The Curiosity: A Novel

by Stephen Kiernan

  Worthless musings deserve a hard interruption, and that’s just what I received when the last reporter hurried in, “excuse me” here and “pardon me” there and in general calling as much attention to himself as if he’d used a foghorn. Wilson Steele, dammit, settling cozy in his seat like a duck on an egg.

  No matter. New York Times or not, his opening paragraph tomorrow would still come from my six-word question.

  The room went quiet like the hush in a concert hall before the curtain lifts, when the crowd somehow knows. I checked my watch. It was exactly six minutes after the scheduled starting time. Dr. Borden entered first, walking stiff-legged like a marionette. Carthage came next, looking as puffed up as one of those giant balloons in the Thanksgiving Day parade. A couple of techs tagged along for ballast, plus Thomas with a sheaf of papers. Gerber waddled into the doorway but moved no closer, rubbing a knuckle in one red eye. He couldn’t possibly be stoned now of all times, could he?

  “Let’s begin,” Carthage said. He folded his hands chest-high, and it looked effeminate, plain and simple. But then I remembered his germ phobia, and maybe this was his way of not touching the podium. A few techs began moving through the aisles, handing out papers. The second podium stood empty, a hint of what lay ahead.

  “My staff is distributing time lines,” Carthage said, “for any of you joining this story today. Also a summary of findings, biographies of myself and our staff, and a complete list of my publications. We’ve also updated our Web site this noon with current videos and data. With me today is Dr. Christopher Borden, and other staff as needed.”

  Carthage adjusted his stance, as if it were possible to swagger while standing still. The lights were brightening him, the cameras pointing at him, reporters alternating between glancing his way and writing down every word he said. Carthage scratched his chin and shutters clicked by the dozen. In response to all of this attention, the bastard smiled. And I must admit, he had one of the sickest, fakest smiles ever: yellowed teeth, asymmetrical lips, the whole thing pulled back on one side like a sneer.

  “I’d like to make a brief statement first.” He cleared his throat. “Five years ago a predecessor organization to the Lazarus Project found that cells which ceased metabolizing due to rapid freezing—a layman would say they had died—nonetheless contained energy supplies to live longer.” On he went, blah blah, history no one cared about. They would wait him out, though, indulging him so they could hear what they came for. Eventually Carthage veered back into their sights.

  “The human being we have reanimated proves to be a man of intellect and judgment. He participates in our research with as much enthusiasm as his limited energy permits. We understand that some people question our motives. Our goal is not to generate controversy, of course, but to offer the promise of a greater life span for all of humanity. Now.” He opened his arms like a priest at the altar. “Your questions?”

  Hands shot up all over the room. Carthage pointed. “Yes?”

  “What kind of shape is the awakened man in?”

  “Dr. Borden, if you please?” Carthage stepped aside and the short doc moved to the podium, pulling the mike down to his level. Carthage frowned at that.

  “Overall his physical condition is remarkably good. All organs and muscle systems are functioning normally, or what would be normal for someone his age who hadn’t been frozen for over a century.” Borden tugged on the tip of his beard. “The primary unusual thing is that his metabolism is spectacularly slow. Like a hibernating bear. He consumes fewer than eight hundred calories per day, and sleeps twenty hours out of twenty-four. After only mild exertions, his fatigue is enormous.”

  “So he’s not some sort of superhuman people need to be afraid of?”

  Borden chuckled. “Judge Rice is as dangerous as a teenager who sleeps till noon.”

  The group laughed along, more hands rose. Carthage chose a woman in the front. “Just how much is all of this costing? Is this judge a good use of research funds?”

  “It’s far too soon to know what our studies will yield,” Carthage said. He used the sleeve of his jacket to raise the mike again. That guy and his phobias, I swear. “As for the price tag, this facility cost a fortune to equip, and the polar research vessel is spectacularly costly to operate. Thus far . . .” and he leaned toward Thomas, who stood against the wall like a benchwarmer dying to get put into the game, “thus far all of our financing has been private, with no federal help. Though we did have an encouraging conversation with Vice President Walker. The better question, if I may, is what price you are willing to put on a recovered human life? Moreover, we hope and expect our initial investments to be spread out over many reanimations and many avenues of research. It’s not as though we built all of this for Subject—for a single person.”

  “A follow, please: how much have you spent so far?”

  Carthage considered her a moment, seeming to weigh something, then reaching a conclusion. “To date, our expenditures have neared twenty-five million dollars.”

  A murmur passed through the room. Gerber in the doorway whistled, earning him a glare from Carthage. Gerber just smiled.

  The reporter had her hand up again. “One more, please. Can you tell us who your funding sources are?”

  Carthage narrowed his eyes. The cameras clicked at that image, and I saw him notice, draw back, then force that sideways smile of his. “We are fortunate to have supporters who enable us to pursue our work unfettered by external interference. Should the government choose to assist our project, we intend to make our methods open-sourced so scientists the world over can build on our findings for the betterment of all mankind.”

  “What do you make of the controversy around this project?” asked another reporter. “You know, people who say you are playing God?”

  “I would say that any endeavor of this significance and potential is bound to upset people who are afraid of change. But controversy is not without merit. Healthy dialogue is necessary and even welcome. Remember, though, our caution is not like the secrecy around the Manhattan Project, for example, where the goal was to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Our work is for life, is all about life.”

  “May I also say”—Borden stood on tiptoe, holding the podium for balance—“to the people who say we are playing God, that we are not playing anything. We do not play. This work is far too complex, the stakes far too high. These people who criticize us simply do not understand. They are ignorant.”

  Oops, I thought. Sure enough, the room went quiet while every single reporter wrote those sentences down, or tapped them into a laptop, so many heads bent like schoolkids to their lessons.

  “I think . . .” said Carthage, clapping his hands. Normally that brings a room to attention, but this time they were all still scribing. He clapped again. “I think the best way to express what is going on here, yes, is with a visual aid. Thomas”—he turned stiffly—“would you please fetch our visual aid?”

  Thomas hurried from the room like a puppy sent for slippers. Borden returned to his place, and Carthage rubbed his hands together as if washing them under a stream of water. While the reporters remained silent I counted, waiting to see how long Carthage had told his team to let the anticipation build. There was no question he would have thought about that, calculating the ideal level of suspense. I had reached forty-eight Mississippi, an eternity for a crowd to wait, when the atrium side door opened.

  Thomas came first, all efficiency, a little robot. Dr. Kate followed in a calm stroll. She wore a navy-blue dress, fitted like a hug of cotton from her collarbone to her knee. What a niblet.

  Half a step behind, holding her upper arm for support, shuffled none other than Hizzoner himself, the man who lived twice, the face known round the world, Judge Jeremiah Rice. He was dressed in surgical scrubs, of all things, and had bare tootsies. Carthage must have overlooked that detail somehow, because the guy’s feet looked bony, pale, and cold. Meanwhile Dr. Kate scanned the crowd like a Secret Service agent at the president’s
elbow. Anyone messed with our old Frank, I could bet she’d swoop down with both barrels blazing.

  It took the crowd a moment to realize what had happened. Then the photographers leaped forward, the reporters all standing and shouting at once.

  “Judge Rice?”

  “Jeremiah.”

  “Mr. Rice, one question?”

  Jeremiah winced at the noise and Dr. Kate stepped between him and the crowd. “Easy does it,” she called. “Easy now. Come on.”

  In that instant, that very second, the future came clear. I could predict exactly what they’d do, what they always do in cases like this. See, the world is hungry to learn about this guy, is what it is, starving to understand him. Afraid of him, too, I’d guess. So these reporters and worshippers? Today they’ll lift him up, the higher the better, a god among men and “friend, can I buy you a beer?” Tomorrow, though, tomorrow they’ll bring him down as hard and fast and brutally as they can. And when they’re finished, there’ll be so little left on the highway, even the crows won’t be bothered to come down and pick at it.

  The judge stood at that second podium and the ritual began, my mouth suddenly sour as I watched a rite as old as the letters Q and A: Where and when were you born? (Lynn, 1868.) Where did you go to school? (Lynn elementary and high school, Tufts University, Harvard Law.) Who appointed you judge? (The governor, I can’t recall his name, my memory is still spotty.) Wasn’t thirty-eight a young age for a judge? (Most people back then did not live past fifty, so advancement came early for promising men.) What do you think about the Lazarus Project and being reawakened? (I feel gratitude. Life is the ultimate gift.) What things are you most interested in doing? (Regaining my energy and learning about the world as it is today.) What do you miss most?

  He paused at that, our old Frank. He looked at his feet, white and pathetic. We all looked, too. He nodded, then raised his glistening eyes. “My family.” He swallowed audibly. “My wife and daughter.”

  I’m pretty sure Dr. Kate acted by reflex. After all, how could you not feel sorry for the guy? But when she reached over and gave his hand a squeeze, and he mooned his eyes at her in response, every camera shutter in the room made its little happy sound.

  “That’s enough for today,” Carthage said. “As you see, Judge Rice is very much present and alive. We will provide ample opportunity for further interviews as his recuperation progresses. Let’s have one last question, then.”

  I raised my hand. So did many others. So did Wilson Steele. He had a large hand. Carthage scanned the room as if trying to choose, conducting some kind of evaluation based on the length of our arms or something, then lifted his chin in my direction. “Yes?”

  “My question is for Judge Rice.”

  Our old Frank smiled at me. “Yes? What do you wish to ask me?”

  Oh, I was ready. And no one had thought of this angle but me. My moment above all those cool and seasoned dudes too superior to say hello. It takes a guy whose parents croaked young, and right in front of him, to know what six words pack the most wallop:

  “What was it like to die?”

  The room made a sound like taking a belly punch. Jeremiah didn’t flinch, though. Instead, he took a step forward.

  “Like being squeezed, to be honest with you. Like being pressed flat.”

  He came around in front of the podium. Dr. Kate watched him, still ready to pounce, but her head tilted to one side like a teenager in love. The judge dropped one hand to his side, the fingers as relaxed as a man on vacation, and placed the other on his belly like Napoleon addressing the troops. At once I knew he had prepared for this moment. He’d been thinking about it, about when he would have to tell his story. Now the time had come. In a way, it might have been a relief to him. And I had made it possible. It was like we were connected, two parts of the same machine. I had switched the motor on, and now he would drive it.

  “We were approximately at the latitude of Ellesmere Island,” he began. “The voyage’s goal was to replicate in northern waters, if possible, Charles Darwin’s findings from a southern clime. My role was to serve as impartial witness, an auditor of the science. Five months we’d been at sea, and the research progressed splendidly. Natural selection revealed itself everywhere we looked—in nature’s variety, in the brutality of the food chain, in the fecundity of species. Think of a shoreline pool that fills or empties based on tides. Sometimes it is dry land, sometimes ocean, and yet even in a region that is frozen for eight months of the year, this pool is crowded with creatures happily adapted to that inhospitable existence. Evolution is the planet’s animating machinery, we came to believe. Evolution is life’s striving toward God.”

  An earful, is what the judge gave us. He placed one hand on the podium and I pictured him in black robes, sentencing a criminal or resolving some civil dispute, and delivering a speech a lot like this one.

  “Our inexperience as sailors, however, became the more apparent as winter began to close upon us. One morning we awoke to find ourselves in a bay whose throat had all but frozen. We’d nearly imprisoned ourselves for the winter. Sure starvation. Several hard sailing hours and not a few jarring hull scrapes later, we regained open sea. That afternoon on deck we deliberated whether to return to Boston. Ironically, I was opposed. The call of home was melodious indeed, but not yet so loud that I did not hear the siren song of further exploration. However, despite our total deference to the captain on matters nautical, the vessel was a democracy on expedition issues. We voted, I was heavily outweighed, and we pointed the bow south.”

  As he continued the room remained silent—wonderfully, poetically silent. The scribblers and skeptics could not have been more entranced if he’d drugged them. Here was a man from the way back of beyond, speaking to them as plain as paper. They wrote and they listened and they swallowed every word.

  The judge shook his head. “I digress. Our ninth night homeward, we sailed straight into the teeth of a storm. For severity, the gale surpassed all experience. At no time was any portion of the ship level, nor reliable underfoot. The cold made it infinitely worse. Imagine your hands . . .” He held his forward like they belonged to someone else. “Imagine them soaked by Arctic brine, chilled as if to ice, trying to pull a rough rope around a winch. There was no joyous exploration any longer. The rather, it was cold bones, suffering morale, and hearts warmed only by fear. The heavens delivered one furious gust, and our mast broke. Splintered. We began to founder, even with foresails raised. The captain ordered all hands out to master the broken rigging, which swung wildly in the rage. I was among those bent to that task.”

  Our Frank hesitated. “Might we pause, gentlemen and ladies, to remember my crewmates? They were decent men all, dedicated to expanding human knowledge, and I cannot imagine that they survived the night.” The judge raised his gaze toward the ceiling. “Might we offer them a moment of prayer?”

  And he closed his eyes.

  Well. I sat up and scanned that atrium like a periscope. It’s not every day someone interrupts a press conference to pray, is it now? The reporters were obviously uncomfortable. Some reread their notes, a few studied the room’s corners, I saw a cameraman pick his nose. Wilson Steele, though . . . he lowered his head. I could just imagine what that bastard was praying for. Too bad he didn’t know about my book deal. Too bad my prayer was already answered.

  “I thank you,” Jeremiah said. “To continue: I was woefully inexperienced in storm conditions. In my haste to secure the sheets I neglected to bind myself to the rails. A massive wave crashed over the bow, pouring its foaming tonnage across the deck and yanking my feet from under me. A salty river bore me headlong toward the stern, another bit of jetsam and wrack. I grabbed at everything, ropes and cleats, to no avail. The rush of water took possession of me, and in one indifferent gush it swept me over the side.”

  Again he paused. Still the room was silent. Amazing, I thought. He was working them over with an old-fashioned sea tale, and they were falling for it with all their might.

/>   “Oh, that water.” He wagged his head. “My final experience on this earth was of a cold so intense it inspired my awe. In roundabout answer to your question, sir”—he gestured at me—“it did not feel like pain, oddly enough, but like pressure. From all directions at once, as though I were being squeezed in some great thermal vise. I took one breath of salt water and coughed it out. It was agony, like scraping a wire bottle brush on your softest interior places. I foundered, rising and falling with the waves as the ship surged away. Then I felt my body stiffening, my fingers swelling as the water within them turned to ice. It was as though nature were racing itself to see which would finish me first, drowning or freezing. Greater than the physical pain was the terror, my mind’s dread of ceasing to exist. Against the weight of sodden garments I struggled to the surface, glimpsed the stars, gasped a magnificent breath of clear air, and knew no more.”

  Our old Frank sniffed. His eyes took a walk over everyone in the room. I have to say, I admired his poise. No fool, this judge of ours. He had a destination in mind with his story. All right, I thought, let’s hear it, mister.