by JA Schneider
Arnett looked at her, looked away, and exhaled. “I must be getting old.”
“Others were beginning to notice too! In the cafeteria there’s been talk of little else. I’ve done nothing special, it was just a matter of time – ”
“Not the same,” said Arnett. He got up, carrying the printouts, and went to the window. A thin gray line was beginning to appear on the horizon.
“Others notice things in pieces,” he said, still looking out. He waved the printouts. “Too timid or ungifted to look for the bigger picture.”
“But records were incomplete. Important information was left out or deleted – ”
“Not for you,” he said, walking back. “I blame myself. I’ve been too focused on research, not spending enough time with real patients.” He shook his head. “Well this does it. I’m going to go all out for you at Stryker’s meeting. And with Levine in line for Ganon’s job - what a wonderful pair you’d make!”
“That’s kind of you, but after this I’m afraid – ”
“Nonsense! You’ve got the whole hospital over a barrel.” Arnett bent to fiddle with a line of test tubes. Then, still bending, glanced at his cell phone; put it back in his pocket. “Have you told anyone else about your findings?”
“How could I? It was barely an hour ago that I…” Jill found herself staring at a pattern on the floor. Arnett had flattered her, told her what a wonderful researcher she was, but he hadn’t emoted over the human suffering. She looked up to see him folding the printouts, putting them into his breast pocket.
She felt a prickling of alarm.
He saw her look and patted his pocket. “First salvo for Stryker,” he said reassuringly. “Also this.” He put the Jackson chart in a top drawer below the counter. “He’s toast and you are safe, my dear.” He reached to touch her arm. “Come see something incredible I’ve been working on. When you see this, I’m convinced you’ll want to work with me.”
He rushed excitedly ahead. Curiosity and lifted spirits took hold. Jill followed him to the far wall of bookcases. “You’re the first to see this!” he said, pushing aside a small jade figurine. It was an elephant, a little jade elephant. Jill’s mind whirled. She had seen it before. Where?
Where the elephant had been, Arnett flicked a lever. There was a click and then a creaking noise. A six-foot rectangle detached itself and groaned outward a few inches. Musty air wafted out.
“I ran out of room,” Arnett said in a reasonable tone. “So I’m using lab space in the adjoining building.”
Jill peeked in, wrinkling her nose at the faintly familiar odor. “Lab?” she asked.
“Better than a lab,” he said. “And the best secret of all in there.”
She hesitated. Her watch read 4:40.
Beaming, he stepped in and pulled her forward. Behind them the door closed, and then all was darkness.
31
Taking the stairs in twos, David whammed open the fourth floor fire door and raced down the hall of the Sturdevandt wing. At Arnett’s office he knocked. No answer. “Jill?” he called. “Clifford Arnett!”
He knocked again, loudly. He tried the door. It was locked.
He frowned in alarm. That radiology guy just saw Jill heading here!
A hospital security guard appeared, carrying a large ring of keys. “Trying to get in?” he asked. David’s white jacket and pants identified him as a resident.
“I’m looking for Dr. Raney. She’s missing.”
“Yeah I got that message. She’s the one who was mugged?” The guard keyed open the door to the lab dazzling with light. Every bank of fluorescents was on.
“Looks like someone’s been here,” said the guard. His name was Angel. “The docs downstairs are tearing the place apart. Cops too.”
“They’re supposed to be here already.” David moved frantically around the room. Angel, wanting to help, followed. David saw two counter stools pulled out from their places and a test tube lying on its side, its contents still draining out. This lab had been vacated seconds ago.
He turned to the guard.
“I’ll be needing your gun, Angel.”
“Wha…? You gone crazy?”
“Yes, I’ve gone crazy.” David stepped closer. “If you don’t give it to me,” he said gently, “I’ll have to take it.”
Angel Torres looked up at Levine, who probably outweighed him by a good forty pounds. The guard’s small features worked in confusion.
Levine’s voice was soothing. “As soon as you give it to me, I suggest you call Security and tell them I took it from you.”
Angel gave a bewildered sigh, pulled his .38 from his holster, and gave it to David.
“Thanks,” David said. “You’re an angel.”
“You sound like my mother.” Angel’s gaze dropped to David’s right hand.
“That gun,” he said. “Use it good, okay?”
Minutes after Angel left two cops arrived, winded. Both had their guns drawn, stepped in and looked around.
“Nobody here,” said the heavier one.
David turned to them. He’d just put Angel’s gun in his belt under his jacket.
“She was here,” he said.
“Maybe,” said the second cop, re-holstering his Glock. “I don’t see anybody now.”
The heavier cop asked David, “How’d you get here so fast? Wings?”
He wanted to say Go on a diet, but restrained himself. “I used to do track,” he said.
Metallic police babble filled the room. One of them answered, talking to his shoulder device. “No, not here,” he said.
More babble, a quick answer, and the cop switched off.
“Someone thinks he’s seen her downstairs,” he said. “We gotta go. Good luck.”
They left.
David stayed and paced, the grinding worry back with a vengeance.
The overturned test tube, the two pulled-out counter stools... David went back to both. They were things so subtle, yet they made the whole lab seem wrong.
Something else had also caught his eye. What was it? He paced and poked, trying to remember.
His brain wouldn’t work, but an intuitive pull kept him from leaving.
32
Ahead the darkness was impenetrable. Jill turned to where Arnett had been standing.
“Can’t see…” she said shakily.
She heard his footsteps move past her across dry wood. A low-voiced “wait” came from somewhere, and she swung around to guess where –
And then lights came on. Low-hanging lights so dim that the tall figures at the end of the long, old attic appeared as dark blurs.
“Have a look,” invited Arnett behind her.
Jill stood, not breathing, then slowly moved toward the figures, only half believing what she saw. When she reached the silent group, she blinked at them, then blinked again.
“Well?” Arnett called to her.
She did not answer. Slowly she made a circle around the first figure, staring at the apelike skull, the almost human, erect posture. In the half light she stopped to scrutinize the glassy-eyed face, and felt shock sweep through her. It was one of the hominids from the museum workshop.
Stolen, no doubt.
Looking to the right, her gaze took in the other figures: Homo erectus, a professional looking job (the other stolen hominid?); Homo habilis, looking mangy and badly put together; Homo neanderthalensis, taller, less amateurishly crafted; and finally, a Cro-Magnon couple, a man and a woman, the tallest and largest-brained of them all. The man held a spear in one hand and some sort of tool in the other. The woman, her face nearly obscured by a mass of black hair, held a knife and cooking tools in her clasped hands.
“Welcome to my museum!” Arnett was suddenly beside her, and she cringed. “It’s not hard at all to make these things,” he said. “All you need is a knowledge of anatomy and a few…borrowed materials.” The comment struck him as funny, and he laughed.
“Borrowed materials,” Jill repeated, staring at Cro-Magnon woman�
��s black wig. He’s insane, she thought. It came to her just like that. He steals museum property. Is thrilled by a dusty old attic he calls his lab…
He was watching her, waiting for a reaction.
“This is your…big secret?” she managed.
In the gloom his voice was low and mocking.
“You’re not serious, of course.”
Her fear deepening, Jill backed away.
“You’ve seen nothing,” said Arnett expansively. “This is merely the evolutionary ladder that had to wait three million years for what I have accomplished in eighteen months.” He gestured around him. “Do you know where you are?”
The rafters overhead, reeking of age; the antique French windows behind the hominids; the unmistakable smell of the place…
Play along, her survival voice told her. Tonelessly she said, “The attic of…the Madison Museum of Anthropology.” Her gaze traveled up the shadowy wall to an incongruous array of objects: medieval bloodletting bowls, a Civil War saw used for amputations; centuries-old obstetrical instruments that made her feel ill.
Arnett spread his hands and turned around grandly. “Someday this place will be more famous than Edison’s Menlo Park or Einstein’s library.”
He flipped another switch. More small lights came on. “Now look,” he said.
Part way back and close to the eaves sprawled a cluster of machines, most of them square or oblong in shape, one soaring upward like a silo. The cylinder seemed to be transparent, but its contents were dark. Around it were monitors with banks of gauges and dials; tubes and colored wires fed into it.
Jill stiffened.
“Oh come, come,” he said impatiently. Taking her arm, he led her firmly to the darkened, silicone cylinder. “Look,” he said, pointing.
She could see a vague shape inside. It seemed to be floating. Arnett reached beyond her, flipped a switch, and lit the interior.
“Oh!” Jill’s eyes flew open and she put her hands to her face. The glow emanating from within was a soft, mellow pink. A tranquilizing color.
And a perfect color, no doubt, for the temporary environment of a five-month-old fetus. Its eyes were closed; it appeared to be sleeping. Its tiny body was perfectly formed.
“Five months of incubated life and four to go,” Arnett said excitedly. “Then its mother here” – he patted the cylinder – “can get immediately to work on the next embryo. I have lots to choose from. Culled from the most viable. Cryogenically waiting.”
Jill tightened her hands on her face. “Mother…?”
Arnett’s eyes had taken on a look of exaltation. His voice when he spoke was trancelike. “This fetus,” he said, “has perfected genes. He is immune to all disease. He will have an IQ in the range of two hundred, and will live at least to one hundred and fifty, perhaps longer. I have introduced anti-aging genes into his cells. I’ve also given him a self-regulating enzyme that can convert carbohydrate to protein or fat and vice versa, depending on his nutritional needs.”
He turned to Jill. “Not bad for a little guy who started life in a Petri dish. Now what do you think of that?”
She dropped her hands. Took an unsteady step backward.
“No…” she whispered.
She took another step, and then another –
“See here!” he said, hurrying after her, seizing her arm. “Are you a physician or a fool? You are witnessing the creation of man finally evolved and you say no?”
He released her arm; abruptly switched his tone back to kindly. “Of course, it’s a shock at first. No one is immune to emotions. However – ”
“You left that out? Immunity to emotions?”
“…you must recognize the necessity of this new breed of human.” Words poured from him in a low, urgent stream. “Homo sapiens as we know him will be either extinct or living in misery in fifty years. The world’s resources will have been used up. The last humans will die of famine or in warfare over the last crumb or the last drop of oil to light their lamps.” He raised his hands. “For tens of thousands of years man has survived by one thing only – his ability to adapt. But now he’s fallen behind. Evolution takes thousand of years. There isn’t time!”
Winded, he let his hands drop by his sides.
Go back to placating him, Jill thought. Pretend to agree or you’ll be as dead as…
A devastating thought hit.
She raised her eyes to the floating infant and struggled for a neutral voice. “What fluid is he floating in?”
“Synthetic nutrients. My own formula.”
She swallowed hard. “Human amniotic fluid doesn’t work?”
He made a dismissive gesture. “It doesn’t work as well.”
Jill thought of the two murdered women. Felt the beginning of nausea and forced it down.
“And you say this child is…immune to all diseases?” she fumbled. “And will live to at least one hundred and fifty? Really?”
She exhaled. The tone of awe must have been there, because Arnett flung up his hands.
“She understands!” His heavy face colored as he saw her gaze fixed – wondrously, she hoped - on the floating fetus.
He pointed. “And you understand the rest, don’t you? Certainly a person of your immense gifts can see that we are living at the end of an era. That the old way of seeing the world is finished, destructive, even!”
He stepped closer to the cylinder and peered at the tiny sleeping face. “I feel like the Fates, you know, weaving my tiny strands of DNA. I kept him in his dish until he had reached thirty-two cells. That’s my first innovation. Not eight cells; that’s not enough to do things to the embryo. That’s for fools like Stryker.”
Jill gave a start. “You mean William Stryker had no hand in these experiments? He doesn’t know anything about this?”
Arnett looked offended. “That mediocrity capable of this? Stryker’s a drone! Good only for posturing, calling conferences and school-marming residents!”
Jill felt new shock as he paced around the cylinder.
“People like Stryker,” he said. “They and their so-called medical ethics force real genius into hiding. Force real genius to do things considered unthinkable – but for the greater good! Oh, they think they’re benefiting mankind because they help a few people. Hah! Finger in the dike medicine I call that. Could they even dream of human salvation on the scale I have achieved? I’m turning off his light now. We want our fetus to get his sleep, don’t we?”
He raved. The light in the cylinder went dark. Jill glanced furtively toward the door, calculating her chances for escape. Was the door locked from the inside? Was the length of the attic too far to make a run for it? She looked back to Arnett. He was standing before her with his back turned.
“…Stryker’s children are all failures,” he said. “Bright, yes. Geniuses, doubtful. But all are as miserably mortal as man has ever been. Prey to illness and disease and absurdly short life spans…”
She started to move backwards, step by step, not daring to take her eyes off him.
“…fools trying to bar me from such advances. I have discovered the means to accelerate human evolution! It’s a race against time. We must do this or the human race is doomed – ”
Her feet were moving faster. She was half-turned, trembling violently, her eyes staring so fearfully at the ranting, white-coated back – “anti-aging genes!” – that she did not hear the soft, metallic sound of a doorknob turn, the rubber-soled shoes stealthily crossing the dimness until they stepped on a floorboard behind her. She wheeled, saw the face and tried to scream. It was no good; her attacker from the record room had seized her by the wrist and neck and was leering down at her as she flailed.
Arnett stood, watching.
“Damn you!” he exploded, his eyes on the newcomer. “I buzzed you ten minutes ago! What in hell took so long?”
33
They had regrouped in the doctors’ lounge.
Tricia was crying. MacIntyre was in a chair he’d collapsed into after tearing ar
ound the tunnels. Woody had been all over the hospital, including checking Jill’s room.
“Security says she hasn’t been seen leaving the hospital by any entrance,” he said. “David says she was at Arnett’s and the pages are calling all over, the basement, every broom closet, the whole damn med center.” Woody paced, his eyes woeful. “She’s not on the inside and she’s not on the outside. She’s missing.”
MacIntyre ran a hand across his brow. “Could she have gone back to her room?”
Tricia managed, “I re-checked. She’s not there. Cops are there. Dusting for finger prints and taking DNA samples as if...as if…” She sobbed.
“Where’s David now?” Woody asked.
“Still up in Arnett’s as of five minutes ago.” MacIntyre pulled out his cell phone and checked it again. Kept it in his hand, staring at it hopelessly.
Tricia whimpered, “What can we do?”
Nobody answered. There was nothing left they could do. Nothing the hospital or the cops could do.
Woody’s pacing slowed down; he could not sit. Tricia buried her face in her hands.
MacIntyre kept staring at his phone.
Jill gaped at the gaunt, malicious face. Seeing him in this setting jogged another memory, barely perceived in the record room, of having seen him before, this young tough whose fingers clamped painfully around her wrist.
“Close the door, Sonny,” Arnett ordered.
Sonny…Sears. The dour-faced assistant sweeping scraps in the hominid room.
Peking’s light is broken, Sonny.
Jill’s gaze dropped to his Nikes, black with silver markings.
The grass man too.
“I said, close the door.”
Sears jerked his thumb at a door located across from the one Jill had passed through. “I hadda clean up her damn mess before Clark got there early. She wrecked that dummy, he was lyin’ there with his guts spilled out.”
“I know,” said Arnett. “And such a racket you made, Jill. I almost had to deal with you myself.”
The footsteps on the museum stairs. Jill backed further away, her eyes dilated in fear.