The Crystal Child (32 page)

“But if she doesn’t, you have no hope of seeing Aaron.  None of us see Aaron now, not since Julia arrived.  I haven’t seen him in four months, and then only in a chance encounter.  Have you ever heard of Delphi?”

“Ancient Greek Delphi?  Of course I have.”

“Well, you might say that Julia is Aaron’s Delphic oracle.  He speaks only through her.”

***

Julia kept Forrester waiting in the conservatory for over an hour.  DeLeon sat with him, thumbing through a stack of correspondence he had brought with him.  Beyond offering Forrester a drink, he said nothing.  When Julia finally appeared and showed that she knew Forrester, DeLeon left without making introductions.   Before Forrester could speak, Julia turned on him furiously.  “What right have you to be here?  I won’t talk with you, nor will Aaron.  What do you have to gain by threatening us?”

“I made a threat in order to get to you.  Please understand — I will never tell anyone about you.  Forget that.  I’m not here as a bounty hunter.  I’m here as a geneticist. I want to see the boy.”

Julia laughed.  “The boy!”

“I want to persuade him to come back with me.”

“That will never happen.”

“Please, Julia.  I’m appealing to you in the name of science.”

Julia stared at him with cool amazement.  “You don’t expect that to matter to me, do you?  Kevin, I’m not part of science or medicine.  I’m not part of anything.” Forrester was studying her with a pitying look, the most emotion he had showed her in years.  “Don’t look hurt.  Aaron — I’m part of Aaron, that’s all.  He won’t be a specimen for you anymore.”

“I don’t want him to be a specimen.  I’ve got all the laboratory proof I need already.  Julia, you must have some idea how important this has become.  Since the last time I saw Aaron, I’ve cultured his cells through more divisions than they would have undergone
in vivo
if he reached a hundred.  There’s not a single instance of misregulation. His mitotic machinery is perfect.  His cells are reproducing without any dysfunction.  He could still be killed in an accident.  But short of that, I can’t see how he could die.  Ever.”

“Then why do you want Aaron?  You have his molecules.  Isn’t that all that matters?  That’s what you always told me.  ‘All we need is one sample of DNA, a pinpoint of matter, and we can recreate the whole person.’ ”

“Okay, I was exaggerating.  Maybe someday that’s all we’ll need.  But right now I need a warm body.  Can you imagine me announcing that I discovered a boy who will never age and then saying that I haven’t got the boy?”

She noticed the phrase
I discovered
— as in “Kevin Forrester discovered.”  Once she would have cared enough to call him to account.  Now, she let it pass.  “Poor Kevin.  Not everybody cares about whether you win any prizes.  Aaron doesn’t, I can assure you of that.”

He tried to look wounded.  “You needn’t put it in those terms.  There’s more than acclaim involved in this, even you can see that.   Think of the way your mother died.  Aaron may offer a cure for that — for all the late-onset diseases, including Alzheimer’s.”

Julia wagged her head.  “No, he doesn’t.  Take my word on that.  Even if he agreed to be your living proof, there’s nothing in it for medicine.”

“I don’t understand.”

She sagged into a chair and put her head in her hands for several seconds.  When she spoke again, she had changed the tone of their conversation. “What’s your religion, Kevin?”  The question caught him off guard.  “I don’t mean now.  Now your religion is science, I know that.  I mean when you were a child, didn’t you go to some church?”

“Presbyterian.  What’s that got to do with anything?  I haven’t been to church since I was fifteen.”

“Did you go to Sunday school?”

“Sure.”

“Then you must have learned something about Jesus Christ — how he was the incarnation of God.  Jews don’t believe in that, of course.  I don’t believe that. I grew up in a family that found such ideas grotesque. But I did learn that much about basic Christianity.”

“Yes, I learned that too.  So what?”

“But you don’t believe it any more.”

“I doubt that I ever believed it.  I was a pretty skeptical kid.  It all rolled off me like water off a duck’s back.” As far as Forrester could remember, she had never raised the subject of religion even when they were lovers many years ago.  “Why are we talking about this, Julia?”

“No good reason, I’m sure.  Except that if you ever believed what you were taught in Sunday school, you might have a better chance of understanding about Aaron.”

“You think he’s Jesus Christ?”  There was a note of subdued but distinct alarm in his voice.

“No.  But I do think he embodies something that’s more than human.”

Forrester’s expression was hardening into a deeper skepticism.  “More than human … meaning?”

“A myth. I think he’s the embodiment of a myth.  He’s something that goes beyond the chemistry of genes.  Another code — maybe that’s how you’d put it.”

“I know of only one code.  It has to do with gene sequences.”

She stared off vaguely, speaking as if to herself.  “I don’t know … I don’t know.  I had a great uncle who was adept in kabbala.  Do you know anything about that?”

“About as much as I know about palmistry or astrology.”

“I don’t know much more than that myself.  But I know the kabbalists have a way of reading through the surface.  They think every Hebrew letter has a second, hidden meaning.  They read everything in the Bible on two levels, the literal and the symbolic.  Or something like that.  Maybe that’s the way Aaron’s genes have to be decoded.  There’s what he is physically, like you and me.  And then there’s something else, deeper in.  A myth.  You’ve heard of the god Eros? Cupid, we sometimes call him.  The chubby little boy with wings that you see on Valentine’s cards.”  He was studying her with a despairing look, the look a doctor might give as he registered the symptoms of a hopeless case.  She smiled back, for the first time offering him something kinder than a sullen glare.   “I don’t know what I mean by that, but it comes closer to the truth about Aaron than anything you’ll ever find under a microscope.”

“However you want to put it, the truth about him is in his chromosomes somewhere.”

“You’re wrong, Kevin. Physical things like that aren’t the secret.  Myths come first.  The world wraps itself around them. We relive them.  Or rather, they relive
us
.  I think Aaron could make his cells look any way he chose to make them look.”  A small defensive laugh caught in her throat.  “So you see how far I’ve strayed from the straight and narrow? Remember, I’ve been through an ordeal.  To hell and back.  That changes your view of things.”  As she spoke she realized that Forrester was the only person besides Aaron she had been with during the last year who had known her well in her previous life.  There was so much she could tell him, a wealth of insights.  Suddenly she longed to take him aside and let him know all she had learned, things she could never mention to DeLeon.  Forrester was her peer and friend, or at least he once had been.  When they were lovers, hadn’t they exchanged little fanciful notions, snatches from novels or movies?  Maybe not.  Maybe Forrester had always been as hard-headed as he was acting now.  He had come to her with his mind set on one narrow goal.  Like all good scientists, he knew how to keep his focus.  Another way of saying he kept his blinkers on.

Forrester realized that he was sweating with impatience and frustration.  Everything Julia said seemed intended to irk him.  She was putting more distance between him and the boy.  He took a deep breath and backed off.  “All I ask,” he explained, “is the chance to see the  boy.  One interview.  An hour.”

“Why?  What would you ask of him?”

“To come back with me.  To let some others at the lab check him over.  He wouldn’t have to undergo public scrutiny.  We could guarantee him anonymity.  But I must have somebody confirm my findings.  There’s a new technique I want to try. Gene chips.  They can monitor changes in the organs at the genetic level.  They could pinpoint exactly where he’s mutated.”

“If you took more samples now, I think you’d be surprised at what you’d find.”

Forrester picked up on her remark at once.  “Why?  Have there been changes?”

“I’m guessing.  Call it intuition.  I’d be surprised if Aaron’s genetic blueprint is anything remotely like what you expect to see.  I suspect it’s outside the range of your science.”

“All the more reason to let me check.  I need a new set of tests, run by somebody else from scratch.  You know the protocols.  Without independent verification, I’ve got nothing.”

“He’ll never go back with you.  I doubt he’ll speak with you.”

“Can’t you work on him?”

“Even if I cared to, it might take quite a while to bring Aaron around.”

“I’ll wait.  If I thought there was hope, I’d arrange to stay as long as needed.”

“Kevin, you have a life to get back to.  Your career, your family.  What do you mean you’ll wait?”

The sincerity she saw in him now was edged with desperation.  “A life to get back to?” He gave a bitter chuckle. “If I hadn’t come across this boy, where would I be?  At GT making deals, pretending to be a scientist.  But I’ve glimpsed the truth.  It’s like seeing the holy grail.  You don’t turn your back on that and go on with your life.”

“But if you did, if you left now and simply forgot about Aaron, nobody would know.”

“
I’d
know.  I’d know what a chance I’d lost.”  Suddenly he felt overwhelmed with fatigue, as if he had run miles to reach the place where he now stood.  He dropped into the chair that was closest and ran his hand across his brow.  A moment ago he had wanted to take hold of her and shake her into submission; now he felt himself go limp with resignation.  “This is it for me, Julia.  I’m in a tight corner.  I don’t have to tell you.  At my age, I don’t have much time to prove myself.  I need what this boy can give me.  Credibility.”

“You keep calling him a ‘boy.’  That’s a sign of how remote you are.  Aaron isn’t a boy any longer.”

Forrester looked up, bewildered by her remark.  “You mean he’s aged?  The disease has returned?”

“No.”

“Then in what sense has he aged?”

“Not physically.”

Impatient as he was, Forrester knew he could not afford to show his temper. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  He looked around him as if he were seeing the conservatory for the first time. “What is this place?  Where are we?  I feel as if I’m on another planet.”

“Aaron’s sanctuary.  He can stay here safely.”

“DeLeon says you’re his oracle, his gatekeeper.  How do I get through?  What do I have to say or do?  Is there a secret word?”

“The word is ‘yes.’  It has to come from Aaron.”

***

That night again, as she had done many nights before, Julia made her way to Aaron’s room after the house had become quiet   Like Psyche longing to be at Cupid’s side in the enchanted palace, she placed her cheek to his door.  He rarely slept, though he sometimes fell into a deep, trance-like quiescence, dead to the world.  If only she could hear his breathing!  That much would satisfy her.  The rest would be supplied by memory, the joy she never expected to experience again.  She felt sure he knew she was there, waiting, listening.  She knew he had no interest in her love, certainly not in her body.  She would have to settle for this, standing at his door with no hope of admittance — like the boy in the painting. 
Love Locked Out
.  After several moments the tears came.  Self-pity, but not for the absence of his love.  For the loss of something greater.  She had been granted one fleeting glimpse of his reality, the world in which his mind moved every day.  And even that glimpse had been clouded by passion, by what her body wanted, that one blinding moment.  That was as close as she could come.  Her tears were those of a lover left behind.

Did Forrester expect Aaron to cooperate with him, she wondered.  Then he was as great a fool as DeLeon.   She hesitated even mentioning his presence, fearing Aaron would be angered.  But when the name at last came up the next morning, Aaron brightened up at once.  “Kevin’s here?  In this house? How did he find his way?”

“From things the police showed him.”  She hastened to add, “You don’t have to see him. I can send him away.”

Aaron pulled a sad face.  “But he’s come so far.  Maybe he’s had a change of heart.”

“I doubt that very much.”

“He wants what?”

“Can’t you guess?”

He grinned broadly.  “Tissue samples?”

“A great deal more.  He wants you to return with him as living proof.”

Aaron laughed.  “ ‘What fools these mortals be.’  He thinks he can use me as a template?  What a mad idea.”  After a moment, he said, “Let’s give the poor man a reading assignment.  Ask him to read this.  It won’t take him long.”  He handed Julia a book.  Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
.  Aaron had marked some pages.  Julia opened the volume to see what Aaron had selected.  It was the passage dealing with Narcissus, the beautiful youth who fell in love with his own reflection.  Julia looked up with an inquisitive frown.  “It may help him to understand,” Aaron said, “though I doubt it.”

***

Even though he was being decently treated, Forrester felt his patience growing more strained with every hour he passed at Tlaloc.  Sylvana, ever the gracious hostess, had eagerly accepted his presence at DeLeon’s bidding, offering a sumptuous dinner, plenty of fine wine and liquor, and the pleasure of her company.  He had been introduced to her by DeLeon as one of Aaron’s doctors, a distinguished man of science famous for accomplishments Sylvana should not expect to understand.  That was good enough for her.  Always on the lookout for notable guests, she was in the habit of inflating the reputation of those who came visiting.  But despite her deferential praise, Forrester found her a tiresome bore, the sort of fawning dinner partner who burdens the occasion with dim-witted table talk.  “And tell me again, Doctor — I’m so stupid about these things — what is a chrono-some?”

The day Forrester spent waiting to hear from Julia was both nerve-racking and humiliating.  Playing the supplicant did not come easily to him.  He was waiting to be granted an audience.  And by whom?  An impudent child.  At times he was restless enough to take off through the house banging on doors and threatening to call down the law unless somebody brought him to Aaron.  He wanted to think of the treatment he was receiving as demeaning, but the situation he was in was so far removed from the conventional courtesies that he could not imagine how to phrase his protest.  He was, after all, an intruder to whom nobody under this roof owed a thing.  He had used bare-faced extortion to make his way to Aaron.  He was free to leave if he felt ill-used; DeLeon had assured him he could order a car at any time.  Even those who knew him best, Julia and Aaron, could not be more eager to send him on his way.

That morning Julia sought him out in the room where he had passed the night as a reluctant guest.  “He says yes.”

“When?”

Julia held out the copy of Ovid Aaron had given her.  “There’s something he wants you to read first.”  Forrester took the book and read the title. He looked up, frowning darkly.  She knew what he was thinking: Aaron was trifling with him. “Seriously,” Julia said.  “He wants you to read this.”  She opened the book to the page where the story began.  “Sorry, Kevin, but that’s the arrangement.”

Forrester stared glumly at the book.  “Will there be a quiz?” he asked.  When Julia shot him a displeased look, he gave in. “All right, all right,” Forrester said, displaying his impatience.  “I’ll play along.”  With an effort, he stilled his vanity and took the book back into his room.  With nothing better to do, he got down to reading immediately.  He read once, twice, three times.  Brief as the tale was  — a mere ten pages — he found it bewildering.  Ovid’s story of Narcissus.  It seemed to him a quaint literary exercise, a relic of bygone and superstitious times.  But then Forrester had never given much attention to literature, least of all mythology, which had always struck him as naive in the extreme.  Wood sprites and fauns, enchanted mountains and talking trees — who could take such nonsense seriously?  He had no idea what to do with a work of fiction that purported to be more than entertaining.

At last he laid the book aside and looked for some way to distract himself until Julia returned.  In Sylvana’s library he found more books, but nothing that drew his interest — art books, more literature, much of it not in English.  He also found liquor and treated himself to a few good-sized drinks.  By noon, he was stewing with semi-inebriated despair.  Two days at Tlaloc would have to be his limit.  Beyond that, the cover story he had improvised for his wife and colleagues would run out.  For that matter, his extended sojourn to southern California had already used up too much time and would require explaining.  He would have to do a lot of lying when he got back, and all for nothing.  Whenever Aaron entered his thoughts, a hot wave of fury washed over him.  The arrogant brat was making a fool of him — and Julia was playing along. He surely did not like what had happened to her.  Prison had broken her spirit.  There was a sad passivity about her now that weighed on his heart.  Before he left — even if the effort were useless — he would do his best to make her come with him.

When Julia knocked at his door later that afternoon, Forrester, expecting flat rejection, was wholly out of patience.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Yes, teacher,” he replied. She gestured him to follow her.  He looked around for a notebook, something to carry with him.  But Julia was off at a fast clip, leaving him to catch up.  They had reached the upper floors of the house before Forrester collected his thoughts.  “Wait,” he called out.  “Give me some idea of what to expect.”

They were in an unfinished room filled with draped furniture.  She turned to look Forrester square in the eye.  Her expression was melancholy and defiant, still letting him know how displeased she was with this visit.  “Expect disappointment.  Expect to dislike what you hear.  Expect to go home empty-handed.  Above all, don’t judge by appearances.  You’re not meeting a child.  Treating Aaron like a twelve-year-old would be your worst mistake.”

“So this is all futile?  Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Futile?  Yes.  Unless you learn what I’ve learned.”

“Which is … ?”

“That Aaron is a warning.  Like a no trespassing sign.”

He waited for more.  Then, “Can you elaborate a bit more, please?”

“Life extension …” Julia began, then dropped her head to rub at her eyes.  “God! What a stupid term.  Life extension isn’t medical science as usual.  It’s mucking around with the limits.  Adding ten, twenty more years to our life expectancy — well, maybe that’s permissible.  But beyond that … what you’re after, Kevin, that’s some other universe of discourse.  Another mode.  Not human.  Beyond that, it’s Aaron.  He’s passing through our lives like a meteor.  People used to believe meteors were warnings.”

He studied her for a long moment, then shook his head in disapproval.  “Listen to yourself,” he said.  “You’re being pathetic.  That’s like telling me I’m in danger of falling off the edge of the world.”

She lifted her chin in defiance.  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

“Well, I have certain beliefs too, Julia.  I believe every scientific question has an answer.  And every disease has a cure.  And the limits you speak of are nothing but current ignorance.”

She nodded, accepting the impasse, then turned and led him down one last hallway.  She stopped and, after knocking twice, inched open the door she stood before without waiting to be admitted.  “And, oh yes,” she said as she led him in, “we keep it dark.”  The room they entered was as dim as if it were twilight outside; the curtains were drawn against the day, admitting only a few weak rays of the afternoon sun.  The room was comfortably cool, but the atmosphere was funereal.

“What’s going on?” he asked as Julia led him to a seat.  The solemnity of the room compelled him to speak in a half-whisper.  She gave no answer.

“Hello, Kevin,” someone said out of the shadows. “What a surprise to see you.” Forrester could not see the speaker, but he recognized who it was.   Like others, he was struck by the commanding strength of the voice.

He stared in the direction of the words, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the obscurity of the room. “Can’t we have some light in here?” he asked.

“Sorry,” Aaron answered.  “I’ve developed a sort of aversion to direct sunlight.  But if you feel the need …” Aaron switched on a small table lamp.  It provided minimal visibility, a small pool of weak, yellow light that fell across Aaron’s hands and chest, leaving his face in shadow.  It was barely enough light to let Forrester bring him into focus, but at once he noticed the peculiar texture of the boy’s skin, a smooth, cool sheen.  The effect could not be regarded as a flaw; even in the half light Forrester could tell that Aaron was too perfectly formed to be seen as anything but exquisite.  Still the luster of his skin lent an eeriness to his appearance as if he were a figure fashioned out of wax.

“I guess you know: I’ve come to ask some favors,” Forrester said, seating himself on a sofa beside Julia.  He did not wish to waste a moment on small talk.

“Yes, I know.  Julia says you’d like me to come back to California with you.  I won’t do that.  But for all the trouble you’ve gone to, I didn’t want to see you leave disgruntled.  I’m willing to assume your reason for coming here is honorable.  You came in the interests of the healing arts.  I respect the motives that brought you.  I can’t blame you for requesting the things you want.  I’d like you to know that you have nothing to gain from me that any of your colleagues would value or believe.”

The last time Forrester had talked to Aaron, the boy had given a caustic, dismissive turn to everything he said.  The tone of a surly teenager.  Now his voice seemed kindly, even soothing.  Forrester found that more annoying.  “Why?” Forrester asked.  “What are we supposedly missing, those of us who serve the interest of the healing arts?”  Forrester could not remember ever using that soppy phrase before.  He had to admit it: this kid knew just where to rub to produce maximum aggravation.

“Please trust me: my case, if you care to regard me as a case, is beyond anything you could bring into a laboratory or analyze under a microscope.  If you did, yes, you’d find some unusual chemistry.  For that matter, if you put a Rembrandt painting under a microscope, you might well find any number of fascinating patterns in the pigment and the brush strokes.  And all beside the point, because that wouldn’t be what the painter intended or was even aware of producing.  You’d be well advised to think of me as one of those unique and unrepeatable freaks of nature. Good science requires good blinkers.  Keep your blinkers on, Kevin.  Pretend you don’t know I exist.”

“How do you expect me to do that?  You’re not an off-the-wall rumor I might come across in the
National Enquirer
.  I’ve seen your DNA; I’ve run tests.  There’s something going on with you that could turn medicine on its ear.  Do you expect me to ignore that?”

“Yes, I do.  Because there’s no way to use what I am.  It can’t be transplanted or reproduced.  It can’t be bottled and sold.  It ends with me.”

“How do you know that?”

“That’s part of the uniqueness.  I understand my body.  I can read it as if it were a text.  But the text isn’t physical or chemical or mathematical.  It can’t be decoded the way you might decode DNA because, well, it isn’t a code.  Remember?  We argued once about the difference between a code and a symbol.  Shall I give you a sort of Sunday school example of what I mean?  Imagine you were on hand when Christ rose from the dead.  I expect you’d see that as a remarkable medical event.  Maybe you’d want to give the man a physical exam to see what made that possible.  If that fails to sound ludicrous to you, that gives you some idea how far apart we stand.  What you’d be overlooking is that the physical basis for the resurrection has no relevance.  What matters is what that event symbolizes.  It uses the body, but it transcends the body — in the same way that a great composer uses the piano to create music.  But even if you take it apart, you won’t find the music in the piano.”

This was the second time Forrester had been faced with a religious reference in the past few days.  What was it Julia had mentioned?  Also something about Jesus.  Ideas like this made themselves known to Forrester like a bad odor seeping through the room.  He could think of no way to respond except to beg off.  It had been years since he talked religion; the subject was stored away in some distant corner of his memory, like the toys he played with in his childhood, left to collect dust in the basement.  Christ resurrected from the dead: that meant so little to him that he did not feel it merited argument.  He glanced at Julia sitting silently at his side.  She refused to meet his eyes.  He realized she would be of no help to him.  “I was never much good at religious instructions,” he said at last.  “You’re probably right: if I were around at anybody’s resurrection, I’d act the way you’d expect a doctor to act.  I’d treat the whole thing with total skepticism; I’d assume it was a mistake or a hoax.  If there had been a good physician around at the time, I think that’s what he would have concluded.  That’s how we make progress, not by falling on our knees and praying.  For that matter, I don’t have any idea what you find ‘symbolic’ about genes.  That’s just senseless.”

“Is it?” Forrester could make out a sly grin on Aaron’s lips.  “You’d agree that genes code for age and death.  But what do age and death tell us about our identity?  Suppose I told you they symbolize the travail of the spirit.”

“Frankly, I draw a blank.  I hear the words the way I might hear Chinese.  But here’s what I do know for sure.  You’ve got a physical body, Aaron.  I can see it right there in front of me.  Like the doubting Thomas, I could reach out and touch you.   What I want to do is to examine that body and report on what I find.  And I’d find a lot. There’s a new method of investigating the genes.  It’s a tiny electronic chip that can scan the genetic basis of every organ in the body.  That’s as close as I come to miracles.  I’m absolutely sure that if you let me do a scan, I could measure how every cell in every major organ of your body is behaving.  You may not care what the result would be, but I’d pay you handsomely to do just that much.”