Flight (7 page)

Fflowers looked past the flurry of hands
preparing him for his rejuve….

….It had been on starry night in late winter,
just before the Ides of March, in the parterre which was filled
with art and flowers, that a sleepless Joshua Fflowers had had the
idea for the very best present he could give to Elena for her
forty-fifth birthday.

It was a time of congruence. Things long
worked for were falling into place. Finally, after fifteen years,
the China market was exploding. Cygnetics just had reported record
quarterly earnings for the twentieth time in a row. The delayed
fledging process had been making remarkable progress. After a dozen
tries, the special embryos of the Centsurety Project, still no
bigger than beans, seemed to be thriving. It was time for him to
give Elena her wings. It was not that he had had no doubts about
his gift. After all, the wings would be grafted, not grown. And
Elena, who had helped millions to fly, had never expressed her own
desire to fly. Soon after Elena’s battle with ovarian cancer and
resultant hysterectomy eight years before, Fflowers had argued with
her to get wings as a balm to her wounds, but she had wanted
nothing to do with it. Rather than flying in an empty sky, she
preferred to lose herself in work.

At the time, Fflowers had heard his wife’s
wishes, but he hadn’t believed them. There had been too many other
times when Elena’s initial resistance later had turned to
acceptance. Fflowers had convinced himself that, once the gift was
made, Elena would be immensely grateful that he had taken the
initiative.

But, Elena had not been grateful. She had
been horrified. And as her revenge, she had left and taken all of
her, and so much of him, from him. He had been left with an
incurable emptiness, and progeny he could not own within his heart.
Now, with the appearance of the girl, who, in some miraculous way,
must be egg of Elena’s egg, the girl who had conjured herself at
this auspicious moment, Fflowers knew that he was about to be
rejuvenated in both body and soul.

As he was wheeled into the surgery, Joshua
Fflowers was more hopeful and more excited than he had been in more
than fifty years. Fate had come round. He was forgiven.

Seventy-two hours later, a half-dozen slight
sighs away from death because of a rejected liver split and a
pancreatic transplant gone spectacularly wrong, hope and promise as
well as any interest in Prissi Langue, her history and kin, were
far removed from Joshua Fflowers’ guttering thoughts.

Lost Paths

As he lay dying, Joshua Fflowers could not
pursue his interest in Prissi, but the same could not be said of
Prissi’s interest in Joshua Fflowers.

The day after the Bissell dedication, Prissi,
along with a scattering of students and a smattering of Dutton
faculty had listened while Vartan Smarkzy had given a Sunday Series
lecture called False Paths. Smarkzy’s talk focused on some of the
heralded scientific theories or paradigms which had led to little
or nothing—humouristic medicine, a geo-centric solar system,
alchemy, the id/ego/superego trinity, and dark matter.

After the lecture, on a beautiful balmy
afternoon with a soughing wind and dumpling clouds, Prissi was
taking a necessarily slow walk across campus with Dr. Smarkzy—slow
both because of her teacher’s infirmities and because Prissi
herself was still sore from hurting her shoulder the day before.
Smarkzy was adding to the false paths he had mentioned in his
lecture—phrenology, natural design. Prissi was listening but she
also was feeling a sense of loss because Spring Break was to start
in just two more days.

Even though she would be relieved to get
through the rush of work Dutton teachers assigned to be due just
before break, if she couldn’t be out of the country vacationing on
an island as seemingly most of her friends were scheduled to do,
then Prissi would rather be at Dutton than home. Although it was
almost three years since her mother had died, Prissi thought that
her father now was even more wounded by grief rather than in the
days and weeks immediately following the accident. From Prissi’s
view, the time healing all anodyne wasn’t working for Beryl
Langue.

Noticing that Prissi was favoring her
shoulder, Smarkzy gently tapped it

“This, this whole process of fledging—the
meta-mutancy, the timing, and the intricate biochemical processes—
also might prove to be a false path.”

Intrigued with the man she had met yesterday
who had discovered the process that allowed fledging, and
interested that there might be a better way to accomplish the
transformation she had undergone the year before, Prissi asked,
“Why? We fledge. We fly. What’s wrong?”

Smarkzy’s gnarled hands did a tortured pas de
deux in the air. “Well, perhaps it’s not so much a wrong path as a
less than optimum path. A young person or that person’s parents
must decide whether to have wings at a period in life when much, if
not most, is still in shadows. The wings one chooses may not fit
what one becomes. In other words, the wings choose the life rather
than the life choosing the wings. How many thousands, if not
millions, of people lose ten, twenty or more years of flying
because they have a mis-match between wing style and
somatotype?

“Eons ago, in my fabled youth, I was asked to
help out with did some interesting work being done by a former
student of mine. She was working with a group that was being funded
by a well-known scienpreneur, one whose acquaintance you recently
made.”

“Joshua Fflowers.”

With his head so big, his body so frail, and
his balance suspect, Prissi tentatively held out a hand when her
teacher began vigorously bobbing that head.

“Although, at the time, as a field of study,
meta-mutancy was more than twenty-five years old, most of the
theorizing still ran down just one, albeit admittedly somewhat
wide, path. Joshua Fflowers was already famous, honored and
immensely rich. But, if you knew Josh as I did, you would know that
wouldn’t be enough. He was driven to do more than he already had
done—which was no less than the gift of flight to mankind—if gift
it truly be.”

After a pause, Smarkzy chuckled, “To wealthy
mankind, anyway. From what my former student told me, my old
classmate was frustrated, pent-up. He was driven to go someplace
new and exciting—perhaps akin to the irresistible force that drove
the 15th century explorers. I could understand this because he and
I had been fair friends when we were at Bissell together. I’m not
sure I’ve ever met a more driven man…and, my dear young lady, I’ve
known a few Nobelists as well as many Duttonians in my many
years.”

He nodded in thanks at Prissi’s snort.

“That distinguished Bissell alumnus put
together a group of people—a group of scientists—very bright, very
well-educated, but, unfortunately, not well-socialized to the norms
and rules of mainstream science—a group the likes of which probably
had not been seen since Josiah Wedgwood, Newton and their group,
or, perhaps, the Oppenheimer team.”

Smarkzy stopped dead in his tracks and rubbed
the slight stubble that rimed his chin.

“Hmmm. That’s a new thought. Fflowers might
even have seen himself as Oppenheimer—you know of Robert
Oppenheimer, the father of the Manhattan Project— a brilliant
physicist and an even more brilliant strategist, administrator and
motivator?”

When Prissi shrugged, Smarkzy mimicked
her.

“No? Well, that’s a pity. I’d say he’s well
worth a look…a long look. My former schoolmate brought together a
collection of people who were almost guaranteed to do brilliant
science. But, it was almost as sure a bet that the light they
brought to their work would be outshone by the light and heat of
their personal frictions. I remember Roan, that was the name of my
student, described it once as a place where big, bright labs were
filled with bigger, brighter egos. They came together at a place
Fflowers had built just outside the research center at Cold Spring
Harbor on Long Island—a hallowed place where some very serious
science, including, perhaps, some of my own, had been getting done
for many, many years. Fflowers drew them in with a dream, fabulous
tools, gave them long leashes and lots of money—all of which comes
very close to a scientist’s definition of paradise.”

“And?”

“And?”

Rather than show her pique, Prissi smiled,
“What happened?”

“Actually, no one seems to be quite sure what
happened. My friend broke a very serious oath of secrecy to tell me
that the group, or a portion of the group of which she was an
integral part, had made a very important discovery. But what that
discovery was I surmised but never really knew for sure. Soon
after, there was a disaster, an explosion. The work was lost; the
scientists dispersed.”

Prissi’s eyes glowed like a dwarf star with
interest.

“A lost, rather than false, path?”

Smarkzy’s eyes twinkled, “Yes, an apt
description.”

“Like a lost treasure?”

Smarkzy’s head snapped around to look at
Prissi.

“Why would you say that?”

Prissi’s hand fluttered as she talked.

“Because there was a major discovery. And,
somehow, it was lost. I wonder what it was.”

“You seem intrigued.”

“I am.”

The old man stood lost in thought for several
moments before he held out his crippled hands, studied them and,
then, reached out and touched Prissi’s shoulders. When he spoke his
voice seemed to Prissi to be coming from a space farther than a
step away. “Well, youth is a time for great enthusiasms, but,
unfortunately, here, at Dutton, we purposefully leave you very
little time to pursue those enthusiasms. Hmmm…why don’t we do this.
See if your interest in this lost path waxes or wanes over the next
few months. If you have a spare moment over Spring Break, do a
little preliminary poking around. If, when you return, you want to
pursue this, I’ll try to help you out. But….”

The old man stopped.

“But what?”

“But…please keep your interest
quiet…no…forget I said that.”

Prissi was unclear what she was supposed to
forget…and why.

Dr. Smarkzy took his hands from Prissi’s
shoulders and began to walk.

In a voice not much more than a whisper, the
old man said, “My experience is that young people are easily
attracted to Science with a capital S; however once they do
science, with a lower case s, many are quickly dissuaded. The
essence of science is frustration, and if you decide to go forward,
you may and should expect to find your own endeavors frequently
frustrated. There very likely was no major discovery. And that is
why it has remained dusty on a shelf for so long. But, who knows?
You live in New York, if I remember?”

Prissi nodded.

“The New York Public Datarium has an immense
collection of Fflowers early papers, papers which he graciously
donated at the time he gave the billions to have the building
renovated. They are not open to the public, but…hmmm…Pequod…an old
colleague, now a research librarian…he might…I suppose I might be
able to help you get some access to those…, or, if I get the urge
to come to the late great metropolis, I might poke around a bit
myself. Seeing my old school mate yesterday has stirred my juices a
bit. There were a number of stories started back then that never
were finished to this reader’s satisfaction. Hmmm.”

“Could you ask your friend?”

“Yes, I’ll see if we can get you a peek.”

“No, the other one. The one whom you said I
remind you of.”

The old man’s head tilted far back and,
again, Prissi threw out a hand in support. He stared at the flock
of docile clouds overhead for the longest time.

“Roan Winslow. Another lost path. With the
accident, my friend…” Smarkzy waved his hand as if dispersing a
cigarette’s smoke. “…disappeared.”

* * *

Unlike what would be true for most
fifteen-year old girls, any and all thought of pursuing the Mystery
of the Lost Path did not disappear from Prissi’s mind an hour after
leaving Dr. Smarkzy. In fact, her new-found interest made her eager
to finish up and go home—well, not exactly home, but to the New
York Public Datarium.

Since her arrival in Manhattan, the NYPD had
been one of the teener’s favorite haunts. Having an excuse to go
there and having a mystery to solve took away much of the dread of
spending three long, slow silent weeks with her father. As Prissi
walked back to her dorm the energy that had been generated by her
talk with Dr. Smarkzy had quickly drained away as she thought of
how her father had always been thoughtful, caring, polite, but he
never had been talkative, clever or entertaining, like Dr. Smarkzy
and Joshua Fflowers. The daughter had accepted her father as he was
until the previous summer. After nine months of living on a campus
filled with bright adults and, in her opinion, brighter teenerz
saying clever things in machine gun fashion, after a thousand quick
contests of quick wits, like cat fights with words, Prissi had
found spending much time with a very nice, but distant, dogged
parent to be beyond dull.

Prissi’s emotions made her feel both disloyal
and guilty. Her father seemed bored doing whatever he was doing. He
never talked about work, and that was how his daughter knew that it
didn’t engage him like his re-gen work in Africa. What made it
worse for Prissi was that she assumed most of the money he made
doing what he didn’t like doing was being handed over to Dutton.
Even without his saying a word, that guilted her.

By the end of the previous summer, her
father’s emotional state reminded Prissi of an accident victim
wandering around in a stupor. In fact, she often imagined that both
he and her mother had been in the truclet. Her mother had died. Her
father had survived, but barely. He was in shock. He needed help.
And, she hated herself for feeling that the role of savior should
be played by someone other than herself.