by The Web(Lit)
"Alex," said Moreland.
"Robin."
"Bill," I answered, numbly.
"I'm sorry to put you through such a rigamarole, son and I didn't know you'd be coming, dear. Are you all right?"
Robin nodded absently, but her eyes were elsewhere.
The tiny woman had engaged her visually. She had on a child's pink party dress with white lace trim. A white metal bracelet circled a withered forearm. A child's curious eyes.
Robin smiled at her and hugged herself.
The woman licked the place where her lips should have been and kept staring.
The others noticed her concentration and trembled some more. The generator kept up its song. I took in details: framed travel posters on the walls Antigua, Rome, London, Madrid, the Vatican. The temples at Angkor Wat. Jerusalem, Cairo.
More cartons of food lined up neatly across from the refrigerators. Portable cabinets and closets, a couple of dollies.
So many refrigerators because they had to be small enough to fit down the hatch. I pictured Moreland wheeling them through the tunnel. Now I knew where he'd gone that night with his black bag. Where he'd gone so many nights, all these years, barely sleeping, working to the point of exhaustion. The fall in the lab... A sink in the corner was hooked up to a tank of purified water. Gallon bottles stood nearby.
No stove or oven because of poor ventilation?
No, the air was cool and fresh, and the rain sound was faint but clear, so there had to be some kind of shaft leading up to the forest.
No fire because the smoke would be a giveaway.
No microwave, either probably because Moreland had doubts about the safety. Worries about people who'd already been damaged.
His lie about being part of the nuclear coverup a partial truth?
Lots of partial truths; right from the beginning he'd swaddled the truth in falsehood.
Events that had happened but in other places, other times.
Einstein would approve... it's all relative... time's deceit.
Everything a symbol or metaphor.
The other quotes... all for the sake of justice?
Testing me.
I looked at the scarred faces huddled around him.
White, wormlike.
Joseph Cristobal, tying vines to the eastern walls, hadn't hallucinated thirty years ago.
Three decades of hiding puncuated by only one mishap?
One of them going stir-crazy, emerging aboveground and heading toward the stone walls?
Cristobal sees, is gripped by fright.
Moreland diagnoses hallucinations.
Lying to Cristobal... for justice's sake.
Soon after, Cristobal gives one last scream and dies.
Just like the cat woman... what had she seen?
"Please," said Moreland.
"Sit down. They're gentle. They're the gentlest people I know."
We squeezed out our soaked clothes and took our places around the table as Moreland announced our names. Some of them seemed to be paying attention. Others remained impassive.
He cut fruit for them and reminded them to drink.
They obeyed.
No one spoke.
After a while, he said, "Finished? Good. Now please wipe your faces very good. Now please clear your plates and go into the game room to have some fun."
One by one they stood and filed out, slipping behind the refrigerators and disappearing around a rock wall.
Moreland rubbed his eyes.
"I knew you'd manage to find me."
With Emma's help," I said.
"Yes, she's a dear..."
"Time's deceit. Including the deceit you used to bring me over.
You've been leading up to this since the first day I got here, haven't you?"
He blinked repeatedly.
"Why now?" I said.
"Because things have come to a head."
"Pam's up there looking for you, scared to death."
"I know I'll tell her... soon. I'm sick, probably dying.
Nervous system deterioration. Neck and head pain, things go blank... out of focus. I forget more and more, lose equilibrium. remember my tumble in the lab?"
"Maybe that was just lack of sleep."
He shook his head.
"No, no, even when I want to sleep it rarely comes. My concentration... wanders. It may be Alzheimer's or something very similar. I refuse to put myself through the indignities of diagnosis. Will you help me before there's nothing left of me?"
"Help you how?"
"Documentation this must be recorded for perpetuity. And taking care of them we must figure out something so they'll be cared for after I'm gone."
He stretched his arms out.
"You've got the training, son. And the character commitment to justice."
"Mr. Disraeli's justice? Truth in action?"
"Exactly... there is no truth without action."
"The great thinkers," I said.
His eyes dulled and he threw back his head and stared at the cavern's ceiling.
"Once upon a time I thought I might develop into a significant thinker shameless youthful arrogance. I loved music, science, literature, yearned to be a Renaissance man." He laughed.
"Medieval man would be more like it. Always mediocre, occasionally evil:'
He ruminated some more, snapped back to the present, licking his lips and staring at us.
Robin hadn't stopped glancing around the room. Her eyes were huge.
"Truth is relative, Alex. A truth that hurts innocents and causes injustice is no truth at all, and an evasive action that's rooted in compassion and leads to mercy can be justified can you see that?"
"Did the second nuclear tests take place near Aruk? Because I know you lied about Bikini. If so, how was the government able to conceal them?"
"No," he said.
"That's not it at all."
Standing, he walked around the table. Stared at the boxes against the wall.
"Nothing you do is accidental," I said.
"You told me about the nuclear blast and Samuel H. for a reason. You held on to Samuel's file for a reason.
"Guilt's a great motivator." What are you atoning for, Bill?"
Putting his hands behind his back, he laced his fingers.
Long arms. Spidery arms.
"I was in the Marshalls during the blast," he said.
"Perhaps that's why I'm dying." Looking down.
"Now have I lied?"
"You didn't participate in the payoffs. I know. I spoke to a man who did."
"True," he said.
"So what's the point? What were the blasts a metaphor for-' "Yes," he said.
"Exactly. A metaphor."
He sat back down. Retrieved the grapefruit. Rolled it.
"Injections, son."
"Medical injections?"
Long slow nod.
"We'll never know exactly what they used, but my guess is some combination of toxic mutagens, radioactive isotopes, perhaps cytotoxic viruses. Things the military was experimenting with for decades."
"Who's they?"
He jerked forward, bony chest pressing against the table edge.
"Me. I put the needle in their arms. When I was chief medical officer at Stanton. I was told it was a vaccination research program confidential, voluntary and that as chief medical officer, I was responsible for carrying it out. Trial doses of live and killed viruses and bacteria and spirochetes developed in Washington for civil defense in the event of nuclear war. The ostensible goal was to develop a single super vaccine against virtually every infectious disease. The "paradise needle" they called it. They claimed to have gotten it down to a series of four shots. Provided me experimental data. Pilot studies done at other bases. All false."
He took hold of the white puffs over his ears. Compared to the soft people, his hair was luxuriant.
"Hoffman," he said.
"He gave me the data. Brought the vials and the hypodermics to my office, personally
. The patient list.
Seventy-eight people twenty families from the base. Sailors, their wives and children. He told me they'd agreed to participate secretly in return for special pay and privileges. Safe study, but classified because of the strategic value of such a powerful medical tool. It was imperative the Russians never get hold of it. Military people could be trusted to be obedient. And they were. Showing up for their injections right on time, rolling up their sleeves without complaint. The children were afraid, of course, but their parents held them still and told them it was for their own good."
He pulled at his hair again and strands came loose.
"When exactly did this happen?" I said.
"The winter of sixty-three. I was six months from discharge, had fallen in love with Aruk. Barbara and I decided to buy some property and build a house on the water. She wanted to paint the sea. She told Hoffman, and he informed us the Navy was planning to sell the estate. It wasn't waterfront, but it was magnificent. He'd make sure we got priority, a bargain price."
"In return for conducting the vaccination program secretly."
"He never stated it as a quid pro quo, but he got the message across and I was eager to receive it. Blissful, stupid ignorance until a month after the injections, when one of the women who'd been pregnant gave birth prematurely to a limbless, anencephalic stillborn baby? At that point, I really didn't suspect anything.
Those things happen. But I felt we should be doing some monitoring."
"Pregnant women were included in the experiment?"
He looked down at the table.
"I had doubts about that from the beginning, was reassured by Hoffman. When I reported the stillbirth, he insisted the paradise needle was safe the data proved it was."
He bent low, talking to the table: That baby... no brain, limp as a jellyfish. It reminded me of things I'd seen on the Marshalls.
Then one of the children got sick. A four-year-old. Lymphoma.
From perfect health to terminally ill nearly overnight."
He raised his head. His eyes had filled with tears.
"Next came a sailor. Grossly enlarged thyroid and neuro fibromas then rapid conversion to anaplastic carcinoma it's a rare tumor, you generally only see it in old people. A week later he had myelogenous leukemia as well. The rapidity was astonishing.
I started to think more about the nuclear tests in the Marshalls.
I knew the symptoms of poisoning."
"Why'd you tell me you were part of the payoff?"
"Couching my own guilt... actually, I was asked by my superior to participate, but managed to get out of it.
The idea of placing a monetary value on human life was repulsive. In the end, the people who did participate were clerks and such. I'm not sure they had a clear notion of the damage."
Craving confession for years, wanting some sort of absolution from me.
But not trusting me enough to go all the way. Instead, he'd used me the way a defensive patient uses a brand-new therapist: dropping hints, exploiting nuance and symbol, embedding facts in layers of deceit.
"I suppose," he said, sounding puzzled, "I was hoping this moment would arrive eventually. That you'd be someone I could. communicate with."
His eyes begged for acceptance.
My tongue felt frozen.
"I'm sorry for lying to you, son, but I'd do it all over again if it meant getting to this point. Everything in its time everything has a time and place. Life may seem random, but patterns emanate.
Like a child tossing stones in a pond. The waves form predictably.
Something sets off events, they acquire a rhythm of their own...
Time is a like a dog chasing its tail more finite than we can imagine, yet infinite."
He wiped his eyes and bit back more tears.
I took Robin's hand.
"After the other illnesses did you go back to Hoffman?"
"Of course. And I expected him to become alarmed, take some action. Instead, he smiled. Thirty years old but he had an evil old man's smile. A filthy little smile. Sipping a martini. I said, "Perhaps you don't understand, Nick: something we did to these people is making them deathly ill killing them." He patted me on the back, told me not to worry, people got sick all the time."
He gave a sudden, hateful look.
"A baby without a brain," he said.
"A toddler with end-stage cancer, that poor sailor with an old person's disease, but he could have been dismissing a case of the sniffles. He said he was sure it had nothing to do with the vaccines, they'd been tested comprehensively. Then he smiled again. The same smile he gave when he cheated at cards and thought he was getting away with it. Wanting me to understand that he'd known all along.
"I'd planned to conduct an autopsy on the baby the next day, decided to do it right then. But when I got to the base mortuary, the body was gone. All the records were gone, too, and the sailor who'd been my assistant had been replaced by a new man from Hoffman's staff. I stormed back to Hoffman and demanded to know what was going on. He said the baby's parents had requested a quick burial, so he'd granted compassionate leave and flown them to Guam the previous night. I went over to the flight tower to see if any planes had left. None had for seventy-two hours. When I got back to my office, Hoffman was there. He took me for a walk around the base and began talking about the estate. It seemed all of a sudden some other buyers had surfaced, but he'd managed to keep my name at the top of the list and to lower the price. It was all I could do not to rip out his throat."
He put on his glasses.
"Instead," he said. The word tapered off. He put a hand on his chest and inhaled several times.
"Instead, I thanked him and smiled back. Invited the bastard and his wife to my quarters the next night for bridge. Now that I knew what he was capable of, I felt I needed to protect Barbara. And Pam she was only a baby herself. But on the sly, I began checking the others who'd been injected. Most looked fine, but a few of the adults weren't feeling well vague malaise, low-grade fevers. Then some of the children began spiking high fevers."
He dug a nail into his temple. There I was, the kindly doctor, reassuring them. Dispensing analgesics and ordering them to drink as much as they could in the hope some of the toxins would be flushed out. But unable to tell them the truth what good would it have done? What curse is worse than knowing your own death is near? Then another child died suddenly of a brain seizure. Another family supposedly flown out overnight, and this time Hoffman informed me my involvement with the paradise needle was terminated, I was to attend to all base personnel except the vaccinated families. New doctors had arrived for them, three white coats from Washington. When I protested, Hoffman ordered me to begin a new project: reviewing twenty years of medical files and writing a detailed report. Busy-work."
"Sounds familiar."
He smiled weakly.
"Yes, I'm a horrid sneak; being direct has always been difficult for me. I used to rationalize it as the result of growing up an only child in a very big house. One wanders about alone, acquires a taste for games and intrigue. But perhaps it's just a character flaw."
"What happened to the rest of the vaccinated patients?" said Robin.
"More were growing ill, and rumors had finally gotten out on the base about some kind of mysterious epidemic. Too much to keep secret, so the doctors from Washington issued an official memo: an unknown island organism had infiltrated Stanton, and strict quarantine was imposed. The sick people were all isolated in the infirmary, and quarantine signs were nailed to the doors.
Understandably, everyone gave the place a wide berth. Then I heard a rumor that all the vaccinated families would be shipped back to the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington for evaluation and treatment. I had a pretty good idea what that meant."
He pulled down on his cheeks.
"I sneaked over to the infirmary one night after midnight. One attendant was on guard at the front door, smoking, not taking the job seriously. Which was typical of the base. Nothin
g ever happened here. Everyone had a slipshod attitude. I managed to sneak in through a rear door, using a skeleton key I'd lifted from Hoffman's office. The smug bastard hadn't even bothered to put on a new lock."
Reaching out, he grabbed the grapefruit, clawing so hard juice flowed through his fingers.
