Immutable

by Cidney Swanson

  Her stomach turned.

  The diapers she’d stolen: who had paid for them? The store owner. And what about the time she’d grabbed a book from a stall watched by a cranky old man? What if the old man was cranky because his wife was dying? What if the sale of that book would have bought medicine or fresh fruit for her?

  She felt her stomach turn again. The plane swung right and began another slow climb. She was going to be sick. Shoving past Pfeffer, she struggled up the aisle.

  “Miss!” A flight attendant called to her.

  Where was the bathroom on this stupid plane?

  “Miss! The seatbelt sign is on. You need to be seated at once.”

  And then the attendant seemed to notice Martina’s condition.

  “You’re pale as—oh, oh, oh—here!” The attendant shoved a hastily opened bag into Martina’s hands and ushered her out of view of the first class cabin.

  Martina’s stomach heaved. She could hear Pfeffer asking after her. Could hear the flight attendant insisting he re-seat himself at once. Heard him objecting and then sighing heavily, complying.

  The flight attendant gave Martina a ice cold wet cloth, rolled tightly. “You can stay here in the jump seat until you’ve recovered.” Beside Martina, the woman whispered things about regulations and trouble and other things that Martina didn’t care about.

  Now that her stomach was empty, her conscience continued its assault, accusing her of having done wrong, wrong, wrong.

  It was a small sort of relief to hear the flight attendant berating her, going on and on about things Martina shouldn’t do, couldn’t do again.

  “I’m sorry,” murmured Martina. She was throwing the apology out to all those many souls who wouldn’t hear it. “I’m sorry.”

  But mostly she was throwing it out to Matteo: I’m sorry.

  She and Pfeffer said nothing to one another the entire flight to Paris. Once or twice, Pfeffer cleared his throat as if to speak, but he seemed always to change his mind, giving Martina the silence she craved, allowing her to continue to catalog her sins and possible sins and send meaningless apologies across the ocean to a tiny hovel beside a shallow grave on a barren hill.

  By the time they boarded their flight to Nice, Martina was very tired. Pfeffer was accompanying her all the way home, it seemed. After a more than usually heavy sigh on her part, Pfeffer cleared his throat again. This time he spoke.

  “You are greatly distressed,” he said.

  Martina felt tears burning her eyes. She blinked until they stopped.

  “Do you wish to speak of anything? Can I … offer help?”

  Help.

  What did it mean to help another person?

  She didn’t know any more. From the time she could walk, she’d been trained and grilled and drilled to help others. But what if it wasn’t even possible?

  “I don’t know how….” Martina broke off. She tried again. “I don’t understand how it’s possible to do any real good in the world.”

  Pfeffer nodded. He was silent for several minutes. Maybe he didn’t know either. Or he wasn’t troubled by such concerns. He was Helmann’s child after all.

  So was she, as far as that went.

  “I think,” said Pfeffer at last, “that our actions tell us much about our truest self, but sometimes they do not tell a complete story.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Forgive me,” he said, a small laugh under his breath. “I’ve always been better with numbers and formulas than with words. Let me try again.” He was silent for a long minute. The plane angled slightly down and the flight attendant announced in French, English, and Japanese, that the final descent would begin shortly.

  Pfeffer spoke again. “The consequences of our actions aren’t the only things that define us, that tell us if we have done good or evil. I did not always believe this, but I am convinced of it now.” He smiled softly, as if at a memory, before continuing. “Our intentions are at least as important as our actions or their consequences. You see, the intention to do good is what matters. Or so I believe. It’s written into the Hippocratic Oath, if you think about it—”

  “First, do no harm,” murmured Martina.

  “Yes. But before you can do, you must intend. Do you see?”

  Maybe.

  “Let me ask you a question,” continued Pfeffer. “When you have worked at the clinic, have you ever made a mistake?”

  Martina flushed. She had splinted the wrong finger, cut toenails too short, given candy to a diabetic child—her list haunted her, along with the other things she’d accused herself of on the long flight from Sint Maarten to Paris.

  “You need not answer,” Pfeffer said quickly. “I have made enough of my own mistakes to know they will happen eventually for you if they have not happened yet. But, you see, the important thing is that I did not intend to do harm. I meant to do good.”

  “That’s small comfort to the child given ipecac syrup when she didn’t need it,” remarked Martina.

  Pfeffer smiled. “Indeed. And, as such, it serves like a whetting stone to a knife, sharpening my resolve to be more careful the next time I intend to do a good thing for another.”

  Martina sighed. “It seems to me that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are much harder to define than is strictly convenient.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Pfeffer. “But there are two kinds of good you can be sure of: love is one; forgiveness the other. These are never wasted, I am convinced.”

  The plane hit a pocket of turbulence and the seatbelt sign flashed on. Their conversation was interrupted with dire warnings from the cockpit to remain seated and assess the tightness of their seatbelts. Pfeffer said nothing more, and Martina asked no further questions. Her mind seemed to have turned to a sieve, able to hold nothing more.

  “It has been decided you are to leave Nice, if you still wish it,” Pfeffer said after the plane had landed and they had caught a taxi.

  Martina nodded. She wasn’t sure if she meant yes, she still wished to work with the Angel Corps or yes, she wished to leave Nice, or simply, yes, I see.

  Pfeffer didn’t press her for an answer.

  When she arrived home, it was dark and quiet. There was evidence her half-brothers had come home in her absence and cooked things and washed things, but they were gone now. Which suited her best. Having stayed awake the entire return flight, she was now in a state well past exhaustion. She had no wish to speak to anyone. She crawled out of her clothes, still sticky with the Caribbean, and in between her cool sheets, and she fell asleep to the sound of Nice taking itself out for an evening stroll and a glass of wine.

  26

  WEAPONS IN HIS HUNT

  San Francisco, California

  Besides the letter sent to Dr. Johan Pfeffer, Mutti Svetlana had mailed several additional letter to friends of hers, former foster mothers like herself, asking if any of them had managed to regain contact with the children they had raised. In particular, she asked if any of them knew the whereabouts of one child, her foster daughter Martina.

  If you are aware of the location of my Martina, please let me know. Matteo has been pining for her. I swear he fell in love with her before he learned to walk and talk, and he never managed to cure himself. I don’t like to think of him alone after I am gone. I could ask Dr. Pfeffer if he would let me know Martina’s whereabouts, but I prefer to start with you, my old friends.

  One of these old friends was now residing in San Francisco, California. Unfortunately, it had not occurred to Sveta that her old friend might have accepted a position with the company founded by the late Dr. Girard Helmann. Sveta’s friend Tatiana had, in fact, been working at Geneses Corporation for two years and was on friendly terms with Dr. Fritz Gottlieb, heir apparent to Geneses’ fortunes and headaches.

  Had Sveta known this, she would have warned Tatiana about Rule #3 (don’t trust Fritz Gottlieb, no matter what.) In addition to warning Tatiana, Sveta would certainly never have mentioned Matteo’s enduring affectio
n for Martina. Sveta knew better than to arm Fritz with such information, even if it seemed there was no bad use to which he might someday put the knowledge. Sveta had learned that there was always some bad use made by Fritz of such information.

  If Svetlana had not asked Tatiana about Martina, Tatiana would not have asked Fritz Gottlieb, showing him the letter with its plea. And if Tatiana had not asked Fritz, Fritz would not have chosen to wield Martina and Matteo as weapons in his hunt for his nephews Hansel and Georg, whom he hoped to employ in a bit of cat burglary.

  But Sveta did not know, and Tatiana did not mistrust, and Fritz became possessed of the information.

  ~ ~ ~

  Fritz acquired the first of his human weapons by night on a hill above the azure Caribbean. The boy fought back, bravely, even, but he was no match for the admixtures in Dr. Gottlieb’s pockets. Still, Fritz let the boy take a few swings at him first. As with tough meat, it was best to tenderize one’s opponents. They put up less fight the next time they were conscious, Fritz found.

  The second of his opponents, however, Fritz decided to treat with more caution. She was, after all, a chameleon. And that lout Pfeffer was soft enough he might have left off dosing the girl with Neuroprine.

  Fritz observed her, invisibly, for awhile approaching her in her apartment—and what a dull little closet that was. Although, nicer, he supposed, than the boy’s hovel on the island. Fritz found it hard to judge in such situations. In fairness, the children had been raised in absolute squalor. What else did his little half-siblings know?

  Well, Uncle Fritz was in a mood to be quite generous with the two boys. He was in the mood, anyway, to offer largesse in exchange for a little smash-and-grab job at Pfeffer’s Montpellier laboratory. The time had come. And with it, the means: Matteo to coerce Martina, Martina to coerce her brothers, her brothers to do what Fritz was too prudent to attempt himself.

  And, in case they needed a demonstration of Uncle Fritz’s good nature and willingness to let bygones be bygones (which Fritz rather suspected they would), he would provide them with the long-lasting AGA supplement he’d been tinkering with back in his own lab. The boys were almost certainly in desperate need of the enzyme by now.

  How nicely things came together if you were willing to exhibit a little patience.

  27

  ANTIDOTE

  Nice, France

  Martina awoke with an appalling headache and a sense that time had not been playing fair with her. Well, she’d crossed the Atlantic and several time zones twice in the past week. To her irritation, it appeared she’d miscalculated the lost day. Only two days remained until Hansel and Georg would return, ready to ask for her help in procuring drugs.

  She groaned as she rolled over in her bed. She didn’t need them on top of everything else.

  And was it really Tuesday? It felt like a Monday. But her cell phone and her clock agreed: it was Tuesday. Pfeffer had told her to take a day or two off before putting in her final days at the clinic. She certainly didn’t feel up to going to work today.

  In the bathroom, her mirror informed her she was badly sunburned. Her skin had been more resilient when she was a child living in the Caribbean. Brown like a little coconut, her foster mother had called her. The memory brought a few tears, and then a few more, collapsing her in a cold, tiled corner of her bathroom for half an hour. Eventually, she rose and prepared for her day.

  Martina didn’t notice her visitor until after she’d showered, checked her phone for messages from Friedrich and Günter (we won’t be home much this week) and walked into the kitchen to find coffee.

  “Guten Morgen, Martina,” said the intruder.

  Martina jumped. Her first instinct, upon identifying Fritz Gottlieb, was to turn invisible. But she overruled the impulse; she didn’t want “Uncle” Fritz to know she retained that power. Not until she had a better idea what game he was playing.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, hands fisted on her hips.

  “Just checking up on my dear niece.” Fritz sipped coffee from a demitasse.

  Her demitasse. Her coffee. Her hands balled to tighter fists. “I’m your half-sister,” she growled. She said it purely for the satisfaction of correcting him.

  “Ah, yes, meine kleine Schwester,” said Fritz. He looked up from his coffee. He was smiling.

  Martina knew that when he smiled, he was at his most dangerous. She also knew he responded more favorably to displays of bravado, that he would match an opponent’s boldness with caution. Cower, and he became confident. And he was cruel when confident.

  “And why do I need checking up on, now of all times?” she asked. She glared at his empty demitasse, and then she glared at him.

  “I believe you might help me to locate someone. Or rather, two someones.”

  Martina knew who he meant before he even said anything: her missing brothers.

  “Have you seen your brothers Hansel and Georg of late?”

  “No,” said Martina. “Not of late.” She hoped her sarcasm bled through. The children had often mocked their uncle’s formality. She thought Fritz would be the sort who would remember that mockery.

  “Ah, what a pity.” Fritz withdrew four vials from a pocket and set them on Martina’s kitchen table. “I developed this especially for them.”

  Martina picked up one of the vials. They were labeled antidote.

  “Antidote for what, exactly?” she asked.

  “A stronger formula of the antidote that will keep all of you children from developing symptoms due to your enzymatic deficiencies. Each of these vials should provide four months of health.”

  “Should?” asked Martina.

  Fritz shrugged. “I was aiming for six months, originally, but it seems to wear off after about four months, depending on the weight and, ah, health of the recipient.”

  That subtle emphasis on the word health told Martina that Fritz knew her brothers must be suffering. Well, they’d gone to Uncle Fritz first, after abandoning her and Friedrich and Günter. Fritz had probably known to the hour when they would grow too sickly to remain solid.

  “I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen them.” She was not sorry, as he was no doubt fully aware.

  “My dear, let us be frank. I rather suspect you have seen them.” Fritz stood and flicked back the thin curtains that offered a measure of privacy from neighbors less than two meters across the way. Fritz uttered a contemptuous grunt—at the view?—and then continued. “Or at least, I rather suspect you know how to reach them. They spoke of you constantly, when last I was with them.”

  “They did?” This was unexpected. Of course, it might not be true. When had Fritz ever preferred truth over fabrications?

  “Mmm-hmm,” he intoned, indicating the affirmative. “They were both hoping you might join them and your loving Uncle Fritz, you know.”

  Martina guffawed. The “loving uncle” part was nonsense.

  “You can’t be happy here, my dear. Surely not.” A contemptuous glance about her lodgings. He must have practiced those glances in front of a mirror, to maximize the sneering quality.

  “I’m fine here. Thanks very much. And I don’t know how to contact Hansel and Georg.” Her gaze drifted to the vials. If the vials really did what Fritz said, they would be invaluable to Martina and her brothers. But that “if” was the problem, wasn’t it? You could never trust Fritz.

  Her uncle, or half-brother, or whatever vile relation he was to her, sighed heavily. “I didn’t want it to come to this,” said Fritz.

  “Why don’t I believe you?” she muttered.

  Fritz shrugged. His mouth pulled up into a tiny smile. It wasn’t his dangerous smile. Yet. “I need to speak to Hansel and Georg. It is a matter of some urgency. I need you to find them and tell them.”

  “No.”

  “Ah, I thought that might be your first answer,” said Fritz. “But I don’t think it will be your last.” Now he employed his dangerous smile, teeth exposed, nostrils slightly flared.

&nb
sp; Martina felt icy needles pricking the back of her neck.

  Fritz removed a small tablet computer from the inner pocket of his wool jacket. He set it on the kitchen table with rather more flourish than Martina thought the occasion called for. After tapping through a few screens, he indicated Martina should have a look at the picture.

  “Please, please. Be my guest, my dear.”

  She leaned in. And she gasped. Immediately, she regretted letting her response show so clearly. It was a picture of Matteo, and he’d been badly beaten. One eyelid was swollen such that his eye was nearly shut. The other eye showed reddish bruising underneath. Recent, the clinician in her whispered.

  “I thought I might require an additional means of persuasion,” said Fritz. “And, as you know, I always like to be prepared.”

  “What have you done to him?” Her voice was low.

  “Hmm, what have I done?” He asked the question as if trying to remember for his own pleasure.

  Martina shuddered.

  “Well,” he continued, “nothing really. Not … yet.” Fritz’s lips pulled back in that feral smile a second time.

  “Where is he?” asked Martina.

  “Nearby,” said Fritz. “You would like to see him?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was raw with wanting it. She hated herself for being so transparent.

  “That can be arranged. All that is required is that you contact Hansel and Georg and ask them to come visit their Uncle Fritz.”

  Martina hesitated. “How do I know this picture isn’t … isn’t old? Or falsified?”

  “How indeed? You don’t. Yet. It’s good to see you using the intelligence with which you have been gifted.” Fritz smiled. “In order to set your heart at rest on that score, I am willing to set up a one minute video conference between Matteo and yourself. Would that satisfy you?”

  “Yes,” replied Martina. In truth, it would far from satisfy her, but she needed to know if Matteo was truly in Fritz’s power before she agreed to talk to Hansel and Georg, didn’t she?

  “Very well. Give me, shall we say, one hour to return to the charming apartments I have procured for Matteo and myself. At that time, you may speak with your little friend. After that, you agree to contact your brothers for me.” He lifted one of the vials. “Let us call these a gift, shall we?”