by Dan Simmons
Julie Strickland’s remains, after an autopsy and positive identification through dental records, had been flown home for burial in Milwaukee. Kate had talked to Julie’s parents by telephone on Monday evening and had lain in the darkness of the hotel room for an hour afterward, wanting to cry, needing to cry, but unable to cry.
Tom’s body was cremated on Tuesday, October 1. He’d once told friends that he wanted his ashes tossed to the winds along the Continental Divide in the center of the state, and after the packed memorial ceremony at a Boulder mortuary, a caravan of almost forty vehicles, most of them four-wheel drive, left for Buena Vista to carry out his wishes. Kate was not feeling well enough to go along. Father O’Rourke drove her back to the hotel. The FBI continued to file through the hotel lobby to question her over and over about details. As though believing her story about men in black, probably Romanians trying to kidnap the Romanian orphan for reasons unknown, they promised her that all U.S. passport control stations had been alerted. They could not tell her for whom they had been alerted.
Kate talked to Ken Mauberly on Tuesday night and learned that Chandra’s body had been returned to her husband and family in Atlanta, He also told her the details of virology-researcher Charlie Tate’s funeral in Denver.
“It turns out that Charlie was a passionate amateur astronomer,” said Mauberly, his voice soft over the phone line. “I went to his memorial service Sunday evening in the planetarium down at the Denver Historical Museum. The whole service—short eulogies by friends, a brief talk by his Unitarian minister—was held in the star chamber with only the constellations overhead for illumination. When the eulogies were finished, a star suddenly brightened in the sky. Charlie’s widow—you remember Donna, don’t you, Kate?—well, Donna stood up and explained that the light from that star was forty-two light-years from Earth and had begun its journey in the year that Charlie had been born in 1949…perhaps even the day of his birth…only to arrive this week. Anyway, the star grew brighter and brighter until the dome was this bright, milky color…sort of like just before sunrise…and we all filed out under this magnificent light. And the headstone that they’re having carved…well, the epitaph is very touching.” Mauberly paused.
“What does it say, Ken?” asked Kate.
Mauberly cleared his throat. “Charlie wrote his own epitaph years ago. It reads—‘I have loved the stars far too fondly ever to fear the night.’” There was silence a moment. “Kate, are you still there?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m still here. Ken, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Kate had requested a second and more thorough autopsy be done on the body of the infant found in the burned house, and at first the county coroner had balked. The child’s corpse had been recovered in the collapsed section of the house only when the flames there had burned themselves almost out—Kate discovered that she had spent almost an hour and a half crawling up the steep slope with her broken arm and concussion, being found only as the bodies were being discovered—and there was little left of the infant’s corpse to analyze: no teeth for dental records, no dental records in any case, and no way to determine the cause of death because of the severity of the burns to the small body and the massive internal damage done by collapsing walls and masonry. After an initial inspection, the cause of death had been established as Death from Burns and Other Injuries Related to the Fire and the coroner had got on with the other autopsies relating to the case.
“Do it over and do it more carefully,” Kate had said to the startled coroner. “Or I will. We need a blood sample, a full X-ray series, magnetic resonance images of the internal organs, and actual samples of the stomach lining and upper intestinal tract. It’s crucial to both the FBI’s investigation and the CDC’s search for a possible plague virus…if you drop the ball the second time, both organizations will be on your neck. Do it again and do it carefully.”
The coroner had been irritated but had complied. On Wednesday, October 2, Kate brought the thick report out to Alan Stevens at the CDC imaging lab. Everyone there was pleased to see her, but she had no time for pleasantries. She barely glanced at the sealed-off Class-VI biolabs where Chandra and Tate had died, and had not even sat down in her own office after confirming that the floppy disks, files, and project reports were indeed gone. She met Alan in a basement conference room that had just been repainted but still smelled of smoke.
“Kate, I’m so terribly sorry…” began the red-haired technician.
“Thank you, Alan.” She slid the report across to him. “This was done by the county coroner. Do we need to do it over?”
Alan bit his lip as he flipped through the stapled pages. “No,” he said at last, “the conclusions are sloppily written up, but the data looks solid enough.”
“And could that child be Joshua?”
The technician settled his glasses higher on his snub nose. “This baby is the right gender, the right age, approximately the right size, and there’s no reason for another child to have been in the house…”
“Could it be Joshua, Alan? Look at the section under ‘blood samples.’”
He nodded. “Kate, it’s not unusual in fires and massive trauma cases like this that there is little blood left in the body.”
“Yes, I know,” Kate said as patiently as she could. She did not mention her emergency room residency or her training with one of the country’s finest pathologists before choosing hematology. “But all of the blood missing or boiled away, Alan?”
“It’s unusual, I admit,” said the technician. “But not unheard of.”
“All right,” said Kate. She handed him the extra folder with the X ray and MRI hard copy. “Is this Joshua?”
Alan spent almost thirty minutes studying the stills and comparing them to hard copy and stored computer visuals in the imaging control room. When he was finished, they returned to the conference room. “Well?” said Kate.
Her young friend’s face was almost forlorn. “I can’t find the stomach-wall abnormality for certain, Kate…but you can see the extent of the internal damage from whatever fell on the child. A support beam perhaps. But the actual tissue samples support the identification. I mean, the cellular pathology is similar.”
“Similar,” said Kate, standing. “But not necessarily the same as Joshua’s?”
Alan took his glasses off and squinted at her. His face looked very vulnerable and very sad. “Not necessarily…there’s no way to be sure with this postmortem data…you must know that. But the chances of an infant of similar size, with such an unusual cell pathology, being found in the same house…”
Kate walked to the door. “It just means that they sacrificed one of their own,” she said.
Alan frowned at her. “One of whose own?”
“Nothing,” said Kate and opened the door.
Alan rose with the files. “Don’t you want these?”
Kate shook her head and left.
The infant was buried in a lovely cemetery near Lyons, a small foothills community where Kate and Tom had sometimes walked. When she had requested a headstone, the salesman had gone into the back room for a minute and brought out a photocopy of an elaborate stone with an infant’s cherubic face, a lamb, and a curling flower.
Kate shook her head. “A plain stone. No ornamentation whatsoever.”
The salesman nodded enthusiastically. “And the deceased’s name to be inscribed…ah, yes… Joshua Neuman,” he said and cleared his throat. “I…ah…have read the newspaper accounts of the tragedy, Doctor Neuman. My deepest sympathies.”
“No,” said Kate, and the flatness in her tone made the man glance up over his bifocals. “No name,” she said. “Just inscribe the stone—Unknown Romanian Infant.”
On Friday, October 4, Kate withdrew a total of $15,830 from her savings account, another $2,200 from her checking account, put most of the cash in folders with other loose papers that went into her carry-on bag, stuffed the rest of the bills in her purse, took the shuttle limousine to Stapleton International Ai
rport, and boarded a United flight to New York with tickets in her purse for a connecting PanAm flight to Vienna.
The plane had moved away from the gate when a man dressed all in black dropped into the empty seat next to her.
“You’re late,” said Kate. “I thought you’d changed your mind.”
“No,” said O’Rourke. “I promised, didn’t I?”
Kate chewed on her lip. Her headache, although much improved over the migraine-intensity a few days earlier, still roared through her skull like a rasping wind. She found it hard to concentrate, but did so anyway. “Did your senator friend get through to the man at the embassy in Bucharest?”
O’Rourke nodded. The bearded priest looked tired.
“And is the embassy guy going to contact Lucian?”
“Yes,” said O’Rourke. “It will be done. They chose someone who is…ah…not unused to delicate assignments.”
“CIA,” said Kate. She rubbed her forehead with her good hand. “I keep thinking that I’ve forgotten something.”
O’Rourke seemed to be studying her face. “The travel arrangements you requested have been made. Lucian will know where and when to meet us. My friends at Matthias Church in Budapest have made the contacts with the Gypsies. Everything we discussed is in place.”
Kate continued to rub her forehead without being aware of doing so. “Still…it feels like I’ve forgotten something.”
O’Rourke leaned closer. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten you need time to mourn.”
Kate pulled back suddenly, turned away as if looking out the window during the takeoff, and then turned her gaze back on the priest, “No… I feel it… I mean, Tom and Julie’s and Chandra’s deaths are in me like a pain more real than this concussion or this arm…but I can’t take time to feel it all yet. Not yet.”
O’Rourke’s gray eyes studied her. “And Joshua?”
Kate’s lips grew tight. “Joshua is alive.”
The priest nodded almost imperceptibly. “But if we can’t find him?”
Kate’s thin smile held no warmth, no humor, only resolve. “We’ll find him. I swear on the graves of the friends I just buried and the eyes of the God you believe in that we’ll find Joshua. And bring him home.”
Kate turned away to watch out the window as the plains of Colorado fell behind as they flew east, but for the longest time she could feel O’Rourke’s gaze on her.
Chapter Twenty-one
KATE had never been to Vienna before, but her jumbled, jet-lagged impressions of it were pleasant: beautiful old architecture coexisting with the most modern refinements, parks, gardens, and palaces set along the circular ring roads of the old city, easy affluence, efficiency, cleanliness, and an obvious care for aesthetics that had not faltered in centuries. She thought that she might like to return to Vienna someday when she was sane.
She and O’Rourke had arrived shortly after sunrise and taken a cab to the Hôtel de France on Schottentör, near Rooseveltplatz, and a cathedral that O’Rourke said was called the Votivkirche.
“You’ve been to Vienna before,” said Kate, trying to focus through the headache and jet lag.
“Even cities as prosperous as Vienna have orphanages,” said O’Rourke. “Here, I’ll check us in.”
Their rooms were on the fifth floor, in a modern edition of the hotel carved out of a two-century-old building behind the main structure. Kate blinked at the gray carpet, gray walls, teak furniture, and twenty-first-century appointments.
O’Rourke dismissed the bellboy in German and turned to leave for his own room when Kate called to him from the door.
“Mike… I mean, Father…wait a minute.”
He paused in the narrow hall. Behind him, greenhouse-style windows looked down on slate roofs and old courtyards.
“O’Rourke,” said Kate, trying to return from the dark place her sad weariness kept taking her, “I forgot to reimburse you for your ticket and for…all this.” She gestured lamely at the hallway.
The priest shook his head. “I’ve got a loan from a well-to-do childhood buddy.” He grinned for the first time in the week he had stayed with her, showing white teeth against his dark beard. “Dale’s a writer and never does anything with his ill-earned profits anyway. He was happy to give me a loan.”
“No, I’ll reimburse you for…everything,” she said, hearing the exhaustion in her own voice. She frowned at him. “You never told me while we were discussing all this…where does your diocese or bishop or whoever your boss is…where do they think you are?”
O’Rourke’s grin remained. “On vacation,” he said. “Six years overdue. Everyone from His Excellency to the WHO administrator I work with to my housekeeper in Evanston think that it’s a great idea that I’m finally taking some time off.”
Kate leaned tiredly against the doorframe. “And what would it do to your reputation if they learned that you’re traveling across Europe with a woman?”
O’Rourke tossed his room keys in the air and caught them with a jingle. He traveled with a single leather carry-on garment bag and he slung the strap over his shoulder with the practiced ease of an inveterate traveler. “It would improve my reputation immensely if some of my old seminary buddies and instructors could see me now,” he said. “They always thought I was too serious. Now you get some sleep and we’ll get together for a late lunch or early dinner whenever you waken. All right, Neuman?”
“All right, O’Rourke.” She watched him stroll whistling down the hall and noticed his slight limp before she closed and locked her door.
They had an appointment with the Gypsies in Budapest on Sunday evening, and O’Rourke had booked them aboard the Vienna-Bucharest hydrofoil leaving at eight A.M. that Sunday morning, October 6.
“It’s the last day the hydrofoil runs,” he said as they walked in Rathaus Park the next day. “Winter’s coming on.”
Kate nodded but did not really believe it. The day was warm, in the mid-sixties at least, and the blaze of fall foliage in the gardens and along the Ringstrasse merely added to the crisp perfection of the weather. Kate’s mood called for rain and cold.
“We have the day,” the priest said softly, as if reluctant to invade her thoughts. “Any ideas how to spend it? You should be resting, of course.”
“No,” Kate said firmly. The idea of lying in her hotel bed made her want to scream with impatience.
“Well, the Kunsthistorisches Museum has a wonderful collection of art,” he said. “And this is a big year for Mozart.”
“Didn’t you tell me that the Kunsthistorisches had a portrait of the real Dracula?” asked Kate. She had been reading everything she could on historical Transylvanian rulers since she had first diagnosed Joshua’s illness three months earlier.
“Yeah… I think so,” said the priest. “Come on, we can catch the Number 1 tram.”
The small sign under the portrait read VLAD IV, TZEPESCH: WOIWODE DER WALACHEI, GEST. 1477, DEUTSCH 16. JH. A smaller sign under the painting said, in German and English: On Loan from the Ambras Museum, Innsbruck. Kate stared at the face in the life-size portrait.
As a doctor, she saw the large, slightly protruding eyes as possibly hyperthyroidal, the prognathous jaw and extruded underlip of a type sometimes associated with mental retardation or certain types of pituitary and bone disorders. Platyspondylisis? she wondered. The kind of characteristic abnormality found with thymic dysplasia and other Severe Combined Immune-Deficiency symptoms?
“Cruel eyes, aren’t they?” said O’Rourke. The priest stood with his hands locked behind his back, rocking slightly on his heels.
Kate was almost startled by the question. “I wasn’t thinking about whether they were cruel,” she said. She tried looking at the portrait without medical prejudice. “No,” she said at last, “I’m not struck by the cruelty in that gaze…arrogance, to be sure. But he was a prince.”
“Voivode of Wallachia,” agreed O’Rourke. “That’s the really frightening thing about Vlad the Impaler’s monstrosities—they were more or
less par for the course in those days. That’s the way princes remained princes.” He turned and watched Kate’s absorbed gaze. “You really think Bela Lugosi here has something to do with the strain of Joshua’s disease?”
Kate pretended to smile. “Dumb, huh? But you heard the clinical description of the immunoreconstructive process the disease feeds on. Drinking blood. An enhanced lifespan. Amazing recuperative powers…almost autotomizing.”
“What’s autotom—whatever?”
“Autotomizing is the way some reptiles like salamanders can actually shed their tails in an emergency and regrow them,” said Kate. Her head hurt less when she thought about things medical. The black tide of sorrow receded then as well. “We don’t know much about regenerative powers in salamanders…only that it occurs on a cellular level and that it requires an immense amount of energy.”
O’Rourke nodded toward the portrait. “And you think maybe Vlad had some salamander in his royal lineage?”
Kate rubbed her forehead. “It’s crazy. I know it’s crazy.” She closed her eyes a moment. The museum echoed with footsteps, coughs, conversations in Austrian that sounded as harsh as the coughs, and an occasional laugh which sounded as insane as she felt.
“Let’s sit down,” said the priest. He took her arm and led her to an area on the second-floor rotunda where cake and coffee could be purchased. He chose a table away from the traffic flow.
Kate was fuzzy for a moment, becoming aware of things again as O’Rourke urged her to take another sip of strong Viennese coffee. She didn’t remember his ordering it.
“You really believe that the Dracula legends might have something to do with Joshua’s…abduction?” His voice was just above a whisper.
Kate sighed. “I know it doesn’t make sense…but if the disease were contained in a family…requiring a rare double recessive to manifest itself…and the sufferers needed human blood to survive—” She stopped herself and looked down the hallway toward the room where the painting hung.