Panacea

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “You’re the boss. You look beat.”

  “I feel beat. Why don’t you look beat? Oh, wait. I know. How did you put it? You can doze off anywhere, anytime, in any position. Your SEAL training, right?”

  “Right.”

  This was not the time or place, but she was determined to call him on that before the day was up.

  “Let’s get it over with,” she said. “I just hope I can stay awake while he’s talking.”

  “I’ll keep nudging you.”

  “As long as it’s just a nudge. No more of that thigh stuff.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t know any other way to keep you quiet without Mister Shin Bet knowing.”

  “What made you think you had to keep me quiet?”

  “People being interrogated don’t realize how much they give away in what they consider innocent chatter. You think you’re making idle conversation, just filling in the uncomfortable silences that interrogators purposely leave, but all the while you’re giving away the farm. Best course is a short, to-the-point answer. Or if you’ve got to talk, you ask questions. Interrogators hate that.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “SEAL training, what else?”

  She balled her fists. Soon, Mr. Haddad or Mr. Hayden … very, very soon …

  4

  Where the fuck was Laura and why the fuck wasn’t she answering her phone?

  Steven was ready to hurl his cell across the emergency department. Either that or scream. But that would frighten Marissa.

  He looked at her, supine on the gurney, an IV running into her left arm, sound asleep but restless. Every so often she’d have a coughing fit.

  He’d seen the concern in the ER doc’s face when he’d told him she’d had a recent stem-cell transplant. He’d ordered blood work and a chest X-ray.

  In the meantime Steven had left Laura three voice mails and hadn’t heard a word back. Maybe if he texted—

  “Glad you’re here.” The ER doc was stepping through the curtains, his expression grim. “We’re going to have to move your daughter.”

  “You’re admitting her? Is that necessary?”

  “Afraid so. The X-ray shows pneumonia. But Brookhaven isn’t the place for her.”

  He felt his blood turning to ice. “What? I don’t…”

  “A regular child, no problem, but an HSCT patient…” He took a breath. “She needs a PICU.”

  His numbing brain took a few seconds to process the familiar acronyms: human stem-cell transplant … pediatric ICU …

  “ICU?”

  “Your daughter is a sick little girl. I called her oncologist and he wants her in Stony Brook Children’s. They have all the pediatric subspecialties she’s going to need.”

  Steven looked at Marissa, a sleeping angel, and back to the doctor. “She’s that sick?”

  “Not yet, but she could be. If she takes a bad turn—I’m not saying she will, but she could if she’s got the wrong kind of infection—I want her where they can do everything for her.”

  “‘Wrong kind of infection’—you mean like CMV?”

  The doc looked mildly surprised. “So you’re aware of that. Yes, that’s the bogeyman we’re worried about.”

  “My wife’s a doctor. She mentioned it. She even ordered some sort of test for it. Unfortunately she’s in France at the moment.”

  “It wouldn’t happen to have been a PCR, would it?”

  “That sounds familiar.”

  “Great. Wherever she is, she did the right thing. Good to know a PCR is already cooking. They take a while. Where’d she have it sent?”

  “Here, I think.”

  “Super. I’ll check with the lab and get started on the transfer.”

  “By ambulance?” He wasn’t going to let Marissa out of his sight. “I’m riding with her.”

  “Of course.”

  But the first thing he had to do was get hold of Laura.

  Since ur not answering my voice mails im trying text. Im in brookhaven ER with marissa shes got pneumonia and theyre shipping her to stony brook picu. Please call. She needs u! we both need u!

  Where the hell was she?

  5

  Nelson awoke to an insistent knocking on his door. Bradsher’s voice came from the other side.

  “Sir? Sir, are you all right?”

  Something pressing against his cheek. He opened his eyes and saw carpet. The floor! He was facedown on the floor.

  What am I doing on the floor?

  Slowly, painfully, he rolled over. What happened? He felt wetness and looked down at the dark splotch that had spread over his groin area. Had he—?

  Yes! He’d wet himself!

  “Sir? Is everything okay?”

  Couldn’t let Bradsher see him like this.

  “I’m—” He had to clear his throat. “I’m fine. Just fell asleep is all.”

  “We have a text to deal with, sir.”

  “Give me a few minutes. I need to take a quick shower to … to freshen up.”

  “Okay. I’m in two-eleven. Ring me when you’re ready.”

  “Two-eleven. Right.”

  “I accessed his file, by the way.”

  File? Whose file? Nelson’s thoughts were too scattered and jumbled to remember or care, but couldn’t let Bradsher know.

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Disturbing, to say the least.”

  “Talk to you later.”

  Using the bed for support, he struggled to his knees. The room wobbled a little but not too badly. The worst was the foggy feeling. He’d need to pull himself together before he faced Bradsher. He had decisions to make … nuanced decisions, and nuances were not his strong point in this state.

  He pushed himself to his feet and stood swaying as he considered his current state: a visual aura followed by a period of unconsciousness accompanied by loss of bladder control. He knew the explanation.

  He’d had a seizure.

  He felt over his limbs and ribs. No major tenderness. He hadn’t broken anything. He ran his tongue across his teeth—he hadn’t bitten it. And he felt oriented—he knew this was Wednesday afternoon and that he was in a hotel south of Paris.

  A minor seizure, he guessed. Major enough to cost him bladder control but not enough to cause serious injury.

  His freshman-year roommate at Penn State had been epileptic. He’d been well controlled on medication but Nelson had looked up the condition. They hadn’t got along and parted ways at the end of the year. Nelson was glad he’d never had to witness a fit.

  And now he’d just had one himself.

  The three tumors in his brain were the only explanation. Dr. Forman had even mentioned seizures as a possible complication if Nelson left them untreated. But he’d had no choice. He couldn’t stop for radiation and chemotherapy now. Tumors be damned, he had to see this through to the end, no matter what.

  By some miracle his jacket and shirt had stayed dry, but that didn’t matter. He’d worn one of his wool gabardine suits for the plane ride, and it was dry-clean only. Good thing it was one of his cheaper suits. He might be able to find further use for the jacket, but he’d have to discard the pants. Luckily, he’d brought a spare suit.

  He’d mentioned a shower to Bradsher as a delaying tactic, but now it seemed like an excellent idea. It would help clear his head, and Lord knew, it needed clearing.

  6

  Half an hour later, dressed in his backup suit—a Continental cut blue flannel—and his head defogged by the shower, he dialed room 211 and told Bradsher to stop by with the text problem.

  While he waited, he composed himself. A seizure …

  Are you testing me, Lord?

  Uncle Jim’s words came back to him: Every affliction has a purpose, every trial is part of His Divine Plan.

  Was the melanoma part of that plan? Nelson had become aware of it shortly after he’d become aware of the return of the panaceans. Coincidence? How long had it been there? He had no way of
knowing. Had the Lord caused it to appear? Were the tumor and the panaceans connected somehow?

  Show me, Lord. Give me a sign.

  Bradsher arrived then, cutting off further speculation. Nelson gathered his wits as Bradsher displayed the message from Dr. Fanning’s husband on his phone screen.

  “Apparently the child is quite sick,” Bradsher said.

  “So it would seem. We can’t let Fanning see this message. She’ll immediately abort her trip and head home.”

  “Kill it then?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do we substitute?”

  Nelson glanced at the clock. “It’s not yet seven A.M. in the city. She won’t be expecting an all-is-well message this early. Let’s wait and let her initiate contact. Her calls will be blocked. After a number of tries, she’ll text. Have them watching closely. And speaking of the good doctor, where is she?”

  “We tracked her to the suburban campus of the Paris Observatory.”

  “Observatory? As in looking-at-the-stars observatory?”

  Now here was a surprise.

  “Yessir. The astronomers have a campus not terribly far to our west.”

  “Do we have anyone inside?”

  “No. So we’re limited to keeping close watch and tracking where she goes from here.”

  Nelson wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not by yet another unexpected development. When he’d heard she was headed to France, he suspected she’d found the location of the Brotherhood’s abbey and would make a beeline for it. But apparently she was more interested in the sky.

  In the heavens … the Lord’s domain.

  Yes … all was becoming clear.

  7

  At the observatory’s Meudon campus they learned that Dr. Duval would not be available until after lunch, so they drove around until they found a quaint little restaurant just off a traffic circle in a woodsy setting: La Mare aux Canards.

  “The Sea of Ducks?” Rick said, squinting through the windshield at the sign.

  Laura had to laugh. “Sea is m-e-r. La Mare aux Canards translates to ‘Duck Pond.’ You know Arabic and Hebrew but you don’t know French or Spanish?”

  “I know enough of each to be dangerous. German is my best non-English tongue. I can speak it like a native.”

  Laura sent Rick inside to snag a table while she phoned home. She couldn’t hold off any longer. The local time had reached one P.M. and she was sure Steven would be awake by now. She’d added the U.S. country code to her home number on the speed dial and so she thumbed that.

  She was rewarded with a message telling her that her call could not be completed as dialed. She tried twice more and heard the same message. She switched to Steven’s cell number and the same thing happened. She called the operator and even he could not get through for her.

  Rick wandered back out. “I’ve got us a table on the terrace. You coming in?”

  “I can’t get through to home.”

  He handed her his phone. “Try mine.”

  She did but received the same message.

  “Damn!”

  “International calling can get weird at times,” he told her. “You have a data package?”

  “I signed up for everything before I left.”

  “Try texting then.” He left her and headed back inside.

  Why not? She hated typing on the tiny screen so she used her phone’s voice-to-text app to dictate a message to Steven’s number and watched the words appear:

  Steven I can’t get a call through. How is Marissa? Call me as soon as you get this. I’m on tender hooks waiting to know.

  She’d said “tenter” but noticed the software changed it to “tender.” Without bothering to correct it, she sent the message and watched to see if it would bounce. But no, it went out with no problem. She headed inside and they directed her to the terrace where Rick was studying a menu under a large canopy.

  “Guess what they specialize in?” he said as she seated herself.

  “I’ll take a wild guess: Donald and Daffy?”

  “Not to mention Huey, Dewey, and Louie.”

  “You just did.”

  “I never knew you could eat duck so many ways. They even stuff their hamburgers with foie gras.”

  “Not hungry anyway.”

  Too worried for that. She placed her phone beside her forks where she could keep an eye on it. She ordered a club soda while Rick ordered a Campari and soda.

  “How continental,” she said.

  “When in Rome … or Paris, for that matter…”

  She stared at her phone, willing it to ring. Why wasn’t he replying? And then, just as their drinks arrived, the text chime sounded. From Steven. At last!

  But why a text and not a call?

  Didnt you get vmail this am? Marissa fine. Fever broke in night now cool as can be. Still asleep. What up with ur phone. Tried to call just now but no ring no vmail.

  No ring no vmail … she couldn’t get incoming calls either? This sucked. She dictated back:

  Great news. So relieved. I’ll check in on a regular basis. Have Grace text or email me the lab results when she gets there. Tell Marissa I love her.

  “Good news, I gather?” Rick said as she replaced the phone on the table.

  “Fever’s down. That’s good but we’re not out of the woods yet. It could spike again. If she goes a whole day without another fever, there’s a good chance we’re home free.”

  “Good. Now relax and have some quack-quack.”

  “You know, I just might.”

  Her appetite was back.

  8

  Steven stood in the hall outside Stony Brook’s PICU and scanned through his messages. They’d made him turn it off when he was inside. So far he hadn’t seen them do anything here that they hadn’t been doing at Brookhaven, but at least she had a lot of professional people hovering around her, and that was good.

  Because Marissa looked bad.

  He’d grown used to her pallor over the years—anemia in leukemia was often profound—but now she seemed to be fading into the sheets. And that cough … it sounded like pieces of her lung were going to come up.

  Here—a text from Laura.

  Got your message. Tried to call but calls not going through. Stony Brook PICU? She’s that bad? I’m sick about this. Did the CMV PCR come back? I’m checking Air France and United and any carrier who can get me back fastest. Will let you know. Give her my love. Tell her Mommy’s on the way.

  Thank God! he thought. Laura will make everything right.

  CMV test not back yet but they suspect thats what it is. Hurry Laura. We need you here.

  He turned off the phone and rushed back inside to tell Marissa the good news.

  9

  “What am I supposed to make of this?” Dr. Duval said, staring at the photo of Chaim’s tattoo.

  The professor reeked of cigarettes and wine. Sixtyish, goateed, and rather slovenly, he was not at all what Laura had expected. His office was situated in the north wing of the Agence de l’Observatoire, an old stone building with an impressive observatory dome jutting up from its center. His cluttered quarters, with its star maps and Hubble photos tacked to the walls, looked like a student project straight out of Set Design 101. But at least he spoke English, so she wouldn’t have to translate everything for Rick.

  “Sense, hopefully,” Rick said. She could tell that already the professor was not on his list of favorite people.

  She unfolded her English version of Ix’chel’s poem and placed it before him.

  “It goes with this.”

  ’Twixt the house of the fallen godmen

  And the tomb of the fallen star

  That slew summer,

  Auburon lies drowning.

  He sleeps,

  Martyred and imprisoned

  Yet mocking his oppressors.

  He sleeps in the Wound,

  Midmoon from the godmen gate

  Where five men stand above his door.

  His guardia
n leg shall bear you to new life.

  His lips moved as he read it.

  Finally he looked up. “You are joking me, yes? This is supposed to cause me to talk about aliens?”

  “Aliens?” Laura said. “No, it—”

  “‘Fallen godmen’ … what can that be but aliens? This is a hoax?”

  “No joke,” Rick said, anger peeking through in his tone. “This tattoo? It’s on the back of a dead man—murdered because of it. Mister Stahlman has paid you to help us, I believe?”

  Duval pursed his lips. “Oui, but—”

  “This is not a hoax. Trust us.”

  “This ‘tomb of the fallen star’ that’s mentioned,” Laura said, trying to get the meeting back on track. “That indicates a crater to me. What do you think?”

  He nodded. “Very possible. Especially since there is this falling star in the tattoo. That could be a meteorite or a comet.”

  “The ‘Wound’ mentioned farther down … couldn’t a crater from a meteor impact be considered a wound in the Earth?”

  … in the All-Mother?

  “One could look at it that way, of course.”

  “How big would the crater be?”

  Duval gave a classic Gallic shrug. “The ancient Vredefort impact crater in South Africa was three hundred kilometers across before erosion set in. And the Chicxulub crater in—”

  “Of course!” Laura said, giving herself a head smack and looking at Rick. “We were just there. It’s off the north coast of Yucatán.”

  “Exactly,” Duval said. “One hundred eighty kilometers across.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” Rick said. “Not by that name, though. The ‘dinosaur killer,’ right?”

  “Correct. That was believed to be an asteroid.”

  “How about France?” Laura said. “Any impact craters here?”

  “None recognizable as such. We had the Rochechouart impact but that was two hundred million years ago and we can only estimate its size. Probably twenty kilometers when it was fresh.” He tapped the poem. “But here is what jumps out at me: ‘the tomb of the fallen star / that slew summer.’ That could be a clue.”