The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  “Well, huh,” said Gerber. “Still, you wouldn’t have always been pleased by what you saw. We haven’t even touched World War Two.”

  “There was another war?”

  “There have been wars damn near all of the time that you were gone.”

  “But couldn’t these inventions unite us? Create a common ground?”

  “They did,” I interjected. “Millions of people are connected all over the world now. We continually grow in our knowledge and appreciation of people who live differently.”

  “Either that”—Gerber laughed—“or we kill them.”

  Judge Rice sighed. “I am fatigued. Before I rest, however, and set my mind to work on understanding all of this, I’d like to see the limit, if I may. The outer edge of what humanity has done with aviation thus far.”

  Gerber looked at me. “Is that okay?”

  “You’re asking my opinion?” I said. “Then no, I would rather you didn’t.”

  “Is history as terrible as all that?” Judge Rice asked.

  “He’s going to find out eventually anyway,” Gerber said.

  I had no answer, which Gerber interpreted as assent. “Okay, Judge, I’ll show you. But it ain’t pretty.” He typed away on his keyboard. “I think I’ll skip the Hindenberg, and start with this.” He cut to a clip from Vietnam, the streak of a jet, a douse of napalm, the jungle bursting into flame. “Not exactly slapping mosquitoes, are we? Now, for your viewing pleasure, we have the drone, a flying bomb controlled by someone far away.” A missile streaked low and loud across the sky of a desert village. On the ground, men in turbans cowered, pointing and shouting.

  “Next we have a jet itself used as a weapon.” I knew what Gerber would show then, and sure enough, the silver bird swept in on that cloudless September morning and impaled itself on a tower of steel and glass. I have seen that image a thousand times; it still stabs me.

  “Oh, my heaven,” Judge Rice said. “Oh, my Lord.”

  “For a while, that was the tallest building in the world,” Gerber continued as the first tower collapsed on itself. He kept typing, calling up information without mercy.

  “Here’s the real deal, your honor, the outer limit. Armageddon in a can.” He played a compilation of nuclear explosions: instant suns in the desert and on the ocean, cars tossed and buildings shredded, one mushroom cloud after another. “The good news is that you’re just seeing tests here. Only two of these bad boys have been used as weapons. But then again, each one leveled an entire city.”

  I pulled my eyes from the screen to see Judge Rice with both hands over his mouth. I put a hand on his shoulder. “All you all right?”

  “The violence of it,” he said. “Such laudable ambition, such courage and invention, all perverted into methods of killing.”

  “It’s not that easy.” Gerber picked up his coffee mug but paused before drinking. “Think of the war your father fought in. Would you send him into battle with an inferior rifle? Or was the weapon somehow justified by what he hoped victory would bring?”

  “But an entire city, with one bomb? And that building, using the aircraft like a giant bullet? We turned genius into sorrow.”

  “Time to step in here,” I said. “We need to give some perspective.”

  “Come on, Kate,” Gerber said. “Don’t go sugarcoating—”

  “Judge Rice, I’m not saying anything you’ve seen tonight is false. But there are balancing things. There is another side.”

  “In truth,” he said in a low voice, “I hope so.”

  “I may not be as quick online as my friend here, but take a look at this.” I typed in a search, then streamed a video of wooden crates floating down from the sky under white parachutes. “This is a food drop. For a city on the ocean that was flooded by an earthquake out to sea. The roads are destroyed, the people are cut off. Using planes, we are giving them food, medicine, materials for shelter.”

  “Aw, shall I break out the violins?” Gerber said.

  I scowled until I saw that he was smiling. He widened his eyes, rolling them side to side, the kook. I smiled back.

  “Then there’s beauty. Some people have turned flying into art.”

  I found a video of a man with a hang glider. He stepped off the side of a snowy mountain, sailing into the thermals. He was skilled with his giant kite, tipping up on one wing, then plunging near the ground only to loft away again, hover, finally glide off into the scenic distance. A dance in the air.

  “We’re not just killers,” I said, tapping in the next search. “We have our redeeming qualities.”

  Judge Rice did not answer. The next clip showed a stunt pilot, smoke trailing from the tip of each wing as he soared straight up, tilted upside down, tumbled wing over wing as he plummeted earthward, then caught on the wind to spiral upward again.

  “Oh, my goodness.”

  “Finally, let me show you what can happen when we’re not being ‘stupid’ but instead work on a loftier purpose.”

  Gerber sat back, hands behind his head. “I hope this is what I think it is.”

  The footage was easy to find. A man in a bulky white suit with a square backpack descended a ladder, planted his boot in gray dust. “That’s one small step for a man,” his voice declared through radio static. “One giant leap for mankind.”

  The video cut to two men erecting an American flag, bright sunlight behind them. One of them hopped leg to leg, eventually bouncing clear out of the frame.

  “Where is that person located, please?”

  “That’s Neil Armstrong, Judge,” Gerber said. “Totally dumb human if ever there was one. And the completely stupid place where he is standing?” He nodded at me with a big grin. “It’s the moon.”

  “The moon.” Judge Rice slumped in his chair, all the wind out of his sails. He rubbed both eyes with his fingers. “Dr. Philo?”

  “Right here.”

  “Hm. Would you kindly help me to my room now? I am exhausted.”

  I remember when Chloe had two teeth pulled before getting braces, how her eyes looked hooded by the dopey anesthesia. Judge Rice’s lids had a similar heaviness, which had come on in an instant. I lifted him nursing-home style, his arms around my neck. We stood a moment together, his body’s fatigue resting against my body’s alertness. Gerber watched but I did not care. We maneuvered away through the desks.

  “The moon,” Judge Rice said. “They were standing on the moon.”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  As I led him into the chamber, the man from the past held me close against his side, like I was the only thing to keep him from falling off the face of the earth.

  CHAPTER 17

  One Who Lingered

  (Erastus Carthage)

  It is simple,” you say to him. “Either you contribute to the discoveries here, or the project cannot afford you.”

  Billings nods ponderously. You peer at him over your glasses. He looks terrible, pale and fatigued. But then, he is a Brit, and in your experience that entire nation could use a few days of hot meals and naps in the sun.

  When he speaks, though, Billings’s tone is unexpectedly firm. “Dr. Carthage, it would be my pleasure to describe for you, at whatever level of detail you desire, the relentless scope of discovery I have accomplished while every other person in this organization has been distracted by Jeremiah Rice.”

  “If you dismiss Subject One as a distraction, you fail to understand the import of this entire project.”

  “So sayeth the man who knows not half of what goes on in his lab.”

  Touché. After all, you were surprised by negligence in the control room. Likewise you were unaware that Dr. Philo had been violating protocol and visiting Subject One, with the video monitors off no less.

  Yet you smile. Is there anything on this earth more amusing, really, than an Englishman? Ever since the days of col
onies in India and Hong Kong, they have possessed this odd sense of superiority, which they believe to be chivalric honor but you recognize as foolishness. Nobility to them, vanity to you. Why did a Norwegian beat a Brit to the South Pole? Because Scott, the Englishman, refused to use sled dogs. It wasn’t fitting for a gentleman to rely upon animals in such a quest, he wrote in his journal, as if he were pulling up a chair at the Round Table. Thus Amundsen not only reached the pole first, returning in one piece, but thus, also, was Scott’s journal recovered from a corpse.

  Smile erased, you lay a palm flat on your desk. “I am delighted that you are finding your time well spent, Dr. Billings. Would you do me the honor of acquainting me with your progress? I tremble with anticipation.”

  Billings marks your tone by sniffing a good British sniff. But he does not parry, only demonstrates the proverbial stiff upper lip and opens his notes. “The giant iceberg which provided us with Judge Rice also yielded nine hundred and fourteen lesser samples. They fall into eleven species. We have conducted assays on ten percent of each one. Within ninety-two samples therefore tested, across all species the results are consistent.”

  “Thrilling,” you say, because you cannot resist your little fun. “Who doesn’t thrive on consistency?”

  Billings closes the notebook in his lap. “Shall I stop here? There must be someone else you can condescend to.”

  “Unless you intend to leave that notebook here as project property, and abandon all of your assays currently under way, I’d advise you to humor me.”

  “Humor you, Doctor? Have I not already done so, well beyond the call of duty? Who tried to keep Dr. Philo from removing Judge Rice from the chamber? And who informed you first thing the next day about what had happened?”

  “What I deduce from that incident is that you failed to persuade your colleague. And while I grant that Dr. Philo is one of the more annoying human beings on this earth, nonetheless I admire her pluck. Whereas for reasons that go back literally to my own parentage, I have always hated a tattletale.”

  That scotches him. Billings has no reply. You continue.

  “Dr. Billings, you assume I have not read your weekly reports. You assume wrongly. In reality I have been indulging you for all these months since the expedition returned from the north, waiting in vain for you to provide a single idea worthy of publication. Meanwhile the rest of the project is ‘distracted’ by redefining human mortality. If I am mistaken, now is the time for you to change my mind.”

  “Metabolic rates,” he says. “All that motion in the later reanimation period? It’s not frenzy, it’s not fear. The creatures all start at an incredibly slow metabolism. Remember when Dr. Borden compared Judge Rice to a sleeping bear? Hibernating is a fair analogy for the early reanimation period. But then, and this is the fascinating part”—he hitches forward in his seat—“the creatures increase energy and motion at the same rate, because their metabolisms are increasing at that rate, too. Shrimp or lobster, krill or cod, they all start slowly and then accelerate.”

  You straighten a paper on your desk. “The implications would be?”

  “Breathtaking, were there not a human subject involved. We would be publishing papers by the dozen. Their shared thesis would be that the rate of acceleration is predictable. It varies only depending on the species’ size—bigger means slower. But the fundamental challenge for postanimation survival is metabolic.”

  He has confirmed Borden’s findings, even enlarging upon them. And because it’s Billings, his documentation will be superior. But has he found anything more substantial than withholding salt? The digital clock says Subject One’s eighteenth day will commence soon. “Have you solved the problem of extending Subject One’s life span?”

  “Not yet. I have two hypotheses. Minimizing his salt intake may work temporarily. But I suspect we would receive a lasting result by saturating his chamber with oxygen—”

  A knock at the door prevents Billings from continuing. Thomas takes two steps into the room. “Sorry to interrupt—”

  “Apparently that seems to be your primary duty these days, Thomas.”

  “With apologies, Dr. Carthage.” He points at the window. “But I thought you would be interested to see what’s going on outside.”

  You sigh. “I’m too busy for protesters right now, thank you. I know they’ve found an organizer—”

  “Better than that, sir.”

  “One moment.” Holding a finger up at Thomas, you turn to Billings. “Your little creatures. Have you found at least a way to keep them alive longer?”

  Billings sags like an airless balloon. “Not yet.”

  “Sir,” Thomas persists, a hand stretched toward the window. “I urge you to take just one minute.”

  “Really now? Must I?” You slide back your chair, rise without hurry, and stroll to the wall of glass. “What can possibly be so urgent?”

  Instantly you have your answer. Below, there is a spectacle: hundreds of people stand crowded around the front door. The amoeba of bodies spills down the sidewalk in both directions, with more people clustered in the street. The usual protesters have drawn back—intimidated by the noisy crowd, you’d wager. The group at the door looks unruly, possibly moblike.

  One woman stands apart from both clusters. She wears a white beret, and there is something arresting about her. Some focus, some patience. But your attention returns to the rabble, where people shove and angle their way forward.

  “Gad. Who are all these people, Thomas?”

  He hastens to stand at your elbow. “Offspring, sir.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That is what they allege, at least. Grandsons, granddaughters, cousins and nieces and nephews. They all say they are relatives of Jeremiah Rice.”

  “Bloody nonsense.” It is Billings, looking down from your other side. “There are quite nearly a thousand people down there. Judge Rice would have to be the most prolific man since Methuselah.”

  “Dr. Billings, why must I always explain the obvious to you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  You sigh audibly. Is every person you hired for this project secretly a dolt? “None of those people is a descendant of Subject One. Not one. Yet neither are they con men or fools. They believe something deeply, even if it is a fiction. What they express is the public’s yearning to connect with Subject One, and with the work of this project. Don’t you see? I don’t mean to dismiss your metabolic findings, Billings. In another time I might have found them compelling, especially if your results contributed to an increase in longevity. But today something of a different order is under way. We see evidence of it everywhere. This is clear empirical data, right here on our doorstep. Do you understand?”

  “Three more months,” Billings replies. “Ninety days and I’ll provide you with long-term survival answers. I am incredibly close.”

  “I’ll compromise,” you say. “But desist with the reports, gad. They clutter the mind, and my desk. Thomas, schedule Dr. Billings on my calendar for ten weeks hence.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ten weeks? Well . . . well. I’ll do what I can. Thank you, Dr. Carthage.” Billings backs away. “Thank you.”

  Why do people who fawn in gratitude make you wish for a breath mint? What is that unpleasant taste? After all, you have given him seventy days to produce what any realistic scientist knows could take years. Billings collects his notes and hurries off. But his very haste, when the human display at your feet is infinitely more interesting, undermines your confidence that he will find much of anything. After so many years with an eye pressed to a microscope, the man simply does not know where to look.

  “Thomas, call the police and have these people removed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Alert the media as well. I want this crowd on the evening news. The planet must know that this hunger in the public exists. We also must inform
the world that the Lazarus Project is not some sort of popular club, which any proletariat is invited to join.”

  “No, sir.”

  And thus you stand there until the police arrive, the TV cameras only minutes later. A hundred or so people meander away; you imagine they do not want their folly broadcast to the world. The rest insist on being heard, meeting Jeremiah, being allowed inside. A policeman in charge climbs on a bench and reads something loudly enough that you can discern his tone through the glass. It is neither friendly nor patient.

  The crowd disperses, first at the perimeter and then along the sidewalk. A few people near the entry appear reluctant to surrender their advantage, even when it becomes clear that no one will be going inside. One man shoves a police officer, but in post-terrorism Boston, the fool should know better. He’s immediately on the pavement, facedown while handcuffs are applied. A cameraman leans so close he could lock the cuffs himself. You smile a little, knowing his footage will certainly be on television that night.

  The rest of the crowd needs no more incentive to depart. You take a call, you dictate a fund-raising letter, you return to your perch. The view, so it seems, has a gravitational pull. The rabble has left, the police and media are gone, the protesters remain quiet for the day. You give yourself a good glop of sanitizer, rubbing your hands one on the other as if warming them.

  Only then do you notice that the woman in the white beret has remained in place all this time, standing on the green across the road. She has not moved. Now she takes off her hat, loosening a cascade of corkscrew curls. She casts her eyes over the facade of the building, as if looking for something in one of the windows. Her scrutiny continues a long time, whole minutes. Eventually she tucks her curls behind her ears, sets her hat snugly in place. She gives the building one more scan, her expression unquestionably in a minor key, then shuffles away with her head down.

  And you wonder.

  “Thomas?”

  He pokes back in the doorway. “Sir?”