Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise (7 page)

No, he didn't need rescuing after all, Aubrey thought.  He was just a jerk.  She also wondered something else about him.  “Are you gay?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you gay?  As in homosexual?”

He appeared confused, “No.  Why would you ask that?”

She rolled her eyes, “No reason.”

Suddenly Maggie interrupted them, “Sorry to intrude, Mr. Potter, but we're almost there.”

“NP-452,” Henry said, rising from his desk.  “Count on a dozen governments to come up with a name like that.  Let's see if she's worth a damn.”

St. Joseph's Medical Center

“So what's our verdict, John?” Doctor Kingsley asked into his phone.  “What does the lab have for us?”

Doctor Burwell had been receiving calls like this from Kingsley ever since the Sienna Petersen case had come down to the morgue.  Kingsley had been the woman's OBGYN, so it was understandable he was concerned.  Doctor Burwell said, “Whatever it was, it wasn't good; they sent it to the CDC.”

“They did
what?
” Doctor Kingsley's voice was suddenly tense.  Then, “I'm sorry, where did you say they had it sent?”

“They sent it to the Centers for Disease Control.  Her death was definitely not related to the miscarriage.”

“Are you sure about that?  Miscarriage can cause all kinds of secondary problems.”

“Well you know what I said about the miscarriage.  She didn't have one.”

“I know what you said, but you know there's no other alternative.”

“I sent pictures to a friend.  A gynecologist.”

“You could have sent them to me.”

“I'm sorry, I know she was your patient.  I didn't want to upset you.”

“What did your 'friend' say?”

“He said never.  He said that, as recent as it was, the cervix would have been open and there would have been some blood at the very least.”

“Hmm.  Well, I still think she flushed it,” Doctor Kingsley asserted.  Then he changed the subject, “So admin is sectioning off the fourth floor?”

“Yes, they're putting Sarah and me in quarantine.  They asked us to go voluntarily until the Maryland authorities decide what to do. They also said the CDC would need an executive order to enact a quarantine.  You know how bureaucracy is...”

Doctor Kingsley grew serious, “But John, this is ridiculous.  The woman had a miscarriage and died.  There isn't any kind of pathological threat.  You're seriously not going to stay there are you?”

“Yeah.  I am.”

“I'm going to fight this for you.  It's not right.”

“Richard, I know you're upset.  This was your patient.  You feel responsible.  But it should make you feel good to know she didn't die of a miscarriage.  She was sick.”

“You know I think of you as a son.  You've been my protégé around here.  But I'm telling you, she miscarried and died.  And I'm going to tell the CDC, too.”

94 Golfpointe Road
Travilah, Maryland

“Is this Mr. Wesley Peterson?”

“Yes.”

“I'm Doctor Phillip Compton, Director of the Centers for Disease Control.  I wanted to speak with you personally because I want you to know how seriously the CDC is taking this situation.  I understand you lost your wife unexpectedly and I know that this must be a very terrible time for you.  Please accept our condolences.”

“Thank you,” Wesley said, a little surprised at the call.  The man's tone said 'I am important, I'm used to being in charge.'

“I am very sorry for your loss, as is everyone here at the CDC.”

“Thank you.”

“And I know our people have held interviews with you, to get information about her case...  But has anyone given you her cause of death?  Anyone from Maryland, I mean?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, while I cannot give you any specific information, what I can tell you is that it was not the miscarriage which caused it.  It was a disease.”

Wesley was incredulous.  While he agreed it wasn't a miscarriage directly, a “disease” seemed awfully far-fetched.  In fact, to Wesley, this sounded like some kind of cover to keep him from the truth, “A disease?  She was fine until that night.”

“So I understand.  However, a disease definitely was the cause of death.”

“What disease?”

“That I cannot say.”

“You don't know or you cannot say?”

“I know more than I can say, but I don't know everything—far from it.  And that is partly why I am calling.  Between then and now, whom have you had contact with?”

“Well, I'm staying with my parents.  I drove over here from Towson.”

“Did you stop anywhere along the road?  A toll booth or anything at all?”

“No.”

“Didn't even go to the bathroom?”

“No.”

“And you haven't seen anyone else?”

“No, I just drove straight here.”

“Okay, thank you.  It would be wise for you to isolate yourself until we find out more about this and you can be tested.  Since we don't know everything, we need to stay on the safe side.”

“Yes, so I've been told.  What about my mother?  Should she be quarantined, too?”

“At this point, I cannot impose a quarantine on anyone.  It will be up to your local authorities in Maryland to determine that.  And I also should stress that there has been no evidence that this has spread to anyone beyond your wife as far as we know.  However, you might think it wise to alert your mother that she should stay out of contact with others.”

“So we had a funeral scheduled in two days.  What about that?”

“I would cancel it.”

“What about her body?  The hospital said they won't sign the death certificate until they can put a 'cause' on it.”

“I'm afraid that her remains will not be accessible to you for the time being.”

“I see.  So if I cancel the funeral, people are going to ask why.”

“Tell them something they will believe.  Even at the risk of looking selfish: 'I can't handle a funeral now' would do.  Just please don't tell them the true reason.  I don't want to cause undue alarm....”

Wesley suddenly wondered if this would be good person to relate his assessment to.  He was eager to talk with anyone who would listen and possibly help.  “My wife didn't have a miscarriage, you know.”

“You mean she wasn't pregnant?”

“Oh no.  She was fourteen weeks pregnant.  What I mean is that her doctor told me that she flushed the baby, but I was there that night and she didn't.  She thought the baby was on the bed until I saw that it was missing.”

“Okay...”

“So she didn't flush it, but it was gone.”

“Hmm,” Doctor Compton sounded patronizing.

“Hear me out, please!  The baby just disappeared.  I'm telling you this because I don't know who else who might be able to help.”

There was silence on the other line.  “So what do you think happened to it if she did not miscarry?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, in my mind, the only other alternative would be that someone came into your home and took the fetus from your wife, unbeknownst to her or to you.  How would you propose that happened?”

“All I'm saying is that the baby disappeared, but she didn't flush it!”

“I'm sorry, but I have to side with the doctor you spoke to.  She must have flushed it.  I know you'd like to believe differently, but we must come to terms with reality sometimes, even if it's uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, okay,” Wesley said, but his feelings did not agree with his words.  Wasn't there anyone who would listen to him, even if he sounded crazy?

With a little introspection, he realized that he wouldn't.

“Mr. Peterson?” Doctor Compton said.

His reply came out sounding defeated, “Yes.”

“Missing children in any state fall under FBI jurisdiction.”

“Oh?”

“If I were in your shoes, I would contact the FBI and report your child as missing.”

“Thank you.”

“Best of luck to you.”

“Really.  Thank you,” Wesley's voice cracked.  He was overcome by suddenly having a slight suggestion of hope.

China Academy of Sciences

Oddly, Doctor Ming-Zhen's paper on the man-eating deinocheirus had been easily approved for publication in a prodigious journal by the anonymous scientists who peer reviewed it, yet became the subject of unrelenting castigation and dismissal from everyone else.  Peer review was an excellent system by which academics could either anonymously censor others with whom they disagreed, or hide from controversy after they signed off on truth that the public couldn't stomach.  In this case, none of the original reviewers of the paper came forward to support Doctor Ming-Zhen.  Not one.

No one believed that he and his team had found Homo sapiens within the belly of a deinocheirus, especially a deinocheirus that was so complete in its preservation and so surprisingly menacing in its construction.  The whole thing simply seemed so entirely implausible, and even with all the evidence, no one was willing to recall Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's adage, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

Before long, Doctor Ming-Zhen was horrified to hear many calling his discovery an absolute hoax, from the human remains to the deinocheirus itself.  As this line of thought gradually came to be accepted by the media and, with them, most scientists, he was angered not only because of how unjust it was for him personally, but even
more so because of the damage it did to his team of pupils.

Then, the unthinkable happened.

One evening he was watching the news on a large screen, his wife standing behind him, when two of his students appeared on an interview.  Undoubtedly buckling under the tremendous pressure brought to bear and determined to salvage their own careers, they told the world that the fossils were a chicanery and that their esteemed professor was a fraud.

One was the carouser Chao.  The other, his precious Jia Ling.

His wife placed a hand on his shoulder.  “I am very sorry,” she said.

He could not muster a response.  He was utterly devastated, and he was filled with a terrible rage against Chao, who had doubtless pushed Jia Ling into this treachery.

In short order, Doctor Ming-Zhen was labeled the greatest fraud of paleontology.

After that blow, the issue became a simple matter of faith, with a very small number of his closest friends and colleagues quietly accepting Doctor Ming-Zhen's testimony (because they knew his character), while the rest of the world chomped at the bit in zealous outrage, practically ready to have him hanged for scientific heresy.

Because he was the head of the Academy of Sciences Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, the institution itself was castigated.  Calls were made for his resignation.  He found himself shunned at the institution by all but a handful of professors.

Because he did not resign, the Academy of Sciences, and, by virtue of equivalence, all of Chinese paleontology took the fall.  There were many claims from the West that this was only the pinnacle in a series of fallacious discoveries.  Papers were rejected for publication on the basis of mere suspicion.  New discoveries were ignored, scrutinized to the point of exhaustion.  It was a catastrophe for Chinese science.

Doctor Ming-Zhen suspected a sinister reason for all the uproar against Chinese paleontology.

Before he published his infamous paper on the man-eating deinocheirus, China had swiftly risen to prominence as the epicenter of paleontology, with more discoveries surfacing there than anywhere else, and more experts in the field than any other nation.  Because China now had such a large and thriving crop of its own homegrown paleontologists, scientists from the outside were rarely admitted to partake in the abundance, and if they were, they were mere spectators or dirt-pushers.  For this reason, the rest of the world was dripping with envy, and Doctor Ming-Zhen's supposed fraudulence, and the Academy's silence on the subject, gave them the perfect excuse to shut China down.  The ire was nothing more than basal human jealousy.

Regardless of the cause, he wondered what he possibly could do to redeem himself and his few perseveringly loyal
students.

And then he received a call from his mother at the giant assisted living facility.  She demanded an immediate visit.  She did this very frequently.  At first, he told her now wasn't the time, but she would not accept “no” for an answer.

So when he arrived at her tiny apartment and had sat down beside her, she said, “I've seen you on the news.  It seems,” she coughed, “you've run into some trouble.”

He hung his head.