Captive Dreams

by Michael Flynn

  “Jessie!” Singer said. “Wilkes is here.”

  A round-faced woman peered around the side of the mass spectrometer. “Oh,” she said. “You.” She was wearing a headset similar to the receptionist’s.

  “Jessica Burton-Peeler,” said Singer introducing us, “is the second-best geneticist on the face of the planet.”

  Peeler smiled sweetly. “That was last year, Charlie.” She spoke with a slight British accent.

  Singer laughed and pulled a stick of gum from the pocket of his lab coat. He unwrapped it and rolled it into a ball between his fingers. “Tell Doctor Wilkes here what we found.” He popped the wad of gum into his mouth.

  “Would you like some tea or coffee, Doctor? I can have Eamonn bring you a cup.”

  “No, thanks. My wife is waiting downstairs. We were on our way to a dinner party, but I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to find out.”

  Singer gave me a speculative look. “Find out what?”

  “What you found out.”

  After a moment, Singer grunted and shrugged. “All right. We cultured all three cell samples,” he said. “The ‘B’ sample was normal in all respects. The cells went through fifty-three divisions.”

  “Which is about average,” Peeler added. “As for the other two…One of them divided only a dozen times—”

  “The ‘A’ sample,” I interjected.

  “Yes,” she said after a momentary pause. “The ‘A’ sample. But the ‘C’ sample…That one divided one hundred and twenty-three times.”

  I swallowed. “And that is…abnormal?”

  “Abnormal?” Singer laughed. “Doc, that measurement is so far above the Gaussian curve that you can’t even see abnormal from there.”

  “The ‘A’ sample wasn’t normal, either,” said Peeler quietly.

  I looked at her and she looked at me calmly and without expression. “Well,” I said and coughed. “Well.”

  “So, what’s next?” Singer demanded. “You didn’t send us those tissue samples just to find out they were different. You already knew that—or you suspected it—when you sent them in. We’ve confirmed it. Now what?”

  “I’d like you to compare them and find out how their DNA differs.”

  Singer nodded after a thoughtful pause. “Sure. If the reason is genetic. We can look for factors common to several ‘normal’ samples but different for your ‘A’ and ‘C’ samples. Run polymerase chain reactions. Tedious, but elementary.”

  “And then…” I clenched and unclenched my fists. “I’ve heard you work on molecular modifiers.”

  “Nanomachines,” said Singer. “I have a hunch it’ll be a big field someday, and I’m planning to get in on the ground floor.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the aquarium. “Right now I’m working on a bacterium that eats plastic waste.”

  “Dear Lord,” said Burton-Peeler in sudden wonder. “You want us to modify the DNA, don’t you?”

  Singer looked from me to his wife. “Modify the DNA?”

  “Yes,” I started to say.

  Burton-Peeler pursed her lips. “Modify the ‘A’ sample, of course. Whatever factor we find in the ‘C’ sample that sustains the cell division…You want us to splice that into the short-lived sample.”

  I nodded, unable to speak. “I thought it might be possible to bring it up to normal.”

  Singer rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know. Splicing bacterial DNA is one thing. Human DNA is another. A universe more of complexity. Of course, there is that business with the multiple sclerosis aerosol. They used a modified rhinovirus to carry the mucus-producing genes into the lungs. If the factor is gene specific, we could do something similar. Infect the cells with a retrovirus and…”

  “Then you can do it?”

  “Now hold on. I said no such thing. I said maybe it was possible, if the chips fall right. But there’ll be some basic research needed. It will cost. A lot.”

  “I’ll…find the money. Somehow.”

  Singer shook his head slowly. “I don’t think you can find that much. You’re talking about maybe three to five years research here.”

  “Three to—” I felt the pit of my stomach drop away. “I don’t have three to five years.” Dee-dee would be dead by then. And Mae, too, taking the secret in her genes with her.

  “We’ll do it at cost,” said Burton-Peeler. Singer turned and looked at his wife.

  “What?”

  “We’ll do it at cost, Charlie. I’ll tell you why later.” She looked back to me. “Understand, we still cannot promise fast results. When you set off into the unknown, you cannot predict your arrival time.”

  Go for broke. Damn the torpedoes. “Just try is all I ask.”

  Burton-Peeler saw me out. On the landing to the stairwell she stopped. “You’re the father of the young girl with progeria,” she said. “I saw it in the paper a few years ago. The ‘A’ sample was hers, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Yes, and the second sample was my own. For comparison.” I turned to go.

  Peeler stopped me with an arm on my sleeve. She looked into my eyes. “Whose was the third sample?” she asked.

  I smiled briefly and sadly. “My faith, that the universe balances.”

  In the lobby, Brenda was just handing a tea cup and saucer back to Singer’s red-haired receptionist when she saw me coming. With a few brisk motions she collected her things and was already breezing out the door as I caught up with her.

  “I’ll drive,” she said. “We’re way behind schedule now, thanks to you.”

  I said nothing and she continued in what was supposed to be an idly curious tone. “Who was that woman with you? The one on the landing.”

  “Woman? Oh, that was Jessica Burton-Peeler. Singer’s wife.”

  Brenda arched an eyebrow and made a little moue with her lips. “She’s a little on the plump side,” she said. “Do you find plump women attractive?”

  I didn’t have the time to deal with Brenda’s insecurities. “Start the car,” I told her. “We’ll be late for dinner.”

  They say we are aged and gray, Maggie

  As spray by the white breakers flung;

  But to me you’re as fair as you were, Maggie,

  When you and I were young.

  Mae Holloway lay between white sheets, coupled to tubes and wires. She lay with her eyes closed, and her arms limp by her sides atop the sheets. Her mouth hung half-open. She seemed grey and shrunken; drawn, like a wire through a die. Her meager white hair was nearly translucent.

  She looked like a woman half her age.

  Noor Khan was sitting near the wall reading a magazine. She looked up as I entered the room. “They told you?”

  “That Mae has recovered consciousness? Yes. I’m surprised to see you still here.”

  Khan looked at the bed. “I have made arrangements. She has no family to keep watch.”

  “No,” I agreed. “They are long gone.” Longer than Khan could suppose. “Is she sleeping?”

  She hesitated a moment, then spoke in a whisper. “Not really. I think that as long as she keeps her eyes closed she can pretend she is not in hospital. Those memories of hers…The consciousness-doubling, you called it. I think they play continually, now. The pressure from the tumor on the temporal lobe.”

  I nodded. Suppress all external stimuli and Mae could—in a biological kind of virtual reality—live again in the past. If we spoke too loudly, it would bring her back to a time and place she did not want. “Why don’t you take a break,” I said. “I’ll sit with her for a while.”

  Khan cocked her head to the side and looked at me. “You will.”

  “Yes. Is that so surprising?”

  She started to say something and then changed her mind. “I will be in the cafeteria.” And then she fluttered out.

  When she was gone, I pulled the chair up to the bedside and sat in it. “Mae? It’s Doctor Wilkes.” I touched her gently on the arm, and she seemed to flinch from the contact. “Mae?”

  “I hear yuh,” she sai
d. Her voice was low and weak and lacked her usual snap. I had to lean close to hear her. “It’ud pleasure me if you’d company for a mite. It’s been mighty lonely up hyar.”

  “Has it? But Doctor Khan—”

  “I kilt the b’ar,” she whispered, “but it stove up Pa something awful. He cain’t hardly git around no more, so I got to be doin’ for him.” She paused as if listening. “I’m not so little as that, mister; I jest got me a puny bone-box. I ain’t no yokum. I been over the creek. And I got me a Tennessee toothpick, too, in case you have thoughts about a little girl with a crippled-up Pa. What’s yore handle, mister?”

  “Mrs. Holloway,” I said gently. “Don’t you know me?”

  Mae giggled. “Right pleased to meet you, Mister Holloway. Greenberry’s a funny name, so I’ll just call you Mister. If you’ll set a spell, I’ll whup you up a bait to eat. H’ain’t much, only squirrel; but I aim to go hunting tomorry and find a deer that’ll meat us for a spell.”

  I pulled back and sat up straight in my chair. She was reliving her first meeting with Green Holloway. Was she too far gone into the quicksand of nostalgia to respond to me? “Mae,” I said more loudly, shaking her shoulder. “It’s Doctor Wilkes. Can you hear me?”

  Mae gasped and her eyes flew open. “Whut…? Where…?” The eyes lighted on me and went narrow. “You.”

  “Me,” I agreed. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Holloway?”

  “I’m a-gonna die. How do you want me to feel?”

  Relieved? Wasn’t there a poem about weary rivers winding safe to the sea? But, no matter how long and weary the journey, can anyone face the sea at the end of it? “Mrs. Holloway, do you remember the time you were on the White House lawn and the president came out?”

  Her face immediately became wary and she looked away from me. “What of it?”

  “That president. It was Lincoln, wasn’t it?”

  She shook her head, a leaf shivering in the breeze.

  I took a deep breath. “The Sanitary Commission was the Union Army’s civilian medical corps. If you were wearing that uniform, you were remembering the 1860s. That business on the lawn. It happened. I looked it up. The dancing. Listen to the Mockinbird. Lincoln coming outside to join the celebration. The whole thing. You know it, but you won’t admit it because it sounds impossible.”

  “Sounds impossible?” She turned her head and looked at me at last. “How could I remember Lincoln? I’m not that old!”

  “Yes, you are, Mae. You are that old. It’s just that those early memories have gone all blurry. It’s become hard for you to tell the decades apart. Your oldest memories had faded entirely, until your stroke revived them.”

  “You’re talking crazy.”

  “I think it must be a defense mechanism,” I went on as if she had not spoken. “The blurring and forgetting. It keeps the mental desktop cleared of clutter by shoving the old stuff aside.”

  “Doc…”

  “But, every now and then, one of those old, faded memories would pop up, wouldn’t it? Some impossible recollection. And you would think…”

  “That I was going crazy.” In a whisper, half to herself, she said, “I was always afraid of that, as long back as I can remember.”

  No wonder. Sporadic recollections of events generations past…Could a sane mind remember meeting Lincoln? “Mae. I found your name in the 1850 Census.”

  She shook her head again. Disbelief. But behind it…Hope? Relief that those impossible memories might be real? “Doc, how can it be possible?”

  I spread my hands. “I don’t know. Something in your genes. I have some people working on it, but…I think you have been aging slow. I don’t know how that is possible. Maybe it has never happened before. Maybe you’re the only one. Or maybe there were others and no one ever noticed. Maybe they were killed in accidents; or they really did go mad; or they thought they were recalling past lives. It doesn’t matter. Mae, I’ve spent the last week in libraries and archives. You were born around 1800.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. Your father was a member of Captain James Scott’s settlement company. The Murrays, the Hammontrees, the Holloways, the Blacks and others. The overmountain men, they were called. They bought land near Six Mile Creek from the Overhill Cherokees.”

  I paused. Mae said nothing but she continued to look at me, slowly shaking her head. “Believe me,” I said. “Your father’s name was Josh, wasn’t it?”

  “Josiah. Folks called him Josh. I…I had forgotten my folks for such a long time; and now that I can remember, it pains me awful.”

  “Yes. I overheard. A bear mauled him.”

  “Doc, he was such a fine figure of a man. Right portly—I mean, handsome. He cut a swath wherever he walked. To see him laid up like that…Well, it sorrowed me something fierce. And him always saying I shouldn’t wool over him.”

  “He died sometime between 1830 and 1840, after you married Green Holloway.”

  She looked into the distance. “Mister, he was a long hunter. He come on our homestead one day and saw how things stood and stayed to help out. Said it wasn’t fittin’ for a young gal to live alone like that with no man to side her. ’Specially a button like I was. There was outlaws and renegades all up and down the Trace who wouldn’t think twice about bothering a young girl. When Pa finally said ’t was fittin’, we jumped the broom ’til the preacher-man come through.” She stopped. “Doc?”

  “Yes?”

  “Doc, you must have it right. Because…Because, how long has it been since folks lived in log cabins, and long hunters dressed up in buckskins?”

  “A long time,” I said. “A very long time.”

  “Seems like just a little while ago to me, but I know it can’t be. The Natchez Trace? I just never gave it much thought.”

  Have you ever seen a neglected field overgrown with weeds? That was Mae’s memory. Acres of thistle and briar. All perspective lost, all sense of elapsed time. “Your memories were telescoped,” I said. “Remember when you sang Sweet Betsy from Pike for me, and you said how real it all seemed to you? Well, after the Civil War, sometime during the Great Depression of the 1870s, you went out west, probably on one of the last wagon trains, after they finished the railroad. After that, I lost track.”

  She stayed quiet for a long time and I began to think she had dozed off. Then she spoke again.

  “Sometimes I remember the Tennessee hills,” she said in a faraway voice, “all blue and purple and cozy with family.” She sighed. “I loved them mountains,” she said. “We had us a hardscrabble, side-hill farm. The hills was tilted so steep we could plow both sides of an acre. And the cows had their legs longer on the one side than the other so’s they could stand straight-up.” She chuckled at the hillbilly humor. “Oh, it was a hard life. You kids today don’t know. But in the springtime, when the piney roses and star-flowers and golden bells was in bloom, and the laurel hells was all purpled up; why, doc, you couldn’t ask God for a purtier sight.” She sighed. “And other times…Other times, I remember a ranch in high-up, snow-capped mountains with long-horned cattle and vistas where God goes when He wants to feel small. There was a speakeasy in Chicago, where the jazz was hot; and a bawdy house in Frisco, where I was.” She let her breath out slowly and closed her eyes again. “I remember wearing bustles and bloomers, and linen and lace, and homespun and broadcloth. I’ve been so many people, I don’t know who I am.”

  She opened her eyes and looked at me. “But I was always alone, except in them early years. With Mister. And with Daddy and my brother Zach.” A tear dripped down the side of her face. I pulled a tissue from the box and blotted it up for her. “There weren’t nobody left for me. Nobody.”

  I hesitated for a moment. Then I said, “Mae, you never had a brother.”

  “Now what are you talking about? I remember him clear as day.”

  “I’ve checked the records. Your mother died and your father never remarried.”

  Mae started to speak, then frowned. “Pa did tell me oncet that h
e’d never hitch ag’in, because he loved the dust of Ma’s feet and the sweat of her body more than he loved any other woman. But Zach—”

  “Was your own child.”

  She sucked in her breath between clenched teeth. “No, he weren’t! He was near my own age.”

  “You remember Zach from 1861 when he followed your husband into the army. He was twenty-two then, and you…Well, you seemed to be thirty-seven to those around you. So, in your memory he seems like a brother. By the time you rejoined him on his ranch in Wyoming, he was even a bit older than your apparent age. Remembered how you thought he resembled Mister? Well, that was because he was Mister’s son. I think…I think that was when you started forgetting how the years passed for you. Mae, no one ever ran out on you. You just outlived them. They grew old and they died and you didn’t. And after a while you just wouldn’t dare get close to anyone.”

  Tears squeezed from behind her eyes. “Stop it! Every time you say something, you make me remember.”

  “In all this time, Mae, you’ve never mentioned your child. You did have one; the clinical evidence is there. If Zach wasn’t your boy, who was? Who was the boy sitting next to you at the minstrel show in Knoxville?”

  She looked suddenly confused, and there was more to her confusion than the distance of time. “I don’t know.” Her eyes glazed and she looked to her right. I knew she was re-seeing the event. “Zach?” she said. “Is that you, boy? Zach? Oh, it is. It is.” She refocused on me. “He cain’t hear me,” she said plaintively. “He hugged me, but I couldn’t feel his arms.”

  “I know. It’s only a memory.”

  “I want to feel his arms around me. They grow up so fast, you know. The young ’uns. One day, they’re a baby, cute as a button; the next, all growed up and gone for a soldier. All growed up. I could see it happening. All of ’em, getting older and older. I thought there was something wrong with me. That I’d been a bad girl, because I kilt my Ma; and the Good Man was punishing me by holding me back from the pearly gates. If’n I never grew old, I’d never die. And if I never died, I’d never see any of my kin-folk again. Doc, you can’t know what it’s like, knowing your child will grow old and wither like October corn and die right before your eyes.”