The Curiosity: A Novel

by Stephen Kiernan

  Baseball Mitt

  (Daniel Dixon)

  Mark,” Dr. Kate calls over the radio, and Gerber presses a button beside his monitor. The image on an upper screen freezes for half a minute—a hand ax striking at the ice—while the video feed continues on the TV below. It’s fascinating, if I linger on the still shot, how easy it is to spot hard-ice: when the ax hits, regular ice falls away and leaves something like white concrete. How had scientists before Carthage failed to discover this stuff? It’s like peeling off wax drippings without noticing the main candle.

  I jot that simile in my notebook for later, because there’s nothing else for me to write at the moment. I’m just watching while they work. But I can tell this iceberg is different, if only by everyone’s seriousness. Gerber has not made a joke in hours. He even turned down the Grateful Dead bootleg of the day; it’s barely white noise from his speakers. The way his chair is positioned, he can’t see the “mark” images overhead. He’s bent toward the live feed playing before him. The tech crew concentrates on screens in front of them, too: sonar scans, temperature gauges, water content monitors.

  The first team works their full shift, then the second squad digs into a side vein. They call it harvesting, Billings removing cores the size and shape of fence posts. They must be sweet with specimens, because by the end of that shift, Billings is singing in his headset. And damn my ears, can that guy not sing. I’ve heard beagles with better voices.

  Look, I don’t buy this whole project. But they must be freezing out there, in bone-aching cold that takes days to recover from. Every so often a piece breaks loose, and everybody scurries. They can’t help approaching an iceberg with fear. It’s like handling snakes, there are too many stories of something going wrong. Plus, both crews have been underwater nearly three hours. During breaks they skip breakfast and napping, despite having pulled an all-nighter. When Billings’s team made its second dive, Dr. Kate stood beside Gerber wrapped in a chocolate-brown blanket, calling “mark” every minute or so. It feels as focused as an operating room.

  As soon as his dive ends, Billings returns to the control room. Dr. Kate gives him a hug, the lucky dog. Instead of a fresh crew, she orders her group to suit up again.

  During the transition I visit the bridge. Captain Kulak has stayed at his post longer than at any time since we set sail. The daylight view outside stuns me. Peaks of white and blue float in a black metallic soup, a sanctuary for whales, or Martians maybe, but no place a human being should linger. Soon the crane hoists Dr. Kate’s team overboard, easing them down like coal miners lowered into a shaft. Aside from Kulak’s commands for the crane operator, no one speaks. Neither is anyone going anywhere.

  Then there’s not much to see, except cables extending into the sea with ice forming at the waterline, so that’s my cue to head downstairs again. Gerber, Billings, the techs, they’re so absorbed they don’t react when I enter the room. For once I am not asking questions. I am just observing, making notes. If Dr. Kate is willing to endure a third shift in that frigid gloom, they’re getting close, is what it is.

  “Mark,” she calls, and the screen shows a flipper, extended down and away from the seal’s main body. It is a slender animal, I’d say. Almost six feet long, maybe two feet wide, though it’s hard to tell exactly through the blur of ice. Then the video feed shows an underwater circular saw, biting into the hard-ice two feet from the flipper.

  Gerber reaches for the cup of coffee I gave him an hour ago, definitely cold by now, but Dr. Kate calls “mark” and he brings his hand back without taking a sip.

  Either these people are incredible actors, every one of them, or they are captivated by Carthage’s crazy fantasy, or, possibly, they genuinely believe they can harvest this animal in the ice and bring it back to life. The implications, which I have denied relentlessly until this day, are boggling. There are something like forty thousand people around the world who are cryogenically preserved, waiting for a day that technology enables them to reawaken. There are another sixty thousand people at any given moment lying in hospital ICUs with incurable illnesses. Imagine if they could be frozen in hard-ice till a cure is found, or some antiaging medicine developed, and then reanimated. There are almost a hundred thousand people awaiting organ transplants. Imagine if you could freeze the bodies of recently dead people, then thaw what you need for parts later. It would make transplanting like going to the fridge for a beer.

  I can’t believe I am starting to think like this. Most of the researchers are rookies, so I understand why they would drink the Kool-Aid. But Gerber?

  “Hey, mad scientist,” I call. “Want me to freshen that coffee for you?”

  He does not take his eyes from the screen. “What’d you say?”

  “Coffee. You want some more?”

  He doesn’t answer. Dr. Kate says “mark” and he snaps the image, then turns to me. “I’m sorry. What?”

  I hoist my mug at him. “Coffee?”

  He turns back to the monitors. “Help yourself.” One more time I perfect my skill at being blown off. Then Gerber checks his watch. “Hey, Dr. Philo, I’m looking at our clock here.”

  There’s silence in the radio, then she squawks on. “And?”

  “You know you have four minutes till ascent?”

  “Three minutes forty-four seconds,” she answers.

  “Not that you’re counting.”

  “Nope. Mark.”

  He presses his button. The image freezes on the overhead screen, long chisels working a cleft in the hard-ice. It’s like defrosting an old-style freezer with a kitchen knife, only underwater, and you’re inside the freezer.

  Her radio squawks again. “Can you tell from there how close we are?”

  “Definitely.” Gerber nods. “I’m worried about that flipper getting too thin a boundary. Exposure would compromise—”

  “I only want to know what species we have, then I’ll let it be.”

  “You and your curiosity. Just be careful. That berg is starting to destabilize. And the fragments are bigger—”

  As if to prove Gerber’s point, a slab of white the size of a minivan breaks free. There’s a groan through the monitor, like a whale giving birth. The slab spirals lazily onto its side, then grinds along the underwater face of the berg. Divers rush away in all directions, kicking their flippers furiously. One scrape from a beast like that and your suit is torn, immediate frostbite, or it brushes your air hose and you’re dead.

  Kate hasn’t moved, though, she’s fixed on her carving like a jeweler cutting diamonds. The woman can concentrate, I’ll give her that—like a freaking sniper. Gerber snaps a photo of the ice block as it rises, silently, trailed by offspring the size of steamer trunks. The other divers gradually swim near again.

  “Call it a shift, lovely,” Billings says into his headset across the room. “I’ll be in after you, straightaway.”

  Dr. Kate does not answer. Now only inches of ice lie between the specimen and open water. I see how the flipper fans open at the end. It looks like the wing tip of a hawk, the way feathers spread when a big bird glides.

  “That fragment did us a favor,” Dr. Kate says, “but this is one awfully skinny seal.”

  Gerber shuts his music off completely, rolls his chair forward till his nose is inches from the monitor. “What the hell is that thing?”

  I’m standing beside him now. “Fuck if I know.”

  “Should I tell her it’s forty seconds till ascent?”

  No one answers. We can see the crew working beside the animal, wedging it toward freedom. It is almost ready to come away.

  “Wait, team,” Dr. Kate calls. “Hold there.” The video feed shows her swimming deeper, under the very bottom of the iceberg. “Shine a light back this way,” she says. A diver leans in her direction to reveal the specimen in silhouette. The ice is cloudy, full of air, so the seal looks suspended like a work of modern art.

  Next Dr. Kate positions herself farther below. She’s set aside all her tools but a brush, and
she’s using it on the last bit of ice along the flipper.

  “Hey, Dr. P,” Gerber says, “you okay there? We’re at major risk for breaking the hard-ice seal. You know how we mothers worry.”

  Instead of answering, she beckons to the cameraman. The feed blurs as he flippers his way down, then settles near her hip, pointing the lens upward.

  Billings leaves his computer and crosses the room to see what’s happening. The other technicians have all gone silent. A beeper announces the time for ascent, but Gerber slaps it off. Everyone’s watching the monitor now.

  “Mark,” she calls, and Gerber presses the button. The screen shows a shadow, reaching, a dark something.

  Dr. Kate maneuvers beneath the animal, then releases a huge exhale. Fat bubbles rise into the pocket around the flipper, trapped in the ice’s shape for a moment, then escaping to one side. It’s like an underwater caress.

  “God in heaven,” Billings says. “She’s melting it with her breath.”

  “Mark,” she says as a layer of ice separates, falling away. With the backlighting so bright, the flipper is taking a clearer shape. Silly as it sounds, I can’t help asking, “Does that look to any of you like a baseball mitt?”

  Gerber squints at the screen. “It does, kinda. Only smaller.”

  As the next breath bubbles upward, Dr. Kate reaches high and hooks her gloved fingers into a tiny crevice. She tugs, twice.

  Billings whispers, “Careful, lovely.”

  All at once the ice falls away, a big plate. Someone gives a yell. Divers rush in, blocking the camera. “No way,” someone shouts. “Impossible,” says someone else.

  “Mark,” Dr. Kate yells. “For God’s sake, Gerber, mark. Mark.”

  Billings stands in my view, until I elbow forward so I can see. By then the divers have collected themselves. The video shows Dr. Kate restraining them in the black water.

  “Gerber,” she says, her voice stern like a cop’s. “Clear the control room.”

  “Say again?” He looks around himself. At some point he has stood up.

  “Clear the control room at once. Also secure this video and the backups as proprietary and classified.”

  “All right, everybody.” Gerber raises his voice. “You heard her.”

  Billings steps away and the technicians all rise from their chairs, two of them poised to escort me from the room, but I remain concentrated on the screen overhead.

  “Tell her it’s too late,” I say to Gerber. “Tell her I already saw.”

  “Saw what?” he says, leaning back to squint at the screen. And there it is, blurred by ice and bubbles, but undeniable. “What is that?”

  “Just what it looks like,” I tell him. “A human hand.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Subject One

  (Erastus Carthage)

  The heavyweights are assembled, sir.”

  Thomas stands at attention, good soldier. You hold up one finger while with your other hand you finish writing your thought. Oxygen, it is all about oxygen. Muscle function relies on salt, yes, and the brain requires a steady electric current. But ultimately life is oxygen. Without it, human existence withers faster than a leaf in the fall. Thus oxygen saturation may be a pivotal ingredient for this latest reanimation. Latest, and obviously greatest.

  “Thomas,” you say, putting the pen aside, “is this our finest hour?”

  He ponders while you stand and don your blazer. It settles on your shoulders like an athlete’s uniform.

  “Our finest hour has not yet occurred,” Thomas answers.

  “Right you are. The meeting today is merely our due. The time has come for the nation’s finest minds to assemble as advisers, and thus acknowledge our achievement. But this moment is like Darwin’s presentation to the Royal Society prior to publishing On the Origin of Species. Our triumph, Thomas, the actual victory, remains ahead.”

  You tug your sleeves snug, then squirt a gob of hand sanitizer from a bottle on the credenza. You give both hands a vigorous rub. “Who has accepted our invitation?”

  Thomas lifts his clipboard and begins reciting the names of the physicians and researchers gathered that morning as you stroll toward the lecture hall. Each one triggers an association for you—Rosenberg of Harvard (smells of cigars), Cooley of Jonas Salk (a first-class sycophant but a Nobel finalist four years back), Borden of St. Aram’s (never heard of him, and an M.D. not a Ph.D., but he came highly recommended).

  Another staffer joins you in the corridor; he is dark-skinned, a new hire, and with a nod of obeisance he hands you a cup of tea.

  You nod in return, take the tea, and blow on the surface. Thomas is still reading. You raise a hand. “Enough. Let them introduce themselves as they speak. Let us begin.”

  As you sweep forward the new staffer reaches to open the door and the edge of it catches you squarely in the mouth. It is like a blow. You stagger backward, tea spilling, hand to your face. “Gad.”

  “I am sorry, sir, I am so sorry.”

  You draw yourself to full height. “Name.”

  “Excuse me, Dr. Carthage?” He has a British accent, or something like it.

  “Your name, imbecile?”

  “I am not an imbecile,” he replies, unblinking. His back is straight.

  “Sanjit Prakore, sir,” answers Thomas. “From the University of Auckland.”

  “Well, Mr. Prakore—”

  “Doctor Prakore, I’ll thank you.” He bows.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon,” you say. You touch your lips, then inspect your fingertips. “I had no idea the imbecile was educated.”

  He does not reply, but continues to regard you steadily.

  “In that case, Doctor Prakore, you are fired. Dismissed. Sacked.” You wave two fingers like a little broom. “Get thee gone.”

  “Sir.” Thomas is at your elbow. “Dr. Prakore is the world expert on the use of magnetic fields to direct oxygen streams at the cellular level. The expert, sir.”

  “Then let him expert somewhere else.” You face Thomas. “Is my lip bleeding?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It was an accident, Dr. Carthage,” Prakore says, “and I wish to apologize.”

  “Not accepted, due to your insolence. Thomas, are my lips swollen?”

  “You can barely tell, sir.”

  “Dr. Carthage, I left a tenured position to come here. I moved my family.”

  “With any luck you are still partially packed. Begone.” You hand Thomas the teacup. “I can open my own damn door.”

  Into the conference room you sweep like a predator approaching its prey.

  A projector throws images on a screen at the front, snapshots from seven months of thawing: a hand emerging, the bottom of a boot. Here is a belt buckle, there the lapel of a coat. The final shot shows the specimen’s face, whiskered like a bobcat, blurry beneath a glaze of remaining ice. As that photo appears, the world’s first glimpse of the frozen man’s face, no one needs to call the meeting to order, or ask for quiet.

  “Your idea?” you whisper to Thomas. He tilts his head and you nod approval.

  Eminences fill the lecture hall. A stenographer taps her keys to record all that is said while a videographer trolls along the walls. Sixty-eight, you count them, all leaders in their fields and thinkers of the first order. Sixty-eight tributes to reason, to you, and to this beguiling creature you have named Subject One.

  The first hour proceeds predictably. Gilhooly monopolizes the microphone, ever infatuated with the sound of his own voice. Then again, he does know his electrons.

  Next comes Petrie, mustached, chief anatomist at UC Berkeley, the slender stalk of him in a wrinkled gray suit. “When the item to be reanimated is minuscule, questions of temperature gradients are inconsequential. But with the mass of a human being, many challenges arise. We could thaw and reanimate his feet, for example, while his skull remained frozen solid. This organism is infinitely more complex, with interdependent parts, each required for the whole to function, each with unique densities and v
iscosity—and thus different rates of thawing. We must therefore devise a means for warming Subject One uniformly. At present I cannot provide an answer, only the question.”

  Petrie pets his mustache and sits without an extra word. The next fifteen minutes provide exactly what you had hoped for: lively discussion of warming methods. Here is the beauty of the scientific method, the dialectic, the contest of opposing ideas leading to a third and better way. Your lips hurt, but when you brush them with your fingertips, it is not to assess the pain. You are monitoring any swelling, lest your appearance at this singular event be in any way marred. The last word on thawing goes to a strapping kidney transplant specialist from St. Louis, who offers something he learned in younger days as a high-altitude climber: the best antidote for hypothermia was administering warmed oxygen from within. Raising the lungs’ temperature proved the fastest way to warm the blood. Perhaps Subject One could be thawed in the same manner, from the inside out. Well, well. An innovation you had not considered.

  The tape rolls, a dozen postdocs take notes, Dr. Billings stands against a sidewall with his face droopy from ennui. Can anyone express boredom more articulately than the British? Dr. Philo, by contrast, stands alert, as if her entire body were an ear.

  An unfamiliar man comes to the mike. “May I add to the discussion?”

  He identifies himself as Orson, of Loma Linda Hospital in San Diego, a medical ethicist. “This marvel we are contemplating is stretching our minds in wonderful ways. But I would encourage all of us here to pause, and consider that Subject One is also a human being. He inhabited a set of circumstances at the time of his death—family, a job, a faith. Our potential to awaken him raises many issues. Would he want us to do it? Does he have descendants who ought to be consulted? Will he suffer from our actions?”

  You write on an index card and display it to Thomas: Who invited him?

  “I propose that we keep Subject One on ice,” Orson continues. “Let us convene ethicists, theologians, and thought leaders, to weigh what we are doing before we do it. Otherwise our technological triumph could prove to be a deed of unprecedented cruelty.”