The Furies (28 page)

Ariel took a deep breath. “It's true, I want to be ready. You have to understand, though, I'm just laying the groundwork. It may take decades to convince the Council of Elders to take this step. Mother and Margaret are opposed to even discussing the idea.” She leaned closer to him. “But please, John, let's drop the subject for now. This conversation is raising your heart rate and interfering with the experiment. The body releases hormones in response to stress, and they can have significant effects on your metabolism. So let's talk about something that's cheerful and stress-free.”

“Stress-free?” John frowned. “You want to talk about the weather?”

“No, that wouldn't be very interesting. The weather in Haven is always the same. How about sports? Do you like baseball?”

“Seriously? You follow baseball?”

“Well, not so much now. But about ninety years ago I got very interested in it. I had to go to New York several times in the 1920s because Cordelia had predicted an economic depression, and I was assigned to sell some of our family's financial interests. And whenever I went there I tried to catch a Yankees game so I could watch Ruth and Gehrig play.”

He looked at her carefully. “You're joking, right?”

“Not at all. They were marvelous. I saw Gehrig hit a three-run homer in the second game of the 1928 World Series. It was a big, big hit. The ball landed in the centerfield bleachers.”

She wasn't joking. She'd been there. John tried to picture her in the stands of Yankee Stadium, in the background of one of those herky-jerky, black-and-white newsreels from nearly a century ago. Then he remembered what Cordelia Fury had said about Ariel's past. “What about farther back? Didn't Cordelia say you helped America win the Revolutionary War?”

Ariel rolled her eyes again. “I love Aunt Delia, but sometimes she exaggerates. I provided some assistance to the Continental Army during the Battle of Brooklyn. And immediately afterwards.”

“I didn't even know there was a battle in Brooklyn.”

“I was thinking of it the other night, actually, when we were in Bushwick. Most of the fighting took place just a few miles away. In the area where Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery are now.”

“So were you in the infantry? Firing a musket?”

She laughed. It was nice to hear her laugh again. John remembered the first time he'd heard that high, sweet chord of delight, when Ariel stepped into the bar in Greenwich Village. “No, those guns were awful. Every time you pulled the trigger you expected the thing to blow up in your hands.” She shook her head. “I stayed away from the front lines. I worked as a washerwoman instead.”

“A washerwoman? Don't tell me you cleaned General Washington's clothes.”

“No, I worked for General Howe. He commanded the British army that was ordered to defeat Washington and occupy New York. After they landed in Staten Island, the general's aide-de-camp hired some local women to launder the uniforms of the top officers. I slipped into the work crew.”

John smiled. He clasped his hands behind his head and started to relax. This was fascinating. “Okay, let me guess. You put itching powder in the general's underwear.”

“Believe me, I thought about it. Howe was an arrogant fool. But I kept my head down and spent a lot of time in the officers' tents, shining their boots while they talked strategy. After a few weeks I learned that Howe was planning to outflank the Continental Army by sending the British troops through Brooklyn. So I stole a rowboat and went to Manhattan to warn General Washington.”

“And that saved the day? We won the war because you tipped him off?”

Ariel made a face. “I'm amazed that you know so little of your country's history, John. Are the schools in Philadelphia that bad?”

“I don't know. I stopping going to school after seventh grade.”

“All right, I'll try to fill the gaps in your education. The Battle of Brooklyn was a disaster for the Americans. It almost ended the Revolution.”

“What went wrong?” John thought it over for a second. “Washington didn't believe you?”

“Exactly. He received me politely enough and listened to my report, but he was convinced that the British maneuvers in Brooklyn were a diversion. He thought the main attack would target Manhattan. So he kept most of his troops there and sent only a few thousand men across the East River.” She scowled. “It was stupid. He was already outnumbered, and then he split his army in two. Howe shattered the Americans in Brooklyn and sent them running back to the river. When I saw Washington again in Brooklyn Heights, he was panic-stricken. He had no idea what to do.”

“Wait a second. You saw him again?”

“I had more information for him. Howe, like the fool he was, had decided to halt his advance. That gave Washington some breathing room. He was thinking of making a stand at Brooklyn Heights, but I told him to load his men onto every available boat and retreat to Manhattan. And this time, thank heaven, he took my advice.”

John stared at her, amazed. She was telling the story as if it had happened yesterday. “It must've been a real kick in the pants for him, taking advice from a washerwoman.”

“Yes, but at heart he was a humble man. He learned from his mistakes. After Brooklyn, he became a master at retreat. He launched raids to harass the British, but he hid his army in the hills and avoided open battle with Howe. That's how he won the war.” She smiled at the memory. “I saw him one more time, at Valley Forge, and he gave me a bright yellow petticoat as a present. It was lovely.”

Ariel tilted her head slightly and stared into space. She seemed to be lost in a pleasant reverie. Then she turned back to John and scrutinized his body, her eyes roving across his face and torso. “How do you feel now? Are you dizzy? Nauseous?”

John shook his head. “I feel fine.” He sat up and flexed his arms and legs. “No changes so far.”

“It's still early. It'll take a while for the Fountain protein to enter your cells. And the first proteins that pass through the cell membranes will be immobilized by the proteins produced by your Upstart gene. The cellular concentration of Fountain has to rise above a critical level before it can have any effect. We may have to wait another ten or twenty minutes.” She glanced at the clock on the wall, which said it was ten minutes before noon. Then she placed a hand on John's shoulder. “In the meantime, you better lie down. You might get light-headed, and I don't want you to fall off the gurney.”

Gently but firmly, she pushed him down. Her hand was warm. She kept it on his shoulder even after he was lying down flat. John wanted her to keep it there. He smiled at her. “I don't think Cordelia was exaggerating. You did help us win the war. I mean, who knows what would've happened if you hadn't knocked some sense into Washington? We could all be English colonists still.”

But she didn't smile back at him. Her face turned serious. “It had to be done. Cordelia was insistent. And history proved her right only a century and a half later. If it wasn't for the United States, the Nazis would've defeated England and Russia, and the Japanese Empire would've conquered all of Asia. The whole world would've descended into nightmare.” She lifted her hand from John's shoulder. “But there was a price to be paid. A very high price.”

“What do you mean?”

“We knew that the new country would devastate the Native Americans. They'd already been ravaged by plagues and war before the Revolution, but they still had a chance to recover. And the English were trying to help them by discouraging the colonists from settling west of the Appalachians. Over time, the Native American tribes could've unified and established their own nation in the western half of the continent. But once the United States became independent, the tribes were doomed. They were crushed by your westward expansion.”

John looked askance. “So what are you saying? You prevented one catastrophe but couldn't stop the other?”

She nodded. “The trouble is, we can't steer history like a car. All we can do is nudge it a little, and sometimes there are no good options.” She raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “And do you know what made it worse? Even back then, I knew the value of what we were going to lose. Before the Revolution, I'd spent more than a hundred years learning about the Native American tribes. I made many friends among the Ojibway when I was growing up in Haven in the 1600s.”

“Gower said your family didn't have much contact with the Ojibway. He said they left you alone, and you did the same.”

“Well, it's true, that was our official policy. But I was a very impetuous youngster, and Mother couldn't stop me from leaving Haven. This was when we lived aboveground and used the cavern only for storing our Treasures. There were just a few dozen Furies then.”

“And you were the only white people in the area?”

“No, there were some French traders and missionaries in St. Ignace and Sault Sainte Marie. We stayed away from both outposts, but the French had brought smallpox to North America, and soon the Ojibway were dying by the hundreds. Our family had already learned how to inoculate ourselves against the disease, and I thought it was our duty to offer this protection to the Ojibway tribes. Mother, though, was dead-set against the idea.”

“Why?”

Ariel frowned. “She had the same fears then as she has now. She thought any contact with the outside world would threaten Haven's safety. But several of my cousins sided with me, and we worked out a compromise with Mother. She agreed to let us inoculate the Ojibway as long as we stayed at least two hundred miles away from Haven. We also had to pretend we were French missionaries and nuns, so the Ojibway wouldn't figure out who we were or where we came from.” Her frown disappeared. She turned cheerful again. “And that's how the Ranger Corps got started. Our first expedition consisted of four men and five women.”

John couldn't help but marvel at all this. He was beginning to see some of the benefits of eternal youth. Ariel hadn't been confined to the boundaries of a single lifetime, the limited set of interests and passions that could be explored in sixty or seventy years. She'd lived several fascinating lives, one after another. “It sounds like that's how you got interested in medicine, too.”

“Oh, yes. And we learned just as much from the Ojibway as they did from us. First we went to the Keweenaw Peninsula, on the southern shore of Lake Superior. The tribes there had extensive knowledge of medicinal plants. Then we moved farther west, to Chequamegon Bay. The Ojibway taught us how to hunt and fish and build birch-bark canoes, so we could live off the land. We could keep exploring the region and inoculating the tribes for as long as we wanted to.”

“Didn't that worry your mother?”

“Every six months I'd assign a pair of messengers to go back to Haven. They'd deliver our reports to the council and pick up new supplies and volunteers.” Ariel paused, biting her lip. An uncertain look had appeared on her face, as if she wasn't sure whether she should continue. She shifted in her chair. “And every year or so, one of our women would get pregnant, so we'd send her back to Haven with the messengers.”

Her cheeks colored. This surprised John. Ariel wasn't the kind of woman who blushed easily. “They found Ojibway paramours?”

“That was our preferred method during Haven's first century. There were few Europeans in the area, and most of them were unsavory characters, either cunning traders or fanatical churchmen. But there were many Ojibway men.”

She said this in a casual way, her voice jaunty and light, but within a few seconds her face turned a deeper shade of pink. John didn't understand what was going on. Ariel was clearly uncomfortable, and yet she'd deliberately broached this subject. He could think of only one explanation: she wanted to tell him something personal, but it was so difficult to say that she had to force herself to do it.

At the same time that he realized this, he had a moment of dizziness. For an instant the gurney seemed to lurch underneath him. The feeling lasted for only a fraction of a second, and then he felt fine. It was so brief he wasn't sure if it was an effect of the Fountain protein or simply a natural jolt of adrenaline. His nerves were in an uproar. Ariel was waiting for him to ask the obvious question.

He moved a bit closer to her, propping himself up on his elbows. “Did
you
get pregnant, too?”

The muscles in her neck tensed under her skin, but otherwise she didn't move. Her green eyes glistened above her inflamed cheeks. Finally, after ten long seconds, she nodded. “Do you remember what Mother said on the day you came here? Near the end of the meeting in the council chambers?”

John shook his head. Elizabeth Fury had said a lot of things, and he didn't know which one Ariel was referring to.

“She reminded me of the last time I brought a paramour to Haven.” Ariel's voice was low but steady. “It was in 1674. His name was Running Cloud. And it didn't end well.”

Before John could respond he had another dizzy spell. This one was longer and more intense than the first. The whole laboratory seemed to tilt, and for a second he was amazed that the hundreds of lab flasks didn't slide off the shelves. He felt nauseous as well, and his skin went cold. Ariel looked at him, puzzled, as his head swayed and his mouth fell open. Then she jumped out of her chair.

“John! Are you okay?”

He couldn't answer. The dizziness wasn't subsiding. Ariel grabbed his shoulders and forced him to lie down flat. Her head seemed to wheel above him, lunging across his field of view.

“Listen to me, John! The protein is slowing your circulation. Take rapid, strong breaths, okay? You need to boost your heart rate.”

Then he felt the gurney rumble under his back. At first he thought this was another symptom caused by the Fountain protein, but Ariel looked up in surprise at the same time and turned her head to the left and right, scanning the room. She'd felt the rumbling, too. “Mercy!” she cried. “What was that?”