Immortal Stories: Eve

by Gene Doucette

  “That’s so, yes,” Eve said.

  “Why do you say that, doctor Marks?” Rick asked. “I mean, it’s true, but what gave it away?”

  He smiled. “Son, if someone handed you one of my business cards, you already know why. I don’t treat humans down here. A few times a month I work a rotation down at Saint Jude’s and then I’ll see humans, but out here I serve another kind of client. You are definitely human. Her, I’m not completely certain.”

  “I am,” she said.

  “You need some sun!” he said with a laugh. “Someone might come after you with a stake one day.”

  “My eyes are the wrong color and it’s still daytime, but I understand your point.”

  “Yes of course, I know your eyes are the wrong color, but someone else might not. Thank goodness for those silly movies, people nowadays think much more highly of vampires—”

  “Hold up,” Rick interrupted. “No, you know what? Never mind. I’m all the way on the other side of the looking glass already here.”

  “Now, were you testing me, Rick? Was this why you came?”

  “Nah, I just wanted to hear someone else say this stuff. I’ve been getting it from her for a few weeks now, and I figured either I was losing my mind or she’d already lost hers.”

  “You look healthy to me,” he said to Eve, in a way that sounded like a compliment and not a lascivious assertion. This was perhaps a talent a medical doctor would have to develop, given how often he had to ask people to remove clothing for clinical reasons.

  “So, now that we all agree the world is full of stranger things than us, what can I help you with?”

  “I have a number of questions,” Eve said. “But we actually have brought you a patient.”

  “Oh! Are they still in the car? You can bring them in, certainly.”

  “No, they’re here. Dee, would you say hello to the doctor?”

  Dee hovered in front of his face.

  “H’lo,” she said.

  Dr. Marks nearly fainted.

  * * *

  “I’d heard of them, of course, but I never expected to meet one!” Dr. Marks said, a little later. He was looking at Dee under a magnifying glass, and Dee, to her credit, was sitting still for him. It helped that Rick had mushrooms in his pocket for her once this was over.

  They had moved to the doctor’s examination room, which was a brightly lit and far more impressively antiseptic area behind a cheap wooden door near the desk in his waiting room. This had more of the feel Eve was expecting on a visit to a medical practitioner: stocked shelves full of sealed containers of clean objects, all the surfaces silvery and gleaming, and the ever-present aroma of rubbing alcohol.

  “And they’re self-aware, you say?” he asked. “And intelligent?”

  “Of course,” Eve said. “You conversed with her.”

  “So I did. Hello, little pixie, aren’t you remarkable!”

  “H’lo,” Dee said.

  He put the glass away.

  “The condition you described the other one in, have you seen anything like that in this… Dee is it?”

  “No, but we saw Cee in an advanced stage of deterioration. I couldn’t say how it began, or what that beginning looked like. But you’ve never treated a pixie before, so I imagine you wouldn’t know what to look for either.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t. Intelligent or not, if she has no way to way to pay for treatment, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be customary for me to offer care. A veterinarian, possibly.”

  “You think the pet shop has a pixie doc?” Rick asked.

  “Probably not. I also don’t think it would occur to one to seek medical help.”

  “She looks healthy to you, though?” Eve asked.

  “Sure. But as you’ve pointed out, I don’t know what to look for, so I’m not sure how much help I can really offer.”

  Eve considered asking if he had ever witnessed a dead demon, but decided against doing so. It seemed unlikely that the man who lived in this large house and nice suburban neighborhood would be familiar with the likes of a demon. A battlefield surgeon might have more applicable experience.

  “The elf who gave me your card, he was sick. He’d been to see you recently.”

  “I see lots of elves, sure. I’d ask you to give me a name to narrow it down, but we’re going to hit a real problem with patient confidentiality. I really can’t talk about anyone’s sickness without them here to provide consent. You understand.”

  “I do.”

  She had never even asked the elf for his name. The idea that he might be difficult to re-locate or that he may not be sufficiently unique and therefore require a title was one that hadn’t occurred.

  “This was… it would have been over two weeks since you saw him. You provided pills for his condition. I’m not asking for details on his disease specifically, but if there was another being in your office displaying symptoms for a similar disease as that which killed Cee... I’m asking if you see any evidence of that in Dee.”

  “Like I said, she looks healthy, for whatever that’s worth.”

  It was such a simple question: did the elf have the same disease as that which she described? The doctor seemed constitutionally incapable of responding to direct questions because of his odd confidentiality rules to protect a patient whose identity she couldn’t even provide.

  Rick gave it a try. “Doctor, what we’re basically wondering is if you’ve ever seen or heard of a condition like the one we’re talking about. Whether you saw it in this one patient or in any patient of yours ever.”

  “Well no, I haven’t, but I can ask around and see if anyone else has. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise but the kind of doctor that specializes in these sorts of clients… we all know one another. I’m pretty sure I’d remember seeing one of mine melting, so fair to say I never have, but maybe someone else has. Do you have any reason to think what would do that to a pixie would do the same thing to an adult of any other kind of species?”

  “That can happen, right? A virus can jump from one species to another. Happens all the time.”

  “Yes, yes, Rick, you aren’t wrong. What I mean is it’s unusual for us to see the same impact. It’s less common for the same thing to cause fatalities in small things and in big things. Like… this is a silly example, but caffeine is poisonous to certain bugs, but humans can’t get enough of it. Or better, a dose of rat poison sufficient to kill a rat is not generally adequate to kill a person. It’s a question of scale. There’s a version of the ebola virus fatal to monkeys but manifests as a head cold in people. It can go the other direction as well. Malaria doesn’t kill mosquitos, but it will do a lot to a human. Now, something interesting enough to do what you’ve described to a pixie and also to an elf, I see no reason it wouldn’t do the same to both of you, yet neither of you appear to be sick. I have no reason to think such a thing would be possible.”

  They’re all the same. Don’t you see? Dream-Adam said yet again.

  The dream ran counter to the doctor’s experience, though, and since Dr. Marks was real and the Adam in her head was not, she felt intellectually obligated to believe the medical man. Emotionally, though, the figment of her nightmare was the one she sided with.

  “Where’d the pills come from?” Rick asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “She said the elf had some pills to help him get better. Do you doctors have your own pharmacy too?”

  “Ah, now that I can talk about! Rick, there are a number of medical conditions specific to one species or another, and many of them require a unique treatment. Often that treatment is common and mundane. For instance, imps are horribly allergic to pistachios, but the cure is a shot of drambuie. But there are some conditions requiring more… exotic things, and some of those things don’t exist in a natural form anywhere, or they do but in such small amounts as to be effectively non-existent as a cure for a large sub-culture.

  “Understand that those of us in this field, much of the time we’re work
ing with… shall we say, traditional cures. Holistic, even. You could argue a professional such as myself is as much a historian as a medical man. This is why we all keep in touch, you see. There are no laboratories working on cures for these folks. There aren’t enough of them to treat, and established medical science doesn’t know they exist anyway.”

  “Yet you have pills,” Eve said.

  “Yes. There are several manufacturing facilities that, in addition to producing supplements for human consumption, provide us with pills for various ailments. Now, let me say… hopefully I can phrase this in a reasonable way… It’s possible I know the elf you spoke to. I do recall one a few weeks back with what I’d call flu-like symptoms. Nothing too terribly serious, and to be honest it was probably a bug he picked up from a human. That happens quite a lot with goblins and elves, as they’re very close to us and some flu viruses are sufficiently indiscriminate. Viruses work much the same in elves as in humans as well. Once they have it, it’s mostly about getting them comfortable and allowing their own immune systems to rally. But for elves, there’s a tree root extract that does a marvelous job of boosting their natural immunity. The problem is, the root is from a baobab tree, which is native to only a few places on Earth, and we aren’t in one of those places. An extract is available in pill form, however. Here.”

  He opened one of the drawers built into his wall, and pulled out a white plastic bottle. He tossed it to Rick.

  “These are made by a local company, actually. They’re only about thirty miles from here. Good people.”

  Rick took a look at the label, then opened the bottle.

  “They smell,” he noted.

  “Sure do. Have one! They won’t do a thing for you, but they won’t hurt you either.”

  “No thanks.”

  Rick moved to hand the bottle back, but Marks waved him off. “It’s all right, we broke the seal. May as well hang onto it.”

  “Right.”

  “The elf I met… I touched his skin and it felt… sticky. Gummy, almost. Can you… did you observe anything like this?”

  “Not that I recall, Eve. Was it a hot day?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “If he still had the flu, he was probably fighting a fever. Elves can get really clammy. It was probably something as simple as that. You’re lucky you didn’t pick up anything if you were that close to him, to be honest. Someone with his symptoms I’d be recommending bed rest to. If he was out, there’s a good chance he was infecting the people around him.”

  “Thank you, yes. I’m sure I was lucky.”

  She saw no need to discuss her own immune system with the doctor. That would lead to a much longer conversation.

  “And again, I don’t see how a pixie and an elf could get hit with the same thing like that. If it can jump between those two species, there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t also jump to humans. I appreciate your concern, but I don’t think you need to worry about Dee, or any other friends you might have concerns over. Keep my card, of course! I love references! And like I said I can ask around. If you kids want to leave contact information, I’ll be happy to phone you up if something shakes out.”

  “That’d be great, sure,” Rick said. He pulled out a business card of his own and put it on the desk. The doctor slid it into she pocket of his shirt, and stood.

  “If there’s nothing else?”

  “No, thank you,” Eve said. “I thought… it’s something I made up, I suppose. I thought it was possible they were all the same in some way.”

  “All they who?”

  “Non-human beings. Something that could connect them to one another, perhaps medically. It was a notion. But I imagine if there were, you would know.”

  “I know what you’re saying, sure. But as far as I’m aware, the only thing connecting them is that none of my neighbors are aware they exist. Biologically, they’re as different as birds and dogs.”

  * * *

  By the time they reached the car, Eve had talked herself into the idea that the doctor was probably right: she was making something out of nothing. An awful thing had happened to Cee; that was undeniable. But if Dee looked healthy and felt okay and the elf she spoke to just had a flu—and was receiving medical care for it—there was nothing else to worry about.

  It was interesting, then, that as soon Rick pulled away from the curb he was ready with an opinion that differed significantly.

  “That was some bullshit,” he said.

  She laughed. “Now your gut is bothering you?”

  “It sure is. I’m not a hundred percent sure that man’s even a doctor.”

  “He has a sign with the staff of Hermes, that’s usually a positive indication.”

  “Sure, and he rotates at the hospital, fine, maybe he’s a human doctor, but I’m not buying anything he had to say about the other kind.”

  My paranoia may be the only infectious thing here, she thought.

  “Tell me why you say this.”

  “Well all right, I’m not any kind of doctor, right? But I know what science is supposed to sound like, and it’s not extract of some exotic tree root and a shot of drambuie. I mean, look at this.”

  He dropped the pill bottle into her hands.

  “You want to tell me these people… these whatever-you-want-to-call-them… tell me they’re real? Okay. Goblins, elves, something called an imp, why not? They’re real. We’ll roll with it and keep on going. But now tell me the only choice they have for medical care is witch-doctor pills from that guy, and I’m sorry, something’s gone wrong.”

  “I’m unfamiliar with how medicine is made, but I know a number of herbal remedies. This doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.”

  “Sure, but these things get tested, okay? Look, I get a headache, I can either take an herbal supplement or I can take some medicine. I have that option, because at some point someone took the time to do some scientific testing on some things and came up with a drug that will help me with my headache, and if I don’t like the idea of taking a drug I can take some gingko extract or rub some tea leaves on my eyelids or whatever. But from what I just heard, if I’m an elf and I’m not feeling well, I have to go see doctor here-try-this, handing out tree roots and calling it drugs.”

  She took a look at the label on the bottle. The company name was Holitix, which meant nothing to her. The bottle had a symbol on it that did look familiar, but she wasn’t sure if she could place it correctly, historically.

  “This is very old,” she said.

  “The remedy?”

  “The markings in their house symbol. Beside their name.”

  He laughed. “The company logo.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me see?”

  He was pulling back onto the highway. It always unnerved her when she was being driven by someone who was also speaking, or otherwise not devoting full attention to the road. She didn’t know how to drive and didn’t expect she would ever put herself in a position to learn, so it was possible she was overreacting. Perhaps it was easy. It seemed more probable that the apparent ease gave the driver a false comfort and allowed them to ignore how often they were flirting with a horrible death.

  “Please just watch the road. I’ll describe it. It’s an X, with a line connecting the top of the left-and-right diagonal so the X looks like a sort of table. On top of the horizontal line are three vertical marks that are fatter in the bottom half than in the top half. They look like bottles, nearly.”

  “Huh. Doesn’t sound like anything I’ve seen before. Probably just an artistic design. Medicines on a table.”

  “That may well be what it means, but where it comes from… It’s very, very old.”

  “How old? Older than you?”

  “No. The Earth is older than me. Few other things are. Perhaps we can use your computer to figure out where it comes from.”

  “Do you think it’s important?”

  “I don’t know. But doctor Marks said when he needs exotic remedies he goes to this company,
and you’ve said there should be real science behind the remedies. If we want to satisfy your concerns, we will need to learn more about Holitix.”

  “My concerns? This was all your idea.”

  “It was. It may still be. My instinct is to assume the worst about this world, Rick. I’d like to believe this time I am wrong, and the reasoning he provided was sound.”

  “An hour ago I would have been there with you. I’m not so sure now.”

  “Yes. But you also just learned there were other sentient creatures living in your shadows. I would say this makes you temporarily predisposed to conspiratorial thinking.”

  He laughed. “I’m gonna call in sick to work this week and tell them that’s what I got. I bet they’ll be cool with it.”

  * * *

  The markings in the Holitix logo were in a script called Vinca, a meaningless title given by whichever modern archeologist was responsible for assigning the ancient alphabet a name. Vinca—the word—had no correlation to the root name or communal origin of the people who used the alphabet, but Eve also couldn’t remember what they called themselves, so Vinca it was.

  The meaning she understood well enough. Vinca wasn’t a language in the modern sense: the symbols didn’t represent sounds in a spoken tongue. This was a pictographic language, and so in this instance the symbol meant exactly what it looked like: bottles on a table. It was a representation of a shop or, in this instance, an apothecary.

  It made for an interesting choice in company design, but Eve wasn’t sure it was anything more than that.

  Rick’s research into the company, meanwhile, had taken on an even more conspiratorial bent. He looked into Holitix’s finances—legally, she assumed—and discovered a parent company that sold vitamins, breakfast cereal, and a few other things. He ascribed great significance to this, but when she tried to grasp why, she fell short.

  His next steps were to map out the reach—market and geographic—of the entire conglomerate, believing it proved something Eve also couldn’t see or fully understand.

  “Imagine if each of these factories is putting out stuff like this…” he held the pill bottle aloft, “…from the back door at the same time the stuff they advertise is going out the front.”