Beyond Eden

by Sherer, B. K. ; Linnea, Sharon

  February 26, 2006, 7:46 a.m.

  FIA headquarters

  Skala, Patmos

  * * *

  Even though it was early on a Sunday morning and none of his office staff was in, Witgard Villella let himself into the small square building that served as official headquarters of FIA in Skala. He often felt he slunk in on Sundays, because most of the year-round residents of the small island were Greek Orthodox and working on Sunday was not on the approved list.

  He wondered what they’d think if they understood what FIA did. Or at least, what business they were in. He sometimes felt as though he was running the only scientific research foundation that supplied him with continual cliffhangers. Yet another fizzle or a Nobel Prize? Stay tuned until Tuesday.…

  Witgard’s college degree was in business, not science, though he felt he now understood enough about processes such as cloning and recombinant DNA to make informed decisions about which projects to fund.

  The Sunmark project had made perfect sense. If she could isolate the strands of DNA that did not succumb to the typical, inbred breakdowns due to aging, so many diseases could be stopped in their tracks. If those strands could indeed be recombined with other mitochondrial strands, then anyone who could afford it could be assured a long, healthy life.

  It was stunning to Witgard that science had come to the point where this could even be a possibility. And if it worked, he would hold the golden key to the information and the procedure. All who wanted to reach the blessed state, where the light switch that told their cells to start breaking down would not be flipped, would have to go through FIA. Which meant Witgard himself could not only live forever, he could do it in fine style.

  He would no longer have to depend on convincing people like Nestor Allende to write another check. Witgard would have the ultimate salable commodity: eternal life.

  There was the unfortunate wrinkle in Sunmark’s research: The subjects were not willing participants. For the rest of his life, he would have to worry about whether there was any way, any at all, to link the kidnappings either to one another or to Sunmark and therefore to FIA.

  There shouldn’t be. After tomorrow, when everyone was taken care of, he would breathe much more easily.

  As for now, once again, he would continue to clear out his hard drive. There was absolutely nothing in the FIA office that would link him directly either to Sunmark or to the hired kidnapper. He did need to be able to reach Sunmark by e-mail, but out of the hundreds of addresses in his computer, how would anyone know that “Rdvrdm4” was her? The letters were purposely random and the messages completely wiped after each transmission.

  Nestor Allende, also, could never find out about the messier parts of the research. Although who knew what Allende would consider acceptable to be the financier of a world-altering breakthrough? Certainly countless thousands of people died each day for much less important reasons, many for no reason at all. The lives of these five would have served a much higher purpose than they otherwise would have.

  They should be proud. They should be grateful, even.

  Ah, well.

  He booted up his computer to see if he had any news from Sunmark or any of his other grantees.

  Enough with the cliffhangers, already.

  He was ready to move into marketing.

  February 26, 2006, 7:56 a.m.

  Petra Hotel

  Fishing village of Grikos, Patmos

  * * *

  “Excuse me, do you mind if I take some sugar?”

  “Sorry?” Geri sat by herself at the marble table, her mind miles away. She looked up to find a blond woman pointing at the rectangular ceramic bowl that held packets of sugar and sweetener.

  “They brought me some tea but no sugar. Do you mind?”

  “Oh. No, of course not.” She held up the container.

  “Thank you. Say, are you American also?”

  “Yes,” said Geri. “Are you?”

  The woman nodded. “It’s unusual to find other guests here during the off-season.”

  “I know,” said Geri. “I’m here on business.”

  “I guess I sort of am, too,” said the woman. “I’m clergy, so I would at least consider it a busman’s holiday, if not completely work.” She had sat down again, at her own table back against the large rock wall adjacent to the bar. There was no one else on the terrace.

  “You’re clergy?” Geri said, blinking. She’d been so lost in her thoughts it was taking her a while to land again back on planet Earth.

  “Presbyterian minister.” The woman smiled warmly. “Can I ask you a question? Don’t mean to pry, but that monk with whom you were just talking, is his name Constantine, by any chance?”

  “What? No. Timothy. Brother Timothy.”

  “I thought I must be mistaken. He looks very much like someone else. You know that feeling?”

  Geri nodded yes. “So you’ve been to seminary?”

  The woman smiled in a friendly kind of way. “Yes indeed.”

  “It’s just—I’m wondering—I’m confused, actually.…”

  “I can certainly understand this island could bring up interesting questions.”

  Geri looked again at the woman. She was thin but not skinny and had shoulder-length blond hair. She was 30, maybe? You could be a minister at 30, surely. Geri wasn’t sure what her own pastor, Reverend Raeburn, thought of women pastors, but the woman seemed intelligent, open, and nonjudgmental.

  Maybe it was safe to talk to her… hypothetically. Nestor certainly had no basis for theological opinions on all these issues.

  Geri hesitated only another moment. “My name is Gerianne Allende. Would you mind if I came over?” she asked.

  “Certainly not,” said the American minister. “I’m Lynn. Shall we see if we can get another hot pot of coffee or tea?”

  “Sure,” Geri answered. Then she said, “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” She slid onto the wooden chair across the table.

  “You can ask, certainly,” replied the woman. “I’ll do my best to answer.”

  February 26, 2006, 8:01 a.m.

  Petra Hotel

  Grikos, Patmos

  * * *

  “Have you ever thought about how you are going to die?”

  OK, this was one question Jaime hadn’t expected. But the woman seemed serious about it and intense in her questioning. Jaime took a breath.

  Jaime had heard the monk say he would be back, and by watching her handheld, she’d seen that he had headed straight for the monastery in Chora, as he’d said he would. So she had some time to talk with Geri, in hopes of finding out more about what was going on. “Well, I don’t spend too much time thinking about how, because there’s really no way to know. I have faced death several times. Some have been in terribly frightening circumstances, but despite the circumstances, each time I’ve felt confident that God was with me, to see me safely home.” She looked at Geri empathetically. “Is there a reason you ask?”

  “Here’s the thing,” Geri said. “For as long as I’ve known him, my husband has been preoccupied with death. Not with death, exactly—with not dying. Were you aware, for example, that only two centuries ago a human being’s life expectancy was only half of what it is now?”

  Jaime shook her head.

  “But now we not only understand how you get sick—unseen entities such as germs and viruses—but we are decrypting the codes inside our DNA, the codes that make us susceptible to cancer or heart disease, or just plain aging. Soon—very soon—we’ll have figured so much of it out. People might be sitting here in a hundred years, chuckling and saying, ‘Can you believe that only a hundred years ago we thought living to one hundred was unusual?’”

  The attractive dark-haired woman paused, and Jaime studied her more carefully. She seemed vivacious and intelligent. Now, however, Jaime couldn’t tell if she was excited or troubled. It seemed some of each.

  “How about you?” Jaime asked gently. “How do you feel about facing your own mort
ality?”

  “That’s just it,” Geri said. “I never have really faced it. Because, you see, I don’t believe I’m going to die.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “Well, you don’t, either, do you? I mean, you’re a Christian, right? A Christian minister?”

  “How would that keep me from dying?”

  “We’re going to be raptured,” Geri said, in a breathless whisper. “Back in Phoenix, where we live, our church has a giant Apocalypse Clock. We’re, like, ten seconds from midnight. It could happen any moment. We’ll be ‘caught up in the clouds’ with Jesus. Reverend Raeburn preaches about it almost every Sunday. Jesus will come and take the believers with him, and those left on earth will face seven years of Tribulation, at war with the Antichrist. And it’s all happening, just as John said it would, in Revelation. There are ‘wars and rumors of war.’ There are earthquakes and famines. Believers are being persecuted. The euros. The giant tsunamis. It’s all happening, right here, right now.”

  “And because you’re going to be raptured, you don’t really have to worry about dying.”

  “Yes. Although, of course, my husband doesn’t understand. I’ve tried to broach it, tactfully.…”

  “There are very few tactful ways to broach not being among the elect.”

  “I know.” She looked crestfallen. “But I do love him. And I know he’s a good person. He even says he’s a Christian.”

  “Is there something specific that is bringing this all up for you just now?” Jaime asked.

  “I’ve been talking to this monk… well, you know—Brother Timothy, the man who was just here. My pastor, Roy Raeburn, put me together with him, I’m fairly certain. But Brother Timothy says there’s a different interpretation of the Book of Revelation. Much different than the interpretation Pastor Raeburn preaches every Sunday.”

  Jaime took a sip of her tea and grimaced. She’d forgotten she’d put sugar in it, since that was the only ruse she’d been able to think of to open a conversation with Constantine’s friend. “It’s cold,” she said, and dumped the small amount remaining back into the foliage, hoping the plants didn’t mind as much as she did. “Would you pour?” she asked Geri, since the pot was sitting on her side of the table. Her new acquaintance reached across to pour her another steaming cup. Jaime hoped Geri didn’t notice that her condiment preference had changed.

  “So you’ve never worried about dying, because you know you’ll be raptured.”

  “Yes,” the woman admitted. “Although, the threat of being raptured, well, I shouldn’t really call it a threat, should I? Anyway, knowing you’ll be raptured at any time can make you nervous. And, worst of all, knowing of all the people you love who will be damned if you haven’t managed to convince them. I mean, if they haven’t accepted… oh, you know.”

  Jaime stirred her tea, although it was sugarless this time.

  “Geri,” she said gently. “It might actually comfort you to know that Reverend Raeburn’s interpretation—the idea of a rapture, of all the Christians magically being whisked off the Earth, then seven years of Tribulation, then another sorting—that is actually not traditional Christian theology. Although it’s been popularized, especially lately, by novels and movies, and sermons, it’s not accepted by either Catholics or mainline Protestants as the correct reading of the prophecy in Revelation.”

  Geri looked at her as if she’d been shot. Jaime realized Geri had probably been expecting her to agree heartily with Roy Raeburn, bless his heart, and denounce the unmet Brother Timothy without even knowing his proposition.

  “Rapture theology was started only about one hundred and fifty years ago in Scotland, by a preacher named John Nelson Darby. His new theology was that Jesus would return twice—the first time to ‘beam up’ all the Christians, and the second time to destroy the world after ‘picking up’ the folks who finally got it right and fought the Antichrist. But that scenario isn’t in Revelation; in fact, you’ve got to pick and choose verses through the rest of the Bible to cobble it together.

  “And, despite what you may hear and see in today’s media, most mainline Christian denominations still don’t go along with it.”

  Geri sat staring at her. Finally she said, “You’re making this up, right?”

  Jaime smiled. “Where God’s love, and basic Christian theology, is concerned, I try my best not to make stuff up.”

  “Does Pastor Raeburn know about this?”

  “I’m sure he does—that is, he ought to. It’s not a secret. The notion of a ‘beam-up’ rapture gained foothold because a commentator who agreed with Darby named Cyrus Scofield published a popular study Bible with notes in the margins linking all those disparate verses, and treating dispensationalist theology as if it were accepted by the Church. Many folks thought if they read it in Scofield, it must be right. But why are you asking about all this now? What is your friend Brother…”

  “Timothy.”

  “What does your friend Brother Timothy believe about John’s vision?” She hoped she didn’t sound too eager to get to what was going on with the unusual monk.

  “He has a different interpretation also.”

  “Does he live here on Patmos? Brother Timothy?”

  “What? Oh yes, he works in the library at the Monastery of St. John in Chora.”

  “Is he one of the monks there?”

  Geri still seemed distracted, but she said, “No, he’s a seminarian. But he’s very involved in helping catalogue things in the library, as I said. It has interrupted his studies. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to talk to my husband before Brother Timothy returns to take me to the monastery.”

  “Of course,” said Jaime.

  “It’s been nice meeting you.” And with that, Geri disappeared without revealing anything about Brother Timothy or what he’d been talking to her about.

  Shortly thereafter, Jaime picked up her things and ducked back into the hotel also. She had rented a smaller room than Geri’s, but it would make a good home base and would keep Jaime near the center of the action. She didn’t feel the need to go under “deep cover,” but there was no reason to broadcast her presence, either. That was why she’d identified herself to Geri by her middle name, Lynn.

  Once back in her room, she dropped onto one of the brown carved chairs and turned on her handheld, scrolling to the correct screen. There she could plainly see Constantine’s—OK, Brother Timothy’s—scooter parked at the monastery in Chora. She could see Yani in Skala. And the more sophisticated listening/locator device she had planted on Geri was apparently working, too. It pulsed gently very nearby, likely in her room here in the hotel.

  Jaime couldn’t help but smile for a moment. For although the stakes were high and the clock ticking, it was worth taking just a moment to enjoy being the one who had the good toys.

  February 26, 2006, 8:07 a.m.

  Somewhere dark

  * * *

  Daniel sat huddled against the wall by his bed feeling crappy. Any air of adventure this situation might have had was gone. The guard had brought him breakfast, and he’d forced himself to eat the toast and drink the orange juice. He still felt sick, and weak.

  Worse, the baby had been unconscious for a couple of hours after they’d returned. Daniel had fallen asleep, it just seemed the best way to deal with the overwhelming horror of it all, but even after he’d awakened, he hadn’t been able to wake the baby. They had brought her a bottle when they’d brought his breakfast, but she was still unconscious, her breathing shallow.

  He’d held her and rocked her in the rocking chair for a long time, trying not to think about what the morning’s activities meant.

  But he knew.

  He knew that the doctor lady wouldn’t take that much blood unless the supply wasn’t going to continue to be available. She’d been stocking up.

  She’d taken so much blood it had made him sick, and it had nearly killed the baby.

  After he’d rocked the little girl for 20 minutes or so, she’
d finally opened her eyes and looked at him. She’d looked so confused. He’d picked up the bottle that sat on the floor by the rocking chair and held the nipple by her mouth. It was when she finally started drinking that all the fear he’d been squeezing down got out, and he’d started crying.

  He’d thought she was going to die, right there in his arms. It wasn’t loud crying, only tears running down his face, but he knew Zeke wouldn’t have cried at all. It didn’t matter anymore. What Zeke thought or did, didn’t matter anymore.

  Daniel had to face the likelihood that he’d never see Zeke again. He was on his own.

  Well, sort of.

  He had seen that guy in the hall. Every time Daniel had been taken to the lab, he’d passed all those closed doors. He’d never stopped to think who was behind them. But there was at least one! One more prisoner, like him. One guy who looked older and capable and maybe able to help them get away. What did he say his name was?

  Jim? Jimi?

  Time was getting really, really short. Daniel had to find a way to reach out to Jimi. They couldn’t just passively await their fate.

  Daniel had to do something.

  He would do something.

  February 26, 2006, 8:49 a.m.

  Petra Hotel

  Grikos, Patmos

  * * *

  Nestor loved it when Geri wanted something. Partly because he enjoyed being the provider. Partly, too, because he enjoyed having the power to grant or deny her petitions. Partly because she was so cute when she begged. And partly because she was so predictable.

  Today she wore black slacks, a white open-collared shirt, and a blue designer sweater. It fit well and looked attractive, yet would be suitably modest to be worn up to the monastery, where she’d said she was going today.