They
crossed another hallway and entered another room. The young man
closed the door behind them.
It
was cold in there. The walls and floor were a soft, reflective apple
green, like cut glass. Several individuals wearing surgical gear
stood in a row, surrounded by tables covered with scientific
instruments. They were looking at the door the three men had just
come through, as if their mission was none other than to form a sort
of welcome committee. One of them, his silvery hair parted down the
side, a suit and tie rather incongruously peeking out from beneath
his green scrubs, stepped forward. The young man made the
introductions.
"Mr.
Harrison, Mr. Carter. Dr. Fontana." The doctor nodded his
greeting; the white-haired man and the burly one followed suit. "You
can speak to them freely, Doctor."
No
one said a word. The trace of a smile, or perhaps a grimace, played
on the doctor's pale, shiny face; he looked waxen. His right eye was
twitching. When he finally spoke, he resembled a ventriloquist's
dummy, controlled from a distance.
"I
have never seen anything like this ... in all my time in forensics."
The
other doctors stood aside, inviting the visitors to step forward. An
examination table lay behind them. Overhead lights shone down on a
sheet-covered shape. One of the physicians peeled it back.
Aside
from the white-haired man and the burly one, no one looked at what
lay beneath the sheet. They were watching the visitors' reactions, as
if
they
were
the ones who needed to be carefully examined.
The
white-haired man opened his mouth, but then closed it again and
looked away.
For
a moment, the burly man looked at what lay on the table.
He
stood there, frowning, his body rigid, as though forcing his eyes to
stare at what no one else could keep looking at was the only thing
keeping him from fainting.
NIGHT
had
fallen. Elisa's apartment was an island of light. The apartments
around hers were growing dark. She was still sitting in the same
position, in front of a television that was no longer on, cradling
the enormous knife in her lap. She hadn't eaten all day, nor had she
stopped to rest. More than anything, she wanted to do some exercise
and then take a long, relaxing shower, but she didn't dare move. She
waited.
She'd
wait as long as necessary, though she had no idea how long that might
be.
They've
abandoned you. They lied. You're all alone. And that's not the worst
of it. You know what's worse?
The
teddy bear's arms were outstretched, his heart-shaped mouth smiling.
His black-button eyes reflected a tiny, pale Elisa.
The
worst is what's to come. What hasn't happened yet. What's going to
happen to you.
Her
cell phone suddenly came to life. Like so many things we yearn for
(or fear), the arrival of the long-awaited (or feared) event began a
new stage for her, a new way of thinking. Even before she picked up,
her brain had already begun to formulate and discard hypotheses, to
take what had not yet occurred as a given.
She
answered on the second ring, sure that it wouldn't be Victor.
It
wasn't. It was the call she'd been waiting for.
The
message took no more than two seconds. But it was enough to make her
burst into tears when she hung up.
Now
you know. Finally. Now you know.
She
cried for a long time, balled up, still clutching the receiver. Once
she got it out of her system, she stood and looked at the clock. She
had some time before the meeting. She'd exercise, have a shower, grab
a bite to eat... And then she'd decide whether to go it alone or try
to find help. She'd thought about trying to ask for help, someone
unconnected, someone who knew nothing about any of it and who she
could explain it to in a logical fashion, someone unbiased. But who?
Victor,
possibly. Yes, maybe Victor.
But
that was risky. And there was an additional problem: how was she
going to let him know she needed his help urgently? She had to find a
way to get him the message.
First,
she had to calm down and think it through. Intelligence had always
been her best weapon. She was well aware that human intelligence was
far more dangerous than the knife she held.
She
thought that if nothing else, at least she'd finally received the
call she'd been waiting for since that morning, the one that would
decide her fate from that moment on.
The
voice had been so unsteady and quavering she almost hadn't recognized
it, as if the speaker were as terrified as she was. But there was no
doubt that it was
the
call.
The
only thing the man had said was exactly what she'd been expecting.
"Zig
Zag."
03
AT
that
moment, Victor Lopera was wondering, somewhat transcendentally,
whether he could consider his aeroponic aralias
natural
or
not. On first glance it seemed clear that they indeed formed part of
nature, since they were living things,
Dizygotheca
elegantissima,
that
breathed and absorbed light and nutrients. But then, nature could
never have reproduced them with such exactitude. They were clearly
man-made, the product of technology. Victor kept them in clear
plastic so he could see the astonishing fractals of their roots, and
he controlled their temperature, pH, and growth with electronic
instruments. To keep them from growing to their standard five-foot
height, he used specific fertilizers. So really, those four dainty
aralias, no more than six inches tall, with their bronze, almost
silvery leaves, were largely his creations. Without him, and without
modern science, they would never have existed. He felt his question
rather reasonable.
He
concluded that they were natural, after all. Maybe not
unconditionally, but they were definitely natural. For Victor, the
issue did not merely apply to plant life. Answering that question was
a declaration of faith (or skepticism) in progress and technology.
And he was committed to science. He firmly believed that science was
another form of nature, and, like Teilhard de Chardin, even a new way
to conceive of religion. His optimistic outlook on life had begun
when he was a child and saw that his father, who had been a surgeon,
could modify life and correct mistakes.
Even
though he admired his father tremendously, he had not opted for a
"biological" career like his brother, who was also a
surgeon, or his sister, a vet. He had chosen to go into physics. He
thought his siblings' jobs were too hectic; he liked peace and quiet.
At one point, he'd even considered a career as a professional chess
player, since his math and logic skills were remarkable, but he'd
soon learned that competition was stressful, too. It wasn't that he
was idle, far from it; he just liked peace to reign on the outside so
he could psychologically battle enigmas, ask questions like the one
about his aralias, and solve complicated riddles and puzzles.
He
filled one of the sprinklers with a new fertilizer he was going to
try exclusively on Aralia A. He'd put them each into their own little
stalls so he could experiment on each one individually. At first,
he'd toyed with the idea of giving them more original names, but he
ended up opting for the first four letters of the alphabet.
"Come
on, now, why are you making that face?" he whispered
affectionately as he snapped the sprinkler head shut. "Don't you
trust me? You should learn from C, who always adapts so well to
change. You've got to learn to adapt, little one. You and I could
both take some lessons from C."
He
stood there for a minute, wondering why he'd just said that. Lately,
he seemed more melancholy than usual, as if he, too, needed some new
fertilizer. But, good heavens, that was just pop psychology. He
thought of himself as a happy man. He liked teaching, and he had
plenty of free time to read, take care of his plants, and work on his
puzzles. He had the best family in the world, and his parents, though
they were retired and now getting old, were still in good health. He
was an exemplary uncle to his nieces and nephews, his brother's kids,
who adored him. Who else had that much love, peace, and quiet in
their lives?
It
was true he was alone. But that was his choice. He was master of his
own destiny. Why ruin everything by rushing into some relationship
with a woman who could never make him happy? At thirty-four, he still
felt young and hadn't given up hope. Life was a waiting game: an
aralia didn't bloom in two minutes, and nor did love. One of these
days, he'd meet someone, or someone he knew would give him a call...
"And
then, bam! I'll blossom like C," he said aloud, and laughed.
Just then the phone rang.
As
he walked over to a bookcase in his small dining room to answer it,
he speculated on who it could be. Given the hour, it was probably his
brother, who had been pestering him for a few months to go over the
accounts at the private surgical clinic he ran. "You're the math
genius; how hard would it be to give me a hand?" Luis Lopera—or
Luis'll Opera, as he jokingly pronounced it
(operar
was
Spanish for "operate," so "Louis'll
Operate"
had
been a long-standing pun among the family surgeons)—didn't
trust computers and wanted Victor to go through the files himself to
make sure all was in order. Victor had grown tired of telling him
that mathematicians specialized, just like surgeons. A brain surgeon
couldn't, just like that, perform heart transplants. Likewise, he
worked on elementary particles, not on tallying up a grocery bill. If
anything, his brother needed his stubborn brain operated on.
He
fished the receiver out from a sea of framed photos (nieces and
nephews, sister, parents, Teilhard de Chardin, the monk and scientist
Georges Lemaitre, Einstein). Stifling a yawn, he said, "Hello?"
"Victor?
It's Elisa."
His
sense of tedium shattered like a pane of glass. It was like suddenly
waking from a dream.
"Hi."
Victor's mind was racing. "How're you feeling?"
"Better,
thanks... At first I thought it was allergies, but now I'm pretty
sure it's just a cold..."
"Good!
Glad to hear it. Did you see the report?"
"What
report?"
"On
the news ... about Marini's death."
"Oh,
yeah. Poor guy." That was the extent of the sorrow she
expressed.
"You
were in Zurich with him, weren't you?" Victor began. But Elisa
spoke over him, rushing to get to the heart of the matter.
"Yeah.
Listen, Victor. I was calling..." She stopped, then she giggled.
"You're going to think this is idiotic, I'm sure ... But it's
really important to me. OK?"
"OK."
He
frowned and tensed up. Elisa's voice was carefree and bubbly. And
that was exactly what worried him, because he thought he knew her
pretty well, and carefree and bubbly were two things she was not.