The Fountain of Age

  “It did?”

  “The detective told me, when he was asking questions yesterday. Also, I got the physician here to let me look at the lab results for everybody admitted to the Infirmary Thursday afternoon. Professional courtesy. There was no food poisoning.”

  “There wasn’t?” All at once Carrie felt scared.

  “No.” DiBella sat thinking a long while. She scarcely dared breathe. Finally he said slowly, as if against his own will or better judgment—and that much she understood, anyway—”Carrie, have you ever heard of the principle of emergent complexity?”

  “I did everything for that boy,” Gina sobbed. “Just everything!”

  “Yes, you did,” said Evelyn, who thought Gina had done too much for Ray. Always lending him money after he lost each job, always letting him move back home and trash the place. What that kid had needed—and bad—was a good hiding, that’s what.

  “Angela didn’t turn out this way!”

  “No.” Gina’s daughter was a sweetie. Go figure.

  “And now I just get it settled in my mind that he’s out of my life, I come to grips with it, and he says he’s flying back here to see ‘his old ma’ and he loves me! He’ll just stir everything up again like he did when he got home from the Army, and when he divorced Judy, and when I had to find that lawyer for him in New York . . . Evelyn, nobody, but nobody, can rip you up inside like your child!”

  “I know,” said Evelyn, who didn’t. She went on making little clucking noises while Gina sobbed. A plane roared overhead, and Frank Sinatra sang about it having been a very good year when he was twenty-one.

  Bob Donovan took Anna’s hand. Gently she pulled it away. The gentleness was for her, not him—she didn’t want a scene. His touch repelled her. But oh, Bennet’s touch . . . or Frederico’s . . . Still, it was the dancing she missed. And now she would never dance again. She might, the doctors said, not even walk without a limp.

  Never dance. Never feel her legs spring into a ballotté or soar in the exuberance of a flick jeté, back arched and arms thrown back, an arrow in ecstatic flight.

  “Carrie, have you ever heard of the principle of emergent complexity?”

  “No.” Jake DiBella was going to make her feel dumb again. But he didn’t mean to do that, and as long as she could sit here in his office with him, she would listen. Maybe he needed someone to listen. Maybe he needed her. And maybe he would say something that would help her make it all right with Dr. Erdmann.

  Jake licked his lips. His face was still paper white. “‘Emergent complexity’ means that as an evolving organism grows more complex, it develops processes that wouldn’t seem implied by the processes it had in simpler form. In other words, the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. Somewhere along the line, our primitive human ancestors developed self-awareness. Higher consciousness. That was a new thing in evolution.”

  Old knowledge stirred in Carrie’s mind. “There was a pope—I was raised Catholic—some pope, one of the John-Pauls maybe, said there was a point where God infused a soul into an animal heritage. So evolution wasn’t really anti-Catholic.”

  Jake seemed to be looking through her, at something only he could see. “Exactly. God or evolution or some guy named Fred—however it happened, consciousness did emerge. And if, now, the next step in complexity is emerging . . . if that . . .”

  Carrie was angered, either by his line of thought or by his ignoring her; she wasn’t sure which. She said sharply, “But why now? Why here?”

  His question brought his gaze back to her. He took a long time to answer, while a plane droned overhead on the flight path out of the airport. Carrie held her breath.

  But all he said was, “I don’t know.”

  Gina had worked herself up to such a pitch that she wasn’t even praying. Ray, Ray, Ray—This wasn’t what Evelyn wanted to talk about. But she had never seen Gina like this. All at once Gina cried passionately, drowning out Sinatra singing, Fly Me to the Moon, “I wish he weren’t coming! I wish his plane would just go on to another city or something, just not land here! I don’t want him here!”

  Never dance again. And the only love available from men like Bob Donovan . . . No. No. Anna would rather be dead.

  “Well, I don’t believe it!” Carrie said. “Emerging complexity—I just don’t believe it’s happening at St. Sebastian’s!”

  “Neither do I,” said Jake. For the first time since she’d entered his office, he smiled at her.

  Outside the building, a boom sounded.

  Carrie and Jake both looked toward the door. Carrie thought first of terrorism, a car bomb or something, because everybody thought first of terrorism these days. But terrorism at an assisted living facility was ridiculous. It was a gas main exploding, or a bus crash just outside, or . . .

  Henry Erdmann appeared in the open doorway to the study. He didn’t have his walker with him. He sagged against the doorjamb, his sunken eyes huge and his mouth open. Before Carrie could leap up to help him and just before he slumped to the floor, he croaked, “Call the police. We just brought down a plane.”

  Anguish ripped through the ship. Not its own agony, but the Other’s. No guidance, no leading, it was raging wild and undisciplined. If this went on, it might weaken the ship too much for the ship to ever help it.

  If this went on, the Other could damage spacetime itself.

  The ship could not let that happen.

  ELEVEN

  When Henry Erdmann collapsed, DiBella moved swiftly to the old man. Carrie stood frozen—stupid! Stupid! “Get the doctor,” Jake cried. And then, “Go, Carrie. He’s alive.”

  She ran out of Jake’s office, nearly tripping over the walker Henry had left in the hallway. He must have been coming to see Jake when it happened—when what happened? She raced to the lobby and the call phone, her mind so disordered that only as she shoved open the double doors did she realize that of course it would have been faster to hit Henry’s panic button—Jake would do that—but Henry seldom wore his panic button, he—

  She stopped cold, staring.

  The lobby was full of screaming people, mostly visitors. Among them, old people lay fallen to the floor or slumped in wheel chairs. It was Saturday morning and on Saturday morning relatives arrived to take their mothers and grandfathers and great-grandmothers for brunch, for a drive, for a visit home . . . Bundled in sweaters and jackets and shawls, the seniors had all collapsed like so many bundles of dropped laundry. St. Sebastian nurses, aides, and even desk volunteers bent ineffectually over the victims.

  Fear roiled Carrie’s stomach, but it also preternaturally heightened her perceptions.

  Mr. Aberstein, a St. Sebastian resident even though he was only sixty-seven, stood unaffected by the elevators. Mrs. Kelly sat alert in her wheelchair, her mouth a wide pink O. She was seventy-one. Mr. Schur . . .

  “Nurse! Come quick, please, it’s Dr. Erdmann!” Carrie caught at the sleeve of a passing nurse in purple scrubs, but he shook her off and raced to an old woman lying on the floor. Everyone here was too busy to help Carrie. She ran back to Jake’s office.

  Henry lay quietly on the floor. Jake had turned him face up and put a cushion—her cushion, Carrie thought numbly, the patchwork one she’d brought Jake—under Henry’s feet. Henry wasn’t wearing his panic button. She gasped, “No one can come, it’s happened to all of them—”

  “All who?” Jake said sharply.

  She answered without thinking. “All of them over eighty. Is Henry—”

  “He’s breathing normally. his color’s good, and he’s not clammy. I don’t think he’s in shock. He’s just . . . out. All of them over eighty?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know, I mean, about the age, but all the older ones in the lobby just collapsed and the younger residents seem fine . . . Jake, what is it?”

  “I don’t know. Carrie, do this now: Go to one of the common rooms and turn the TV to the local news channel. See if there’s been a . . . a plane crash—”

  He stopped. Bot
h of them heard the sirens.

  Henry did not wake. All of Redborn Memorial Hospital’s ambulances had gone to the crash site. The St. Sebastian staff moved afflicted residents to the dining room, which looked like a very peaceful war hospital. The residents didn’t wake, moan, or need emergency treatment with the exception of one woman who had broken a hip falling to the floor. She was sent over to Memorial. Monitors couldn’t be spared from the Nursing floor, where nearly everyone had fallen into the coma, but a few spare monitors were carried down from the Infirmary. They showed no anomalies in heart rate or blood pressure.

  Relatives summoned family doctors, sat by cots, screamed at St. Sebastian staff, who kept repeating, “Redborn Memorial is aware of the situation and they’ll get the St. Sebastian residents over there as soon as they can. Please, sir, if you’d just—”

  Just be patient. Just believe that we’re doing our best. Just be reassured by your mother’s peaceful face. Just accept that we don’t know any more than you do. Just leave me alone!

  Carrie checked on her resident-assignees, one by one. They were all affected, most collapsed in their apartments. They were all moved into the Infirmary. They were all over eighty.

  She was hurrying from Al Cosmano’s apartment—empty, he must have been elsewhere when it happened—back to the Infirmary when a man caught at her arm. “Hey! Ms. Vesey!”

  One of the detectives who’d investigated Jim’s death. Carrie’s belly clenched. “Yes?”

  “Where do I find the hospital administrator? Caldwell?”

  “He’s not here, he went out of town for the weekend, they sent for him—why?”

  “I need to see him. Who’s in charge? And what the hell happened here?”

  So not about Jim’s death. Still—a cop. Some part of her mind shuddered—Jim had been a cop—but at the same time, she seized on this. Official authority. Someone who investigated and found answers. Security. There was a reason she’d married Jim in the first place.

  She said as calmly as she could manage, “We’ve had an . . . an epidemic of collapses among the very old. All at the same time. About a half hour ago.”

  “Disease?”

  “No.” She heard how positive she sounded. Well, she was positive. “When the plane went down.”

  He looked baffled, as well he might. She said, “I’ll take you to Dr. Jamison. He’s the St. Sebastian’s physician.”

  Jamison wasn’t in the dining room. Carrie, leading Detective Geraci, found the doctor in the kitchen, in a shouting match with Jake DiBella. “No, damn it! You’re not going to further upset the relatives for some stupid, half-baked theory—No!” Jamison stalked off.

  Carrie said, “Dr. Jamison, this is—” He pushed past her, heading back to his patients. She expected the detective to follow him, but instead Geraci said to Jake, “Who are you?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  She had never seen Jake so rude. But he was angry and frustrated and scared—they were all scared.

  “Detective Geraci, RPD. You work here?”

  Carrie said quickly, before the two men could get really nasty, “This is Dr. DiBella. He’s doing a medical research project at St. Sebastian’s, on . . . on brain waves.”

  Geraci said, “I received an anonymous call. Me, not the Department, on my cell, from the St. Sebastian front desk. The caller said there was information here about the plane crash. You know anything about that, doctor?”

  Carrie saw that Vince Geraci believed Jake did have information. How did she know that? How did he know that? But it was there in every line of the detective’s alert body: He knew that Jake knew something.

  Jake didn’t answer, just stared at Geraci. Finally Geraci said, “The plane went down half a mile from here. A U.S. Air commuter plane carrying forty-nine passengers, including thirty-one members of the Aces High Senior Citizen Club. They were on a three-day trip to the casinos at Atlantic City. Everyone on board is dead.”

  Jake said, “I can’t talk to you now. I have to take some brain scans while these people are unconscious. After that idiot Jamison realizes what I’m doing and throws me out, we can talk. Carrie, I’ll need your help. Go to my office and put all the equipment in the corner onto the dolly, throw a blanket over it, and bring it the back way into the kitchen. Quickly!”

  She nodded and hurried off, so fast that she didn’t realize Geraci was behind her until they reached Jake’s office.

  “Let me get that, it’s heavy,” he said.

  “No, it’s not.” She lugged the console onto its dolly. “Shouldn’t you be asking people questions?”

  “I am. Does DiBella always order you around like that?”

  Did he? She hadn’t noticed. “No.” She added the helmet and box of peripherals on top of the console, then looked around for a blanket. There wasn’t one.

  “Do you work for DiBella or for St. Sebastian’s?”

  “St. Sebastian’s. I have to go to the linen closet.”

  When she returned with a blanket, Geraci was reading the papers on Jake’s desk. Wasn’t that illegal? Carrie threw the blanket over the equipment. Geraci grabbed the handle of the dolly before she could.

  “You need me,” he said. “Anybody stops you, I’ll just flash my badge.”

  “Okay,” she said ungraciously. She could have done this, for Jake, by herself.

  They brought the equipment into the kitchen. Jake set it up on the counter, ignoring the cook who said helplessly, “So nobody’s having lunch, then?” All at once she ripped off her apron, flung it onto the floor, and walked out.

  Jake said to Carrie, “Hold the door.” He slipped through to the dining room and, a moment later, wheeled in a gurney with an elderly woman lying peacefully on it. “Who is she, Carrie?”

  “Ellen Parminter.” After a moment she added, “Eighty-three.” Jake grunted and began attaching electrodes to Mrs. Parminter’s unconscious head.

  Geraci said, “Come with me, Carrie.”

  “No.” Where did she get the nerve? But, somehow, he brought that out in her.

  He only smiled. “Yes. This is an official police investigation, as of this minute.”

  She went, then, following him back to Jake’s office. Carrie was shaking, but she didn’t want him to see that. He did, though; he seemed to see everything. “Sit down,” he said gently. “There, behind the desk—you didn’t like me reading DiBella’s papers before, did you? It’s legal if they’re in plain sight. You seem like a really good observer, Carrie. Now, please tell me everything that’s been happening here. From the very beginning, and without leaving anything out. Start with why you told DiBella that woman’s age. Does her age matter to what he’s doing?”

  Did it? She didn’t know. How could it . . . people aged at such different rates! Absolute years meant very little, except that—

  “Carrie?”

  All at once it seemed a relief to be able to pour it all out. Yes, he was trained to get people to talk, she knew that, and she didn’t really trust his sudden gentleness. It was merely a professional trick. But if she told it all, that might help order her chaotic thoughts. And maybe, somehow, it might help the larger situation, too. All those people dead on the plane—

  She said slowly, “You won’t believe it.”

  “Try me anyway.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  This time he just waited, looking expectant. And it all poured out of her, starting with Henry’s “seizure” on the way home from the university. The vomiting epidemic among seven or so patients, that wasn’t the food poisoning that St. Sebastian’s said it was. Evelyn Krenchnoted’s functional MRI. Anna Chernov’s necklace, what Evelyn thought the necklace looked like and what Bob Donovan said it really was. The secret meeting this morning in Henry’s apartment. What Carrie had overheard: Henry’s words about photons and how human observation affected the paths of fundamental particles. Jake’s lecture on ‘emergent complexity.’ Henry’s appearance at Jake’s office, saying just before he collapsed, “Cal
l the police. We just brought down a plane.” The mass collapse of everyone over eighty and of no one younger than that. The brain scans Jake was taking now, undoubtedly to see if they looked normal or like Evelyn’s. The more Carrie talked, the more improbable everything sounded.

  When she finished, Geraci’s face was unreadable.

  “That’s it,” she said miserably. “I have to go see how Henry is.”

  “Thank you, Carrie.” His tone was unreadable. “I’m going to find Dr. Jamison now.”

  He left, but she stayed. It suddenly took too much energy to move. Carrie put her head in her hands. When she straightened again, her gaze fell on Jake’s desk.

  He’d been writing when she’d burst in with the news of the meeting in Henry’s apartment. Writing on paper, not on a computer: thick pale green paper with a faint watermark. The ink was dark blue. “My dearest James, I can’t tell you how much I regret the things I said to you on the phone last night, but, love, please remember—”

  Carrie gave a short, helpless bark of laughter. My dearest James . . . God, she was such a fool!

  She shook her head like a dog spraying off water, and went to look for Henry.

  The new being was quiet now. That made this a good time to try to reach it. That was always best done through its own culture’s symbols. But ship had had so little time to prepare . . . This should have been done slowly, over a long time, a gradual interaction as the new entity was guided, shaped, made ready. And ship was still so far away.

  But it tried, extending itself as much as possible, searching for the collective symbols and images that would have eased a normal transition—