Sorrows of Adoration

by Kimberly Chapman

  Jason closed his eyes and sighed. He tried not to think about Gaia at work, despite having named Gaia Global after her. He preferred to do his brooding over her at home, something both Don and Trish knew quite well, yet here Don sat pestering him.

  “Hamdon BioTech needed my override for some equipment they wanted for …” Don looked over his computer at Jason’s annoyed expression. “Right, sorry, you don’t need those details. They’ve got her.”

  “What do you mean, ‘got her’?”

  “Uh …”

  “I need more details than that, Don, even if I don’t require the minutia of what captured your attention.”

  “Sorry. Hang on.” He tapped for a few seconds more while Jason pushed his tea aside and folded his hands on the desk patiently.

  “Here,” Don said as he turned his computer around.

  Jason looked at the screen. “Paraquat? Why is that name familiar?”

  “It’s a very powerful herbicide. It kills photosynthetic material on contact. Nasty stuff.”

  “The one we can’t beat with our organic line or get the Third World weaned off?”

  “Yeah. It’s ‘restricted use’ here, which means you can’t just go down to the hardware store to pick some up. They’ve been ordering tons of the stuff on the sly because they don’t have a license for it.”

  “Do they have a reason to use it?”

  Don looked at him as if he were insane. “They’re biotech.”

  “Right, so could they be—”

  “Using it in some kind of experiment? No, not based on what I know of what they’re researching, and we own sixty percent of them so they shouldn’t be researching anything without us knowing about it.”

  “Okay, how does that lead to you coming in here going on about Gaia?”

  “Because I thought, ‘Shit, if they don’t have a license, they probably don’t have the proper storage facility,’ since they could probably get a license if they did. And if they don’t have the proper storage facility or licensing, our lab could be on the hook for any legal issues, and I don’t want feds giving us a hard time, so I looked up their building specs, and that’s when I found this,” he said as he brought up a window that displayed a building schematic.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “There’s a hole in their building.”

  “A hole?”

  Don pointed to the screen. “This corridor goes to an elevator shaft, but there’s no listed elevator.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I looked up elevator licensing records, even though it’s not on their official floor plan. They do in fact have an inspection record for a one-hundred-ninety-foot elevator. But they only got it once when it was first built, and it’s expired.”

  “Wait. One hundred ninety feet?”

  “Yeah, I know—weird, huh? It looks like they hired a mining company to do some unspecified work just before that, so I’m guessing they’re the ones who dug it. According to the licensing information it only stops at the top and bottom.”

  “What the hell are they doing down there?”

  “I researched what that depth could mean, were they maybe after the water table or something geological or what. They’ve got aquifers around but not close enough for that to be the explanation. That depth gets them to bedrock, I think, but what’s more interesting is it turns out that it’s significantly further down than any root system outside of a handful of desert trees that wouldn’t grow there anyway.”

  Jason’s jaw dropped.

  Don nodded at him.

  “They’re keeping vegetation away from someone down there,” Jason whispered.

  “Seems like it.”

  “Oh god, they’ve got her down there.” His heart pounded.

  “I don’t know for sure, but when that popped into my head I went through a bunch of other purchasing records—”

  “How long have you been looking into this?”

  “Couple of days. I didn’t want to tell you until I had something more definite. Anyway, they’re also purchasing pre-made meals from a catering company with a bunch of weird specifications that amount to no raw fruit or vegetables. In fact, they’re using some kind of nasty-sounding vegetable substitute paste stuff along with processed chicken meat for the most part. I did some calculations, and based on their ordering, it’s probably about enough for one or two people a day going back almost ten years.”

  “Good god.”

  “Then I carefully went through their project list, and I found this buried in another list where it totally didn’t belong. This clinches it,” Don said, flipping to yet another window.

  Jason read aloud, “‘In an attempt to isolate the Elementum Curans, the blood product will be subjected to the following examinations.’ That’s Latin for ‘healing component’.”

  Don sat back in his chair. “They’re trying to figure out how someone heals quickly like you do, and they’re trying to replicate it.”

  “It’s got to be her.”

  “Or someone like her. It stands to reason that if there are two of you, there could be more.”

  “Either way, I want to meet them, and if Hamdon BioTech has anyone locked up underground against their will I want it stopped.”

  As Jason began to reach for his phone, Don exclaimed, “Whoa! Whoa! You can’t just call them!”

  “I was going to call Trish in here.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Do that.”

  When Trish entered a few minutes later, she shut the door roughly, crossed her arms, and barked, “How come he’s allowed in here during your precious tea time? You snark on my ass if I come to your office during tea time.”

  Jason replied, “Because he found Gaia.”

  “Possibly,” Don clarified.

  Trish blinked at them and then said in a loud whisper, “You can’t be serious!”

  “I’m always serious about Gaia,” Jason said.

  They showed her Don’s research, but she was immediately skeptical. “Okay, so you’ve found a bunch of crap that might mean something, but it doesn’t mean she or anyone else is down there. You’ve got no evidence that any of these things are related.”

  “It’s not a big company,” Don protested. “They’ve got three lead researchers, one of whom they just hired and has been churning out plenty of work on the projects they’re supposed to be doing. But look at this Dr. Noreen Steele: she’s got a brilliant CV except for these repeated ethics violations.”

  “What’s she done?” Jason asked.

  “Looks like a string of improperly filed requests to use human test subjects, some violations on how she had people sign disclaimers, and …” Don read for a moment before adding, “and a couple of accusations of not obtaining proper informed consent, but those weren’t substantiated enough to do anything but note them.”

  “There’s a long stretch between not getting your paperwork done right and locking someone in a basement for years,” Trish said.

  “Not necessarily,” Don said bitterly. “Some of us take care to do things properly because it matters in the validity of the end results. Also, she had a fairly consistent pattern of her own publication credits for years, then there’s a big gap that coincides with a reference in a later publication that’s been redacted. Since then, she’s only cited as an adjunct on stuff published by the other two Hamdon leads.”

  “So what, one redacted thing, and you think she’s doing secret military work?” Trish scoffed. “More likely she took time off to vacation or party or something and then just got boring.”

  Don replied, “The gap was a year and a half. Most scientists don’t like to interrupt their research that long.”

  “By ‘most’ you mean you. Just because you’d never backpack and party your way through Euro-clubs doesn’t mean she didn’t. Or, duh, maternity leave?”

  “She’s officially single with no kids. And don’t tell me someone with this CV is content playing second fiddle to her colleagues for the remainder of her career. She’s doing
something she doesn’t want publicly noticed.”

  Trish gave him a conciliatory shrug.

  “Regardless of Dr. Steele’s personal life, there’s enough weirdness at Hamdon for me to want to know what’s going,” Jason said, “even if they don’t have anyone locked up.”

  “So phone them and ask,” Trish replied. “You own enough of the company to warrant sticking your nose into their business.”

  “And if they are up to something nasty, they’ll cover it up if he comes poking around,” Don warned.

  “Not everybody thinks like an evil scientist,” Trish said with a roll of her eyes.

  “I’m not evil,” Don said defensively, clearly still annoyed at her previous assertion about ethics.

  Trish sighed. “Yeah, I know, sorry. Mostly.” She smiled at him, but he’d already turned back to his computer and didn’t notice.

  “You could get me a look in there,” Jason said to Trish.

  “Well, yeah, but if you want to talk ethics, hacking into their video security system isn’t exactly playing nicey-nice. Besides, you’re supposed to be my role model for going straight.”

  “My role in that regard has been over for some time. Can you at least find out if there’s a camera down that shaft?”

  Trish narrowed her eyes at him but then rolled them and sighed. “Fine, but only because that sounds more entertaining than what I was doing anyway. Be right back.” She left his office and returned a short time later with her own computer. She set herself up at a table in the corner and began typing as earnestly as Don, who was still tracking down links and occasionally citing more potential evidence.

  While his closest friends worked, Jason sat back once more in his chair, his hands clasped and index fingers bumping lightly on his mouth. Two years ago he thought he’d found Gaia after Don had put some other elements together: an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality report of unexplained, out-of-season plant growth in what was supposed to be a protected area, plus satellite photos of what appeared to be a small shack nearby. The government investigation had concluded a nearby illegal logging operation had been using some kind of unknown, undetectable chemical element to spur tree growth and it had gotten out of their control. But Jason, Don, and Trish all knew Gaia could make plants grow as if by magic, and they’d surmised she might have been trying to erect a barrier against incursion by the loggers.

  By the time this information had come to them and they’d gone to the site of the shack, however, it had been severely damaged and appeared to have been abandoned several years before. Jason suspected that something terrible had happened to Gaia, since the area had strange, twisted growths, and the wrecked state of the shack looked to him as if violence had occurred. Plus, he’d found an overturned box of trinkets and mementos that had no apparent value, which led to the conclusion that they were sentimental items and thus not something anyone would willingly leave behind.

  “Okay,” said Trish. “I’m in their system, mostly because they’ve been stupid and are using default settings. If they have a camera that looks at that elevator or what’s down in the hole, it’s not on here.”

  “Damn,” Jason said.

  Trish closed her computer. “I think we should continue this at home. It’s going to be time to go soon anyway, and if we head out early we’ll avoid some of the traffic. That way we can poke around before Henriika has dinner on the table, and she won’t tell us off for letting it get cold while we ‘do ze dilly-dally viss ze compoota’.”

  “Fine,” Jason said. “We can speak more freely there anyway.”

  “Well, it’s not like your office is bugged,” Trish said. “I did sweep it last month, and you’re not that intriguing to most people.”

  “I know, but when this topic comes up, I worry about someone coming in. It’s best to avoid questions.” He grabbed his keys from his desk as he rose.

  “I’ll drive,” Trish said.

  “No, I came in my own car today,” Jason said with an edge to his tone.

  “I know, but you shouldn’t drive when you’re like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know, distracted.”

  “I’ll be fine. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” Trish said with her hands on her hips. “Maybe you could get into a car accident and a hundred people around you with cell phone cameras could watch your splattered guts heal up in a matter of minutes. That’d put an end to your big fat hairy secret pretty fast and make you a lot more intriguing, wouldn’t it? Then again, that’d make it more plausible for you to walk on into Hamdon’s lab and demand—”

  “Fine, fine, point taken. I’ll go with you if you’ll shut up about it.”

  Trish grinned at him. Then she went to Don, patted him on the back, and said, “Come on, doc, you can keep reading in the car as always.”

  “Hmm?” Don said, not taking his eyes off his screen as he picked up the computer and followed Jason and Trish down to the garage.

  * * *

  As Trish and Don set themselves up at their respective desks in the parlour, Jason picked up a small remote from the end table beside his favourite chair. He clicked it, and the house-wide music system Trish had built for him as a Christmas gift several years before powered up. It was automatically set to a large mix of his preferred classical music—a term he found amusing since he’d attended the London debut performances of several of the songs in his collection.

  The first song that came up was Chopin’s “Minute Waltz”, the opening notes of which made him frown. He was not in the mood for a waltz, even a brief one. He pressed the skip button and peered at the small screen. It read, “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 13 In F Major, K. 112: II. Andante”. Mozart always settled his mind. He’d often wondered if it was a mystical power of the mad genius, perhaps not unlike his own strange abilities.

  Jason regretted never having taken the time to travel to try to meet the great composer. Then again, some of the notable figures of history he had known were far less impressive than their stories would later indicate. Perhaps he would have been disillusioned by Mozart as well.

  He set the remote down and eased into his chair, feeling useless as he watched the other two tap away. Usually he read while they were on their computers, but his mind was too scattered to focus on words on a page.

  Gaia: the only other person he’d ever known to have a healing power like his own, and he’d never even spoken with her. It wasn’t her real name, but he didn’t know what that was. After he’d first seen her and accidentally witnessed her arm heal from a terrible wound in seconds, he’d learned she was Lady Rose Davidson, a well-to-do London socialite who owned a fashionable boutique. But by the time he’d worked up the nerve to visit her, she’d sold her home and business, set up a trust fund for a girls’ school, and disappeared. That was in 1899.

  He’d done his best to trace her history through the shop’s ownership documents filed in the dusty, bureaucratic halls of the British government. It seemed that, like him, she’d changed her identity from time to time when the decades failed to age her appropriately. She might have been known as Anna Yale, the cousin of Rose Davidson, and before that an aunt named Flora Yale who maintained the London shop from various addresses in Scotland, and before that another aunt named Melantha Yale. The latter founded the shop in 1775, so his trail ended there.

  In 1775 he’d been Jason Caldwell III, hiding out on the continent intermittently to avoid being drawn into the war in America. He’d still enjoyed battle at the time but had no desire to go beyond France for it, and another skirmish with France was always on the horizon back then. He’d also been doing what he suspected Flora had done: maintaining an estate from afar so he could return as a relative who looked astonishingly like one from a previous generation who had died unseen abroad. It was tedious, but it was the best strategy to avoid questions.

  When Rose Davidson left England, she appeared to have left that name behind too. He found hi
nts of her being called Anna again as she went through Europe on her way to India. He had not known what name to use for her until he discovered her amazing ability to make plants grow. They had called her Annapurna in India, but his love of Greek mythology inspired him to think of her as Gaia. Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis several decades later made it seem all the more apropos, as Jason had become fully engaged in environmental research and industry by that time, in no small part as an attempt to get her attention.

  It hadn’t worked. He’d grown ever more wealthy and done much toward his other goal of keeping a world he’d likely have to live in forever clean and tolerable, but his persistent dream of Gaia showing up one day to applaud his efforts had never come to pass. He had no reason to believe she’d ever heard of him, and since he’d kept his immortality and other nefarious power so well hidden, he really had no reason to expect her to appear.

  Ah, his other power. No growing flowers and food for him. What Gaia could give, he could only take. He looked at his hands, and his heart sank as dark memories began to surface.

  Quickly, he clenched his fists and stuffed them between his legs and the chair’s arms. He’d done that so many times over the years that they slid into perfectly fitted indentations.

  In an effort to keep memories at bay, he looked back and forth at Trish and Don some more.

  Trish was fairly slim and quite attractive. She often referred to herself as a “nerd goddess” since she was a hacker-turned-CTO but could have easily pulled off any career where being pretty counted—though Jason pitied anyone who was foolish enough to suggest that to her. She kept her dark hair short less for style purposes and more to not have to fuss with it unless she felt like it.

  Don, by contrast, was entirely average to look at: a round face with plain glasses beneath a receding line of sandy-blond, short, always-askew hair. He wasn’t obese, but he was comfortably soft from so many years spent sitting in labs or behind computers. His warm smile and slightly rumpled clothes gave away exactly what he was: a kind, gentle, friendly scientist.