The Crystal Child (29 page)

Was Aaron right after all?  “Love — as
they
know it — is a detour, a distraction.”  She thought back over her own coming of age.  And that of Alex too — how he had left his childhood behind.  Something happens when sex enters life.  Not a flowering, but a diminishing, a narrowing.  Children, in their innocence, savor life.  They cannot have enough of it; they hunger to take in the world — its color and music and fragrance and taste.  Their bodies give pleasure at every point.  Tickling — she remembered how Alex loved to be tickled, how he demanded it and then howled with unbearable delight when she touched him anywhere.  What a marvelously erotic instrument the child’s body is.  Children wake up to adventure every morning.  They live among fabulous beings and magical realms.  And then, suddenly, almost over night, once the tyrannical hormones take possession, they stop being open and fresh and inquisitive.   They become cranky and moody, filled with discontent.  Everything in their life shrinks down to a single, incandescent objective — like the spectrum of light focussed to one hot point ready to set them on fire.  They become stunned with desire, their minds ruled by one objective.  Before, they were filled with miracles and amazement. They asked great questions in their own childish way.  Alex’s voice came back to her.  “Where did the world come from?  Who taught the first man how to speak? Where does the universe end?”  But with their sexual awakening, their minds fill up with silly, petty things.  Hair-styles and dating and looks.  Their sense of adventure dims.  All that matters is sex.  How did Aaron put it? 
They become chained to their reproductive duty.

Had he learned that lesson from her?  From that one delirious interval when they were flesh against flesh?  She had played an unwilling Psyche to Aaron’s seductive Eros and had suffered a terrible penalty for the violation.  Eros, arrows.  Looking back, she could not recall that the act had been physically gratifying.  Rather it brought another sensation, a clouded sense of having found her way back to something long forgotten, a secret that was entwined with the immortality that once defined divinity, though she did not know how. Not pleasure, but longing for something lost beyond regaining.

“Do you feel you’re alone where you are, Aaron?  Or are you moving toward something?”  She had wanted to ask for weeks as she saw his appearance and his body changing.  When at last she did ask one night after they had used the pool and were watching the wheeling stars, he gave no answer.  Perhaps because he had none to give, perhaps because he believed the answer would make her afraid.  He shook her off restlessly and walked away, back to his quarters.

That night before she had fallen asleep, he came to her door carrying a book.  “You know this story, but please read it again.”

The book was Yarborough’s study of the Zeus myths, the sort of magisterial scholarship that has fallen out of fashion.  Yes, she knew the story he had marked.  It was the tale of Semele, mother of Dionysus.  A heart-breaker.  But, as requested, she read it again.

Drunk with love for the lovely maiden Semele, Zeus swore by the River Styx that he would grant her any favor she asked if she would but yield to him.  So she did, opening her thighs as a girl must when the father of gods demanded.  He had his pleasure of her through a long night of love.  When he was finished, she made an odd request.  She asked to see him in his full magnificence as King of Heaven and Lord of the Thunderbolt.  Zeus was horrified and at once sought to dissuade her, knowing that no mortal could see him thus and live.  But Semele insisted and Zeus was left with no choice.  He had sworn by the River Styx, an oath that not even a god dared break.  Rising with Semele to the heights of Olympus, he there revealed himself in all his glory.  And in the annihilating brightness of that vision, Semele was consumed in flames and perished.

When the police arrived at the offices of Genetic Therapies International, Forrester’s first inclination was to greet them with mild disdain like bothersome solicitors at the door.  Glancing at his watch every thirty seconds, he behaved as if he had little time to spend talking about Julia Stein’s probationary status and even less interest.  So she had failed to check in with her probation officer in Dallas.  How sad that she had elected to ruin her career.  But what conceivable difference could that make to him, a busy scientist with a major research laboratory to manage?  No, he had not heard from her by any medium of communication since she was released from Stockton.  No, he could not give them any leads on her whereabouts.  He soon discovered that officers of the law were not easily discouraged by flippant treatment. They had ways of getting nastier and more tenacious.

“Maybe we should talk to your partners or some members of your staff,” a black officer with hard eyes remarked.  “Maybe your colleagues would appreciate knowing that you’re part of a criminal investigation.”

Forrester relented and agreed to give the officers as much time as they wished.

“You were Mrs. Stein’s last visitor at Stockton,” the other officer reminded him. He was the larger of the two.  He had a massive jaw and the build of a football player.  “We understand you showed her some papers in an envelope.  What were those papers, Dr. Forrester?”

“Lab photos of some DNA samples.  I cleared the envelope with the prison authorities.”

“Were those photos of Aaron Lacey’s DNA?”

“As it happens, yes.  I was consulting on his case.”

“Was there anything else in the envelope?” the black officer asked.   “Any maps? Tickets to distant places?”

“You think I had something to do with her disappearance?  That’s absurd.”

“Please answer the question,” the officer said.

“I gave her no maps or notes or tickets or … anything — except the photos.  I wanted her help with interpreting some lab results.  It turned out she was no help at all.  My only interest in seeing her was professional.”

“And the phone call you made to her the last day she was in jail?  Was that purely professional?”

“I called to offer her a ride.  She’s an old friend. She said she didn’t need a lift.  That’s the last time we spoke.”

“So besides your professional relationship with Julia Stein, you’re also friends.”

“Yes, for many years.”

“The sort of friends who might meet for drinks and dinner?”

“We have from time to time, usually in the company of her husband and my wife.”

“But not always.”

“Mostly.”

“Have you ever been on intimate terms with Julia Stein?”

Forrester flushed. “I don’t have to answer questions like that.”

“Weren’t you once engaged to be married?”

“Who told you that?”

“We’ve talked to Mr. Stein.”

“Then I’m sure he told you that was twenty years ago when Julia and I were in med school.”

“And your intimacy with her ended then?”

“I never mentioned anything about intimacy.”

The black officer kept Forrester under a fixed stare while his partner shuffled through some notes.  The pause became a wire tightening around Forrester’s chest. At last, the white policeman looked up and asked, “You do genetic research here, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Meaning you work with genes, the genes that make people what they are.  You change them, improve them, get rid of illnesses and birth defects, and like that?”

“I guess you might put it that way,” Forrester answered.

“You take out patents on the things you discover about genes?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Which can be worth a lot of money, I bet.”

“Sometimes.”

The white policeman searched through his notes again. “Are you working on the problem of aging — like how to keep people young forever?”

“We study aging. I wouldn’t say we’re trying to keep people young forever. That’s a foolish thing to say.”

“You haven’t found the fountain of eternal youth yet,” the officer said with a smile as if this was intended to be a humorous remark.  When Forrester gave no answer, his face went sober.  “We understand that Aaron Lacey looks as if he might stay young for quite a while.  Is that why you’re interested in him?  Is there something going on with him you might want to patent?”

“I have no idea.  I never had the chance to deal with him on a fully professional basis.”

The black policeman said, “But maybe, if you were on to something with the boy, it would be a smart move to keep him sequestered.  I mean so nobody could patent him first.”

Forrester gave a bitterly angry laugh.  “Are you accusing me of … what? kidnapping the boy?”

“I didn’t say kidnap,” the black officer answered.  He turned to his colleague.  “Did I say kidnap?”

“You said ‘sequester,’ ” the other policeman answered.

The black policeman turned back to Forrester.  “Sequester, that’s what I said.”

Struggling to stay patient, Forrester said, “Well, I haven’t sequestered him.  I haven’t seen him since he reportedly ran away.  And incidentally we don’t patent people.”

The black officer emptied a large envelope on Forrester’s desk.  “Will you look at these items, please?  These are copies of the mail Julia Stein received during her last few months in prison.  Does this have any meaning that might help us find her?”

Forrester made a hasty survey of the material.  There were photocopies of letters from a bank and an insurance company, a driver’s license renewal form, some advertising, a postcard from Julia’s sister in Dallas, and — the last article Forrester looked at — a copy of Peter DeLeon’s invitational letter.  Forrester meant to dismiss it along with the rest, but something on the page caught his eye.  He looked away quickly to make sure the police did not see him giving the letter any special attention, but the white officer had noticed his hesitation.  “Something about this letter, Doctor?”  He held out the invitation.

“No, nothing.”

“Do you know this Dr. Peter DeLeon?”

“I know of him.  We’ve never met.  He’s a quack.  Geriatric medicine is filled with people like him.  He might claim to know the secret of eternal youth.”

“Was Mrs. Stein connected with Dr. DeLeon in some way?”

“DeLeon has a mailing list that includes everybody in the field of gerontology.  He sends to everybody.  He’s a pest. We probably have some of his literature floating around here.  That wouldn’t mean he knew Julia personally. As I said, the man is a quack.  Julia is, or was a serious gerontologist.”

“Dr. DeLeon’s letter was sent to her at the prison.  He must have known she was in legal difficulties.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that DeLeon — who isn’t any sort of doctor, incidentally — has been in plenty of legal difficulties himself.  That wouldn’t keep him from sending her mail.”

“So you don’t think there’s any link between Mrs. Stein and this man’s institute in Mexico?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Do you know if you received an invitation like this?”

“Not that I recall.”

“It says this letter went out to ‘a number of leading figures in gerontology and geriatric medicine.’  Why wouldn’t that include you, sir?”

Forrester blew out an exasperated breath.  “A lot I care what a crank like DeLeon thinks.”

The white officer turned back to his notebook. “What does ‘immortalist’ mean, Doctor?”

“Immoralist?”

The cop showed his notebook to his colleague. “No.  Im-mor-tal-ist.  Isn’t that what it says?”

“Yeah.  With a ‘t’ in there. Immortalist.”

“The white cop said, “That’s what DeLeon calls his Institute.  ‘The Immortalist Institute.’  What does that mean, sir?”

Forrester shook his head.  “Officer, it’s just gobbledygook.  You’ll have to ask DeLeon what it means.”

The cop nodded as he folded his notebook away.  “Not an easy man to find.  He travels all the time.  Do you know where he might be?”

“Absolutely not.”

The interrogation went no farther.  The two officers left their cards and asked to hear from Forrester if he had any useful information.  The white officer left a parting word. “If Mrs. Stein should get in touch, please tell her to turn herself in.  She’s in violation of her parole.  If she doesn’t report in soon, she could be sent back to prison.  Do your friend a favor, Doctor.”

***

Undergoing police interrogation renewed Forrester’s anger at Julia.  She had placed him in a gravely compromised situation.  Instead of being able to steam ahead with research on Aaron, to announce his findings and seek the grants he would need, he was left stymied.  The lab scans he had made of Aaron were useless without the boy himself.  And there was nothing he could document about Julia’s treatment of Aaron if she was a fugitive.  Why wasn’t this a matter of simple, straight-forward science?  If it were, he would be on his way to a great achievement.

The visit from the police left Forrester puzzling over one point.  The Kong Effect.  That was the phrase in DeLeon’s letter that had drawn his attention.  It might be some flaky idea of DeLeon’s.  But why did it stick with him?  It was distantly familiar — like a face in an old photograph, someone you once met but can no longer identify.  For the next several days, the term kept turning over in his mind.  He even tried looking it up on the Web, with no result.

Then at home several days later, Forrester chanced to walk past his eight-year-old son’s room.  The boy was seated at his computer playing a game. Forrester stopped to watch.  There was a digitized gorilla on the computer screen madly leaping from building to building.  “What’s this?” he asked the boy, coming up behind him to observe.

“It’s called Kong.  You have to make the monkey jump just right or he goes splat on the sidewalk.”

“Oh, yes,” Forrester said, at last remembering another little boy who had been very good at making the monkey jump.

She remembered it as the night she discovered her body, not knowing she had lost it.  Until that moment, she was unaware how drained she was of significant sensation.  But now his touch, gentle and caressing, brought warmth as if to numbed flesh.  It might have been his tenderness that reached so deeply into her, but she knew it was also the need she brought him.  Perhaps she would have surrendered to any one who offered intimacy.  She had become that desperate, desperate enough to make a serious mistake if she did not tread carefully.  She had no idea if she could trust him, but she trusted none the less.

“What do you know about me?” she asked afterwards when it was time to lie in his arms and talk.

“You are a miracle worker.  You know how to cure people of dying.”

“Please, seriously.  Do you know why I’m here?”

“You are caring for the boy.  The boy who isn’t a boy.  The boy who is an old, old man.  You healed him, now you care for him.”

“Have you met Aaron?”

“Once.  When he arrived, Peter introduced us, very solemn, like royalty.  I have not seen him since.  I did not wish to.”

“Why?”

There was a long pause.  He was sorting out his feelings.  “He spoke to me as if from a high mountain.  Someone above being human.  I felt threatened.”

“Threatened? You?  By a boy?”

“By a superior species.”

“Yes, he can be like that.”

“It’s enough to meet such a person once.  It teaches you a possibility, but perhaps a possibility you cannot accommodate.  I will tell you a story.  Once when I was very young, very young, a boy still in school, there was a visitor who came to my class, my first class in architecture.  An honored guest in my country.  You know Frank Lloyd Wright.”

“Of course.”

“Many years ago he built a notable hotel in our country.  Survived a great earthquake.  Now he came back to celebrate fortieth anniversary.  He spoke to the students.  A long, rambling talk on many subjects and yet on nothing in particular.  He was very old, soon to die.  We didn’t care. He was an elder.  Simply to have him in the room was a gift.  Old but very sharp, very witty.  He spoke with a certain distraction as if something else of greater importance was on his mind, something he had decided to wave aside, but not for long.  It was like that with Aaron, only more so.  He was burdened by a greater distraction.”

“It doesn’t bother you that I’ve been in prison?”

“American justice.  Not my concern.”

“Do you know why I was put in prison?”

“Because of the boy.  You took him for your lover.”

“Or he took me.  I’ve never been clear what happened.  Doesn’t that shock you?”

He shrugged.  “In a court of law, he is a child.  But he is not a child.  He is … unnatural.  He invites unnatural acts.”

His candor saddened her, but he was right.  “Yes, unnatural acts.  But it’s because he’s part of some other nature.”

“One nature is enough for me.”

She allowed a long pause to take shape. “I’ve hurt people.  My son.  I had no way to justify what I did.”

“You were not to blame.”

“I wish I could be sure of that.”

“I’m sure.  But take my advice — in the future, choose older lovers.”

She decided it was time to turn a page in the conversation.  “Tell me about your relationship with Peter.”

He gave a low, bitter laugh.  “Nobody has a relationship with Peter.  Peter is totally self-contained.  He is a monad, closed on all sides by walls of money.”

“But you work with him.”

“No.  I work
for
him. He tells me what he wants.  We argue, then I do as I am told.  His taste is ludicrous, a rich man’s taste.  Not my style.  In fact, I was ready to break off with him months ago.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wish to come here.”

“But why?”

He drew her closer and brushed a light kiss into her hair.  “Seriously, you cannot guess?”  He waited, letting several moments pass.  “I must ask you.  Do you have plans to leave?”

“Leave Tlaloc?  No.  Where would I go?”

“You should have plan for leaving.  I could help.”

“But why?  Aaron is safe here.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think he’s safe?  Why not?”

Another, longer pause.  “You have seen Peter’s crypt?”

“There’s a crypt?”

“So I call it.  He calls it repository.”

“Aaron mentioned that once.  What is it?”

“You must see it to believe it.  If he shows you, you will know why you must be careful, why you must leave.”

“If I can.”

“Has he told you that you cannot leave?”

“Not in so many words.  But he’s made it clear that I’d never be allowed to get past the gate.  Not if Aaron was with me.  And where would I go?”

“Not to United States?”

“No.  I can’t go back there ever.”

“I am sure I could take you to be with me.”

“You’re married.”

“On paper I am married.  How shall I put it?  The relationship is on life support.  For many years.”

“But you haven’t pulled the plug.”

“There seemed to be no need.  Until now.”

He leaned his head against hers and stroked her shoulder. “I must leave tomorrow.  Paris, then long time in Manilla.  Big project.  Big foolish project.  Luxury hotel in city of hungry people.  Then home to Tokyo.”

“How long will you be away?”  He could hear the worry in her voice.

“Two months.  But this can be changed.  If there is problem, I will leave my phone — very powerful, very reliable.  You call me, anyplace in the world.  Only call.”

“I’ll remember that.  Thank you.”

***

She knocked for a third time at the door.  There was no answer.  She turned the knob and entered.  Aaron lay stretched across his sofa, his eyes open and staring fixedly into his upper lids. His color was ashen.  She rushed to his side and called his name, then bent to feel his pulse and to listen for his breathing.  After several moments of searching at his wrist, chest, and throat, she detected a single faint beat, then a single shallow inhalation.  Again and again she spoke his name while she chafed his hand.  A sickening fear descended upon her.  She realized how helpless she was without medical supplies at hand. She thought of Dr. Horvath’s dispensary.  Could she find her way there promptly enough?

She rose and rushed to the intercom to call Eduardo, then stopped. She heard a soft moan.  Turning, she saw Aaron’s eyes flutter and refocus.  She returned to his side in time to see his face, which had been as placid as the face of a corpse, twist into an expression of agonized bewilderment.  Seeing Julia, he reached out to grasp.  It was the first time she had seen him so confounded, the first time he had held her close to him.  She could feel a deep trembling in him as if he might be on the brink of hysteria.  Holding him, she remembered comforting Alex when he awoke from a bad dream.  Then, with her cheek against Aaron’s brow, she noticed something.  Where the sunlight filtered into the room, his hand, his cheek had a faint shimmer.  Looking more closely, she saw a glassiness to his skin tone, as if he were wearing a translucent garment.

“You collapsed,” she said as she hugged him close.  “I had no idea what to do.”  When he had regained his composure, she said, “You were hardly breathing.”

“Oh that,” he said, waving her concern aside.  “I do a few hours of meditation every day. My breath slows to a minimum.”

“Meditation?  Hardly.  You were in a coma.”

“Not at all.  But I was in a place I had to leave.”  He pointed to his head.  “In here.  There are certain … well, I call them zones.  It’s not wise to linger.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”  The words came out angry, half shouted.  She took a breath and decided she had reached her limit.  “I’ve been patient, Aaron.  How long am I to wait?”

He stood for a moment deep in thought.  Finally, “Yes,” he said, “I’ve been inconsiderate.  But I haven’t known where to begin.”

“Anywhere,” she said.  “Begin anywhere.”

“All right.”  He turned to his desk and began shuffling through a stack of papers. “Let’s begin with this, “ he said, retrieving several sheets of paper held together by a staple.  “I had a deal of trouble running this down.  Read it first.  It won’t take long.”  Julia glanced at what he had handed her.  It was in French, an article photocopied from a medical periodical dated summer 1924.  Clipped to the article were several typewritten pages in English.  “One of my tutors helped me translate it.  Paulette.  Mme. Verlain.  I wanted to make sure I understood it correctly.”  The title was “Report on a Case of Hydrophobia: First Recorded Cure.”  Julia sat down to read it at once.

The article was a case history, a report dealing with an eight-year-old boy who had been bitten by a rabid bat.  The boy’s family lived in a small village in the mountainous south of France, miles from the nearest hospital and without any means of rapid transportation. The hydrophobia was in an advanced stage by the time a doctor arrived from the nearest town.  The doctor — his name was LaSeur — was the author of the paper.  He warned the family at once that at this stage the disease was incurable, but the family insisted that he treat the boy.  Dr. LaSeur did the only thing he could think of.  Intensive nursing.  As each symptom appeared, he treated it as best he could, doing everything in his power to keep the boy alert and hopeful.  In this way, he kept his patient alive through each new crisis.  And at last after twelve days the fever broke, the symptoms vanished.  The boy recovered.

Julia skimmed the article again.  Was she supposed to see a connection here?  She began to put the pieces together.  Hydrophobia.  Like Aaron’s accelerated aging, it too was thought to be incurable.  Two little boys who had been saved from death.  But where does the path go beyond that intersection?  She was reminded of the videogames she used to play with Aaron.  Often the player had to spot unlikely correspondences and connections.  A magic bird or a warrior banner.  A child’s toy or a witch’s spell.  A golden key or a sunken bell.  But Julia was drawing a blank.   Finally she asked, “What am I missing?”

Aaron settled back deeply in his chair.  “When you reported my case to the world, you said you had
reversed
the disease, that I’d
returned
to where I started. You described me as a normally healthy ten-year-old child again.  We think of disease that way, don’t we?  We were better before we got sick, so now we want to get back to that status.  We battle with the sickness and fend it off.  When it’s beaten, it goes away and we return to something called ‘normal.’   We call that conquering the disease.  Isn’t that the way you’ve been thinking about me?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“But pay attention to the metaphors.  The metaphors are misleading you.  ‘Reversing,’ ‘returning,’ ‘going back’.  You see, that’s exactly wrong.”

“How so?”

“There’s another way to see it.  We don’t ‘return to health.’  We go
forward
to health.  Not a serious distinction in most instances, but using the wrong image in my case has been a radical mistake.  We speak of the patient having a history.  But in fact it’s the disease that has a history.  Disease uses the patient to reveal its history.  It starts, it attacks our organism in some way, severely or mildly, and finally, in most cases, the body finds some way to fight it off.  But often what really happens is that we hold on while the disease runs its course and uses up its resources.  That’s what Dr. LaSeur was doing, though he seems not to have understood.  He was following a sort of Fabian tactic: waiting, holding out, wearing his opponent down.  Of course, some diseases are fatal.  Fatal diseases never get the chance to complete their history because the patient dies.  Every fatal disease is an unfinished story.  We die before we get to the last chapter — and so the disease dies with us.  I’m like the boy in the article you read.  His disease ran its course.  After that, it simply departed.  Hydrophobia was finished with him.  That’s my story as well.  The diseases of old age are finished with me, so they’ve departed.”  For the first time since she arrived at Tlaloc, he looked at her as if he honestly needed help.   “Where does that leave me?”

Julia shook her head.  “Aaron, how can I answer that?”

“Someplace nobody has ever been before.  I didn’t go back to being ten years old; that should be pretty obvious.  That’s what everybody — my parents, the courts, you, Kevin Forrester — has been struggling with. 
I didn’t go back.  I went forward.
  I went through everything that makes old age lethal — and came out the other side.”

“But the disease was cured, the way we try to cure any disease.  I don’t know how we killed it off, but we did.”

Aaron’s eyes were on her, a glowing, penetrating gaze.  “But
was
it a disease?  Now that we see its result, do we still think of it as something that needed to be cured or killed?  That’s the crucial point here.  You know how it is with adolescence.  So many wrenching physical changes.  The glands go wild, our sexual juices boil over, the entire body gets rebuilt.  Raging hormones, we call it.  The child becomes overloaded, confused, troubled — as I’ve been for months now.  I’ve been behaving like a bratty teenager, taking my confusion out on everybody around me.  But is adolescence a disease?”

“Of course not.”

“How do we know it’s not?”

“Because it’s a normal development in every human being.  Everybody goes through it, unless they die young.”

“Meaning the child knows what lies ahead.  Others have been through this.  Children learn that it has to do with sex.  We’re born into life sexually immature, and now is the time to grow up.  We’ve seen people go through it and come out into the next stage of life.  You know the story by H. G. Wells: “The Valley of the Blind?”  The man who could see was regarded as diseased, wasn’t he?  There were these two bulging orbs — his eyes — that were identified as abnormal growths that had to be removed.  Now suppose there were a society of prepubescent children where nobody had ever gone through the teen age years.  How would they regard adolescence when it descended on one of their members?  Wouldn’t they see it as a sickness?  They might try to ‘cure’ adolescence, might they not?”