Oh, Jack Koryan, he thought. Poor Jack Koryan. You’ve got demons clawing at your brain, and you don’t know what to do. The sad thing is that nothing can be proven after all these years. And even if it came to that, how do you explain? It’s all so garbled by time. Even if you could explain, what can you do about it?
But maybe you should, Nick told himself. Maybe do the one decent thing that would free the guy. And isn’t that your playbill role out here: Dr. Ethics?
Deep down, Jack, we’re really not bad people, just humans in conflict—like the rest of the race. Except the stakes are higher.
Nick looked at the sun rising between a fissure in a hoodoo blade rising out of the chasm. A shaft of gold sent spikes in all directions like a crown of glory.
Sorry, Jack Koryan, for the long bad nights. But, I swear, when I get back I’ll open the door for you.
Nick moved to another outcropping of rock where he hung over the edge with the Nikon. He clicked off three shots. The light was rapidly shifting, shafts of gold shooting from the horizon through the cloud holes. He traced one to his right when he thought he spotted some movement on the higher ledge. He swung his camera around to zoom in on what appeared to be a clotted shadow among some pines just below where the rays lit the treetops.
In the split instant he depressed the shutter release halfway for autofocus, uncertain whether the shadow was an animal or a person, sudden movement from behind him sent a reflexive shudder through his body.
Before he knew it, a figure rushed out at him. In the instant before impact, it all became clear to Nick. But in a hideously telescoped moment he felt the wind punch out of his lungs, and his body was propelled off the rockface lip and into the abyss.
FROM A PERCH FIFTY YARDS TO the upper right, the only sound was a solitary note of recognition—a short “ahhh” escaping from Nick Mavros’s lungs as if he had found a misplaced key—then maybe ten seconds in real time the soft smack of his body against the rock rubble below … then some muffled afterechoes as he and his camera tumbled to their final resting place in the cretaceous layers of ancient seas.
It was done, and Dr. Jordan Carr signaled below to his accomplice to return to their car before day hikers began to show.
Jordan’s guess was that Nick would eventually be found by backpackers or park rangers—a battered thing in a red North Face parka and jeans. And, depending on how long it took to recover the body, the newspapers back home would run the sad obituary of Dr. Nicholas Mavros of Wellesley, Massachusetts, senior neurologist of MGH and chief principal investigator of clinical trials of the new experimental wonder cure for Alzheimer’s, who had apparently lost his footing during high winds on a slick and crumbly rim in Bryce Canyon National Park while alone on a photo hike. He had been in Utah attending a meeting of clinical physicians for blah blah blah, as Gavin Moy would so eloquently put it.
Jordan took a final glance into the abyss.
The only barrier between him and the Promised Land now lay below. And God’s in his heaven, and all’s right with the world.
77
SOLAKANDJI.
Jack had written the word on the back of René Ballard’s business card.
It was a warm afternoon, a fine day to be outside. And Jack’s rehab people were of the Kamikaze School of physical therapy, encouraging him to get out and walk twice a day.
The Robbins Memorial Library was no more than two miles from his house—maybe an hour’s walk at his rate with the cane. Located in the center of town on Massachusetts Avenue, the library was a beautiful Italian Renaissance building whose interior might have been one of the most stunning in the Northeast—high vaulted arches, Doric columns, carved marble niches, paintings, and multicolored marble floors. Beyond the rotunda was the reference room, where a bank of online computers stood against a wall. At this hour most students were in class, so there was no wait for a machine.
On Google, he came up with hundreds of hits for “Solakandji jellyfish.” He scrolled down the list, uncertain what he was looking for, but positive that this was preferable to laundry and housecleaning. Besides, he was curious about the little critters that had taken a half-year bite out of his life.
Some of the sites contained general info about jellyfish with sidebars about Solakandji; other sites were for naturalists, students of marine biology, and underwater photographers. Several explained treatments of jellyfish stings. Aunt Nancy had been right—vinegar, and don’t rub.
He clicked on a few sites that included color photographs of the animal. And there it was: Solakandji medusa—a smoky yellowish translucent mushroom with spaghetti tendrils. It looked so innocently pretty.
This highly venomous jellyfish is extremely hard to detect in the water …
… its tentacles can grow up to 2m long and are near invisible under water.
The Solakandji sting causes a rapid rise in blood pressure and a cerebral hemorrhage …There is currently no anti-venom available for the sting because scientists have struggled to capture enough of the jellyfish to develop an antidote …
Coelenterates have stinging cells called nematocysts, which are made of a spirally coiled thread with a barbed end. On contact, the thread is uncoiled and the barb delivers the toxic substance …
(St. Thomas, V.I.) By the time the emergency helicopter arrived, he was screaming in agony; a few hours later he was in a coma … died four days later …
There were similar news items about rare encounters in the Caribbean with swimmers and snorkelers, but none in North America. The news account of his own attack had apparently expired.
As he continued down the hit list, he found more technical sites cued by scientific terminology—“Coelenterate,” “envenomations”—and linked to lengthy abstruse articles for marine biologists and not the beachcomber or sport diver.
Jack clicked on a few terms and found himself getting lost in the details. After nearly an hour, he came to a cluster of links to more medically slanted sites concerned with the toxin and possible neurological problems. A few enumerated the venom of various species that were clearly dangerous to humans but which were being researched for potential medical application—all very scientific. Out of curiosity he explored some of the archival abstracts of papers published in obscure journals.
Scrolling down a long list Jack came to a dead stop. For a long moment he stared at the screen in numbed disbelief:
Sarkisian N., Nakao M., Sodaquist T. A novel protein toxin from the deadly Solakandji jellyfish. Biotechnology Today 66: 97—102, 1969.
What nailed his attention was the name buried in the authors list: Sarkisian, N. Nevard, Armenian for “Rose.” Her professional name.
His mother.
The realization came to him in a stunning moment of awareness: She had coauthored an article about the toxins of the same jellyfish that had rendered him comatose. As if in autoreflex he read the beginning of the abstract, trying in a side pocket of his mind to put it all together:
The deadly Solakandji jellyfish Chiropsalmus quadrigatus Mason is rare and distributed in the tropical Caribbean and equatorial Atlantic. Four fatal cases due to stings from this species have been officially reported. C. quadrigatus toxin-A (CqTX-A, 43kDa), a major proteinaceous toxin, was isolated for the first time from the nematocysts of C. quadrigatas … CqTX-A showed lethal toxicity to crayfish when administered via intraperitoneal injection (LD50=80 g/kg) and hemolytic activity toward 0.8% mice … .