllis back into bed, so he took a bite of egg and returned to the newspaper. A small item in “Comings and Goings” caught his eye and quickly pushed Megan from his mind. He read it with mounting distress.
“And a warm, hands-across-the-border welcome to Herbert West,” it read. “Formerly of Toronto, New York, and Zurich, Mr. West will be arriving in Arkham today to begin his studies at Miskatonic. The winner of the 1977 Young Scientists of Canada Gold Medal for his work in electrical rejuvenation of dead animal tissue, he was most recently a student aide to the late Nobel Prize winner Hans Gruber at the University of Zurich. Dean Allan Halsey of Miskatonic told us, ‘We are delighted to have a student of Mr. West’s caliber join our student body, and trust that Arkham will help him feel right at home.’ ”
Hill’s hands dropped, crushing the paper in his lap. He stared across the river, over the old homes and spires of Arkham.
“It can’t be,” he said. “Why didn’t Allan discuss this with me?”
Dean Halsey hadn’t told him, he decided, because Halsey was a short-sighted ass. West was just another prize catch, another potential grant-getter. He probably hadn’t analyzed it any deeper than that.
“Dr. Hill, do you have any Pine Sol or something? I kind of smashed an egg on your counter.”
He shut his eyes, mumbled for her to leave it, the housekeeper would be there soon. He thought of Halsey’s stupidity, did some deep breathing to try and stay calm. How a fool like Halsey could have fathered a woman like Megan was a mystery to him.
He thought about Herbert West. The name was unfamiliar to him, but West had to be good. If he weren’t, Gruber would never have taken him on. What’s more, he had to be coming to Miskatonic for a reason. This wasn’t the kind of school to which someone transferred by chance. The tuition was far in excess of its prestige, catering mainly to wealthy Massachusetts families with an occasional scholarship thrown in to keep the government happy. With his credentials, West could have been accepted to any number of schools. He was coming for a reason, and Hill had a good idea what that reason was: him. The question was, did he simply want to study with him, with a former colleague of Professor Gruber . . . or was he after something else?
He continued shallow breathing for several moments more and then opened his eyes. He was being premature and paranoid, had slept too little, and was thinking too much. He returned to his meal.
Phyllis came onto the terrace with her breakfast tray and began prattling about what a magnificent view he had and how her own apartment looked out on an Ogan Chemical sewage-processing facility.
Hill didn’t even make a pretense of listening. He wanted to finish breakfast and get over to the university, to take a look at the newcomer’s file. Though science surprised him constantly, people did not; that was one reason he prospered and published while his colleagues went unrecognized. Why photodynamic therapist Douglas Scott had been unable get his laser-surgery ideas off the ground until Hill had taken him under his wing.
Why Herbert West would be his ally or be out on his ear, his future in ruins.
A cloud passed across the sun, throwing a chill into the warm October morning. Phyllis pulled the robe tighter, but Hill barely noticed her or the drop in temperature. Rising, he told the girl to dress and did likewise; fifteen minutes later she was standing at the bus stop while he raced h
is Jaguar toward the school.
Dr. Grace Harrod cursed as she left one corpse, a young man who had shot himself in the head, and ran to what the odds said was about to be another.
She had complained often to the hospital board about conditions in her emergency room, about how they were constantly getting overflow from Springfield’s understaffed John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital, and how that overflow was straining their own facilities. But no one seemed to care. The board refused to give her more staff or even to lodge a complaint with the Kennedy board. They liked being what Halsey had called “The Little Engine That Could” of hospitals. It kept up morale, he said, and—though he didn’t say this—Harrod knew it also made Ogan Chemical look good. The hospital the firm had endowed was all that stood between health and utter chaos, which was great for the corporate image.
It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that the lack of personnel cost them a life now and then. As long as the bottom line looked good and the press was favorable, nothing was going to change. Nothing—like the two extra minutes this poor young girl had had to wait before they could unload the ambulance and send it out again.
The ER medical director entered cubicle 3 and stood back while her staff prepped the body. “What’s the story?”
Intern Judie Reynolds filled her in.
“Heart attack, no vital signs.”
“I heard someone say she had to wait—”
“We went out two minutes after the call came in. Got her here in three. She’d already lost everything by the time we got there.”
“Shit.”
Five minutes without oxygen; even if they brought her back, they might not bring all of her back.
“All right, I’m going to zap her.”
