The Curiosity: A Novel

by Stephen Kiernan

  “Don’t be,” I reassured him. “Please. There is no shame in sadness. Besides, being restrained like this would depress anyone.”

  I knew Carthage would not hesitate to put the frozen man’s weeping on the Web, if he thought it would generate donations. I felt the impending invasion of privacy with dread. This was not science, it was voyeurism. Here was a moment for me to retreat, cover my ass and stay out of trouble, yet my impulse was the opposite. Only a monster can see a person weep and not take action because of something as lowly as a boss. So I leaned down, opened the ankle straps, lifted his legs so he could know he had liberty.

  From the hallway I fetched the wheelchair set aside for a moment that everyone thought was months away, but which had now arrived. By the time I rolled it to the bedside, the frozen man had composed himself. He was sitting up, stretching his ankles this way and that. “I need to tell you something.”

  “And I need to show you something,” I replied. “You first.”

  “My name.”

  “Your name? Fantastic. I’ve been dying to know. Please.”

  He put a fist on each thigh. He straightened his back. He looked me in the eye. I cannot express how riveting it was to make eye contact with a man from another time. Feeling the thrill, I went calm, folding my hands. Waiting.

  “My name is Jeremiah Rice.”

  “How do you do, Jeremiah Rice?” I laughed, clasping his hand, giving it a vigorous shake. “Kate Philo, at your service. It is a pleasure to meet you. When . . . how do I ask this? When are you from?”

  “The last birthday I recall was my thirty-eighth. Today I deduced with fair certainty that my last clear memory comes from nineteen hundred aught six.”

  “Wow. You died over a hundred years ago, Jeremiah Rice.”

  “A paradox that warrants considerable explanation on your part.” He tugged on one whisker. “Is there anything from my time that remains in the here and now?”

  “Good question.” I scanned the chamber, looking for something reminiscent of a world so far in the past. But it was all new, everything: fluorescent lights, digital clocks, the security keypad instead of an old-fashioned key. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” I said. “But Jeremiah: that’s a biblical name.”

  “I came from a mother of faith.”

  “Were you a member of the clergy?”

  He shook his head. “I was a judge.”

  A judge. How lucky was the project, to have reanimated a public figure? I stifled an urge to run to the computer, ferret out the history of the man with that name and profession. There would be ample time for digging later. Instead I pointed at the main camera, his eyes following my finger. “World, this is His Honor Judge Jeremiah Rice.”

  “Good evening.” He smiled wanly, not at the camera but at me.

  “You are remembering things now?”

  “All day.” His smile vanished. Then he turned his face sideways, as if listening to something in another room. “It has been a flood.”

  “Do you think you could handle some new memories? Created right now?”

  After a moment he returned from wherever he’d gone. “That would be welcome.”

  “Excellent.” I knelt by the bed, drawing slippers onto Judge Rice’s feet. “Remember I said I had something to show you? Well, here we go.”

  One summer in college, when I was still debating whether to pursue medicine or bio research, I worked in a nursing home in Atlanta. One afternoon Nurse Emma pulled me aside. She was an enormous woman with a small head, an almost comical appearance, but she possessed the confidence that comes from rock-solid competence.

  “I seen how you hoisted that big fella earlier on today, and you listen, honey. They’s only one way to lift a fat old man without you hurting yourself,” she said. “You watch me now. Like this.” She squatted, bending her legs like a longshoreman, keeping her back as stiff as wood. “All the hoist is in the knees.”

  Emma was right. Over that summer many workers injured their backs, but I used her lifting technique without coming to harm. I also fell in love with colorful, patient, frail old people, watching nine of them die before I went back to school. I cried openly over each one, Emma shaking her head. “I woulda took you for a weeper, sure, but criminy what a faucet you got.”

  The grief from those nine put an end to my career indecision. Laboratory creatures were never going to break my heart. Or so I thought.

  Remembering Emma’s instructions now, I squatted beside the bed and extended my head. Judge Rice hesitated, so I lifted his arms and wrapped them around my neck. He pulled back. “Forgive me. I am not accustomed to being so familiar.”

  I faced him. “Did you ever have to surrender some of your reserve to a physician, or give up your privacy?”

  “Of course. Once on the voyage when I lacerated my thigh, the ship’s physician cut away my trousers before the whole crew.”

  “Well, I am a kind of doctor.”

  “You are? What kind?”

  “Cells, actually. Cell biology.”

  “What are cells?”

  “Ah. A long story. Let’s just say they’re a very tiny part of the body, of which I am a doctor.”

  “I surmised that you were a student. From observing the way they treat you.”

  “That’s a long story, too. For now I just want you to think of me in a medical way, all right? My supporting you when you stand, that’s therapeutic.”

  “Therapeutic.” He raised his arms again, lamely, but I ducked under them and locked his hands behind my neck. Next I straightened, lifting him from the bed. Judge Rice’s legs touched my legs, his torso draped against me like in some high school slow dance, we stood in an almost embrace. I felt myself flush. So much time had passed since I’d last been that close to a man, experiencing the solidness, the weight of him. So I went to my usual place when flustered, my inner island of calm. I looked past Judge Rice’s shoulder to see the time on the control room clock—8:52—fixing it in memory to put in my notes later as the moment he first stood.

  “You smell good,” Judge Rice said.

  “Thank you,” I said, stepping sideways like in a half waltz, bending my knees, depositing him gently in the chair. I hurried around behind so he would not see me blush. “It’s lavender.”

  “Where are we going now?” His voice sounded small, almost young, vulnerable.

  “That is my question precisely.” Billings stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. “Lovely, may I ask what you think you are doing?”

  “Freeing the prisoner.”

  “As your friend, I urge you to reconsider. Merely entering the chamber could be grounds for dismissal.”

  “Pardon my manners,” I said, easing the chair forward. “Dr. Graham Billings, allow me to introduce Judge Jeremiah Rice.”

  “How do you do?” The judge held out his hand.

  “A judge? It is an honor, sir.” Billings shook hands, recrossed his arms, glared at me. “You will do this man no good if you are terminated.”

  “He has been awake and strapped down for fourteen days. How long do you think is acceptable?”

  “Kate, lovely, you have to maintain a long view of these things. Patience now makes possible all sorts of actions later.”

  “Is fifteen days, okay? Sixteen?”

  “You know the politics here. Give an inch to gain a mile.”

  “Or to lose another inch,” I said.

  “I don’t understand,” Judge Rice said to Billings. “Have I put this woman in some sort of danger of losing her employment?”

  “Yes,” Billings answered.

  “No,” I said. “I am making my own choices here.”

  Billings shook his head. “Don’t do it.”

  “Please step away from the door.”

  “What about potential infection?”

  “Judge Rice has an immune system just like us.”

  “But, lovely, it’s utterly unschooled in the hazards of this era.”

  “Are you kidding? He
was born in 1868, half a century before antibiotics. His immune system could probably kick our immune system’s butt.”

  Billings staggered. “1868? How do you know this?”

  “He told me, Graham.”

  “We brought back a man born in 1868?” Billings fell back against the wall, his mind grappling with this new fact. I rolled the wheelchair past him. The security door hissed closed behind us with Billings still in the chamber.

  “I did not understand any of that conversation.”

  “Don’t worry, Judge Rice.” We cruised through the control room into the corridor. “Everything is going to be fine.”

  “Could you tell me, please, where we are going?”

  I grabbed both handles so we could roll faster. “To see the world.”

  When the elevator reached the top floor, I wheeled Judge Rice into the hallway.

  “How did you do that?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “The door closed on one room, but opened on a different one.”

  “Oh.” I laughed. “That’s an elevator. We’re on a different floor of the building now.”

  “Brilliant,” he said. “How does it work?”

  “Well, I don’t know exactly. There’s a motor on the roof, and cables down to the room we were riding in. It runs up and down a column through the center of the building.”

  “Ha ha.” Judge Rice wagged his head side to side. “A great invention.”

  I started wheeling him again. “I suppose it is.”

  When we found the roof access, I discovered it was up a flight of stairs. This was a new experience for me, to see our destination in plain sight, yet not be able to reach it.

  Judge Rice tilted his face, considering the stairway as if it were a mountain whose altitude needed assessing. “What is up there, Dr. Philo?”

  “The rooftop,” I said. “Outside, there’s a pretty good view of the city.”

  “Which city might that be?”

  “You mean no one has told you where you are? What do they do with you all day?” I shook my head. “It’s Boston.”

  “Ha ha.” His eyes brightened. “I love Boston.”

  “I thought you might have been here before, since you’re wearing boots from Lynn. You’ll find the city considerably changed.”

  Again Judge Rice cast an eye up the stairs. “I’ve observed how strong you are, Dr. Philo. Nonetheless, I don’t imagine you could carry me.”

  I locked the brakes. “How about a team effort? The old college try?”

  “Excuse me?”

  I laughed. “It means to do your best. Or something like that.”

  “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp—or what’s a heaven for?”

  “Did you just make that up?”

  “Hardly.” He raised his arms toward me. “Browning.”

  I used Nurse Emma’s lifting technique, brought Judge Rice beside the railing, slid under his arm, pulled his hip against mine. “You were well read, in your old life?”

  He took a hesitant step. “Not especially. I was weak on Homer, for example. Although I loved Shakespeare and Swift, I had no use for Milton whatsoever.”

  I smiled. “I feel the same way. Milton and I have never gotten along.”

  “You’re teasing me.” He was smiling, too.

  “More like laughing at myself. Ready?”

  Judge Rice took a deep breath. He brought his hand down on my shoulder, gripped the railing, stared straight ahead. “Ready.”

  I moved forward, he lifted his right foot, I hoisted, we rose one step. In that fashion we inched our way up, toward the rooftop and revelation.

  The fire door was metal, heavy, and jammed shut. I leaned Judge Rice against the wall and banged the door with my shoulder. It moved about an eighth of an inch. “I did not expect this,” I said, banging it again.

  “It’s fine,” he panted. “Fine.”

  I looked at the sheen of perspiration on his face, his lips white at the corners, and worried that I had made a terrible mistake. What his heart rate must have been, that poor muscle that had only been beating again for fourteen days. “Should we go back down?”

  “Not when we’ve come this far. Assiduity always prevails.” He gestured with his chin. “You’re hitting too high, Dr. Philo. Kick it like a mule, right near the handle.”

  I stepped to the side and followed his advice. After two kicks the door swung wide. A gust of wind banged it hard against the outside wall. “Good advice, Judge Rice,” I said, turning in jubilation.

  He was on the ground, clutching his throat. I bent beside him, my mind already halfway down the stairs to slap that red panic button. “Are you all right? Is it your lungs? What is it?”

  He swallowed hard, as if he had a stone in his throat. “You can’t smell it?”

  I looked around. It was just a concrete stairwell, metal stairs. “Smell what?”

  “The ocean.”

  “Oh, yes, the salt air. The wind must be from the east tonight.”

  “Poison,” he gasped. “It’s like poison.”

  I searched his face. “How could it be? I don’t understand you.”

  He tapped the end of his nose. “It wasn’t just water I breathed in, Dr. Philo. It was salt water. Salt water that killed me. It feels like someone is scouring my sinuses.”

  The wind banged the fire door again. It was early April, but a late winter storm was heaving itself against the city. A gust swirled in on us, part snow, part dust.

  “Come on, Judge Rice.” I hooked him under one arm. “We did this too soon. I’m taking you back down.”

  “No,” he said, his face gone hard. I had a feeling the judge was in charge now, the authority from the bench. “If I am to experience a second life, mystery though it remains how such a thing could be possible, I must live it. I must see this place where the battered ship of my existence has come into harbor.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He set his jaw, raised his arms toward me.

  “Well, then,” I said, “only a few more steps.”

  As I lifted him that time, he leaned heavier into me. I could feel the heat of his body, his exertions. We turned the corner, reached the threshold. Then he took his hand from my shoulder, shuffling the last few steps on his own. I let him go, hovering in case he stumbled, as he moved himself forward into the dark.

  I am not a praying person. But I had a moment then, when I wished very hard for him. That he would not be overwhelmed, that he would not get sick, that he would not go crazy. I wished on his behalf, then followed to where he stood.

  Judge Rice covered his mouth with both hands, staring with eyes wide. Below lay the streets of Boston, its edges softened by an inch of fresh snow. Streetlamps cast amber down the avenues. Smoke rose from chimneys and pipes near and far. Cars followed the paths of their headlights. A taxi honked twice. Pedestrians crowded the nighttime sidewalks, headed to friends’ apartments perhaps or home from a movie. The protesters had departed the green across from our building, leaving a small snowy park. To the right rose the spire of the North Church, to the left stood the sixty-story John Hancock Building, its glass skin reflecting the surrounding lights. A jet came roaring into view and Judge Rice startled at that, bending his knees as if to bolt, then followed the aircraft with his gaze as it banked east and out to sea. A police car brought his attention back, chirping its siren just long enough to cut through an intersection.

  I stood beside the frozen man, seeing the city with new eyes. It was complex, it was beautiful, I felt a compassion for its people almost like pity. He lowered his hands, any pain from the salt air now anesthetized by the luminous spectacle at his feet.

  “Well, your honor,” I said to him. “What do you think?”

  Judge Rice shook his head. “Humanity,” he said, “you’ve been busy.”

  CHAPTER 13

  On the Record

  (Daniel Dixon)

  That’s what he said? We’ve been busy?”

  “I told you th
at already,” Dr. Kate said.

  I dutifully wrote it down. “And again, the reason you took him up there?”

  “He was grieving. Look at the tape. He’d been crying. Being restrained had depressed him.” Unconsciously, she pulled her hair back. “After fourteen days, it would depress anyone.”

  She wore snug jeans, a white top that looked like it would be soft to the touch. She had a tired look, from working all night and then having to stay for this meeting. Dr. Kate slipped off her shoes, turned in the chair, and tucked her feet under her butt. What a kitten. I had to scan my notes for a second, just to collect myself.

  “What else?” she asked, sounding about as enthusiastic as colonoscopy patient.

  We were waiting outside Carthage’s office, summoned by Thomas that morning. Billings was there, too, sitting apart and keeping his nose in his notes. The door was closed, a murmuring from within. Who would Carthage be meeting with, this early in the day? I was always first, to review the previous day and discuss the highlights tape Gerber pulled together for morning release. Today Carthage had put me off twice, and now this. The security guys downstairs called Thomas away, which gave me a few private minutes for reporting. “How did you plan to get him back down the stairs without assistance?”

  “I do not think that calling a couple of techs in for fifteen minutes constitutes a capital offense. Besides, what about Judge Rice? Now we know his name, his profession. The doors of his history are just beginning to open.”

  “Look, Dr. Kate.” I chewed a second on the end of my pen. “How do I say this without making it a leading question?”

  She did a slow blink. “Lead away.”

  “Well, this project is Carthage’s baby, is what it is. He made the whole deal happen here. No Carthage, no ice ship, no Jeremiah being woken up. And the good doctor could not have been clearer about what he sees the purpose of this project to be. Research, so that many more people can be reanimated down the road. I’ve heard him go on about this till my ears had blisters. Yet you blew all of that off. Took the guy out of the chamber, risked infection, exposed him to the dirty Boston air without so much as a surgical mask. That bails fairly completely on the scientific angle, wouldn’t you say?”