Nick laughed. “All work and no play—”
“Bullshit! I want you on this, and so do you.”
“All right, all right, give me a chance to catch my breath.” Nick had seen Moy worked up before, but not like this. His face looked like a giant tomato.
“Catch your friggin’ breath and tell me yes, you’ll head this up.”
“If
I agree, all proceedings will be according to protocol.”
“Goes without saying.”
“Fine.”
“Monday.”
Moy stood up and shook Nick’s hand. As Nick headed for the door, Gavin
said, “Believe me, it’s the Holy Grail—what you’ve been chasing all your life. You deserve to share in the victory.”
GAVIN MOY’S WORDS ECHOED IN NICK’S mind as he took the elevator down to the lobby—a high-glassed interior and the main entrance to GEM’s state-of-the-art complex. Given the surrounding acreage, there was room for expansion to meet the anticipated demands of the drug for years to come.
Nick crossed the lobby, which was appointed in marble and brass, red oriental rugs, and gold leather sofas and chairs. As was characteristic, Gavin himself had worked with designers. Basically it was a Gavin Moy decor. So was the large aquarium in the middle of the floor, its brightly colored sea life looking like Christmas ornaments floating in the air.
Nick’s heels clicked on the marble as he walked to the structure that sat like a fairyland column of coral, anemones, sea fans, long diaphanous grasses, and a bewildering variety of polychrome tropical fish. It was GEM’s showpiece, which Gavin Moy had specially designed and which cost a small fortune. According to him, this was one of the few Kreisel nonpublic aquariums. And what distinguished the setup were its unique water inlets and outlets—essential so that its special residents were suspended in the middle of the tank and didn’t get sucked into the filters. To add to the complicated filtration and fluid dynamics, sophisticated monitors maintained the proper temperature as well as delicate chemical and biological levels. In addition to the special filter system and chilling unit, a separate breeder tank provided brine shrimp as a substitute for plankton, the creatures’ natural diet. This was not your average pet shop fish tank.
Nor were those pulsing bulbs with the meter-long tentacles your average fish tank denizen. These creatures were the real celebrities of this bottled reef and the secret source of the endless blue skies above, the iconic genus of GEM Neurobiological Technologies—the elusive
Solakandji.
The fifty-billion-dollar jellyfish.
RENÉ FOUND JACK KORYAN IN THE intensive care unit of Mass General Hospital.
Sitting with him was his wife, Beth, a slender, attractive woman with thick dark shoulder-length hair that was streaked blond. Her complexion was pale, as if she were getting over the flu. Her brown eyes were bloodshot—probably from a lack of sleep—giving her a muddy glance.
René introduced herself and explained that she was the consulting pharmacist and an associate of Dr. Nicholas Mavros. “I just wanted to come by to see how he was doing.”
And to put a face to the brain images.
The woman didn’t seem to care who she was or why she was there. “This is Jack.” Her voice was flat.
On the windowsill sat a double frame containing two color photographs of Jack—one of him standing with a male friend, the other a close-up solo that made René aware of how handsome he was—a man with black curly hair, a disarming smile, and lively exotic eyes. He was dressed in a black T-shirt that showed a well-built upper body. It was difficult to believe it was the same man in the bed. What struck her about the close-up photo were Jack Koryan’s eyes. They looked like shards of peridots and vaguely familiar.
“That’s his friend Vince Hammond,” Beth explained, watching René examining the photos. “They were business partners, or would have been.” Then Beth muttered “Shit!” under her breath and looked away.
Nearly two weeks had lapsed since the accident and, according to the nurse, the news was good. Jack Koryan was off the ventilator. But he was still a shocking sight. His body was slightly bloated, and the silver nitrate for his open sores had turned his skin black. The blisters across his torso and legs had eventually dried up and had to be surgically debrided—the dead skin being cut away, leaving red patches against the yellow. He looked as if he had been painted for camouflaging. His scalp and ears were scabbed, and his lips were gray. His feet and fingers had been freshly dressed against lesions. His arms were connected to IVs, and a percutaneous gastrostomy tube had been surgically inserted through the wall of his stomach so he could feed—standard for
unconscious patients. Machines monitored his vital functions including his brain waves. It was hard to believe he had survived the attack.
“The nurse says that the brain swelling has subsided and he’s responsive to sensory stimulation—which is good news.”
Beth nodded glumly. “His EEG is only four Herz; six to eight is for normal sleep. He’s still unconscious. How’s that good news?”
René let the jab pass. “Well, every brain injury is unique; so is the rate of recovery. He could just pop awake.”
“I don’t believe that.” Then she placed her hand on his arm. “Jack, it’s Beth. Please wake up. You’ve got a visitor. What did you say your name is?”
René told her again and studied Jack while Beth spoke to him in a flat, neutral voice. But there was no sign of response—not a twitch of an eyelid or a finger, not a hitch in his breathing.
“The doctors call it a persistent vegetative state.” She made an audible
humpf.
“More like he’s dead.”
Mercifully, her father had never passed into a coma, at least not technically. Toward the end he was conscious and unconscious at the same time. He could sit up in bed or in a wheelchair, move his eyes and hands. But inside he was nearly blanked out. And that’s what René could not take: the loss of recognition that animated the face, the vacant stare, the sudden spike of fright, the reduction of his mind to brain-stem reflexes, his strong voice and articulate words reduced to grunts, his bright eyes to blown fuses. A gaga thing attached to a diaper.
Thank God he had made her promise to let him die. He knew what was coming. It was his final gift to her.
“His vital signs look good,” René said, nodding at the steady beat of the monitors.
“I don’t know,” Beth said. “He’s had some kind of seizures and bad dreams that make him agitated and get that thing jumping all over the place.”
“But that means there’s activity in the frontal and occipital lobes, so his memory and vision sectors are functioning. And there’s no indication from the MRIs that he’d suffered a stroke.”
As René watched the persistent pulse on the monitors, she wondered what if anything was going on inside Jack’s mind. Was he dreaming or aware of his condition, or just suspended in a profound void? His brain had been saturated with the chemistry of Memorine. God knows what he might remember were he to even wake up.
“He never should have been out there. It’s got an undertow and all those damn poisonous fish and things. But no! And now he’s locked inside himself.” Then she looked at René in exasperation. “He could go on forever like this, right? Jesus!” she said in exasperation.
René could hear anger and resentment coiling around Beth Koryan’s words as if Jack had done this to her. The more Beth talked, the more it became clear that their marriage had not been a healthy, solid one—a suspicion that explained Beth’s chilly manner and the fact that there were no happy photographs of the two together.
“Who found him?”
“The Coast Guard. He was supposed to catch the water taxi back by seven, and when he didn’t show up by nine and didn’t answer his cell phone, the rental guy called.”
“It’s lucky they got to him in time.” The woman was not easily consoled, and this was the best René could come up with.
“Is it?”
The question squirmed between them. “Of course.”
Beth shrugged. “The thing is, he loved the sea. Look at that, I’m talking in the past tense already, like he’s dead. But he did—It’s in his blood, like his mother, which is kind of ironic, his getting himself poisoned, kind of like the ocean betrayed him. Those goddamn things show up something like three times in the last fifty years. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
René noticed that the woman’s fingernails had been bitten to the quick.
“He could go on like this for years. Just lie there with these fucking tubes and wires and just shrivel up.”
“And he could still wake up any time.”
But it was as if Beth didn’t hear her, locked in some long-running narrative. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have let him go alone. We had a fight, nothing new, and … now this is what we’ve got to live with.”
It seemed as if the woman had already consigned Jack to permanent unconsciousness and herself a life of bedside wife. And what René was hearing was blame and resentment.
Suddenly one of the machines made a double chirp. And on the screen the green little sawteeth made a series of ugly spikes.
“Shit! Another seizure,” Beth said, and got up. “Jack, calm down.”
He let out a high-pitched whine at the same time his eyes snapped open—so open that René half-expected his eyeballs to explode from their sockets.
“Amaaaaa!”
The sound cut through René like shrapnel. His voice must have carried, or somebody at the head desk was checking the monitors, because two nurses dashed into the room. Jack was thrashing and pulling against the lines connected to him. The nurses worked to restrain him since Jack was trying to rise from the bed to follow his cries, his eyes huge and staring at something that was terrifying him.
“Jesus, what’s happening to him?” Beth cried.
Jack continued babbling nonsense syllables.
“It doesn’t even sound like him. His voice. That isn’t his voice. It sounds like … a child.”
It did. And nobody said anything as the nurses tried to hold him down because Jack was pulling against his dressing and the tubes, his eyes bulging and focused on nothing across the room, but something awful swirling behind them.
“Ahamman maideek amaaa
…,” Jack continued babbling.
“What’s he saying?” Beth asked.
“Maideek.”
“It sounds like ‘mighty’ something.”
Jack muttered more syllables.
“Ammama
…”
“I think he’s saying ‘Mama,’” René said.
“That’s not unusual,” one of the nurse replied. “Patients under stress even in comas call for their mothers.”
“That happens a lot,” the other nurse added. “We hear it all the time.”
“Except Jack didn’t have a mother.”
René looked at Beth. “What?”
“She died when he was a baby, and he was brought up by his aunt and uncle. He never called anyone mama.”
Jack started thrashing again, and to calm him down the smaller nurse produced a syringe of Valium and emptied it into Jack’s IV. In a minute or so, Jack gasped and deflated against his pillow, his eyes pulsing against closing lids until he slipped back to sleep with a solitary sigh rising from his lungs.
But before that happened, his eyes shot open again and he looked directly at René. And through his crusted mouth still glistening with analgesic ointment he formed the syllables: “Mama.”
“MAMA”
Jack Koryan was at the door again. He could hear the wind outside, but that was all. He was safe to go out and the knob wasn’t frozen again, so he turned until he heard the latch come free.
Instantly the door sucked open and in the flare he saw the large pointed creature standing over the big mouse, its feet twitching as the club came cracking down on it.
Then the door slammed shut and Jack was back in the cage.
And outside the night raged and flared.
Then all began to fade like distant thunder as black air mercifully closed around him.
Hartford, Connecticut
“SURE, I REMEMBER HOW TO GET there,” said William Zett, sitting in the passenger seat of his sister’s car.
Greg Lainas drove while his wife MaryAnn sat in the back seat. It was late Sunday morning, a beautiful early September day with a big blue sky filled with sudsy white puffs of clouds. One of those days that reminded you of childhood.
“Yeah, turn up here,” William said. Then it came to him. “South Street.”
“Son of a gun,” Greg said. “You’ve got the memory of an elephant.”
“Told you,” William said proudly. “Then you take a … let’s see … a left onto Campfield Ave.” The name then opened up in his head like a flower. “Goodwin Park.”
“Heck, maybe you can get Dr. Habib to get some of those magic pills for me, too.”
“Yeah, ask him for the both of us,” MaryAnn said with a chuckle. Then she turned toward Greg in a voice loud enough that William could hear. “Do you know the other day he started reciting one of his physics lectures. Come on, tell him, William. You know, the Heisenberger something-or-other principle, or whatever.”
“Heisenberg uncertainty principle.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Come on, let Greg hear it.”
William hemmed and hawed then after Greg and MaryAnn’s prodding he said, “I don’t know, something like … the simultaneous measurement of two variables like momentum and position …” He closed his eyes as it all came back to him the way it did the other day, as if receiving instructions beamed to him from afar. “Energy and time for a moving particle entails a limitation on the precision of each measurement. The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.” Then he closed his eyes tight and thought. “Delta
p
times delta
q
is
greater or equal to Planck’s constant over four pi. And delta
E
times delta
t
is greater or equal to Planck’s constant over four pi.”
And MaryAnn and Greg cheered, “Yeaaaaaa!”
“God, just a few months ago he couldn’t put a simple sentences together, now he’s doing quantum mechanics again.”
And William felt a warm glow of pride in his chest. He had taught physics at the University of Hartford for thirty-seven years before being forced to retire. He could have taught well into his seventies, but he had begun to fade.
“Speaking of pie, you’re going to love dessert. And nothing uncertain about that.”
They pulled into the parking lot beside the old watering hole, the playground off to the right through the trees. The original lot had been dirt, but it had been asphalted over and security lights now sat atop some poles. The area had not been expanded as had other town playgrounds—none of those fancy new wooden climbing complexes that looked like little fortresses with castellated towers, bridges, handlebars, and tubular slides, et cetera. The swings were the same, although they had been repainted a hundred times, and the monkey bars had been replaced, as had the sandy play area. The two slides, Big Shot and Little Shot, as the kids had called them, looked the same. And they sat maybe thirty feet apart.
“God, I don’t think I’ve been back here since the fifties,” said MaryAnn, who had packed a picnic lunch for the three of them. While William walked around the playground structures, she and her husband spread a tablecloth across one of the wooden tables and laid out the food and plates.
Meanwhile, William shuffled over to the swing, his feet kicking through the familiar fine yellow sand. He didn’t think it was the same old chain that held up the seats, but it was long and rusty as he remembered it. He could still feel the cold metal in his hands as he gripped it and sat in the seat. He could still smell the funny rusty iron odor that the chain left in a moist grip. He lowered himself onto one of the swings.
“Want a push?” MaryAnn hollered from the table. She laughed and waved.
William waved back. “I can handle it.”
He gripped the chain and it all came back to him in a rush—his feet pushing himself back against the seat until he was standing, then he raised his feet and felt himself swing forward, pushing his body forward and back until he established momentum and was swinging with the steady period of a clock pendulum.
Amazing, as if it were just a membrane away. He closed his eyes. It must have been sixty-five years since he had last done this. But it seemed like …
“Hey, Billy.”
Billy opened his eyes, and a hot flame flared in his chest. It was Bobby Tilden on the Big Slide near by. Bobby the Bully. And behind him were three other kids, including Annette, the girl up the street Billy was crazy about.
“Come on, or you gonna chicken out again?”
“Hey, William, you’re looking good, kiddo.”
“But watch your neck,” MaryAnn shouted. Then to her husband she said, “He’s got that slick jogging suit on, he could slide right off the seat.”
“He’s fine,” Greg said. “Hold on tight,” he shouted to his brother.
William nodded and looked toward the slide.
He was scared. Heart-banging, dry-spit scared, pants-wetting scared.
“Hey, Peepee Boy!” shouted Bobby Tilden, grinning with his broken-tooth smile and sly fox eyes and the baseball cap in a rebel slant. “Come on up. Or you ‘fraid of wetting your pants again?”
Other kids on the slide and at the bottom joined in the taunt to give it a try—the Big Slide, what the older kids did—kids ten and up. Billy had tried it before, but it was very high and fast, and he did chicken out and had to climb back down the ladder, which caused everybody to make fun of him, and Bobby called him Peepee Boy and knocked him down and gave him a knuckle haircut that made him cry while everybody hooted with glee.
Billy got off the swing and shuffled toward the Big Slide with the clutch of kids at the bottom—Philly, Michael Riccardi, Larry Ahearn, and Francine with the big yellow buck teeth and Snookie B. in the dirty sailor cap—waving him over and jeering, hoping he’d humiliate himself and chicken out again, wet his pants. At the top, Bobby Tilden snorted deeply and spit a clam that landed near Billy’s feet. Then he let out a whooping cry and slid down the slide with his hands and sneakers in the air. He landed on his feet, and the others let out a cheer.
Mikey Riccardi was next. He came flying down lying straight out. At the last minute he lifted his feet and came down on his backside flat. Two more kids came down, all pushing each other from the top of the ladder. Then Bobby raced back up, taunting Billy to join them. This time Bobby came down on his belly, letting out a yowl all the way. He smacked the yellow earth and got up spitting and covered with yellow sand on his front. And the other kids went wild.
“You’re next,” they said to Billy.
“William, lunch time.”
Billy’s heart pounded as he made his way to the ladder. The others formed a wall around him so he couldn’t run off at the last minute. Philly pushed him in the back to climb up. There was no backing off now, and he thought that if there was ever a time he wanted to die, this was it. One by one he climbed the rungs toward Bobby, who grinned down at him from the top, green-jelly snot bubbling in his nostrils, his chipped tooth flashing at him, his dirty face in a demon grin as he watched Billy climb.
“William, what are you doing up there? You’re going to break your neck.”
“Come on, Peepee Boy.” And Bobby slid down to give him room.
At the top, Billy looked down the long shiny metal slide that seemed to go on forever, the knot of kids below arms waving and shouting for him to do it, don’t be a chicken.
“Will-iam?”
“BIL-LY BIL-LY BIL-LY
…
”
Billy’s heart thudded painfully as he held his breath and said a silent prayer. Then eyes closed, he shot down the slide. At the last moment he caught himself and landed on his feet. And the kids cheered. For a protracted moment he could not believe how easy it was, and how great it felt.
“Way to go, bro,” somebody shouted. “Now, come on and have your lunch.”
To the hooting of the other kids he climbed back up and came down again. Easy as pie, as his mom always said.
“How about on your back if you’re so cool?” Bobby sneered at him.
Billy wanted to go home, but he had to take the challenge. So he climbed back up the slide. At the top, while the other kids watched, he took a deep breath and stretched himself out, and when Bobby cried “Go” he shot down and at the last minute he caught himself and landed on his feet, nearly losing his balance.
“William, that’s enough of that,” the woman said.
“Now headfirst,” Bobby said, his face in a slick grin like J
.
Worthington Foulfellow.
“William.” A man was approaching Billy from the picnic table under the trees. He looked distantly familiar.
“Come on, Peepee Boy, or you gonna go running home to your mommy?”
“Yeah, scaredy-pants,” Philly C. shouted. He was Bobby’s best friend and did everything Bobby said.
“I’m not scared,” Billy heard himself say. But he was. So scared he felt himself begin to wet his underpants. But he couldn’t cop out now or they’d jeer him to tears then give him noogies and a pink belly in front of everybody, including Annette. He was as certain of that as he was of his own name—because that’s what
had happened way back and every time he kept going back there in his head. But this time he had to show them. He had to. He had to.
“So, do it, Peepee Boy. Eyes closed, headfirst on your back, if you’re so cool. Or your ass is grass.”
Your ass is grass. It was Bobby’s favorite threat, although Billy didn’t know exactly what it meant.
Billy saw the man approach, so he climbed back up the ladder.
“What the hell are you doing, brother?”
But Billy paid him no attention—as if he were invisible or a ghost of another time.
At the top Billy sat down, his sneakers on the top rung. Below, the kids made a noisy clutch of arms and hats and dungarees and T-shirts that said Naylor Elementary. In the distance, at the picnic tables, were his parents and other parents drinking coffee out of big red Thermos jugs and watching all the kids playing. Billy’s mother cried out, “Careful, Billy.”
And Billy inched himself backward onto the slanting metal slide, his hands gripping the sides, then he lowered his back onto the warm polished metal, his head straight down. He could feel the heat rising, the sun in his face, his short little legs curled over the top, holding him in place, as he watched a white seabird slice across the blue.
“William, no!” cried his mother.
“
Billy
, go!”
cried the kids.
And William Zett raised his legs and slid down the sun-slick trough, his face fist-tight, the hard blue sky running him along, the white bird freezing in flight.
His head jammed into the earth and he heard something in his neck snap like a Popsicle stick. And everything—the sky, the trees, the white bird, the man looking down on him—
“Oh, God, no!” went black.