Part 4, Chapter 25
Methuselah’s Daughter: Part 4
Gods and Monsters
“Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose.” (Macbeth, Act II, Scene 1)
Chapter 25
I was kind of depressed. For about a week after our last meeting I hadn’t heard a word from her and she didn’t return my phone calls. Finally one morning she called and asked me to meet her at her hotel room, so I drove on out. I was still mystified and a little hurt, but I tried to keep it off my face as I knocked on her hotel room door. Then, when she opened the door, I looked at her and covered my mouth to stop myself from laughing. She had a dead serious look on her face, and her hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail. She was wearing a long green floral-print housedress and, of all things, a pair of pink bunny slippers.
Her face was cloudy. “You are amused?”
I straightened my face. “No, no. You look great. Glad to see you.”
“Thank-you,” she said crisply, her back straight as she stepped back and gestured me inside. I walked quietly toward the suite’s generous sitting area and chose the large overstuffed brown chair. As I sat, I watched as she walked archly toward the leather couch, the floppy bunny ears bouncing with her footsteps. In spite of the incongruity, she had a new look in her eye that kept me from snickering. I hadn’t seen her look that way since the first week we met; guarded, distant. She sank into the large couch and it practically seemed to swallow her as she crossed her arms, dropped her chin, and regarded me levelly, unsmiling. I leaned back in the chair across from her and tried to relax.
“So what’s on your mind?”
She crossed her right leg over her left at the knee and bounced her dangling foot, the bunny face on it smiling bizarrely at me.
“I am considering terminating our relationship,” she said bluntly and I shook my head and looked back up at her.
“Well,” I said, “That’s your prerogative. It’s in our contract. I guess I’d be disappointed though. Can I ask why? I didn’t mean to offend you, whatever it was I said.”
Her gaze wandered away, looking past me. She was quiet for a bit, her face impassive but a little sad. Then her green eyes snapped back to me with that almost alien look, like I was a different species. In a way I couldn’t put my finger on, she almost seemed inhuman. But then she pursed her lips, exhaled slowly and finally spoke.
“I am coming to understand that to do what I set out to do here may indeed be impossible. I was holding that understanding at arm’s length, pretending it wasn’t real, but then last week it finally came to me, full force and undeniable.”
“You got pretty mad. I’m still not sure what set you off like that, but whatever it was…”
“It was not merely you. It was Joshua as well. You both brought the reality of what I am facing to where I could no longer ignore how very weak my plans are. I thought… I hoped that just telling my story would be enough. That I would be able to let this out in careful bits and pieces, let it be dismissed as fantasy until time managed to provide the evidence. By then perhaps it would be easier for people to accept. The shock would be softened a bit. Perhaps my work with the Foundation would give me enough sympathetic friends to blunt any negative consequences… instead, what do I have? You urge me to turn myself over to doctors and scientists and hope some ephemeral construct of property law of all things might somehow stand as a shield between me and those who might wish to do me harm.”
“But Zsallia,” I said, “the idea here is to try to help you.”
“Hmm, yes, help me,” she said, skeptically. She paused, still looking at me, utterly without emotion. “Tell me my friend, do you crave immortality?” The way her eyes were fixed on me made me feel like a specimen under a microscope.
I gave another little start. “Um, well,” I thought. “I’m not sure.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I believe you do,” she said. “You all do.”
I opened my mouth, shut it and sat back. “I guess it depends on what you mean,” I said.
“Don’t banter with me.”
“Hey,” I said, getting irritated now, “You think I haven’t thought about it at all? I haven’t exactly slept right or eaten right since meeting you. I’ve been having stupid arguments with my wife, too, because I can’t really think what to tell her about you. I wouldn’t even believe you were real if I hadn’t seen you grow back that leg and then that arm. What the hell is with that anyway? You grow the leg, then the arm? Jesus, I mean, what the hell are you?”
“Precisely my point. Just what the hell am I? Who else will be asking just that question? Will they be people who see possibilities, or threats, or both? You and Joshua seem to operate from the assumption that once the truth comes out I will be believed, but what if those in power suspect I am lying?”
“It won’t matter if you have the research. Sure, things could get sticky, but you’d be dealing from a position of strength.”
She just kept looking at me, her eyes cavernous and unblinking. It was getting a little unnerving, but I just looked back at her and waited. Finally she spoke again.
“What is it you think you’ll learn from studying me, anyhow? If immortality is not the goal, then what?”
I looked at her, perplexed. It seemed like she was missing the completely obvious. Then I stood up and leaned toward her. She pulled her head back a bit but otherwise didn’t move as I tapped her left forearm. “That,” I said sharply, tapping it again, feeling the warm life in it. Then I sat back down. “Jesus, it creeps me out a little just thinking about it, but just a few months ago you had no freaking arm there, lady. Now I see you typing on your computer or putting on makeup with it. That’s just incredible.”
“It is part and parcel with the same phenomenon,” she said.
“Oh, I’m not so sure it is, but….” I paused, groping. “Well there’s only one sure way to find out, isn’t there?”
“So you believe I am obligated to do this.”
“I never said you were obligated to do anything.”
“No. You said I had no right to make decisions about what the human race was permitted to know; however, the one follows naturally from the other.” Her voice was calm, but her gaze was still hollow and accusing.
I paused, “Well now wait just a minute, you’re….” I stopped. I saw her point. “Okay, I said something along the lines of, it’s not up to you to decide what’s best for humanity…” I stopped then as a tight, grim smile appeared on her face and she nodded curtly. I suddenly realized that this was not an argument I could win even if I thought it was worth fighting. “All right,” I continued, “you’re right. I do think you’re obligated to let yourself be studied. With limits, and within reason. But I think people are obligated to do all kinds of things they don’t do. That doesn’t mean I run around pointing guns at them making them do it.”
The lizard-like stare softened suddenly, just a little, but she still seemed guarded. “You should realize that after our last meeting I very nearly changed my identity, left town and considered leaving to where none of you would ever find me again. Every day I have agonized over this. I very nearly did not call you again. I still don’t if we should even be having this conversation.”
“Okay, but…” my voice trailed off. “Well, you know what?” She looked at me quizzically. “If you ask me to, I’ll tear up all my notes, destroy our recordings, take the money you gave me and forget I ever knew you. I’ll never tell anyone about you, except maybe I’ll spin some stories for my grandkids, if I’m still around.”
She kept looking at me, quietly. Her eyes narrowed a bit.
“Okay,” I said, “So we could do all that and you could disappear. I think you’d be making a mistake, but you hired me to tell your story and that’s really all I’m here for. I’m not here to force anything on anyone. Hell, I don’t even like making my son clean his room. But I think there are better options where you could definitely help yourself, definitely be in a position of greater control than you’ve ever been in, and besides that, you could…” I stopped, not sure what to say. Then I remembered something. “Have you ever been on a burn ward?” I asked. I knew this was dangerous ground, but I couldn’t let it go.
“I’ve seen people burned,” she said evenly, her jaw set. “I’ve been burned.”
“Right now, while you and I are sitting here, there are children…”
She interrupted “That is enough. If you think I haven’t…”
“There are children,” I said, loudly, talking right over her, “five, six, seven years old, with half or more of the skin on their bodies charred black from burns. The pain is so agonizing they can’t give them any drugs for it because to give them enough to make a difference would kill them. A couple of times a day at least, nurses have to go to those kids and put them in a bath and take a wire brush and scrape that blacked skin off and do their best to help them grow more back. And they just have to listen to those kids scream, day in and day out, because if they don’t do it, those kids will die or have no chance of healing at all. It gets so intense that most doctors and nurses have to be rotated out of there on a regular basis. Even people who deal with death and suffering for a living can’t bear it for more than a few months at a time.”
Her jaw clenched and she stared at me. I saw anger in her eyes, a dangerous anger, but she didn’t say anything, so I kept going.
“Even if the kids do recover they sometimes look like monsters the rest of their lives,” I said. “When I was in High School, I knew this kid, track star, on the swim team, too, plus just a really nice guy, everybody loved him. Jumped in the pool wrong in the shallow end, cracked his head on the bottom, broke his neck. Nearly drowned, and later he told me he wished he had. Know why? Because he never moved below his neck again. Doctors told him he’d be eating through a tube and stuck in a wheelchair, no hands no legs, for the rest of his life. Couldn’t even scratch his own nose.”
“The world is a tragic place. Life is not for the faint of heart. I am unmoved by cheap appeals to emotion. What would you have me do? Do you think you can cut me open and find some magical potion to cure all of this?”
“I think,” I said, and stopped for a minute. “Okay, I think your body’s your own, but that unless you’re some magical fairy from another dimension, with a few vials of your blood, they could learn all kinds of stuff.”
She shot me a strange look. “My…. blood?”
“Sure, then they could examine your DNA and learn things. Or they might find chemicals in your bloodstream they could examine. Maybe some of both. Hell I don’t know, but it probably wouldn’t require anything more than that out of you.” I grinned. “What, are you afraid of needles?”
She gave a hollow chuckle. “Not precisely, it’s just the thought of…” She paused and shook her head, looking a little sad. “Never mind. What I am truly afraid of is what will happen if that isn’t good enough. What will happen if they learn too much, what might happen to mankind….”
“Why do you presume to decide for humanity what we should or shouldn’t know? I think you could help people. I think if you explain to people what you’re worried about, and they still want the knowledge, then you let them decide whether to use it. And you’d be doing it on your terms, rather than having them chase after you and try to force you.”
“It would seem that simple to you. Neither of us knows what such testing might reveal, or what truths might need to be embraced or rejected…” she said, her voice trailing off. She looked terribly tired all of a sudden and put her eyes into her left hand. “I have wreaked much havoc in the lives I have touched, even yours.”
I chewed on that for a minute, but I really couldn’t see it changing what I believed. “I do think I see what you’re saying. But…” I stopped, and thought. “You figure you’re a pretty good judge of character, right?”
“Better than you can imagine,” she said, evenly, lifting her eyes from her hand.
“Well,” I said, sitting back and looking her in the eye. “Look at me. Would I lock you in a prison or force you to do something you don’t want to do? Am I the kind of person who’d go along with other people who wanted to do that? Is your friend Joshua?”
She looked me in the eyes for a long moment before speaking.
“What if it were your son?”
“What?”
“The child screaming in the debridement bath. What if he were your son? Don’t answer. I know the question is unfair, but you are depending on everyone being selfless and civilized. I know humans, and everything I know of the nature of man and power tells me I should be afraid, and nothing you have said to me here serves to change that one whit.”
“Damn it, there is no way to make a point with you on this, is there? Dennis Novak was right.” She looked confused, and I smiled a bit at that. I’d gotten her. “Dennis said you don’t know how to deal with anything involving institutions, or the law, or bureaucracies. It’s always about individuals with you, isn’t it?”
“Dennis told you that?”
“Yeah, the day I met him in the hospital. He said it’s like you’ve got a mental block when it comes to anything more complex than your tight little circle of friends, or whatever buttons you can push when you’re face-to-face with a stranger.”
She looked surprised. “I suppose I’d never thought of it that way. But of what relevance…?”
“No matter how far up the ladder mankind has climbed, you still don’t trust the civilization we’ve created.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It is hardly so simple. Civilization is fragile and mankind hasn’t changed all that much in thirty-five centuries. Go to
“The problem is the world’s big and complex and bureaucratic now, and more so all the time. Some ways that’s good, some bad, but it’s the way things are. So the idea that you can just hide out and push buttons on a few people…. It’s just not going to work, Princess. You can run and hide again, but where? You want to leave the
She suddenly looked very small, just staring at the floor and for some reason I felt like a bully. But I went on: “Look, I just think you are going to get caught sooner or later and should have a strategy that has you in a position of strength,” I said. “And maybe you could do some good for mankind.”
“Or perhaps I would do a great deal of harm, with no control at all,” she said, her voice quiet, nearly a whisper.
“It’s your call, Princess,” I said. “It’s your choice. You don’t have to decide now. I’m not going to browbeat you. I’ve said my piece.” I paused. “I thought I was helping you figure out a good strategy, but I guess that’s not my job. You’re going to do whatever you’re going to do.”
Hey eyes continued to stare at the floor. Then slowly she looked up at me, her eyes betraying a look of weariness and anguish so deep I was stunned.
“I do not know what I am going do,” she said, and the rasp in her voice expressed such a conflicted mess of emotions I didn’t know what to say. It was clear she was in some pain, a pain I had no way to understand. So I just cleared my voice.
“That scares the hell out of you, doesn’t it? Not knowing, I mean.”
She just stared at me. Then her head gave a short nod. “Yes. You are not the only one who has had restless nights my friend.”
“So… am I fired?”
“No,” she smiled at me, thinly. “Not yet.” Then she looked to her right and stared into space again.
“Good, I think,” I said. “So what changed your mind?”
Her huge green eyes, storm-filled and relentless until now, turned back to me and finally the storm seemed to break: she looked human again. “You were honest with me.” She said it almost like a benediction. “I can still trust you.” It sounded like a judge handing down a sentence, but she was looking at me like I was a person again. I smiled and felt awkwardly relieved.
“Good,” I said, “because we haven’t gotten anywhere on this damned book in the past few weeks. Why don’t we get back to work?”
“Did you bring the recorder?”
“Yep,” I said, pulling it out. “So what was it like, back in ancient
Her face turned mordant. “It was beautiful,” she said. “Beautiful and terrible.”
Posted on October 23rd, 2007 by Zsallia
Filed under: The Novel
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