.
Chapter Twenty Six
The Lamb and Flag
Oxford
.
Laughing, thrilled, and incredibly excited the team finally succumbed to their pangs of hunger and left together to go for a ‘celebratory’ pub meal in the Lamb and Flag, the pub where they traditionally celebrated all their ‘ups’, and drank to forget their ‘downs’.
They managed to get the last of the Sunday Roast and washed it down with several bottles of decent wine. Laughing and joking together properly as a team for the first time outside of lab hours, the Prof. smiled on at the group as he surveyed them coyly from the bar while fetching yet another round of drinks. He was pleased to see them having fun. Pleased to see Jason taking the lead naturally now that he had been formally handed the group’s reigns. Pleased to see Jason and Lydia so obviously in love with each other. And pleased also to see Louisa so happy and Don slowly coming out of his shell. Yes, what with today’s discovery there was an awful lot to be happy about. An awful lot.
More than anything though he was pleased that he had been able to keep his sadness from destroying the moment. It would be fair to say that as much as everyone else had the right to be happy, the Professor had the right to be sad. And yet it wasn’t till he had seen the last member of his team stagger into a taxi and had ushered them all off home to bed, that he let the sadness overtake him and the wall of despondency and anger engulf him.
Anger? Probably a natural reaction to the news he had received.
Sadness…that was understandable…there was so much he was going to miss now. So much.
It was two weeks ago that he had heard the news. Two weeks since he had sat in the doctor’s surgery in Broad Street and been told that the cancer had spread, and that the prognosis was not good. Two months at the most.
Anger!
Yes, he deserved to be angry.
After all the years of fighting the disease, after all the painful treatment, after having been given so much hope of a recovery, and now, just as he had found the true reason to justify his existence on this wonderful planet…just then was he going to have it all taken from him, or rather, he would be taken from it.
Taken from the discovery of a lifetime, and taken from each and every wonderful day where just to see a raindrop fall, or to hear a bird call from a tree, or see the sun shine from behind a cloud, would fill his sight and senses with the awesome wonder of life.
Life.
Boy, had he lived in his time! The best thing was that Mathew Wainright, scholar, playboy and adventurer and now long-time philosopher had not wasted a second of his life. But two months?
No, he needed more...Some people lived their life stuck in a room in front of the television, but Wainright understood the value of life! Why not take someone who didn’t know how to live? Why take someone who valued what it was all about? Why? Why? Why?
After two days of raining, at last it had finally stopped. The Professor paid the bill for the evening, signing for the receipt with a scan of his left-hand index finger at the bar. He always preferred to pay cash.
“Shall I call you a taxi?” the bar manager asked.
“No thanks...I need the exercise” Mathew replied. He refused to let the cancer turn him into an invalid.
Wrapping his long blue woollen scarf around his neck, and buttoning up his long tweed jacket, he picked up his silver capped cane and started the pain-ridden walk home through the empty Oxford streets.
The streets were surprisingly quiet for a Sunday evening.
He decided to try and fight off his sadness by splashing his way slowly through the puddles on the way back to his house, just like he used to do when he was a kid. The road took him past the I.G.E.G.G.M. and as he passed he stopped for a second to rest and look up at the building which signified the greatest achievements of his life.
Yes, in spite of everything, he had a lot to be proud off. At the very least, he could be proud of the fact that because of his efforts there were a number of infertile couples in the world who were now happy parents, bringing up beautiful children full of laughter and life.
.
He looked up at the Haissem lab, in the building above him half expecting to see someone, but the rooms were dark and unlit. Then suddenly it started to rain again, this time heavily, and without further thought he found himself driven into the shelter of the building.
.
“Good Evening Professor Wainright? Going up to the lab are you? Can I help you?” The voice of one of the security guards caught him unawares as he came to the door to open it for him.
“Oh, good evening Jonathan...yes, …well, actually I was just thinking about going up and taking another little look at the experiment we’re doing...” the Professor mumbled quickly, making up the answer as his lips mouthed his reply.
“Well, if you want me to call a cab for you later when you want to go home. Just give me a buzz down?” the friendly guard replied.
“Okay, thanks Jonathan. I will....” And before he knew it the Professor had stumbled his way into the lift and was heading up to the lab.
Why, he didn’t really know.
.
The lab was dark and quiet, save for the hum of the ventilation and air filtration systems which worked continuously to keep the air clean and dust free. Opening his locker, and putting away his scarf, coat and walking stick, he pulled on his bunny suit and stepped into the first airlock. As the air rushed over him, cleaning off the tiny invisible dust particles he suddenly felt the tremendous sense of sadness returning to him.
How many more times would he be able to do this? In two months time he would be dead. Gone. Maybe even sooner.
The cancer was out of control now, and according to the doctor the headaches he had been suffering were due to a rapidly growing tumour in his brain. Who knows how that would affect him in the weeks to come! In two weeks he could maybe lose control of his own body…
Blindness, deafness, loss of memory? All the expertise and knowledge he had build up over the years would simply disappear. And then he would be gone too, and people would begin to forget his name. Soon it would be like he had never existed.
There was a rush of sound as the airlock opened and he stepped into the next clean area beyond. There were three different airlocks, each leading to a progressively more ‘clean’ area, where the amount of dust in each cubic centimetre of air decreased tenfold each time. There were two more airlocks to go. All the DNA experiments took place in the third clean area, where the risk of outside genetic or viral contamination to any research was minimal.
The professor stepped into the second airlock. The air jets washed over him, and the sadness engulfed him again. Then suddenly a thought occurred to him. He had led a life of science. He had never really been very religious, and had never ever accepted the fact that everything was just there by chance. He had spent his life investigating and trying to understand the rules which governed mankind’s existence, trying to guess at the knowledge by which all things existed. Someone must have made the rules he was trying to understand? Someone...God? A great master scientist in the sky?
He had never really spent much time pondering the “Why?”, mostly being too busy trying to figure out the “How?”.
Yet, the rest of mankind, well at least the culture in which he was brought up in, believed the answer came from one Man, one God, ...and, incredible as it may seem, everything pointed to the fact that he, Mathew Wainright was one of a small team that had reproduced the blood of that Man, and it was now sitting in several containers in the third and final clean area. The blood of Christ.
The actual blood of Christ.
As Wainright stepped out of the second airlock he quickly crossed the second lab area, passing rows of test-tube covered benches. He entered the third and final airlock, where again he immersed himself in the purifying air, letting it wash over him and cleanse him of all the worldly contaminants.
It occurred to him that it was almos
t as if he was going from the outer temple to the inner sanctum, through the progressively more privileged areas where fewer and fewer people were allowed to tread, until they finally reached the inner sanctum where only the high priests were allowed to stand before God and ask for divine deliverance for their people.
A temple. Yes, that’s what it was. Except his was the temple of Science, and he was the High Priest of Genetics. And as he had this thought, he knew what he had to do. And why he was here. The answer to all his problems lay here, in the final clean zone. Something had brought him up here tonight to stand in the inner temple of science and ask God for his own deliverance. After all, he was the high priest, and he could ask for anything, could he not?
There was a click, the red light above his head went out and the green light came on, and the door swept open in front of him. He was in the inner sanctum. Most big temples had some sort of religious artefact at its core, and theirs was better than most. Theirs was ‘The temple of the Crown of Thorns’. Only the high priests would get to stand before the Crown, and he was the highest priest of them all.
He crossed the room to the large walk-in, airtight, indestructible, fireproof, bombproof, 'everything-proof ', metal safe on the far wall in which viral cultures and spores were normally kept. He opened it and removed the metal padded box containing the Crown. He carried it from its place of safekeeping and put it down on one of the tables in the middle of the room, opening the box and removing the Crown and its protective padding and placing it directly on the table in front of him.
So what was the plan now?
For a good few minutes he just stood there staring at it, thoughts rushing through his head, and his heart pounding, the dull headache he had felt for the past two months hurting more and more as the blood pumped faster through his skull. He didn’t know what to do next.
He drew up a chair, turning it round and sitting astride it cowboy style, resting his arms and head on the top of the chair’s back, staring intently at the Crown.
His thoughts turned to his life, his childhood, his first wife and their son, now living in France somewhere. He remembered the first time he made love to a woman when he was seventeen, being seduced by an older woman who he had subsequently followed round like a puppy for weeks.
He remembered his first true love, his first car, the cry of his first baby as it was born, the smile on his wife’s lips as he had gazed at her at the altar, the pain of the divorce, the years of studying, the achievements of his career, and finally the certainty that he would be dead in two months time and unable to complete this, the most important of all his life’s works.
Unless…unless the God that he had never sought or spent time with would now suddenly forgive and cure him.
No...not even cure him, just give him his health and clarity of mind to see the project through, to see the baby Christ cry his first tears and take his first breath of air, to know that he had succeeded in this, his life’s greatest task.
A blinding white pain suddenly erupted in his skull, and pain, far worse than anything he had experienced so far, engulfed his body, his senses strained to their maximum by the severity of the attack. Wainright gripped the edge of the chair and rode out the storm, the pain lasting for a few minutes before subsiding and leaving Wainright sweating and gasping for breath.
It was getting worse each time. And every time it happened the dull pain that it left in its wake was more unbearable.
How much more time did he have before it became so unbearable that he would have to take the mind numbing morphine, which he was resisting as much as he could? He needed to be able to think clearly for his work.
“God...” He heard himself crying aloud, his voice spreading throughout the empty lab and echoing back off the far wall. "Why? It’s not fair…Just not fair."
Then suddenly there was clarity. A clarity that he had never experienced before. A clear, defined certainty and knowledge. The truth. What his life had been about. And why.
In a moment of stunning self realisation Wainright realised that his whole life had been a search for the truth. The Truth. The answer to all questions. The BIG question.
He had spent his life looking for and investigating the rules of life, without looking directly at the simple question of “Who made the rules and gave us Life?” He had been skirting around the edges, scared to look at the centre. But now, with certain death facing him in the weeks to come, with time running out and his ability to think coming to an end, he turned all his attention to answering that one big question.
He opened his eyes again and looked directly at the Crown of Thorns.
Up till now he had looked at the Crown purely as a scientific object. The focus of his latest experiment. The source of his next white paper and future academic acclaim. With sudden fresh new insight Mathew looked at the Crown and saw it truly for the first time.
With his eyes open he saw in his mind's eye the hill in Jerusalem, three crosses upon it, three deaths, the thunder and lightning, the Centurion, the anguish, and oh…suddenly the pain…terrible, terrible pain,…the pain in his head, in his hands and ankles...in His head…and His ankles...
A wave of indescribable, intense pain swept through his body again, and Mathew felt the wrists in his arms twitch, and a burning sensation in his side as if he had been pierced with a sharp object. The pain in his skull grew and grew and involuntarily Mathew swept his hands up to grasp his temples...but as he did so, almost subconsciously he felt his hands reaching for the Crown and sweeping it up onto his head. As he put the Crown on, the pain once more erupted inside his brain and swept over him in a wave. White light flashed in his eyes, and Mathew cried out aloud.
“Lord, let it stop....”
A tremendous heat swept down from the Crown on his head, through the fabric of the bunny suit covering his head, engulfing his skull and passing on down through his neck, sweeping down over his shoulders into his body, washing down through his torso, and into his arms and legs. His feet and toes tingled, and his muscles relaxed throughout his body. His body became alive with a sensation of power and electricity, warm heat engulfing him and passing into and through his bones. From tip to toe Mathew felt a warmth, a quiet warmth…a sense of peace.
Then suddenly it all went dark, and he slipped from the chair, sprawling on to the floor below.
The Crown of Thorns fell from his head and rolled onto the ground beside Mathew’s inert body.
.
Chapter Twenty Seven
I.G.E.G.G.M laboratory
Oxford
.
The sun’s rays swept over the edge of the laboratory bench and spilled out onto floor, coming to rest on Mathew’s eyelids. His eyes flickered, and slowly opened.
“Ouch…that’s bright…” He muttered aloud.
For a second he lay there on the floor trying to figure out where he was and what had happened. Then he remembered it all. He drew himself up into a kneeling position and raised his hands to his head to help ride out the expected wave of pain that he'd recently felt every day upon waking from an always troubled sleep.
There was nothing. The pain didn’t come. In fact the dull, ever present pain that he had come to live with constantly had gone too. His mind was fresh and clear.
He looked across the floor and saw the Crown of Thorns lying a few feet away. He reached over for it, and realised with alarm that one of the thorns had been damaged by the fall and was now hanging half-detached from its branch.
Concerned, he carefully picked it up, then slowly stood up to place it back in its padded metal container. He looked at his watch. It was 7am. An hour before the others would start to arrive for the morning meeting. He picked up the box and moved towards the wall-safe, half ready to wince at the pain he always felt when walking nowadays. His lips gathered themselves into a wince, and he automatically got ready to mutter ‘ouch’ under his breath as he took his first step.
There was no pain.
He took a few steps forward.
>
Nothing.
He walked quickly and freely to the wall, covering twenty or thirty steps. Nothing. No pain.
He placed the Crown in the safe, closed the door, and walked to the mirror in the corner of the room, pulling down the edge of his face mask so that he could see his face properly in the mirror. His eyeballs were white and clear, and the darkness under his eyes had gone. He looked remarkably well. Not bad for a man half his age! Even the lines on his temple were relaxed.
He reached up to touch this head, as if he would be able to touch inside his brain and feel the pain from his tumour. Again, he realised the pain was gone. And still there was no pain in his legs.
For the first time in seven years he was pain free.
Instead of the pain he felt a tremendous inner peace. A certainty about things, a calmness and a warmth in his chest and heart, that welled up into his head and spread throughout his soul. He felt good. Very good. He didn’t need any doctor to tell him what he was suffering from now. He knew...Mathew knew that he had been healed.
Given a second chance.
The poisoned, corrupt, malignant cells in his body that had infected and torn his body apart with cancer were gone.
.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Sunday Evening
.
The plane touched down at the English air force base and rolled to a stop beside the large camouflaged green hanger, disgorging its cargo of people. Nowadays American military aeroplanes only flew into English bases with the special permission of the English government. The last of the European American airbases had been closed down two years before, and now only service flights were allowed in to cater for the embassy and the large American ex-pat community in London and the South of England.
The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2] Page 13
