The Curiosity: A Novel

by Stephen Kiernan

  “Carthage promised me exclusive access to Subject One. And no one else.”

  Gerber rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve got the hunger, too.”

  “Hell no,” I said. “Just another story to me, another byline. But Carthage and I had a deal. And I can just guess who that fucking reporter was.”

  “You’re completely missing my point.”

  I jammed the notebook in my pocket. “Right this second, with all due respect, I do not give a rat’s ass about your point. I have been bullshitted again.”

  Gerber laughed and turned his back. “Well, aren’t you suddenly Prince Charming?” He pressed a key on his computer, and the screen brightened. A bunch of graphs all pointed uphill. He leaned forward and studied them.

  I paced for half a minute. I deserved an explanation. With Carthage gone home, the only people with any answers were the good judge and Dr. Kate. I knew right where I could find them. I mean, if I were Frank, I know where I’d be aiming to get her, just the two of us, the minute the sun went down. Not to mention this meant I could get back to tailing for the night.

  “I’ve got work to do,” I told Gerber’s back, and hustled for the corridor.

  “Have fun, tiger,” he sang, wiggling his fingers in the air.

  Goddamn elevator took like a month to arrive.

  CHAPTER 32

  On Tiptoes

  (Kate Philo)

  Whatever calm we regained over the course of that evening in Lynn, as soon as we turned onto the street of the Lazarus Project offices the recovery shattered like glass. Jeremiah had pulled himself together, taking a long, melancholy walk around the cemetery while I waited by the entrance. I felt as comforting as a porcupine. My cell phone rang several times—Gerber’s extension at the project offices—but I had no stomach for his weird ways right then. When Jeremiah returned, I took his hand for the meander back to the car. We drove out the causeway to Nahant, along the shore up to Beverly, not speaking the whole time, finally easing back toward Boston.

  We drove directly into a spectacle. Police vehicles blocked the entire street. Bright banks of lights beamed from fire and rescue trucks. I rolled down my window and people were singing as police carried them into what looked like giant armored cars.

  A man in uniform waved his flashlight. “Move it along heah, please.”

  “I need to drop my passenger off at the loading dock in back.”

  “Street’s closed, ma’am.”

  “But he lives in this building. How’s he supposed to get home?”

  “What can I tell you, sweethaht? We got upwards of a hundred people blocking the road and creating a hazzid. Gonna take a good two hours to get ’em all processed.”

  I was at a loss. Jeremiah slumped against his window, shaking his head as though he was saying no to everything, no to the whole world. “What should I do?”

  “Go get a lahge pizza, eat it slow, come back at around eleven-thirty.”

  “It’s him. Oh my God, it’s him.” A photographer behind the cop had spotted us, leaped forward with his camera.

  “Hey, buddy.” The cop pulled on his arm. But there were others right behind, and in seconds we were surrounded by flashing lights.

  I closed my window, put the car in reverse, and backed away fast. At the intersection I cut hard to the left and zoomed off. Within a block I could see a TV truck following us, but I cut through an alley toward the Commons and he fell from the rearview. “Lost him.”

  Jeremiah was somnolent no longer. “What in great glory was that?”

  “Some demonstration against the project, I guess.”

  “I mean that wave of camera people. And that man who chased us.”

  “Well, we call them paparazzi. I don’t what the word means, it’s Italian. They’re people who get paid for photos they take of rich or famous people.”

  “Why would you run from someone who wants to take your picture?”

  “Because their appetite is endless. In fact they can be dangerous, because they don’t believe in limits or privacy. People have died trying to escape them.”

  “But we’re not rich or famous.”

  “Not rich anyway. But you are getting pretty well known, mister.”

  “If that is the result, I would expect everyone to strive to be anonymous.”

  “That makes sense, if you come from another century.”

  Jeremiah fiddled with the glove compartment latch, then quickly sat on his hand. “What happens now? We wait till nearly midnight?”

  “No,” I said, taking Storrow Drive toward Cambridge. “We go to my place.”

  He didn’t answer. I took it for affirmation. I drove faster. In retrospect, I could not have been more foolhardy if I’d been racing toward a car accident.

  Miracle, I found a parking spot just up the block from my apartment. A cat prowled under a streetlight. Otherwise the road was deserted. We climbed out, I took Jeremiah’s offered arm. It felt different in that moment, more muscled, more of a pleasure to grasp. I used both hands.

  “This is where you live,” Jeremiah said, studying the arching trees.

  “The project is where I live. This is where I sleep, and do laundry.”

  “Do you have laundry tonight?”

  He sounded so guileless I looked at him sideways, but his face gave nothing away. Was this really happening? We inched along that sidewalk together. Inevitably, we arrived at my front step.

  “Jeremiah, I feel just terrible about the cemetery—”

  He placed a finger over my lips. There we were, facing each other, silent, streetlight through the trees streaking his face, this incredible man. I put one hand behind his neck, summoned my courage to its tiptoes, kissed him.

  I believe, I want to believe, I hope I remember truthfully, that he kissed me back.

  Then the strangest thing: I thought I saw a flash. I peered into the dark. Could someone be hiding there? Hadn’t I lost him? “Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”

  There was no answer. “Let’s go inside,” I said. Jeremiah followed close behind.

  Between a man and a woman, everything can be changed by one kiss. Touch, private information, the admission that each person yearns for the other. Some would say intercourse is the alteration, and that’s true, but there is no denying the barriers that fall after one heartfelt kiss.

  Sure as night follows day, the questions came next. What does he want? What are the rules? How do the sexual mores of his time compare with today? What do I want?

  No lights on, for starters. They would be too bright for what had just happened. “Wait here,” I told Jeremiah in the front hall. Then I tossed my bag on a chair, hurried into the kitchen, where I thought there might be a candle.

  Also I needed a minute alone. I hadn’t been intimate with a man since Wyatt, the law professor. Yet I had just kissed Jeremiah Rice on my front stoop. That was real. I willed myself calm, then dug in the chaos drawer: batteries, spare keys, half a red candle. Grabbing an unfinished wine bottle on the counter, I poured the remnants in the sink and wondered if it was some kind of metaphor. Old wine, old history, old loves, good-bye.

  Except that I had no notion of what Jeremiah was thinking. On that fine summer night with him standing in my front hall, I felt a simple truth. My life’s experiences had no more equipped me for the present situation than they had prepared me for parachuting.

  I corked the candle in the bottle, using a burner on the stove to light it. The flame was gentle, silent. I cupped a hand around it with a sweet feeling, like I was protecting something fragile on my way back to Jeremiah.

  He had taken a few steps into the living room. “This place smells like you.”

  “Coffee and stress?”

  “Lavender,” he said.

  “My shampoo?” I laughed, putting the candle on a table. “I’ve used this overly floral stuff ever since college. Now it’s my signature scent?”

  “I like it.”

  “Thank you,” I said. It came out barely a
whisper.

  “Kate.”

  It was just my name, but in a tone I’d not heard before. “I’m listening.”

  He brought his arms around me, I laid my head on his chest. Jeremiah caressed my shoulder, but the touch wavered on my arm.

  “You’re trembling,” I said.

  “Not at all.”

  I pulled his hand against me, his wrist between my breasts, held till it went still. So did I, so did I. Any second now, I imagined, he might ask me to make love. How he would say it, I didn’t know. How I would answer, I didn’t know. I rested against him, savoring. He took a deep breath.

  “It is impossible to enumerate the ways in which you have helped me in this inexplicable time.”

  Such vocabulary, at such a moment. I smiled at the formality. “My pleasure.”

  “Nor can I list all the experiences I have relished which were improved by your company. My second life feels as though it has been lit by you.”

  “I feel the same, Jeremiah.”

  “Shhh.” He rested his chin on the top of my head. “Shhh.”

  I nestled in him, patient. The candle flame wavered then held.

  “Please remember that I have said these things to you. Promise me, Kate, months and years from now, that when you think of this time, you will remember how grateful I am to you. Can you promise me that?”

  I nodded.

  He began whispering. “One thing only has maintained my sanity through the maelstrom of here and now. It is so dear to me, I nearly choke to say it.” He paused, swallowing before continuing. “When my mind has struggled to understand, when my memories have proven inaccurate, when I have felt the loneliness of a century’s time standing between me and what I knew and loved, one thing has sustained me. It has been fixed, like north on a compass.”

  I waited, closing two fingers around his yellow tie.

  “My family,” he said. “My anchor, Joan; my firefly, Agnes; and the ironclad love I feel for them still. In all the confusion of here and now, my devotion to them, regret at leaving them, desire however futile to experience them again, has been the one thing I have known, truly and undeniably known. It is rock.”

  I felt so small then, small-minded. I hadn’t done anything, yet I felt selfish somehow. I whispered, too. “What is it that you want me to understand?”

  “I am speaking with great presumption, Kate, for which I beg your leave. But I am as yet unready for the fruits that might come between us as man and woman, delicious though I know they would be. My bond with the past remains too strong.”

  “It is not adultery,” I whispered. “You are a widower.”

  “Further, I worry about the effect upon you when time has . . . when my time . . .”

  “When what? What time?”

  “Moreover, the only woman I have ever known, I mean known, is Joan. That is my life’s entire intimate world: her. I am not yet beyond that.” Jeremiah fell silent, tightening his hold on me. Then he relaxed, stood apart and upright like a silo, cleared his throat. “Also you are exhausted, while my energy is fresh. My suggestion would be for you to retire, after giving me a good book, and a blanket perhaps for when fatigue does find me, and we will speak in the morning.”

  I drew back, searching his face. “Really?”

  He nodded. “Honestly. And I thank you for this unforgettable day.”

  “What about that kiss? What did that mean?”

  “Hm.” He touched his forehead to mine. “Wonderful.”

  “I didn’t dream it, then.”

  “ ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’ ”

  “Hah. ‘And our little lives are rounded with a sleep.’”

  “Listen to yourself.” He made a thin smile. “Well done.”

  “You’re not the only one who ever read The Tempest, you know.”

  So we parted, hands releasing last. But only temporarily. “As yet unready” is a hundred miles from no. I blew out the candle, turned on the lamp, blinked in the bright light of disappointment. Meanwhile the want had been revealed by both of us. Fruits delicious as I know they would be. No, there was no taking that back.

  CHAPTER 33

  The Rage of an Ant

  (Erastus Carthage)

  The man arrives in your office all but with his hat in his hand. Actually he has nothing in his hands at all, but that is as articulate as any words he might say: no documents, no abstracts of publishable ideas. No letter of resignation either. Thus you decide to have a little fun.

  “Dr. Billings, at last.”

  “Carthage.” He tips an imaginary cap.

  Apparently he is game as well. Heaven bless those British, as skilled at minor diplomacies as any species on earth. And why would he not be? The radiance of the summer morning pours through your office windows. The chant of protesters below lends the hour a certain musicality. And this wretch, having failed in his researches, has come to plead. Thus shall you enact a ritual, a rite whose end is foreknown by all parties. You meet eyes with Thomas, who stands at ease by your diploma wall, then place both palms flat on your desk. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  That appears to baffle him. He stammers, then reclaims his even keel. “You instructed me, I doubt you’ve forgotten, to return today with the results of my work on the smaller specimens.”

  “Of course, yes. But we parted unpleasantly, did we not?”

  Again your feint, again he draws back, collecting himself. “Doctor, I submit that all of our partings have been characterized by their dearth of warmth and collegiality.”

  A fair riposte, that. And what a word selection, that dearth. You nod, ready to let the preliminaries end. “Indeed that may be so.”

  “Erastus Carthage is famous for many things, but charm is not one of them.”

  “I take both halves of that sentence as compliments.”

  “As you would.”

  “Well.” You clap your hands together once. “Enlighten us. What has the great and wise Graham Billings unearthed?”

  He lowers himself into a chair. “Carthage, how many years have you conducted biological research?”

  “I couldn’t begin to guess. I published my first paper at sixteen, perhaps you knew that, so it has been decades.”

  “And in that vast span of trial and error, seeking and sometimes finding, has there ever been a ten-week period in which you could design assays, perform them, and draw meaningful conclusions? In five fortnights?”

  “Are you implying that I set you up for failure? Or that the deadline was too soon? Do you honestly think ten more weeks would prove revelatory?”

  “I’d be delighted to answer your questions, following your answers of mine.”

  You give Thomas a look, and he is smiling. Good. He understands that this is indulgence on your part, a severance check already sits in an envelope under your right hand. This banter is not a sign that you’re weakening, diminished by public opposition and tight finances. No, there are reasons to prefer Billings resigning to your firing him: maintaining friendly relations with Oxford, avoiding potential insult to another Brit who is one of the project’s potential investors, even respecting Billings’s reputation, little though it has profited this enterprise. Still, he is not some no-consequence whelp. Any indignity he suffers should occur not on the professional level, but on the personal. Thomas’s grin confirms his comprehension of these nuances. He is coming along nicely.

  “No,” you concede. “Not once in my career. Ten weeks is often insufficient time to acquire proper equipment, much less perform something useful with it.”

  “Then why did you grant me these weeks anyway?”

  “To teach you, Doctor. You were asking for more time, when you knew the outcome already. You were denying persuasive data. That is sloppy science, and you needed to learn.”

  Billings opens his mouth, but restrains himself. Well done. If anyone dared accuse you of sloppy science, you might go find a pistol. But this man is beaten enough, he does not speak in his o
wn defense.

  “But I am presuming,” you say, holding your arms wide. “I could be mistaken. Bestow upon me, please, the fruits of your labor.”

  “There is nothing to bestow, and you bloody well know it.”

  “Nothing whatsoever?”

  “Not of use to you. There are trend lines in the metabolic data—”

  “Trending how?” This could be interesting.

  “Erratically. I suspected there was an indicator, a mark at which we might intervene and prolong the specimens’ life span. But the marks occurred inconsistently.”

  “You wanted to keep them alive.”

  Billings sighs. “In the work interval given, that proved unattainable.”

  You rise from your chair. Billings was chasing the very thing you need, the thing your potential investors have repeatedly requested: prolonged survival. If a businessman has a warehouse of frozen bodies, he won’t give a nickel to someone who can wake them up. For someone who keeps them awake, he will go to the vaults of Fort Knox. And if Billings found the crucial answer, and is holding back . . .

  “Need I remind you, Dr. Billings, that your work here is contractually the property of the project? And that the life of Subject One is at stake.”

  “I can provide a copy of that contract,” Thomas interjects.

  You wave this suggestion away. “That shouldn’t be necessary.”

  “It’s not.” Billings rises to the bait. “I know perfectly well that every jot and tittle in my notebooks belongs to you.”

  “Not to me,” you say, “but to this grand enterprise.”

  “Fine, then.” His jaw clenches in a mixture of hatred and defeat. “It’s oxygen. The accelerating metabolism creates more ammonia than the liver can process without aid. The number of cases was too small to confirm the method. But I rescued several acceleration-stage sardines by applying supersaturations of oxygen.”