“That’s complicated.”
The reason I killed my ‘self’ and broke off all contact with the outside world was that a small number of incredibly wealthy people happened to know I was immortal, and had already exhibited an unseemly degree of motivation in attempting to exploit that fact. I wanted nothing to do with them. This was partly because their plans didn’t include my surviving the experience, which was an admittedly selfish motivation.
The less selfish motivation: sharing total immunity and effective immortality with the richest .1 percent of the planet would be a disaster from just about every angle. If I knew exactly who these people were, I could maybe develop a strategy to avoid them. But I don’t. And, based on everything I’ve come to understand about the world of high finance—holding companies, venture capital firms, offshore accounts, and all that—the people behind it might not even know they’re behind it. They could just be rich people investing in an untested medical procedure.
That wasn’t the only reason, though. We had to burn all connection between what we were doing now and the secret island from which we came, both to preserve its secrecy and to protect Eve, who was convalescing there. This was maybe just paranoid thinking on my part, but I thought it would be best if nobody knew where she was until we better understood how she’d gotten sick when that was supposed to be impossible.
“This is a yes?” Ina asked.
“We are not wanted by Downing Street,” Mirella said. “Nor by Mossad, so far as we’re aware. The CIA, possibly.”
“Don’t hold out, pretty woman,” Ina said. “Any others? Interpol?”
“I don’t think so.”
Ina checked with me.
“The Inquisition,” I said. “But they’ve probably stopped looking for me by now.”
She grunted.
“Show me the ID’s you’ve already used, please.”
I tried to come up with a reason for her to need these, without asking, because it was becoming obvious that her answer wasn’t going to change the end-result of us handing them over. Then I tried to come up with a reason why showing them to her would be bad, and came up with only one: if she didn’t give them back, we’d be stuck in Paris.
That was a good reason to hang onto the passports, but at the same time I was standing in the living room of a master forger already, so other options were available if this became an issue.
I handed mine over, and Mirella did the same.
Ina examined both for several seconds, nodding slowly.
“Yes,” she said. “I know this work. Very good. There’s a bar behind that wall. Sit. Drink. Wait.”
You may know this about me already, but the very best way to get on my good graces is to share your large stash of expensive alcohol.
The secret bar behind the wall was fully stocked with top shelf liquors, plus a couple of wines older than everyone who wasn’t me, and Ina was now my best friend. I went straight for the bourbon, because decent bourbon is harder to find than you might think, and this was on the good end of decent.
“Careful,” Mirella said, as she took the bottle out of my hand—I’d filled a glass, drained it, and was about to refill it—and poured a drink for herself. “We could use you clear-headed right now.”
“Same to you.”
She smiled. “I handle my liquor better. We both know cirrhosis would have claimed you a millennium ago if you functioned like the rest of us.”
“So, you’re saying try not to get drunk.”
“I am saying that, yes.”
“But I do some of my best work drunk.”
“This is only something you tell yourself. It isn’t true.”
“I think I’m supposed to be offended now,” I said, somewhat close to being genuinely offended.
“You would be if I was wrong.”
I don’t let a lot of people get to know me as well as Mirella. Maybe one person every third generation. When it happens, I make it a habit to not ignore their wisdom as it pertains to my behavior. Usually, they’re right. Sure, a lot of the time they have a crummy way of making their point—lovers habitually leave, for instance—but they’re still usually right.
The point is, I took her concern seriously.
Mirella scooped up her glass and took it to the window to get a proper look at Paris at night.
“I’ve been in rooms such as this before. You’re right, I don’t believe this woman lives here. I don’t think anyone does. I suspect it’s loaned out for parties and the like. The bar makes that point strongly.”
“You’ve been to parties in places like this?” I asked.
“I’ve guarded people who went to parties in places like this,” she said, referencing her prior career as an expensive bodyguard. “I met you in a place like this.”
“That was a hotel room.”
“Similar view, different city, same size bar.”
“Better alcohol here.”
“Fair.”
She downed the glass and went back to the bar.
I snuck a peek around the corner and down the hall to see if there was any way to discern exactly how long this was going to take. (You would think I’d be more patient, given boredom has been the defining mood of almost my entire existence.) There wasn’t; I’d have to break whatever politeness protocol we were observing and walk into the room at the end of the hallway to get an idea.
Mirella watched me fidget.
“I feel it too,” she said, quietly. “This was not a night I expected to feel safe and relaxed, and with a drink in my hand, and so I don’t feel safe or relaxed. If it puts you at ease, I’ve checked the windows for sniper positions four times and identified two likely fire exits. I also believe I can shatter the overhead window if we need immediate roof access.”
“That does make me feel better, thanks. And I can add that the man at the door is right-handed and has a Glock holstered on his left side. He favors his left leg. Knee problems, I’m thinking. He looks like he’s carrying about twenty pounds more than he should be for his frame, and his peripheral vision sucks.”
“Don’t we make a pair,” she said, smiling. Casing a room is kind of like foreplay for us.
“I think maybe we shouldn’t be released on the world,” I said. “Let’s go find another island, or we’ll never get to relax again.”
“Certainly. Right after we save everyone once more. It’s your turn to pick the island.”
“Here we are!” Ina said, from halfway down the hall. “I will show you the first set, and then we will talk some more.”
She bustled into the room with two passports in her hand. She tossed one to each of us.
“Sit!” she said, before taking a seat of her own in a lounge chair opposite the couch.
I flipped open the new passport immediately, to see what my new name was about to be.
Frederick Mayall. Didn’t roll off the tongue, but okay.
“I have a large list of appropriate names from which to choose, with the paperwork already completed and ready to go,” Ina said. “All of this documentation cost time and money to obtain and create, and so it only wastes my time if there is a name which I cannot use, about which I’m not notified.”
“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t at all clear on the point she was trying to make.
“I will explain. You are better known by the world at large as an immortal man named Adam. Knowing this, it would have been unfortunate had I used one of the two ‘Adam’ documents I have available.”
I looked blankly at Mirella, and she back at me.
“Neither of us gave you that name,” I said.
“Exactly. And you ought to have. Now, let’s discuss why Dimitri should have never let you leave the island.”
Interlude (1)
From the journal of Dr. Lew Cambridge
Day thirty-seven since the patient arrived.
* * *
The patient remains in an unresponsive state. I continue to have reservations regarding the customary terminology—e.g.
, a ‘coma’—to describe this state. In the most important sense, that’s exactly what it is, as she’s alive, not conscious, and not merely asleep. According to the EKG, her brain remains active.
* * *
Coma, then.
* * *
Yet her body, which seems to be essentially that of a normal human female, periodically acts with a type of self-defensive agency which we are at a loss to explain, without using a word like “magic”: sometimes, somehow, she disappears for a little while.
* * *
I’ve been examining all of the historical and medical documents, books on mythology and legend, and religious texts, and I can find no antecedent for these periodic disappearances.
* * *
(Actually, this isn’t entirely true. There are numerous such examples in the religious texts, but I’m discounting those for the fact that while one might argue our patient vanished because she was assumed into heaven, after that assumption she returned. There is no history of that happening as a matter of routine. A few thousand years apart, yes, but not twice in an afternoon.)
* * *
There’s no biological explanation for the disappearances, although in fairness I wouldn’t know where to look for a biological explanation. And, although we have only a few examples to study, there doesn’t appear to be a connection between the disappearances and external stimuli: in some instances, it’s defensive, but in others it just happens.
* * *
When I approached Adam on the subject, in the hope that he would have an insight he could share—and could furthermore perform the same vanishing act, so it could be studied more concretely—he recommended I skip the biology textbooks and study the physics textbooks instead. Then he said something about a fairy kingdom, which I would be extraordinarily surprised to find covered in a physics textbook.
* * *
But I’m not a physicist, so I’ll allow that I could be in error.
* * *
Adam is no longer available to answer questions, not without placing a call I’m told not to place short of an emergency. It’s been seven days since his departure, and I’ve heard nothing since.
* * *
As his intention is to get to the root of our patient’s evidently impossible sickness, I’m holding out hope that his efforts are more fruitful than mine. Understanding how she can dematerialize is a close second on the ledger of things about which I’m curious. Figuring out how someone who never gets sick got sick is a much more important question.
Day thirty-eight.
* * *
We tried to move the patient again today, and it was as fruitless as ever.
* * *
We’d like to do this for a few reasons.
* * *
First off, it would be much easier if she were in the hospital, because some of the equipment I’d like to use for diagnosis just can’t be relocated, or if it can it won’t fit through the hotel room door. We have a basic setup in the room, and that’s all.
* * *
Second, I’ve been told by hotel management that they would prefer she not remain in the hotel room, as it’s interfering with their cleanup. I’m taking this as the exaggeration it must be, because the entire island still looks more like a war zone than a vacation spot. We’re as aware of this as anybody.
* * *
All of the surviving hospital staff, along with the new arrivals from the mainland, have been working non-stop to deal with the injuries sustained either from the tsunami or the siege that followed, and yet we have the better task. Yes, we are seeing patients die, still—sometimes tourists, sometimes neighbors—but our work is primarily with the living. The larger challenge is having to deal with all the debris, because there are bodies in the debris, and they’re only getting riper in the heat. I don’t envy anybody that task.
* * *
I think we’re a long way from the hotel serving as a proper hotel again. Were it not for the fact that an incredible amount of money was buried in this island already, I’d say it shouldn’t be expected to ever recover. Surely, an insurance executive somewhere is saying exactly that to the council members, or whoever is making decisions these days.
* * *
And so, the patient is hardly our biggest concern. On top of that, there doesn’t appear to be anything to treat: she’s sick, but with something we have no cure for. Even if we did, Adam mentioned in passing that—and I’m quoting—“drugs don’t work on us.”
* * *
(Is this still the case? If she was sick with something for which we had a cure, would the cure really not work?)
* * *
Without a treatment protocol, the hotel bed may as well be as good as the hospital bed… except for the part where we won’t really know if this is genuinely the case until we’ve had a chance to study her, using all available technologies. And as I’ve said, some of those technologies aren’t portable.
* * *
But she continues to not let us move her. Today, we shifted her onto a crash cart, made sure she was comfortable—as much as one can determine this sort of thing with an unconscious person—and rushed her from the room. She made it all the way to the ambulance before disappearing.
* * *
We found her lying in the parking lot where the ambulance had been parked. The hotel’s satyr manager looked quite put out, but the only thing we could do was bring her back to the room again. It was either that or risk her vanishing while the ambulance was in motion. I know nothing of the nature of this trick of hers, but I suspect it would be bad for her health if she reappeared on the open road while unconscious, and still carrying the vehicle’s momentum.
* * *
I’m thankful that to this point, she hasn’t materialized in the middle of a solid object. This would, I expect, be fatal.
3
I am beginning to hate the information age.
I’m really fond of my secrets, although I honestly don’t have all that many right now. I’ve had thousands of really good ones, but secrets only last as long as there are people around who care about them. Eventually, I end up being the only guy who knows enough about the secret to know why it’s a secret at all, basically, and then it no longer matters to anybody except the occasional historian.
For a really long time I could keep all of those secrets in a place where nobody could get at them: in my head, most obviously, but also written down in a ledger I kept on my person, or locked up in a place only I had access to.
There were also secret societies that were good for keeping information secret. Sometimes, they were secret societies that, by virtue of being secret, became good places to store information. Other times, there was a bunch of information in need of being kept secret, so a society was formed to keep it that way. Honestly, once things got going it was hard to tell which came first: the information, or the organization. They both looked the same after a generation or two.
Being associated with one of these groups meant a new place to store my own secrets, which did mean they tended to last longer.
But not too much longer. A lot of the secret societies are gone, a few are still here but not all that private—the Freemasons, for instance—and a handful still exist and nobody knows about them but the members. I can name five of these off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more.
Beyond those kinds of explicit secret-keeping endeavors, there are the things I think should be secret but somehow are not any longer. Like, where I ate breakfast, when I crossed a border, whether or not I wore a hat last week, and what kind of hat it was. They’re not really secrets, but they are things I feel shouldn’t be straightforwardly obtainable.
That’s what I don’t like about the world so much. It wasn’t that long ago that I understood when I was entering into a high surveillance situation, and what to do with myself in that circumstance. No sudden movements when meeting a head-of-state and all that. Nowadays, there’s no such thing as a low- or no-surveillance environment, not if I wan
t to go anywhere and do anything. (Aside: I do not want to go anywhere or do anything, which was why we moved to an island, but that’s another story.)
“You know about the island?” Mirella asked.
“I do,” Ina said. “But not that you came from there, not until I saw your papers. Dimitri always uses the same man.”
“That doesn’t seem like enough to put us on the island,” I said. “Other than when we confirmed it for you about ten seconds ago.”
“No. But I knew of you, the man who doesn’t age. It has been some time, hasn’t it? Since you last poked your head out of the grasses and looked at the horizon?”
“I planned not to stick my head up at all, but events conspired.”
“I see.”
She stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. It was a little like how it felt to be stared at by an oracle or a prophet. Like my now wasn’t the only thing being perceived. Fortunately, I had a drink in my hand, which leavens discomfort sometimes.
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