The Book of All Things

by David Michael Slater

  “All your promises, all your assurances, it all means nothing now!”

  And Daphna, at the museum, the talisman you stabbed the snake with—

  It had blood from my hand all over it! Lilit stopped biting because he realized some people were poisonous to it! The thirty-six!

  “I don’t care what you gave up to reach this point! I don’t care if you’re the most decorated scientist in the history of the universe! YOU CAN’T HANDLE THIS!”

  That’s why he searched out that scroll! He needed to know how to find the Lamed Vavniks so he could kill them! Then nothing could stop him from finding the Aleph! He didn’t try to take it from us because he felt our heads—that’s why he grabbed us that way! He needs to kill us safely first! He needs to take our organs, but without touching our blood!

  “You failed when you started your professional life, and you’ve failed at its end! You’re career is over! You can stop working right now. I’m putting someone else in charge.”

  “I’ll stop working when I’m dead!”

  “Goodbye, Dr. Fludd.”

  It does want its children, Daphna thought. This is all for its children.

  The door slammed, shaking the frames on the walls.

  There was silence in the office.

  Dex—our blood, Daphna thought as genuine hope ignited inside her after so long. If it’s poisonous to Lilit, then for infected people—

  Dex knew exactly what she was going to say, so he said it for her: It might be the cure.

  CHAPTER 37

  intrathoraic

  Dr. Fludd grunted. It was something primal, something animal. And then things started shattering around the room.

  Daphna moved to climb out from under the desk, but Dexter held her back. It’s okay, Dex, she thought. I’m going to tell her everything. I think she might even believe it now. All I’ve been thinking about is getting away, escaping all this suffering. We need to do what needs to be done. After that, what happens, happens.

  Yes, Dexter said. Okay.

  Something flew over the desk and broke against the wall. A lamp. Then much of what was on top was swept off. The twins cringed as a mini-avalanche of office supplies rained down behind the desk. At least the computer didn’t come with it. The two giant x-ray envelopes did. One had Daphna’s name on it, the other, Evelyn Idun’s. Daphna leaned out and picked them up.

  Come on, she thought, taking Dex’s arm.

  You go, Dex said. I’ll stay here. Just in case.

  Daphna thought a moment, then agreed. Before she got up, she reached back to squeeze Dexter’s hand. Brother and sister looked into each other’s matching eyes for a long moment.

  I love you, Dex, Daphna thought.

  I love you, too, Dexter thought back.

  Daphna got to her feet.

  Dr. Fludd was standing at the safe. It was open. The Harvard diploma was on the floor, its frame smashed. There were smashed and broken things all over the place. Daphna thought briefly about the fit she’d thrown in her room over mistreatment by a couple of snotty girls, one of whom was dead now. It had felt like the world was going to end over that. Just that.

  Daphna cleared her throat. Dr. Fludd, spun around, then dropped the papers she’d been reading.

  “Daphna!” the doctor cried. “What? How?”

  Dex! Daphna thought. The papers from the safe. They’re on the floor! “That coincidence,” she said to Dr. Fludd, holding up the x-ray envelopes. “The one you mentioned at our house—”

  But Dr. Fludd hadn’t recovered her wits. She was just staring at Daphna, mostly at her head. Her halo.

  “The coincidence,” Daphna pressed.

  Finally Dr. Fludd responded, though as if in a trance. She looked far beyond exhausted, and now in shock as well.

  “You both have intrathoracic ribs,” she said somewhat robotically.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You have extra ribs.”

  “Extra ribs?”

  “Yes, ribs,” Dr. Fludd repeated, her eyes only slightly more focused. She took the envelopes and drew out two large x-rays, which she laid on the desktop side-by-side. “And for whatever reason, they vibrate,” she added, looking back at Daphna’s head.

  “They vibrate?”

  “Yes. I have no idea why, but the vibrating is irrelevant. Intrathoracic ribs are an incredibly rare congenital abnormality, but harmless. There can’t be more than a few dozen people in the world—“

  “Thirty-six,” Daphna said, leaning over the desk. Nothing much was visible, of course.

  “What?”

  “Eve was created from Adam’s rib,” Daphna said, mostly to herself.

  “Why—why are we talking about Adam and Eve?” Dr. Fludd begged. “Please, tell me what happened in that store.”

  “There’s a lot to explain,” Daphna said, “and I will tell you everything. But first—those murders—Lil—I mean, the killer, is taking organs to cover up what it really wants, the extra ribs. All thirty-four victims have had one. He will find me soon to take mine, and my brother’s, too. We can’t let that happen. The rib can somehow create people, even if their owners are dead.”

  In response to this, Dr. Fludd simply stared at Daphna with her mouth open.

  “But all that can wait,” Daphna said. “I have a question for you that can’t: Is it possible that my blood can be the cure for this disease?”

  Dr. Fludd again did not respond. She reached out a hesitant hand and put it into the aura around Daphna’s head.

  “Please,” Daphna said, taking the hand into her own. “Is it possible that my blood can be the cure for this disease?”

  “It’s incredibly unlikely,” Dr. Fludd replied, “but possible if the reason you’ve not been infected is because you are immune to the disease. We can run a test called electrophoresis, which can isolate proteins in your blood that might account for any immunity. If that’s what’s happening, we may be able to use them to create a cure. Yes. We didn’t think of doing that with the samples we took from you when you were here. It was grossly negligent of me.”

  “We better do that test,” Daphna said. “Now. I think maybe you can get your job back.”

  But Dr. Fludd still seemed to be in another dimension.

  “Your lab,” Daphna said, gently squeezing the hand she still held. “Where is it?”

  The door opened just then. Judging by his voice, it was the same man who’d berated Dr. Fludd a few minutes earlier.

  “You’ve been ordered to pack up your—” he started to say. But then he gasped, “What the—Is that the Wax girl?”

  “My lab!” Dr. Fludd suddenly cried, her eyes dialing back into reality. She spoke in the commanding voice the twins had come to know. “I have the cure,” she declared. “Call the President. Call the press. Tell them we’ll have it ready for mass production within days.”

  “What?”

  “It’s in the girl’s blood. She’s immune. We’ll be in my lab, and I do not—under any circumstances—wish to be disturbed.”

  Dex heard movement, no doubt toward the door.

  “I’ll be okay!” Daphna called out as she was whisked away.

  There was silence in the room again, a stunned silence. But then the man moved to the desk. He picked the phone up off the floor and took a deep breath. Then he muttered, “God help me,” and began to dial.

  CHAPTER 38

  the lost lecture

  The man—he said his name was Dr. Brody—made over a dozen phone calls, promising a cure within forty-eight hours. He said the Wax twins had been found, and they’d provided critical information that led to the breakthrough. When he was done, he hurried out of the room.

  Dex climbed out from under the desk. His head was spinning. The rib!

  It seemed so simple, so incredibly obvious now, as if they should have known what was going on all along. He knew Daphna was right about their blood. There would be a cure.

  But first things first.

  Dex bumped the compu
ter as he came around the desk, and it came to life. A giant banner was already running across the top of the news site: ‘BREAKING NEWS! Cure discovered…In production now…Cure discovered…In production now…’

  Of course he and his sister weren’t mentioned. Daphna, Dex thought, where are you? Maybe Dr. Fludd would need blood from both of them. But there was no response. Dex checked his reflection on the monitor and saw his aura was fading fast.

  Dexter hurried for the door, but stopped when he reached the safe and saw the papers sitting in a fairly neat pile on the floor. He picked them up. It wasn’t easy to read, but Dex was able to make out the title once again: Mary had a Little Boy: Stem Cells and Agamogenesis. Whatever that last word was, he knew it had terrified one of the most powerful institutions ever to exist, that it was connected to a secret it felt compelled to keep even if it meant the death of every living person on Earth.

  Dex looked at the second sheet, which—he had to squint—had the word ‘Summary’ at the top. He tried to skim, but the words were swelling and shrinking on the page. But he still had some time, and he wasn’t going to waste it.

  He made out, “contention that—” but then the whole page blurred. He shook his head and looked again. He saw, ‘scientific explanation,’ then, ‘infinitesimal percentage’ and ‘world history.’ Further along the line he made out ‘unique stem cells,’ but then it all blurred again.

  Dex felt the rage coming. He closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath to prevent himself from tearing the papers to shreds. He looked again. There was the word, ‘Agamogenesis,’ but then everything scrambled.

  “No!” Dex roared. He picked up a frame lying on the floor—some kind of certificate—and threw it at the desk, shattering it. He picked up another, which was also a certificate. Suddenly curious, Dex flipped over all the frames lying around. Not a single one had a person in it. He was sure none in the room did.

  Didn’t Dr. Fludd have any loved ones? She was a genius. Her work defined her, but what did that earn her? Dex was flawed, deeply, irreversibly flawed, but that’s not what defined him. How many times had he overcome his deficit? He’d lost track. That’s what defined him.

  That was his power.

  Dex looked once again at the paper. It was no use, but he didn’t get angry. No, he did, but he allowed the anger simply to drift away, like dark clouds across a blue sky. He got up, looking for a solution.

  There, on the desk, he saw the x-rays.

  Maybe.

  They had a tint to them—not a colored tint, but still. Dex grabbed the page he’d been trying to read and slipped it under one of the sheets.

  And then he read:

  Agamogenesis, asexual reproduction, is conceivable in human beings who possess this genetic abnormality, these rare and unique adult stem cells capable of initiating reproduction without a mate. I submit the possibility that vestigial structures (i.e. the vermiform appendix) may have once been used for regulating such cells before humans evolved toward solely sexual reproduction, which rendered them obsolete. I propose that in a tiny percentage of the population, this capability persists. (The likely presence of an undiscovered enzyme that can, when activated, cut short X-chromosomes into Y’s would allow for the production of both female and male fetuses.) In adult males these structures may be dormant and useless, but in females, the implication should be obvious. There have been a number of cases throughout recorded history of “virgin births,”—

  Dex looked up. His mind bent and twisted to allow this all in. His focus changed, and he was looking at the ribs in his sister’s x-ray over the words he’d just read. Then he closed his eyes because now he understood. He understood what the Pope himself couldn’t be allowed to know. He understood the secret that could destroy the Church for all time. Jesus was born to a Lamed Vavnik. His mother, Mary, did not conceive God’s child—she conceived her own, on her own.

  And now Dex understood why the Secret Keeper was willing to kill and bury them in a secret place to save the world. Life would one day have been reborn from the earth, the way it first began in the Garden of Eden—perhaps long after Lilit and its kind were no more.

  Dr. Fludd was right. She’d always been right, and now she could prove it to the—

  “No!” Dex cried, leaping to his feet. Daphna! He ran out of the office, but stopped immediately. Down the hall, a group of white-coated men and women were crowded around a door, trying to see in through a little window. Dex stepped quickly back into the office and closed the door part way.

  “This is not right!” someone out there shouted. “It’s outrageous!”

  “What does she think she’s doing keeping us all out?” another voice complained. “I can’t see what’s going on!”

  “She wants all the glory!”

  “ALL OF YOU, GET BACK TO WORK!” someone bellowed. Dr. Brody. “MOVE!” he roared. “If anyone distracts her, you’ll be charged with a crime!”

  Dex peeked out and saw the group herded down the hall and then through a set of swinging doors.

  He waited as long as he could bear, then hurried down to the lab, where now he peeked in the little window.

  Daphna’s body, covered by a sheet, was laid out on a long silver table. A gas mask was on her face.

  Dr. Fludd wasn’t visible, but he didn’t need to see her to know what was going on.

  It was just as he feared: she was going to take the rib for herself.

  CHAPTER 39

  you, too

  Dex burst blindly into the lab. He rushed toward his sister’s body without giving a single thought to where Dr. Fludd might be. When he reached his sister, a hand grabbed him around the mouth from behind with some kind of cloth.

  “I need you too, Dexter,” said Dr. Fludd.

  Dex, who’d been seeing red, now saw black.

  CHAPTER 40

  slowly and carefully

  A window was open in the lab, and a mist poured in over the pane. The smell was horrific. It was suddenly freezing cold, and there was the sound of flapping as a gust of black wind blew in behind the mist.

  Standing between two operating tables—each bearing a body with an open chest cavity—stood Dr. Fludd. She was just setting a short, curved bone down on a shiny silver cart. A similar, smaller bone lay there already. Her latex gloves, as well as the front of her scrubs, were covered with dark red stains.

  She looked up and saw a figure entirely in black.

  “No!” Dr. Fludd cried through her surgeon’s mask. She grabbed a scalpel from the tray and brandished its tiny blade. “This is my discovery! Mine! You won’t do this to me again!”

  The figure in black seemed wary, but approached. Dr. Fludd stepped back, cowering against a wall.

  “No! Please, no!” she begged. “I’ve worked my whole life for this! Please! My whole life! I’ve given everything for it. Everything!”

  The figure stood between the tables, looking down at the masks on the bodies’ faces and the tubes running from their arms to life-sustaining machines.

  “Please! No!”

  In a motion too quick to see, the figure leapt forward and took the scalpel from Dr. Fludd’s trembling hand. Then it was suddenly between the tables again. Slowly and carefully, it sliced open the throats of the bodies laying on them.

  Blood oozed from the wounds.

  “No!” Dr. Fludd shrieked.

  Now the figure threw the tables over, sending its last victims crashing to the floor. All the tubes and cords tore free when they fell.

  “It’s not my fault!” Dr. Fludd cried. “You’ve killed them!”

  There was pounding on the lab doors now, and shouting. The doors were thrown open.

  But the figure was gone. And so were the ribs.

  CHAPTER 41

  all its eternal glory

  Tendrils of gas and steam whipped and whirled in the wind above the open cone of the volcano. A figure robed in white was making its way up to it. It walked right through the glowing orange lava seeping slowly down the
slopes, following channels and grooves left by lava before it. The figure was carrying something in each hand—bones, short, curved bones. Its red eyes were focused directly ahead, unblinking. Its beautiful, horrible face was set in stone.

  It reached the peak and stopped, then smiled, exposing deadly, pointed teeth. And then it threw the bones into the mountain.

  “Now!” a voice called out. And then, suddenly, two smaller figures rose up from a ledge below the lip of the crater.

  Despite its superhuman abilities, Lilit was too surprised to react—it just stood there frozen as the twins plunged two syringes directly into his heart, injecting it with blood from their own veins, the veins of the last two Righteous Ones—the ones he thought he had killed in that lab.

  Lilit produced one more scream, a scream that made birds fall dead out of the air, a scream that threatened to break open the very vault of the sky. But then it ceased, and there was an almost painful silence.

  The monster went rigid, its pale, handsome face going utterly white, deathly white. The path of the twins’ blood in its veins stood out in bold relief, bulging all over its body.

  It teetered, tipped forward, and then fell into the volcano.

  Moments later, a rumbling shook the mountainside. Gas burst all around from the small cones pushed up from underground. Then the volcano erupted—a burst of black wind exploded into the sky, blotting out the stars, consuming the night itself.

  The world went dark.

  Dexter and Daphna Wax hugged each other in that dark, their eyes on the sky.

  Moments later, a single star appeared. And then a second. And then more and more.

  Soon enough the infinite sky was visible once again in all its eternal glory.