Guinea Pig

by Curtis, Greg

  Pastor Franks asked the question. Just as he'd asked it a hundred times before. And Reginald could only give him the same answer as he had every time he had asked before.

  “His heart's still beating.”

  Or actually both of them were. How that was happening he didn't know. Between what he'd done to him and what Doctor Adams had then done he should be dead. But he wouldn't die. Something kept him going despite everything. At least he didn't seem to be in as much pain any more. He wasn't awake but his moans weren't as terrible as they had been. And after only twenty four hours that seemed like a miracle.

  “We should give him more food.”

  Nurse Etta spoke up from the next room where she was watching the computers, and he guessed that another hour had passed. They were feeding him hourly through a feeding tube, and it seemed to be helping. His weight was still creeping down, but at least it wasn't plummeting. And having determined that the oral antibiotics hadn't seemed to harm him he was including those with the food. As much as he could take. Infection was Mr. Simons' biggest risk.

  Reginald hooked up the bag and turned the wheel to let another hundred mls or so of the highly concentrated protein and carbohydrate solution flow into his stomach, hoping as he had every other time that it would help. That his patient wouldn't throw it up. And just as before he didn't. He was tough. Though Reginald suspected that it was actually the flesh that was tough. It refused to die, even though he was sure William Simons might have wanted to.

  “You could let the nurses do that.”

  The Pastor was right of course, he could. And normally he would. But not now. Not with this patient.

  “Etta's busy and Jones is asleep.”

  He was glad to have the two new nurses, and even more glad that they were nuns. He could trust them. Just as he could trust the technician the church had provided, though for a while he'd wondered if he'd have to send James away for emergency treatment. He only wished they had another doctor to help him. One was on the way, but he was coming in from out of state. Los Angeles and half of California was in complete chaos. The hospitals for a thousand miles were overflowing with emergency room and critical care patients. Finding a free doctor there was hard enough. Finding one who was also a trusted member of the church was nearly impossible. But after Doctor Adams he wasn't willing to have any other doctor go near his patient. Certainly not one provided by the government.

  He was certain that they had provided Doctor Adams or whoever he was with a specific goal in mind from the start. To get some samples. Maybe they hadn't instructed him to be so brutal in his methods, but they'd always intended for samples to be taken for research in a government facility somewhere. They'd always intended to break their agreement. It was the only way he could think that the doctor and half a dozen soldiers could have left in a military helicopter after they'd finished and flown away without anyone suspecting a thing. The official story about them having been spies with false identities seemed like a lie. A poor one.

  But if the bishop was right they'd have the proof in due course. The moment they tried to incorporate the angelic DNA into a human being somewhere else, they'd have another disaster on their hands and the truth would be known.

  And he knew they would try. The material they had got was incomplete. Half human half angelic and completely chaotic. They didn't have any of the virus he'd created left. Reginald already knew tissue culture wouldn't work. The angelic material didn't do well outside of a body. So sooner or later they would figure out that the only chance they had to salvage any of the experiment was to find a compatible donor and try to grow the host cells in him. And then they would start this whole nightmare all over again. He wondered if the new host would be told what would happen to him. Or just used. As he had used William Simons.

  They sat there in silence for a while, watching William Simons as he stubbornly kept living despite everything that had been done to him. And then unexpectedly Elijah asked him the question he could never answer.

  “Why?”

  It was a terrible question. Terrible because he didn’t know how to answer it – and worse because he had to try.

  “I don't know.”

  But that was a lie. He did know why he'd done it. It just wasn't the sort of knowledge that he could put into words. Not words that made a lot of sense. Not even to him.

  “I had to know.”

  He'd said that before, and in a way it was the truth. He had had to know. But no matter how many times he'd told people that, and no matter how fascinating the idea had been, it wasn't the need for knowledge that had driven him. Not for scientific knowledge anyway. He was curious. It was probably his dominant personality trait. But it wasn't intellectual curiosity that had driven him to commit his crime. That was there, but the motivation ran far deeper.

  “Know what?” Pastor Franks had guessed as much. And maybe he deserved to know. Maybe he could hear his confession.

  “I don't fully know.” But he did. He just didn't want to know. And he certainly didn't want to make it real by saying it out loud. But they had a right to know.

  “It began with Mary. With her death.”

  It was a difficult thing for him to talk about. Even to remember. But maybe this was the time for it, and someone should know.

  “When she died I was lost. A part of me had died with her. You see before I met her I was nothing. A bright, young trainee doctor with an ego the size of a small planet and curiosity to match. But she changed me. She made me a better man. I still don't know how. All I do know is that she made me want to be better. She made me care about people as I never had before.”

  “Before I met her I was probably destined to become like Doctor Adams. A scientist with nothing but a thirst for knowledge. But afterwards I became a doctor.”

  “And then she died. I couldn't understand that. I couldn't process it. And though she had returned me to my childhood faith, I couldn't understand. She was such a good woman. Lovely and kind and with a heart as big as a house. The world needed her. I needed her. And yet she was taken. And taken so cruelly. Cancer can be a terrible disease.”

  “For a long time after that I lived half a life. I went about my work and life and did what I had to do. But I did it only because I had to. There was no joy in the world.”

  “I lost my faith too. I couldn't understand how God could have done that to her. To me. I went to church, I said the words and bowed my head. But it was a learned behaviour, not belief.”

  “And then one day I was reading through her journals and I came across her entry about her visit to the Mileseva Monastery when she was sixteen, and my world changed. Something about it resonated within me. The more so when I read what she'd written about the stories of the brush. You see Mary was fascinated by it. She was an artist and the idea of a brush that could inspire was a wonder to her.”

  “Reading her journal brought me closer to her again. It let me feel her passion and wonder. Know her heart and soul. So I read it and read it again. I lived her visit. I dreamed her dreams. And then I moved on to the rest of her world.”

  “She had photos of all the frescoes in the monastery throughout her studio. She'd started painting some of them herself, trying to recreate the inspiration those ancient artists must have known. She had collected all the various stories of the brush as well. Written them down and gathered them together in a bundle in her desk. Analysed them, hunting for any clue she could find as to how the brush inspired. And among them was the tale of the brush having been made from the hair of the archangel Raphael.”

  “The moment I saw that I was hooked though I didn't understand why at first. All I knew was that my wife was dead, and that all her life she'd wanted nothing more than to see an angel. To have an angel guide her in her art. In that moment the two parts of my life came together. My work as a doctor developing genetic medicines. And my marriage to a woman who had both found a clue to a genetic trace of an angel and who had lived her life wanting to see one. And I knew then that I coul
d do it. That I could create her dream for her.”

  “After that the steps to my damnation as they say were all very logical. I built a private lab where I could perfect the techniques I needed to extract old DNA. I specialised in the specific medicine of gene insertion therapy. I encouraged the church to bring the relic to America by beginning a public awareness campaign.”

  “It took years, but time didn't matter to me. Nothing mattered except my wife's dream. I was doing it for Mary. There were setbacks, viruses that couldn't take sufficient genetic material, problems with the accuracy of the insertions, unexpected inactivation of genes, but each time I found a way through. And each time I overcame another obstacle I kept thinking it was fate. That I was doing what I was meant to do.”

  “Then, when I was ready I stole the brush. I faked a robbery and stole what I thought would lead to the most important discovery of my life. But it wasn't a scientific discovery I was hunting. Science was only the tool I used. It was about bringing back a tiny piece of my wife. Her dream. Never anything more than that.”

  “And then I found my victim.”

  They were surely the worst words any doctor could ever have to speak. But they were true and they had to be spoken.

  “Of course I never thought he would be a victim. I thought he would be a glorious triumph. A man transformed into an angel. A gift to my wife. Her dream given to the world. I was somehow completely blind to the risks.”

  “And even when I found him I thought that I'd found more proof that it was meant to be. That he was meant to become an angel. Born in Saint Mary's Hospital to a mother named Mary on the very same day that my wife visited the Mileseva Monastery and began her lifelong obsession with angels and a particular paint brush. Bearing the tattoo Fiat Lux, Let There Be Light. A good man confirmed in the faith. And most striking of all, bearing the middle name Raphael. So many coincidences. I was certain that when he volunteered for the trial that it had to be fate.”

  “But then the problems began. I'd intended to put him in the trial with the others and simply swap the dose. No one would know I figured. But I was delayed. I couldn't get the angelic DNA to replicate as it should, and I needed it to. I can replicate human DNA, mouse DNA almost any DNA on the planet. But not that. The standard techniques simply don't work on it and there were no others that did either. Not even tissue culture. Most tissues are destroyed by it, but I found a few – a very few – that could at least survive with the insertions. The only way it will truly replicate though is in a living cell inside a host. So as the trial continued and the six subjects were treated I worked frantically every night to find an answer. But the answer wasn't what I expected. The angelic material will not replicate outside of a human body. And not many human bodies at that.”

  “William though – his cells could survive the insertion and even allow for some tiny amount of multiplication. With everything else that I had discovered about him I thought that was another sign. And I thought that if his tissues could support the angelic DNA however minimally in culture, then in his body it would be better.”

  “Fortunately – or at least I thought so at the time, I could still do the insertion with what I had – my engineered virus is incredibly good at acquiring genes – but I would need to use all of it. I'd never planned on that. I had thought that I could do the procedure and then when it had been shown to be a complete success I could perform it on others. That potentially I could transform the entire world.”

  “But I couldn't do that. And then by the time I'd worked out how, I couldn't even add William to the trial. It was closed, the six subjects chosen. So I had to fake records and pretend there was a seventh subject. And I knew that sooner or later I would be caught.”

  “That meant I had to change another part of it. I had initially intended to do it bit at a time. To insert just a few genes at a time and see what happened. Then to do it again. To take it slowly and cautiously, maybe over many years. But when I knew I would be caught soon enough, I couldn't do that either. It was all or nothing. One shot. I had to give him everything.”

  “But I thought that too was fate. That it had to be done that way. That this was never the sort of thing that should be done in small steps. By then I was so committed to the plan, so far along in my madness that I couldn't see the blindingly obvious.”

  It was a form of tunnel vision he supposed. He could see nothing except what he was aiming at. And it was only when the train had started veering off the tracks that he had understood. And by then it was too late. Far too late. And no matter what he did now, he couldn't fix it.

  “It was madness. Superstitious behaviour as terrible as that of any compulsive gambler. I saw signs and thought they meant something other than coincidence. I turned a blind eye to all the warnings along the way. I threw reason out the window and medical ethics with it. And somehow I forgot in all of it that there was a real human being I was using as a guinea pig.”

  There was silence for a while after he finished speaking, probably because no one knew what to say. And then Pastor Franks cleared his throat.

  “Please don't say it Pastor.” Reginald held up his hand to stop him before he tried to say something consoling. There could be no consolation. Not for him.

  “There is nothing you can say to make any of this better. I know my failures, my crimes. They are unforgivable. And I will tell them to the judge when the time comes. It's not me who needs your comfort. It's Mr. Simons.”

  Chapter Twenty Five.

  Gamut sat in the major's office, annoyed that he should have to. Normally he didn't. After a mission he simply went home and in due course received his payment and sooner or later his next assignment. It was just the way things were for a private contractor like himself. And he liked it that way. It wasn't just for the pay either, though it helped that he was well compensated for his work. But he would have worked for far less. For a normal salary if need be. In the end he did what he did for his country. And the satisfaction he got from finishing an assignment and knowing that he had served his country and made America stronger, was worth more than mere coin – far more.

  In the end he was a patriot. Others might laugh if they heard that. But he didn't need to wear a uniform to prove it, and accepting money for his work didn't disprove it. In the end patriotism had nothing to do with wearing your country's colours or taking its money. It was about knowing that there was something greater than you and serving it unquestionably. A patriot was more than a man and he was proud to be a patriot.

  However his employers didn't seem to understand that. And sometimes they made things awkward as they worried about his loyalty. He wasn't certain that this was one of those times. It seemed more like some sort of clerical mess. There had been unexpected paperwork to do before he could receive his money. Forms to fill out. And then there had been checks to be done. Most of them medical checks as they worried that he might have been infected with the angelic DNA. As if that could happen. He wasn't stupid enough to get himself injected with something like that. Especially not when he'd seen the freak show on the morgue table. No one could be that stupid.

  Still, he'd done all the tests. Eight hours of sitting in a surgery being poked and prodded and having some tissues of his own sampled. At least they hadn't used the drill he'd been given for his job. He'd filled out the endless forms and handed them to the major. And soon a cool quarter million should be finding its way into his bank accounts. And that was as it should be. This was America – the home of capitalism. It was expected that a man should be compensated for his work. Especially when he'd done it well.

  And he had done it well.

  After all he'd done exactly what had been asked of him. He'd obtained the samples – all that they could want and more. The doctors hadn't exactly objected when he'd handed them the refrigerated briefcase full of samples nine or ten hours before. He hadn't killed anyone, not even the freak show on the table though he probably should have when the man was a threat to the national security. And he'
d left without anyone ever knowing who he was. No records, no pictures and no names.

  Even the mercenaries who had helped him didn't know who he was. All they knew was that they had been hired for a mission. To fly in, pretend to be members of the military – something that was made all the easier by the passwords and fake orders he had provided for them – and then escort him away while the others looked on. And then they had been paid and gone. They never knew what the freak on the table was. They didn't care. Their role was purely as muscle and show. And if they had ever started to wonder then sooner or later they would wind up with a bullet in their chests. They, like him, knew the rules. Complete anonymity.

  Every part of his mission had been completed perfectly. There was nothing that could go wrong any longer. That wasn't bad when he'd been given only a day to prepare. To take on the identity of a government doctor who himself was using a fake name. Lies within lies. And then to be trained in all the medical jargon he needed to know in a matter of hours.

  It really wasn't bad when he considered how much crap he'd had to listen to. The maudlin self-recriminations of the bungling doctor who'd created the mess in the first place. Gamut really disliked the man. More correctly he despised him. He had aspired to greatness and yet somehow had not only failed but buried himself in guilt. And not guilt for his failure, but guilt for what he had done to a single man. That was no way for a true scientist to think. You couldn't make an omelette without breaking eggs as they said. And regardless of whether his experiment had worked out as he wanted, he had made significant technological advances in genetic engineering. Advances that the country needed.