by Tom Pawlik
George looked from Vale to Miriam. “So someone taking perilium can’t be killed?”
Vale chuckled. “I wish that were the case. No, our bodies can sustain physical trauma to such a degree that not even perilium can help. It won’t grow back a limb, for example. Nor does it prevent someone from, say . . . drowning or suffocating. But I can tell you that most injuries—even gunshots, if not immediately fatal—can heal within minutes. Broken bones, depending on the severity of the break, will heal within a few hours.”
Miriam was shaking her head. “So . . . forgive my cynicism here, but what’s the catch? I can’t believe this perilium has no negative side effects.”
Vale narrowed his eyes at George. “You haven’t related our conversation to her?”
Miriam frowned and turned to George as well. “What conversation?”
“Uh . . . well . . .” George had hoped to explain the situation to her in his own time. On his own terms. But truthfully, he hadn’t even figured out exactly how he was going to broach the topic. Now he stammered, trying to find the words to explain it all to her.
Finally Vale interjected, “The beneficial effects of perilium require a regular regimen to maintain. But as long as you continue your treatment schedule, you should retain your health—and youth—indefinitely.”
“Regular regimen?” Miriam fell silent a moment. “What exactly does that mean? Just how often do I have to take this stuff?”
“That all depends on your body’s specific response to the treatment,” Vale said. “But in your case, most likely once every few days.”
“And how often do you have to take it?”
George stared at his wife. A few days ago she didn’t even know her own name. Now she was back to her old self again, going after Vale like an attorney questioning a beleaguered defendant on the witness stand. George watched Vale draw a breath and could see a slight tightening of his lips.
“Those of us who have been here longer take a daily dose.”
“Daily,” Miriam said. “So then, the older you get, the more you need.”
“A minor consequence.” Vale tried to shrug off her comment. “It was to be expected.”
“And if you stop taking it?”
Vale’s eyes narrowed. It was as if that thought had never even crossed his mind. “Then of course the beneficial effects would wear off as well.”
“And I assume everyone in town . . . they all have to get their daily allotments from you?”
“Yes.”
“And where do you get it?”
Vale glanced at George as if expecting him to intervene, but George could only shake his head. Vale’s eyes flicked back to Miriam. “From a local tribe called the N’watu,” he said. “They discovered the secret of perilium a long time ago.”
“But you don’t know what it is.”
“We’re . . . addressing that issue.”
“Addressing it? So this tribe—the N’watu?—right now they’re the only ones who know how to make this perilium?”
“From what we’ve been able to determine, the primary element is an organic component that we believe exists only in the caves in this area.”
“But still,” Miriam pressed, “you don’t know how to make it yourself.”
Vale sighed and seemed to concede the point. “It’s an ancient secret, yes. They’re very guarded about it.”
Miriam laughed. “So you’re just as much a prisoner here as everyone else.”
Vale shook his head. His tone grew terse. “To be completely free from disease, from aging—you call this a prison?”
“It’s not just disease and aging we suffer from, Mr. Vale,” Miriam countered. “You can never leave this place, can you? You’re like a drug addict. And you have to do whatever they tell you to; am I right? The one who supplies the drugs always has power over the ones who take them.”
Vale stood. George could see his pale complexion turning pink. “You’re making judgments about things you know nothing about, Mrs. Wilcox. I suggest you discuss this decision in depth with your husband. If I can’t persuade you of the benefits of this arrangement, perhaps he can.”
As soon as Vale had left the room, Miriam turned to George. “How could you have gone along with this?”
George hung his head. Now he was on the stand. “You don’t know what it was like to watch you drift away from me over the last four years. To have you looking at me like I was a stranger. To watch you . . . fall out of love with me.”
“I was the one with the disease, George.”
“And you said yourself you didn’t want to go back there again. You know how terrible that was. What would you have done for me?”
Miriam paused, her lips tightened a moment, and she looked down. “Do you really think you can live forever?”
“I don’t know what to think,” George said. “They told me it would cure your Alzheimer’s. They didn’t say anything about longevity. Or that we’d have to move here. I just knew we’d be together again.”
Miriam touched his cheek. “Sweetheart . . .”
“But we could live another eighty or ninety years at least. Maybe twice that. What could we do with that kind of time? Think of all the things we could accomplish.”
“But is it worth it?” Miriam said. “What good is living so long if we have to spend it cooped up in this town? Doing whatever Vale tells us to do? That’s not life—not real life.”
“We’ll be together. That’s enough for me.”
“George—” Miriam’s voice grew gentle—“I know what you intended, but this feels like we’re trying to cheat the natural order of things.”
“Natural order?” George grunted. “If your Alzheimer’s was part of the natural order of things, then I’m fine with cheating it. I refuse to let you go back to that condition. I don’t care what it costs me.”
“I’m not saying this isn’t a wonderful opportunity. It’s incredible and I’d love for it to last forever. But something about it just feels wrong. Everything has a cost to it—more than just money.”
Miriam’s comment was hauntingly perceptive. George knew if he were Vale’s employee, he would end up having to do as he was told. And he would be helping keep this place a secret. George had never been above bending the law a bit in order to get a business deal done or to gain leverage over a competitor. Still, he’d never gone so far as to do anything overtly illegal. But then, he’d never had quite so much to gain before.
Or so much to lose.
He felt Miriam’s hand on his arm. “You know what I believe, George. I’ve lived a good, long life—a full life. And I know there’s something better waiting for me after it. So much better than this. I’m not afraid to die.”
“I am.”
She rubbed his arm. “You don’t have to be. We were meant for something better than this world. For eternity. This body is wasting away no matter what we do—even their perilium can’t stop it completely. They might live for hundreds of years, but eventually death will catch up with them.”
“But what’s wrong with trying to put it off for a while?”
“I think we would be miserable here.”
“Well, the others all seem happy enough with their arrangement. You talked to them, right? Did they seem miserable?”
Miriam sighed. “I suppose not. The Brownes and the Huxleys seemed to love it here. I couldn’t get them to shut up about it.”
“Did they feel like they’d been cheated? Did they have any regrets?”
“No.” Miriam rested her chin in her palm and drummed her fingers lightly on the table. “No, they seemed perfectly happy.”
“Well, there you go,” George said. Though he’d gotten a very different impression from Amanda McWhorter out on the patio last night. She was anything but happy. Now he wondered how long she had actually been out here and how old she really was.
Miriam continued, “But we’d have to move away from all our friends. And church. What are we going to tell everyone?”
George shrugged. �
��Maybe you’ve forgotten, but you haven’t been very close with anyone for a couple years now. I stopped bringing you to church when you stopped recognizing anyone. I think in their minds, you’re already gone. You were gone a long time ago.”
“I just get a bad feeling about this place, George. Why does he have to go to so much trouble to keep it a secret?”
“Can you imagine what would happen if word of this ever got out? I mean, if the public found out there was a cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s or any disease out here—let alone a fountain of youth—this place would be overrun with crazies. And if that happened, no one would benefit from it.”
“So instead they keep it a secret only for a select few? The very wealthy? That’s not right either.”
“There’s just not enough of it for everyone. Besides, even if it could be mass-produced, can you imagine the nightmare this planet would become if everyone lived two hundred years? Or three hundred? We’re stretching our resources thin the way it is. Talk about hell on earth. . . .”
Miriam turned away, frowning. “It just smacks of elitism, George.”
“Then so be it.” George felt a certain resolve growing inside him. He could see the logic to Vale’s methods. Elitism or not, he was starting to see the rightness of it.
Besides, it wasn’t like they had much of a choice anymore.
Chapter 27
They spent the rest of the day indoors. Miriam had said she was feeling a bit restless, so she offered to help Amanda in the kitchen. The two of them spent most of the day together talking while George lingered on the periphery. It looked like they had struck up a bit of a friendship, and he was thankful for that. Amanda seemed to be a rather lonely person, and George knew it would be good for Miriam to have a friend as well.
Amanda shared some of her life story with them. She had apparently arrived in Beckon in 1923 at the age of seventeen. It was incredible to think that she was over a hundred years old. She looked barely twenty-five. Miriam peppered her with questions about the perilium, the town, and mostly about Thomas Vale. Amanda provided only vague answers to most.
George frowned inwardly; a hundred years was a long time to be so miserable.
He also heard them talking about God at one point and wasn’t a bit surprised. Miriam had always been able to worm her beliefs into almost any conversation. There was a time in his life when it had annoyed George. Now? Not so much.
And rather than seeming put off herself, Amanda looked genuinely interested in what Miriam had to say. Something about what Miriam was sharing appeared to have struck a chord.
That evening Miriam complained of feeling tired, so they went to bed early. George slept fitfully. He kept thinking about the van he’d seen the day before and wondered what the story was behind it. Who was inside, and why were they here? He was hesitant to ask about it since the only way he’d been able to see it was through the window in the other wing, and he didn’t want Vale to know he’d been poking around.
He woke up the next morning to gray clouds and a heavy rain pounding the glass and drumming on the roof. And for the second morning in a row, he found Miriam in the bathroom weeping softly. Though this time it sounded different.
George knocked on the door. “What’s wrong now?”
A moment later Miriam opened the door. “I don’t feel very well.”
Her complexion was pallid with dark circles lining her eyes. Her forehead was cold and clammy to the touch.
“I just feel . . . a little dizzy.”
George helped her back to the bed. “Lie down and I’ll get Dr. Henderson.”
He went downstairs. It was still before eight o’clock, but he hoped Amanda would be up early. He went to the kitchen to find her preparing a tray of food.
“Where’s Dr. Henderson?” George said. “Miriam’s not feeling very well; I think she might need more medicine.”
Amanda frowned, then pushed past him and hurried down the corridor with George on her heels. “Where is the doctor?” he was saying. “Can you call him?”
But Amanda just said, “Wait here,” and disappeared inside Vale’s office.
George called after her, “Can you please just call the doctor?”
Amanda emerged from the office a few moments later with a glass vial in her grasp. George followed her back to their suite and the bed where Miriam was lying, now drenched in sweat and struggling, it seemed, just to breathe.
“Do you know how to administer this stuff?” he asked.
Amanda helped Miriam sit up in the bed, then uncapped the vial and held it to her lips. “Drink this down. Swallow it all and don’t spill any of it.”
Miriam gagged slightly but swallowed the perilium from the vial. Amanda made certain she drank every drop. Miriam seemed to relax; her breathing slowed and she settled back against the pillows.
Amanda felt her forehead, then got up from the bed. “She should be all right in an hour or so. Let her rest for now. I’ll call Dwight and he’ll come up and check on her.”
Amanda left the room, and George sat in silence for several minutes watching his wife. Vale had said that the effects of the perilium would wear off, but George hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly.
When he was satisfied Miriam was sleeping again, George dressed and slipped downstairs. He found Amanda in the kitchen, leaning against the big aluminum sink, her head down, the water running.
“What was wrong with her?”
Amanda didn’t look up. “Did they tell you what would happen if she ever stopped taking it?”
George shrugged. “They said that the effects would wear off. And that her Alzheimer’s could eventually come back.”
She shook her head, and her eyes glistened. “Well, let’s just say if she stops taking the perilium, Alzheimer’s will be the least of her worries.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
She turned back to the sink. “Never mind. I already said too much.”
George grabbed her arm and spun her around. “What will happen to her?”
She pulled free from his grasp, her eyes flaring. “Why did you bring her here?”
“To save her. I had to try to save her.”
“Really? Did you do it for her or for yourself?”
George stepped back and blinked. “What?”
“I mean, was it her suffering you were trying to ease or your own?” Amanda wiped her eyes, and her tone suddenly grew cold. “Who were you really trying to save?”
She pushed past him and left George standing in the kitchen struggling with his thoughts. Her question hung in the silence, pricking his conscience. Had he brought Miriam all this way for her sake or his own? He recalled hearing Alzheimer’s described just that way: a disease where the patient’s family suffers more than the patient. He hadn’t thought about it quite like that before. But now part of him had to concede it was true. He’d been more occupied with how her disease had affected him. His life. His plans.
George returned to his room and sat at the bedside as Miriam slept. An ominous thought overshadowed him as he considered the miracle drug and its side effects. Vale had purposely withheld the information about its rejuvenating abilities until it suited him. George wondered now what else Vale hadn’t told him. What other side effects were there? He couldn’t trust Vale for information. He would need to find out for himself.
After a time he dozed off and woke up again shortly after noon. He glanced out the window and saw that the rain had let up some. Miriam was still asleep but George was starving, so he decided to head back to the kitchen and find something to eat.
In the hallway he heard voices coming from the dining room. It sounded like Thomas Vale. And George thought he heard another woman’s voice as well. It wasn’t Amanda, and it didn’t sound like any of the other women he’d met at the dinner party two nights ago.
George heard Vale’s voice drifting up through the foyer. “She wanted to find her cousin. Go take her to him.”
George snuck along the hall
until he came to the balcony over the foyer, where he saw Carson escorting someone down the corridor below him. It was a woman, her shoulder-length black hair hanging in wet clumps. She was drenched. George couldn’t see her face, and it almost looked like she had been handcuffed.
“Idiots!” Vale was saying now. “How could they not have known they were being followed? Is he completely incompetent?”
“What are you going to do with her?” Amanda’s voice responded.
“We don’t have any choice,” Vale said. “She didn’t leave us any.”
George watched as Vale and Amanda emerged from the dining room and walked down the hallway.
“See what else you can find out about her,” Vale said. “I need to know if she was telling the truth or not.”
“Yes, sir.”
They headed down the same corridor where Carson had taken the prisoner. Vale exited through the door at the far end of the hallway, and Amanda turned into one of the other doors.
George stole down the stairs quietly and listened. Maybe now was his chance to check in Vale’s office. It was obviously the place where he stored the supply of perilium, or at least some of it, and George needed to find out what else was in there. It was also where George recalled spotting the only phone he’d seen in the entire complex—on Vale’s desk. And since his cell phone had no reception in these mountains, it was the only connection George had to the outside world.
The door was closed, but George pushed it open silently. The office was empty, as he suspected. The big oak desk stood at the far end of the room, and George’s heart pounded as he sucked in a deep breath and stole inside.
He moved past the bookshelves and picked up the phone but heard no dial tone. The LCD screen indicated that a pass code was required in order to dial out. George wasn’t surprised. Vale’s mission was to keep this place a secret. And that meant no unauthorized communications.
To the right of the desk was a second door. George tried the knob, and it opened to a room filled with what looked like storage equipment and monitors. It was small and dimly lit, containing two large refrigeration units built into the walls, with temperature monitors and a security system connected to a large console in the middle of the room. Across from the refrigeration units was another door that led to some sort of supply closet.