The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  I waited, closing two fingers around his yellow tie.

  “My family,” he said. “My anchor, Joan; my firefly, Agnes; and the ironclad love I feel for them still. In all the confusion of here and now, my devotion to them, regret at leaving them, desire however futile to experience them again, has been the one thing I have known, truly and undeniably known. It is rock.”

  I felt so small then, small-minded. I hadn’t done anything, yet I felt selfish somehow. I whispered, too. “What is it that you want me to understand?”

  “I am speaking with great presumption, Kate, for which I beg your leave. But I am as yet unready for the fruits that might come between us as man and woman, delicious though I know they would be. My bond with the past remains too strong.”

  “It is not adultery,” I whispered. “You are a widower.”

  “Further, I worry about the effect upon you when time has . . . when my time . . .”

  “When what? What time?”

  “Moreover, the only woman I have ever known, I mean known, is Joan. That is my life’s entire intimate world: her. I am not yet beyond that.” Jeremiah fell silent, tightening his hold on me. Then he relaxed, stood apart and upright like a silo, cleared his throat. “Also you are exhausted, while my energy is fresh. My suggestion would be for you to retire, after giving me a good book, and a blanket perhaps for when fatigue does find me, and we will speak in the morning.”

  I drew back, searching his face. “Really?”

  He nodded. “Honestly. And I thank you for this unforgettable day.”

  “What about that kiss? What did that mean?”

  “Hm.” He touched his forehead to mine. “Wonderful.”

  “I didn’t dream it, then.”

  “ ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’ ”

  “Hah. ‘And our little lives are rounded with a sleep.’”

  “Listen to yourself.” He made a thin smile. “Well done.”

  “You’re not the only one who ever read The Tempest, you know.”

  So we parted, hands releasing last. But only temporarily. “As yet unready” is a hundred miles from no. I blew out the candle, turned on the lamp, blinked in the bright light of disappointment. Meanwhile the want had been revealed by both of us. Fruits delicious as I know they would be. No, there was no taking that back.

  CHAPTER 33

  The Rage of an Ant

  (Erastus Carthage)

  The man arrives in your office all but with his hat in his hand. Actually he has nothing in his hands at all, but that is as articulate as any words he might say: no documents, no abstracts of publishable ideas. No letter of resignation either. Thus you decide to have a little fun.

  “Dr. Billings, at last.”

  “Carthage.” He tips an imaginary cap.

  Apparently he is game as well. Heaven bless those British, as skilled at minor diplomacies as any species on earth. And why would he not be? The radiance of the summer morning pours through your office windows. The chant of protesters below lends the hour a certain musicality. And this wretch, having failed in his researches, has come to plead. Thus shall you enact a ritual, a rite whose end is foreknown by all parties. You meet eyes with Thomas, who stands at ease by your diploma wall, then place both palms flat on your desk. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  That appears to baffle him. He stammers, then reclaims his even keel. “You instructed me, I doubt you’ve forgotten, to return today with the results of my work on the smaller specimens.”

  “Of course, yes. But we parted unpleasantly, did we not?”

  Again your feint, again he draws back, collecting himself. “Doctor, I submit that all of our partings have been characterized by their dearth of warmth and collegiality.”

  A fair riposte, that. And what a word selection, that dearth. You nod, ready to let the preliminaries end. “Indeed that may be so.”

  “Erastus Carthage is famous for many things, but charm is not one of them.”

  “I take both halves of that sentence as compliments.”

  “As you would.”

  “Well.” You clap your hands together once. “Enlighten us. What has the great and wise Graham Billings unearthed?”

  He lowers himself into a chair. “Carthage, how many years have you conducted biological research?”

  “I couldn’t begin to guess. I published my first paper at sixteen, perhaps you knew that, so it has been decades.”

  “And in that vast span of trial and error, seeking and sometimes finding, has there ever been a ten-week period in which you could design assays, perform them, and draw meaningful conclusions? In five fortnights?”

  “Are you implying that I set you up for failure? Or that the deadline was too soon? Do you honestly think ten more weeks would prove revelatory?”

  “I’d be delighted to answer your questions, following your answers of mine.”

  You give Thomas a look, and he is smiling. Good. He understands that this is indulgence on your part, a severance check already sits in an envelope under your right hand. This banter is not a sign that you’re weakening, diminished by public opposition and tight finances. No, there are reasons to prefer Billings resigning to your firing him: maintaining friendly relations with Oxford, avoiding potential insult to another Brit who is one of the project’s potential investors, even respecting Billings’s reputation, little though it has profited this enterprise. Still, he is not some no-consequence whelp. Any indignity he suffers should occur not on the professional level, but on the personal. Thomas’s grin confirms his comprehension of these nuances. He is coming along nicely.

  “No,” you concede. “Not once in my career. Ten weeks is often insufficient time to acquire proper equipment, much less perform something useful with it.”

  “Then why did you grant me these weeks anyway?”

  “To teach you, Doctor. You were asking for more time, when you knew the outcome already. You were denying persuasive data. That is sloppy science, and you needed to learn.”

  Billings opens his mouth, but restrains himself. Well done. If anyone dared accuse you of sloppy science, you might go find a pistol. But this man is beaten enough, he does not speak in his own defense.

  “But I am presuming,” you say, holding your arms wide. “I could be mistaken. Bestow upon me, please, the fruits of your labor.”

  “There is nothing to bestow, and you bloody well know it.”

  “Nothing whatsoever?”

  “Not of use to you. There are trend lines in the metabolic data—”

  “Trending how?” This could be interesting.

  “Erratically. I suspected there was an indicator, a mark at which we might intervene and prolong the specimens’ life span. But the marks occurred inconsistently.”

  “You wanted to keep them alive.”

  Billings sighs. “In the work interval given, that proved unattainable.”

  You rise from your chair. Billings was chasing the very thing you need, the thing your potential investors have repeatedly requested: prolonged survival. If a businessman has a warehouse of frozen bodies, he won’t give a nickel to someone who can wake them up. For someone who keeps them awake, he will go to the vaults of Fort Knox. And if Billings found the crucial answer, and is holding back . . .

  “Need I remind you, Dr. Billings, that your work here is contractually the property of the project? And that the life of Subject One is at stake.”

  “I can provide a copy of that contract,” Thomas interjects.

  You wave this suggestion away. “That shouldn’t be necessary.”

  “It’s not.” Billings rises to the bait. “I know perfectly well that every jot and tittle in my notebooks belongs to you.”

  “Not to me,” you say, “but to this grand enterprise.”

  “Fine, then.” His jaw clenches in a mixture
of hatred and defeat. “It’s oxygen. The accelerating metabolism creates more ammonia than the liver can process without aid. The number of cases was too small to confirm the method. But I rescued several acceleration-stage sardines by applying supersaturations of oxygen.”

  “Damn,” you say. All that manipulation, wasted. “You are mistaken.”

  He sniffs in disdain. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s not oxygen.”

  “But if you bothered to read my papers—”

  “Anyone can hyperoxygenate a fish tank and a sardine will remain alive. But the human body contains only so much hemoglobin. No matter what you do externally, Subject One’s blood can transport a finite amount of oxygen.”

  Billings pulls his chin back as though you’d poked him. “Blast. That’s a beast of a hole in my theory, isn’t it now?”

  “The answer is not oxygen.” You enjoy the pleasure of informing him. “It’s salt.”

  “Salt? How so?”

  You consider. There is no harm in sharing Borden’s discovery. “Zero salt intake, Dr. Billings, prevents the ammonia problem from beginning.”

  “Indubitably. But that diet’s utility will diminish over time, because the body innately contains salt in its tissues. It’s a prerequisite of muscle contraction.”

  You sigh, facing the bookcases, the top shelf titles all your own. “Billings, you are no fool in the lab, but we have been ahead of you on this question forever. Borden solved the life-span problem with salt nearly two months ago.”

  You turn, expecting to see him bent, dejected. Instead Billings sits chin high, like a 1920s socialite with a long cigarette holder. What a strange man. But then, what a supply of oddities one finds in the sciences.

  “With salt alone, you say? Brilliant.”

  You turn away again. “Doctor, need we say anything further to one another?”

  “I’d like one more day, if you please. You needn’t pay me. But my haste with the oxygen studies has left materials in disarray. I’d like to place the data in a coherent format, should this avenue prove useful someday to someone down the lane. Also I’d prefer a proper good-bye with the technicians who’ve assisted me. Hardly your manner, but it’s how my mother raised me.”

  “Dear powers in heaven, keep me from challenging motherhood,” you say, one hand raised as if swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth. “You may have your extra day, Billings, without pay as you said and as is appropriate. Surrender your security badge to Thomas by noon tomorrow. He will have severance documents ready.”

  Billings nods, but not only to himself. “All my career, I’ve advanced from one lab to the next only by answering inquiries. I’ve never lost a job before.”

  “You’ll live.” You return to your desk and sit.

  “Suppose I will now, won’t I?” Billings stands. You wish he would leave the room so you can get back to business. But his walk possesses a stiff, dignified air, and he moves with the speed of a snail. He stops in the doorway; must there be a valedictory? “I must say, Carthage, working with you has been—”

  “Goddammit, where is he?”

  Billings jumps back in surprise, as none other than your news puppet Dixon comes barging through the doorway. He bumps Billings on the way but it does not so much as break his stride. Dixon barrels up to your desk and puts his hands on his hips. “You and I have to talk,” he says. “I demand an explanation. Now.”

  It would be easier to respect this man if his hands were not so fleshy, the fists of a piglet. “You demand? You demand something from me?”

  “As I was saying,” Billings began, trying to regain his moment.

  “You’re goddamn right I do,” Dixon blusters on. “I have carried your water all these months now, in article after article, and then you go and break your word.”

  Moments like these can challenge some leaders, the direct attack, but for you they provide an opportunity to demonstrate mastery. “Calm yourself, Mr. Dixon, be seated, and in a moment I will hear you out.”

  “I will not be seated. And I will not wait.”

  The audacity. The ingratitude. You lean to see past him. “Dr. Billings, you were saying?”

  “He just expressed it better than I ever could. Good luck to the filthy lot of you.” And he leaves the room smiling.

  It’s a bit unsettling, that crooked grin, and you pause to ponder how he could have, despite your intentions, wrested good humor from your exchange. Dixon puts his hands on his hips again, all righteousness and ignorance. A weariness possesses you then, fatigue with the burden of him. “What is it, Mr. Dixon?”

  “You and I had a deal that there would be no exclusives. But you let Wilson Steele interview the judge without me present.”

  Something about your dissatisfaction with the conclusion of the Billings meeting abbreviates your patience for this one. Thus the sooner this conversation arrives at its predictable conclusion, the better. “Yes, I did.”

  “That was a direct contradiction of your agreement with me.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Well, Jesus.” He pounds a fist against his thigh. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “Mr. Dixon, do you honestly want to know the answer to that question?”

  “Why do you think I asked it?”

  “Very well.” You turn your seat halfway from Dixon, giving him your profile. Essentially, you are addressing Thomas. “I reneged on our agreement because Wilson Steele, in his sleep, is one hundred times the reporter and writer that you are on your finest day. He has a national platform for his work, a massive audience, and a history of writing bestsellers. You, you are a small-time science magazine hack, who’s quick with a simile but otherwise struggles to put three intelligent sentences together.”

  Dixon takes the seat you had offered a moment before, slumps into the chair like a defeated boxer who doesn’t know well enough to lower his chin. Since the damage is already done, you continue.

  “You were useful for the initial propaganda about our work, but your limited reach and rudimentary skills are insufficient for the range and audience that we now need.” You rotate back and squirt a dollop of sanitizer on your hands. “I gave Wilson Steele that interview because you are no longer of any value to me. There. Now are you pleased with the answer?”

  “You,” he growls, shaking his head. “You are one smug motherfucker.”

  “Thomas,” you exclaim. “Listen to him. A Shakespeare in our midst.”

  Dixon stews there, rubbing his face with one hand. You can all but hear him thinking, little wheels turning, his wobbly cogs of cognition. You are nearly out of patience, but at least he is showing the spirit Billings failed to provide. You will indulge him one last minute.

  “What is in your mind, Mr. Dixon?”

  “Just working something out here. Something I’ve wondered that didn’t make sense. And now that I’m getting close, you back-door me.” He chews on a fingernail. “Yeah. I suspect this project, and you cut me out. Huh. Kinda confirms my suspicions.”

  “Whatever are you foaming at the mouth about?”

  “You.” He sits forward in the chair, a strange grin on his face. Who are these people with their odd smiling? “You think your ego can keep you out of trouble. But you’re dead wrong.”

  “What a Boy Scout you are turning out to be, Daniel. It gives me goose bumps.”

  He points at you, rudely. “You are going to regret treating me this way.”

  You cannot help it; you laugh. “Are you threatening me, Mr. Dixon? Are you actually threatening Erastus Carthage? Thomas, please relieve our puppet of his security badge. His work here is finished.”

  Thomas strides over and unclips the lapel card, the reporter’s sole means of access to project offices and labs. You allow yourself a minor gloat. “Do you honestly believe the world could encounter anything Daniel Dixon writes
that contradicts Erastus Carthage, anything at all, and it would accept your version of events?” You scrub your hands together thoroughly, squeezing each finger with the other hand as though milking a cow. “I had no idea you were so deluded.”

  “I am really going to enjoy it, you know that?”

  You switch hands. “What are you going to enjoy?”

  “The crashing sound you make when I bring you down.”

  “Mr. Dixon, would you please stop being so tedious?”

  “You think I can’t do it?”

  You tend to your cuticles. “No more than an ant can fell an oak.”

  “But I know about you, mister, and you are no oak.”

  “I am relieved to hear that your capacity to distinguish one species from another remains so acute.”

  “I know you are a fraud, and this project is a fake. You just confirmed it, right now. The only thing keeping me from writing about it is figuring out how many people here are in on the scam. You may have the world fooled, Carthage, but I have been paying attention all this time. I know the truth, and I have proof.”

  “Again I find myself reminded of an ant, dazzled by the banquet he has found, when in reality it is just a crust of bread.”

  “We’ll just see about what I’ve found, now won’t we? You pompous fuck.”

  What is obscenity, really, but a person’s way of showing he lacks distinction? You do not deign to reply, only continue the pleasant cleansing of your hands. Dixon heaves himself up from the chair and starts for the door. But he pauses on the sill. You snicker inwardly; is this now where the defeated make their vain last stands?

  “One last question for you, Dr. Carthage. On the record.”

  “Must you be so relentlessly dull?”

  “Just one, and then I’ll be out of here.”