Petrified Read online

  He stood at the end of the bed watching him for a few moments, and then he said, ‘It’s almost back to how it was before you burned it, isn’t it?’

  Nathan clenched his fingers into a fist, and then splayed them open again. ‘Yes, it is,’ he admitted. ‘The tendons still feel kind of tightish, but that’s all.’

  There was a very long pause, but then Doctor Berman cleared his throat and said, ‘You want to tell me what’s going on here?’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand you. Nothing’s going on, except a little light physiotherapy.’

  ‘I’m a doctor, Professor. I deal with people every day who have agonizing and permanently disfiguring burns. To do that, I have to be a psychiatrist and a counselor as well as a surgeon.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘When you were brought in here, you had full-thickness burns to your hand and you were suffering intense pain. We dealt with the pain by giving you morphine. But you also faced the prospect of losing the use of your hand, maybe for good. That should have been very daunting and distressing, especially for a man in your profession.’

  He paused again, and took off his spectacles.

  ‘The thing of it is, Professor, you were not daunted and you were not distressed. Not especially, anyhow. Maybe I sensed a little apprehension, yes – but only that kind of “fingers crossed” apprehension when a person is hoping that everything goes according to plan. Now that I’ve seen how rapidly your hand has restored itself, I think I know why.’

  ‘All right then, doctor,’ said Nathan, guardedly. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I think you were ninety percent sure that your hand was going to heal as quickly as that, because you treated yourself somehow to make sure that it would. I’ve been Googling your research this morning, Professor. As far as I can tell you’ve been trying to recreate extinct species in the hope of discovering cures for diseases and medical conditions that are currently incurable. Such as MS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Alzheimer’s, and reconstruction after third-degree burns and other serious traumas.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Nathan. ‘Well, you’re ninety-nine percent right. My objective is certainly to find ways to cure all of those conditions, and more. But the creatures that I’ve been trying to bring back to life aren’t so much extinct as mythical.’

  ‘Mythical?’

  Nathan nodded. ‘I’m talking gryphons and wyverns and chimera. They all flew and swam and walked on this planet once, for real, and their DNA is still traceable. My idea was to recreate them in the laboratory, and then extract their stem cells to give human beings some of their attributes. The trauco, for instance, which was a mythical humanoid from Chile, was supposed to have been capable of making even the most infertile woman pregnant. Stem cells from a trauco could make IV redundant.’

  ‘So what about your hand? What creature’s stem cells did you use to heal that – if that’s what you did?’

  ‘A phoenix. We successfully recreated it in the laboratory on Monday, using a dragon-worm whose DNA we had combined with that of an Egyptian scavenger hawk. We burned it alive, and out of the flames came the phoenix.’

  ‘So I assume that when your colleagues came to visit you, they injected you with stem cells from this phoenix?’

  ‘Twice only. Once this morning and once at four p.m. this afternoon.’

  Doctor Berman carefully put his glasses back on. ‘You do realize what could have happened to me if this little experiment had gone wrong, don’t you? That would have been the end of my career.’

  ‘I do realize, and I’m truly sorry. But I couldn’t think of any other way. Schiller was cutting off my funding so I couldn’t afford to test the phoenix stem cells on any other burns victims. You can imagine the medical insurance premiums. They would have been staggering.’

  Doctor Berman stared at him. ‘You burned yourself deliberately? You did it on purpose?’

  ‘How else was I going to find a willing burns victim?’

  ‘Gott in Himmel. You must have been damn confident that it was going to work.’

  Nathan said, ‘Confident? Not totally. I have to admit that when my hand was actually on fire I wished to hell that I hadn’t done it, and that’s an understatement. I never knew burns could hurt so much.’

  Doctor Berman came around to the side of the bed. ‘May I?’ he said, and took hold of Nathan’s hand. He examined it closely, and then he shook his head and said, ‘It’s remarkable. It really is. Do you think it will have the same effect on any type of burn?’

  ‘I don’t see any reason why not. And my research has indicated that it doesn’t matter how old the scar tissue is. Somebody might have been burned by napalm in Vietnam, thirty years ago, but even after all this time their skin could be regenerated.’

  ‘Remarkable.’ Doctor Berman bent Nathan’s fingers back. ‘You have almost total flexibility, and your skin is barely even discolored, let alone scarred.’

  He thought for a moment, stroking at the prickly silver stubble on his double chin. Then he said, ‘One of the patients we’re treating here at the moment is a five-year-old girl. She was trapped in a blazing auto wreck, and she suffered very serious burns to her face and hands. We’re giving her the very best treatment we know how, but she’s still going to end up badly disfigured.’

  ‘You want to try the phoenix treatment on her?’

  ‘I’m not sure. If it had any unwanted side-effects, I could wind up in very deep trouble.’

  ‘Well, Doctor, I can’t give you any guarantees. But it’s worked on me, hasn’t it, and so far I feel fine. All I can say is, if you do decide to try it, my team and I will give you all the help you need. And we’ll keep it totally confidential. Except if that little girl gets healed, of course. Then we’ll want all the publicity we can get.’

  Doctor Berman said, ‘Why don’t you come take a look at her?’

  Nathan climbed out of bed. He put on his slippers and Doctor Berman handed him the dark blue robe that was hanging behind the door. Together they walked along the corridor until they reached the room where Susan Harris was being treated, her face still protected by the shiny Jaloskin covering. Braydon was dozing in an armchair beside her bed, but when they walked in he opened his eyes with a jolt and said, ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Doctor Berman, laying a hand on his shoulder. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Braydon. ‘Don’t worry about it. I was having this really scary dream, that’s all. More of a nightmare.’

  ‘Well, you’ve been under considerable stress, Mr Harris. It’s not surprising that you’re having nightmares. I’ll prescribe something to calm you down, and you should sleep better. Meantime, I want you to meet Professor Nathan Underhill.’

  ‘Sure. Great,’ said Braydon, standing up and holding out his hand. ‘Are you a patient, too?’

  ‘Professor Underhill has been undergoing some minor procedure, that’s all. We’ll be discharging him tomorrow morning, most likely. But he was very interested to see what treatment we’ve been giving your Susan.’

  Nathan approached the bed. Sukie was fast asleep, breathing deep and slow, with a slight catch in her throat. Even beneath the Jaloskin, Nathan could see how severely her face had been seared. No matter how expert it might be, conventional treatment would still leave it looking like a taut, expressionless mask. The twisted face of the doll lying beside her on the bed was a horrible parody of what she would eventually become.

  ‘What – are you some kind of burns specialist?’ asked Braydon.

  Nathan nodded, and then turned around. ‘You could say that, sir. I’m so sorry for what’s happened to your little girl. But I know that she’s being given the best possible care here at Temple. Doctor Berman here is something of a genius when it comes to burns.’

  ‘Thanks, Professor,’ said Braydon. ‘Thanks, Doctor Berman.’

  ‘By the way, Mr Harris,’ said Nathan. ‘What was your nightmare about? You practically jumped out of your skin when we came in here.�
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  Braydon gave a dismissive flap of his hand. ‘Ah, nothing. It was just like a nightmare that Sukie always has. I must have been thinking about it, that’s all, and when I fell asleep I started to have the same nightmare myself.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘It was all about these huge shadowy creatures flying through the sky. Like dragons, you know? And they were making this terrible screaming noise. Sukie calls them Spooglies. For some reason they scared the living crap out of me, excuse my language.’

  ‘I think they would have scared the living crap out of me, too,’ said Nathan. ‘Make sure that Doctor Berman gives you that Rx. Nightmares like that you can do without.’

  They said goodbye to Braydon and went back out into the corridor.

  ‘Well?’ asked Doctor Berman. ‘What do you think?’

  Nathan said, ‘I can’t give you any guarantees, but I think there’s every chance that the phoenix treatment will give young Sukie her face back, just as it was.’

  ‘So – if I agreed to go ahead with it – how soon could you call in your associates?’

  ‘I can arrange for them to give her the first injection tomorrow morning, early. Do you want to say seven a.m.?’

  ‘Very well. Seven a.m. I just hope I know what I’m letting myself in for.’

  ‘Fame and fortune, Doctor, with any luck.’ He lifted his left hand and said, ‘See? You have my hand on it.’

  NINETEEN

  Thursday, 11:37 p.m.

  Nathan was nearly asleep himself when he heard the door of his room open, and somebody step quietly inside. It didn’t disturb him. The nurses came in to check up on him at least twice during the night. But after more than a minute, he realized that whoever it was, they still hadn’t left.

  He lifted his head from the pillow. At first he couldn’t see anyone, but then he gradually began to make out the dark shape of somebody sitting in the armchair on the opposite side of the room. He could smell a grassy aftershave, too.

  He reached across and switched on his bedside lamp.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, and he jumped almost as violently as Braydon Harris had when they had startled him awake from his nightmare.

  Sitting with his legs crossed and a sloping smile on his face was Theodor Zauber, dressed entirely in black – black three-piece suit, black silk shirt, black necktie, black polished shoes. His hands were steepled as if he were about to deliver a lecture, or say a prayer. The bedside lamp was reflected in both lenses of his spectacles.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Nathan demanded.

  ‘Please do not overexcite yourself, Professor Underhill,’ said Theodor Zauber. ‘I am sure that you have suffered quite enough trauma in the past twenty-four hours.’

  ‘How did you get past security?’

  ‘Ah, that. You know that my late father taught me the arts of thaumaturgy. I can pass through any security and nobody sees me. You remember Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars?’

  ‘What do you want? I thought I made it pretty damn crystal clear when you came around to my house that I didn’t want anything to do with you and your gargoyles.’

  ‘I know what you did, Professor. I know that you deliberately burned yourself. I also know that you have achieved a miraculous recovery.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  Theodor Zauber tapped the side of his nose with his fingertip. ‘Like I said, I am a thaumaturge. People will willingly talk to me without realizing who they are talking to and what they are saying.’

  Nathan said, ‘Great.’ The last thing he needed right now was Theodor Zauber trying to cajole him into helping him. His encounters with Theodor’s father had taught him a healthy respect for alchemy and the so-called magical spells that were devised by medieval sorcerers. Without the instructions contained in Kitab Al-Ajahr, The Book of Stones, he could never have recreated a phoenix. Although he rarely said so at zoological conventions, he believed that modern scientists could learn a great deal from the dark arts practiced in the Middle Ages.

  But it was almost midnight, and he had enough on his plate with his own experiments. More than that, he didn’t like Theodor Zauber. He had too much self-esteem, just like his father. And, just like his father, he seemed to have no regard whatsoever for other people’s lives. If a few people die in the course of this experiment, so what? The outcome will be worth it for mankind as a whole.

  ‘I think you need to leave now,’ Nathan told him. ‘I don’t want to discuss this any further. Not now, not ever.’

  ‘Ah, but you must,’ Theodor Zauber retorted. ‘I have reached a critical stage now with my gargoyles and I urgently need your expertise.’

  ‘What gargoyles?’

  ‘The many gargoyles that I have in my possession.’

  ‘What? I thought you said that they were all stored under the Eastern State Penitentiary, in the vaults.’

  ‘Until February of this year, they were, yes. But then the board of directors wanted to clear most of them out so that they could open a new exhibition area. They sought tenders to remove them, and my bid was successful. I now have more than a hundred of them in premises of my own.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘Not at all, Professor. It is the most extraordinary collection of gargoyles that you have ever seen. From France, from Germany, from Poland. They are all gathered together, frozen in time, waiting for the moment when they can be brought back to life.’

  ‘So what exactly do you want me to do?’

  Theodor Zauber stood up and walked across to the window. ‘I have been attempting, perhaps rashly, to bring them back to life myself, using a formula devised by Artephius for reversing the process of petrification. To turn the gargoyles into stone, he used his “secret fire”. To change them back, he mixed a liquid he called “quenching water”.’

  ‘So you’ve been trying to mix your own “quenching water”? But no luck, huh? That’s too bad, Mr Zauber. I’m sorry you got nowhere with it. Maybe you should take up something else for a living, like stage hypnotism. You seem to be pretty good at that.’

  ‘No,’ said Theodor Zauber. ‘The whole point is that I have had success. I have already brought several gargoyles back to life. They can walk, they can feed, they can articulate their feelings in cries and screams. They can fly.’

  Nathan sat up straight. ‘Is this some kind of hoax, Mr Zauber? If it is, I don’t find it very rib-tickling, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why would I tell you anything but the truth, Professor? Besides, don’t they always say that we Germans have no sense of humor?’

  ‘You’re trying to convince me that you have actually succeeded in breathing life back into a creature made of stone?’

  ‘You don’t have to take my word for it, Professor. You can see for yourself.’

  With that, Theodor Zauber tugged the cord that drew back the blinds. Nathan’s room was on the top floor, and out of the window he could see the ten-story building opposite, which was the physiotherapy wing. Most of the building was in darkness, although a pattern of windows was still lit.

  ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ he asked.

  Theodor Zauber pointed upward. ‘The roof. Come closer, Professor. You won’t be able to see anything from over there.’

  Nathan hesitated, but then he swung his legs off the bed and walked across to the window. To his discomfort, Theodor Zauber laid his hand on his shoulder, as if they were old friends.

  ‘There, Professor. Do you see it, sitting right on the very edge of the roof, next to that satellite dish?’

  Nathan could see it quite clearly – a silhouette that looked like one of the gargoyles perched on the steeples of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. It had a hunched back, with dragon-like wings folded over it, and stubby horns, and a curved beak.

  ‘So how did you manage to get that baby up there?’ he asked Theodor Zauber. ‘If that’s a real gargoyle, and not a Styrofoam replica, it must weigh all of half a ton.’

  ‘I told you. I brought it back to
life. It flew up there.’

  Nathan peered at the silhouette more intently. ‘It’s not moving. If it flew up there, I’m a Dutchman. This is a hoax, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is not moving, Professor, because it is waiting for me to give it permission to go looking for what it needs. I brought it back to life. I am its master.’

  Nathan turned away from the window, shaking his head. ‘What kind of a sucker do you take me for, Mr Zauber? Now – please. I’d very much appreciate it if you went, and let me get some badly-needed sleep.’

  ‘No, please! Come back here. You must see this. I promise you that you will never forget it.’

  Nathan took a deep breath. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But make it quick, whatever it is, and then I want you to go.’

  He rejoined Theodor Zauber at the window. The gargoyle was still crouching exactly where it had been before, motionless.

  ‘Look down there,’ said Theodor Zauber, and pointed to the hospital parking lot ten stories below. There were only twenty or thirty cars parked in it tonight, and the only people that Nathan could see were two hospital orderlies standing in a dark corner between the buildings having a surreptitious smoke. The tips of their cigarettes glowed red in the shadows.

  ‘OK, what is it you wanted to show me?’ asked Nathan.

  Theodor Zauber turned the handle and opened the window as far as the safety catch would allow, which was only about two inches. Nathan could feel the cool night breeze blowing in.

  ‘As I told you, I have reached a critical stage with my gargoyles. I can use the “quenching water” to turn them back into living flesh, and a static electrical charge to start their hearts beating again, just as Artephius would have done. So far I have succeeded with four of them, including this one you see sitting on the rooftop opposite. And – as I explained, they can walk and they can feed and they can scream and they can fly.

  ‘The problem is that after quite a short time, they rapidly start to transmute back into stone. At my first attempt, only an hour passed before this started to happen. The next two took a little longer, but they still suffered the same fate. The “quenching water” reanimates them very quickly, but the effect is only temporary, and I cannot find a way to overcome this problem. Not with alchemy, anyhow.’