The Curiosity: A Novel

by Stephen Kiernan

  “What’s your question?”

  “Well, I guess it would be this: what were you thinking?”

  “There is a balance to be struck here, Dixon. I would think you’d understand that already.” She scooted forward in her chair, just an inch or two of her sweet backside still on the seat. “I am a scientist by profession and inclination, which means I care deeply about what we learn here. But I am also a human being, mindful that Judge Rice is a human being, so I also care about how we learn.” She rubbed her forehead. “When I was in grad school, we injected mice with cancer cells so we could try possible cures on them. We bred rabbits just so we could take their blood for testing new drugs. If you are really generous, and keep in mind the lofty larger goals we were after, still you could say we were in a morally gray area. Now that we have a person, this . . . this guy, in my view we have moved totally out of the gray. I no longer work for Erastus Carthage. I work for the Lazarus Project, which includes taking the best care I can of Judge Rice.”

  Billings made a faint cough. I looked sidewise and the guy was definitely eavesdropping. It had been a long time since he turned a page. Oh well, no skin off me.

  “What about the hug, though? Not quite so freaking scientific, Dr. Kate. Did you forget the cameras were on?”

  She pursed her lips. “The right thing to do is also the right thing to do in front of a camera.”

  “Even if it gets you fired?”

  “I have only been thinking about that all night long.”

  “You can’t do old Frank much good if you get canned.”

  “Judge Rice, you mean.” She smiled. “Actually he helped me prepare for this meeting. He offered excellent advice for keeping my job. The judge’s legal mind remains quite sharp.”

  “Even so, your termination may be what is happening next, right?”

  “Well.” Dr. Kate sat back in the chair, crossed her legs, folded her arms over her breasts. The body language equivalent of a turtle retreating into its shell. “Isn’t that what we’re both here to find out?”

  Right then I had to admit it, plain and simple: yours truly just could not figure this one out. You don’t see a lot of hotties in a lab, first of all. She was still at a decent baby-making age, too, yet I’d never seen a guy within two miles of her. No ladies calling either, so it’s not Plan B. She works for maybe the world’s most controlling boss, yet she refuses to kiss his pompous ass like everyone else. An idiot would know that the hug, unstrapping, leaving the range of the cameras, any of that would make Carthage pop his clogs with rage. Dr. Kate did it all anyway.

  She’s not stupid, though. Back in August, while she brought the body back through Canada, I tracked down her grad school adviser, now a geek beyond salvation at the National Academy in D.C., and he said she was a bona fide genius, smarter than Carthage and Gerber combined.

  Sure. And she owes it all to him, right? Perhaps we are committing a slight overstatement, Herr Professor? But his praise did lead me to track down her dissertation, on monoclonal antibodies and T-cell lymphocytes, and I curled up with it for a nice evening’s education. Can’t let a title scare you off, right? If you give these papers a chance, the stuff inside often makes a distant version of sense.

  Not hers. I mean, I have digested my share of opaque research documents over the years at Intrepid: bending light, gravitational fields, evolutionary shortcuts in worms. And I often came away understanding more than I get from an overhead announcer in a train station. Dr. Kate’s? Not a chance. For all yours truly could comprehend, it might as well have been written in Cyrillic.

  “I notice you’re not answering me,” she said.

  I came back to the present. “I don’t know anything. I’m just the scribbler.”

  There was a bark of laughter from inside Carthage’s office. Who could possibly be in there? My job is to know, yet here I was in the dark. Pissed me off. But I got my answer about three seconds later.

  “Great, then, Dr. Carthage, terrific.” Out stepped Wilson Steele, damn it to hell. Senior science reporter at the New York Times, all six foot four of him. He’d authored two books on cryogenics, too: a scientific treatise titled Margin of Possibility and a popular one called On Ice, which I’d read years back—and loved, too, blast it all. In other words, the real thing is back in town. There goes my exclusive access, my global bylines. I guess the moment was bound to arrive eventually. But damn.

  “You have my direct line,” Carthage was saying while Steele worked his hand up and down like an old water pump down on the farm. “Don’t be a stranger.”

  “No, sir,” Steele said. He turned to go, spotted me, and made his giant hand into an imaginary pistol so he could shoot me as he passed. “Nice work you’re doing, Dixon.”

  Right. Pat me on the head on my way down. The bastard.

  Carthage had already retreated into his lair. “Come in, come in,” he called after. Of course I stepped back so Dr. Kate could go first. Billings stood and snapped his notebook shut, when all along I’d figured he was the meeting after us. I hung back half a second, and Wilson Steele leaned toward me with a whisper.

  “You’re not really buying any of this place’s crap, are you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t be coy, man. You hanging in till you can expose the whole fraud?”

  I chuckled. “I used to think that way. But this place is legit.”

  “Sure it is, Dixon.” He winked on his way to the corridor. “Sure it is.”

  “Daniel?” Carthage called from inside his office. “Anytime now.”

  I hustled right along. Was Steele gaming me? What was he up to?

  Carthage sat at his desk, splooging some of that cleaning goop onto his hands. Apparently even a New York Times reporter counts among the unwashed. The head honcho waved us toward three chairs. “Be seated please.”

  Dr. Kate complied, quick and quiet. Billings sat as slowly as an undertaker meeting with the bereaved family. I’d never given the guy much thought, because I pegged him early on as a lousy interview, but right then he gave me a creepy feeling. I shook it away. Time to cast for bigger fish.

  “Dr. C,” I said, all brass tacks, “I thought I had the exclusive for the press pool on this story.”

  “Excuse me?” Carthage jerked his head back as though I’d spat on the rug. “What are you talking about?”

  “We had a deal. I give you glory ink, you give me sole access. But here’s Wonder Boy Wilson coming out of your office. A change in direction, is what it is. I’d just like to know if we’re in a new game now.”

  Carthage shook his head. “Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “On the contrary. You need to have confidence. I called you to this meeting precisely because I trust you, and wanted you to witness something. Likewise you need to trust me. The Lazarus Project is your story, no one else’s.”

  “Then what about Steele?”

  Carthage dropped his shoulders, as if to say, How can anyone be so dumb? “The New York Times, Daniel. Even the president of the United States gives them special treatment. Am I to consider myself superior to the president of the United States?”

  You already do, I thought. I checked Dr. Kate to see if she had the same opinion, but she was studying her feet. Billings was reading diplomas on the far wall, all but whistling to show his lack of interest. “Of course not,” I said.

  “You have enjoyed weeks of stories, published in newspapers around the world. What more could you want? Tell me.”

  I looked at Dr. Kate again, then back at him. Carthage gave a sick smile. “Oh, don’t you concern yourself about her anymore, not one molecule.”

  I studied my notebook a second. What the hell, right? I’d already had a good ride out of this story, from one stupid Arctic assignment for Intrepid. What did I have to lose?

  “I want the book.”

  “The book?”

  “Eventually there has to be a book about this project. T
he whole chronicle, from hard-ice to wherever the rainbow ends. And it ought to be written by someone who was present for the whole shebang.” I spread my hands wide. “This book will document work that makes history. It will give a layman’s view of how amazing the project is. And I would guess, given the Web traffic, that it would be hugely popular.”

  “Making the author both famous and wealthy?”

  “Every writer wants to be read. If someone’s going to tell this story, why not me?”

  Carthage stood. “Why not indeed?” He paced a moment, then retreated behind his desk. “Once again you are two steps ahead of me, Daniel.” He sniffed. “You are perfectly correct about the need for a book. It could serve many useful purposes, for this project and the people it employs.”

  “What about the person it reanimates?” Dr. Kate interrupted.

  Carthage lowered his eyebrows. “You I will deal with momentarily.” He nodded at me. “I hope you will commence work on this book immediately, Daniel, and write it simultaneously with your news reports.”

  “Thank you, Dr. C.” I slouched in relief. “Thanks a ton.”

  He sat again. “Now.” Carthage rubbed his hands together like a gambler about to roll hot dice. “Daniel, I wanted you to be present so you might convey to the public the standards of professionalism the Lazarus Project strives to maintain.”

  I waved my notebook, not really following him. “Ready when you are.”

  He turned his full attention to Dr. Kate. And when I tracked his stare, I understood. He wanted me to watch him fire her. Talk about perverse. She was not quite as indifferent to his power as she pretended to be either. Her face had gone white, her eyes narrowed like she was facing into a strong wind. It was eerie, though, because Dr. Kate maintained this weird internal calm.

  “Dr. Philo, why do we have cameras in the animation chamber?”

  She considered a moment. “Science, publicity, and voyeurism.”

  “You are mistaken. I could not care less about the peccadilloes and peculiarities of Subject One. It is all about documentation.”

  “All?”

  “Likewise, your job is science, not social work. When Subject One cries, you do not hug. You take notes, you interrogate.”

  “Interrogate? Judge Rice is not some talking maze mouse.”

  “We may provide Subject One with counselors at a later date. Psychology is neither your background nor your responsibility. Your task is to gather data. We need to know, to measure, and to record.”

  “As a result of my involvement, we now know a great deal more about the person we reanimated. I have not done anything wrong.”

  With two fingertips, Carthage straightened a paper on his desk. “Dr. Philo, surely the degree of skepticism this project faces does not escape you. If we are ever to be believed, I need an unassailable record of everything we do. Therefore . . .” He cleared his throat, though there was no obstruction in there that I could hear. “Therefore any misconduct captured on camera, or any activity which occurs beyond the monitors’ watchful eye, not only undermines my credibility, it jeopardizes the future of this entire effort to save humanity and alter something as massive as our definition of mortality.”

  “If you check Gerber’s records of our site traffic, you would see the numbers are always higher when Judge Rice is active. Which is to say when he is interacting with me. People are hungry to see him live and move.”

  “Saturday-morning cartoons are popular, too, Dr. Philo.”

  “Do you consider the news that Jeremiah Rice was a Massachusetts district court judge to be cartoonish?”

  “Irrelevant,” Carthage shouted, rising to his feet. He took a deep breath to collect himself. “I am weary of your recklessness and insubordination. You have been warned repeatedly. You have violated the rules repeatedly.”

  “I told her not to do it.”

  It was Billings. I’d forgotten he was even there.

  “Wow, Graham,” Dr. Kate said. “Way to throw me overboard.”

  “Pardon me, Dr. Billings?” Carthage said.

  “I’m telling you I stood in the way, at the chamber door, and reminded her what your rules are, and told her not to do it.”

  I have always hated people like that, brown-nosers who will knife anyone just to save their own asses.

  Carthage approached Dr. Kate. “Is this true?”

  “Almost verbatim, and completely beside the point. If you measure my conduct by the outcomes, they indicate not that you should reprimand me, but that you should revise the rules. Maybe give me a raise.”

  “Don’t speak nonsense.”

  “If I followed your regulations,” she continued, “this walking, talking man would still be unconscious. Meanwhile precious days would be going by. Or if you somehow woke him, he would still be unspeaking. Or if you somehow got him to talk, no one would understand him. Without me, all you’d have in that chamber right now is an expensive piece of muttering meat.”

  Nice turn of phrase, I thought, though I was writing so fast I could not take the time to register Carthage’s expression. It must have been something, because he did his usual dodge. When I looked up, he was over by the window, gazing down on the protesters. I swear he liked them. Somehow it fed his contempt, the fuel for his interactions with the world.

  “Allow me to spare us both the turmoil of further bickering,” he told the window. “You are fired. Immediately and forever. Clean out your desk and surrender your security badge within the hour. Good riddance and good-bye.”

  Dr. Kate studied the digital clock on the wall—it was synchronized to the one in the control room counting how long old Frank had been alive again, just like the one in the hall and a huge one down in the atrium. Only forty-one minutes till it hit fifteen days. But I could tell by how long she stared at the clock that she was using a ploy every bit as phony as Carthage’s pose by the window. After a moment again there was that uncommon calm. “I refuse to go.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I will continue to come here, Doctor, no matter what you say. If you order the security guards to stop me, I will alert the media so they can film you keeping me out. Who knows? I might even cry.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I will also invite Judge Rice, who is not the property of Erastus Carthage but rather is a free citizen of this nation, and increasingly my friend, to come live in my home. I have already retained an attorney who only awaits my instruction to seek injunctive relief against you imprisoning your ‘Subject One’ for one more day. If you oppose me, I will sue you immediately for sexual discrimination in the workplace. While you spend a fortune defending yourself, funding will wither under the deluge of bad PR.”

  She stared him dead in the eye. “Dr. Carthage, I am helping this project and this person. I am not your enemy. But if you fire me, it will make me one.”

  I was in love. I mean, I’d worked for female city editors with less backbone, interviewed female homicide detectives with less pluck. Carthage was on his way to becoming the most famous scientist in the world—a Stephen Hawking, a Carl Sagan—and here this gumptious chiquita was going toe-to-toe with him. Her firing would make the papers, sure as Sunday. But this scene, this very moment, I would save for the book.

  Meanwhile Carthage’s face wore an expression like someone had farted. He scowled at his hand sanitizer. It was over on his desk, so that stall was unavailable to him. He cleared his throat. “Do you understand the legal consequences of blackmail?”

  “Of course.”

  “And it is not lost on you that this conversation has witnesses?”

  “No more than it is lost on you, Dr. Carthage, I’m sure, what a jury would make of security and video records confirming that the one and only woman employed by the Lazarus Project is also the one and only person assigned to work nights, every night in fact, with no time off for three straight weeks.”

  The phone rang. “Thomas, get that, please,” Carthage barked. Too quickly, I thought. She had him cornered. And here yours truly thought
this was going to be just another goddamn workday. I flipped my notebook to a fresh page, ready for round two.

  Instead Carthage regained his composure, and chuckled. “Following your logic, perhaps my error was in hiring a woman, no?” He crossed to the desk, casual as a car salesman. “I am well accustomed to people wanting to keep their jobs with me. Typically they beg. Or plead, or promise to do better. It’s appalling. Sound scientists demeaning themselves, just to keep a job. No dignity. But this is the first time I’ve experienced professional fisticuffs. I must admit, I’m rather enjoying it.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” Dr. Kate replied.

  “Daniel, take note.”

  “Sir?”

  “Observe.” He squirted sanitizer on his palms, then rubbed them together. “Often in science we must remember Occam’s razor, the philosophy which holds that the simplest explanation is also the likeliest. Thus I will keep my actions extremely simple.” He sat against the front of his desk and looked down at her. “Dr. Philo, your employment here is terminated. T-E-R-M—”

  “Sir, it’s the vice president.”

  It was Thomas at the door. Carthage blinked, as though he needed to focus to recognize him. “What are you doing interrupting me?”

  “Of the United States, sir. Gerald T. Walker. He called to say he’s a great fan of the project, and watches every video update on our site.” Thomas wrung his hands. I had an image flash in my head of a kid who needs to pee. “He’d like to speak with you, sir. He wants to meet Subject One.”

  “Truly?” Carthage was glowing, I swear, face like a coal. He circled behind the desk, his attention redirected, his pique evaporated. “Put him through, put him through.”

  “Right away. Oh, and sir?”

  “What is it, Thomas?”

  “He wants to meet Dr. Philo as well. Insists upon it. Apparently this morning he saw the hug.”