UNCONTROLLED EXPERIMENTS
21
In the morning Susan re-packed her luggage (most of it untouched since her return from California) and went looking for Dr. Kyriakides.
She found him in the study. He was bent over his desk, making notes in a loose-leaf binder. He looked up when she opened the door. How old he seems, Susan thought—suddenly old and humorless.
“We’re leaving today,” she said. “John and I. We’re going to find Amelie.”
Dr. Kyriakides did not react at once. Slowly, he peeled away his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. The silence was professorial, devastating; Susan wanted to cringe.
He said, “That’s absurd.”
“You can’t stop us.”
“Of course I can’t. You’re both adults. You can do what you like. But surely you must see—well, for one thing, Susan, consider the weather! You’d be lucky to get a mile down the road. And I’m certain neither of you know where to find Amelie, wherever she might be. We can’t even be certain she wants to be found. All we know is that she left the house without warning last Saturday—which is her privilege, as it is yours.” He shook his head. “It might be understandable that John conceived this idea. He’s ill, after all. He has a neurological illness. But you, Susan! I thought you were interested in his welfare! Not coddling his disease,”
In spite of herself, Susan blushed. “That’s not what I’m doing. John is perfectly lucid.”
“It was his idea?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t it seem a little out of character?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“He has no interest in Amelie! It was Benjamin who cared about her. John is as far beyond Amelie Desjardins as we are advanced beyond the starfish. And you know it. Why would he want to risk his life for her? Because that’s what this would mean, after all. He seems fine, but the crisis could come at any moment. Fever and disorientation and possibly unconsciousness—possibly death. Can you cope with that? Do you want that to happen while your car is buried in a snowdrift miles from here?”
“It’s important to him.”
“Is it? Has he told you why? Or is this your own conclusion?”
Susan shook her head. “I don’t want to have this discussion. I just thought you should know we’re leaving.”
She turned away.
“Wait,” Dr. Kyriakides said, and Susan was embarrassed to discover she could not resist the command.
She hesitated at the doorway.
“John talked about me—didn’t he? That’s what this is all about.”
“He talked about himself,” Susan said.
“You know I never meant this to happen.”
His voice was suddenly chastened and tentative. He stood up, stepped out from behind the desk. He’s a small man, Susan thought. He’s shorter than I am. Another brand-new observation.
“I had no idea things would turn out the way they did. At every step—please try to understand—I made what I thought was the best decision. The wisest decision. Even when I was tampering with John inutero, even when I was dealing with his mother. She was a stupid woman, Susan. She would have had a stupid child and they would have lived stupid, ordinary lives. She was the kind of passive and amoral creature that allowed a Hitler to come to power—a Stalin.” The words were fervent and his expression was utterly sincere; Susan was transfixed. “When I created John,” he said, “I meant to break that chain. I was funded by a mercenary organization for a mercenary purpose, it’s true, but I never believed the government would benefit from my work in any substantial way. If anything, the opposite. I meant to create a better human being, for whom they would therefore have no use. Not just ‘more intelligent’ in the obvious sense. Authentically better.” He shook his head. “But it’s a terrible burden, and I should not have imposed it on John. I understand that now. I—”
“God damn your pious self-pity!”
She had not planned to say this; the words came spilling out. Her fists were clenched and her fingernails bit into her palms. Dr. Kyriakides gaped at her. “That’s all we are to you—all of us—just stupid, ordinary people! You took a child and you fed him all that contempt, that arrogance! Christ, of course it was a burden! Isn’t it obvious? That’s why he had to invent Benjamin.” She turned away. No more hesitation. “That’s why we have to leave.”
She was too shaken to drive. John slid behind the wheel of the Honda. He had excavated the car from a mound of snow, but the driveway was still solid—Susan wondered whether they would get as far as the road. But she put her faith in John and curled up into the private space of her winter coat. The snow tires whined and finally bit against the blacktop; the Honda struggled forward.
According to the radio, the snow might begin again tonight. A second front was pushing in from the high prairies. But for now the sky was a glassy, vacant blue, cold and clear. Susan scrubbed frost from the window next to her and peered out at a frigid rural landscape of frozen ponds and hydroelectric clearances. The highway had been ploughed during the night, but a morning wind had scattered snow back across the tarmac in serpentine dunes.
Now the Honda picked up speed. It occurred to Susan that John was driving too fast for the road—but she looked at him and was reassured. His eyes had taken on an intense, powerful focus; his touch on the wheel was delicate and certain.
The road sped away behind them. Susan was warm and calmer now; she sat up and stretched.
“You told Max we were leaving?”
She nodded. “He says it’s pointless. He says you don’t know how to find Amelie.”
“I don’t, precisely. I think I know where to begin.”
“You don’t really know that much about her, do you?”
“No.”
“But Benjamin does.”
He nodded.
“And you have access to that,” Susan said. “To his memories—his life.”
“More than I used to. That makes it easier. But even Benjamin didn’t know all about Amelie.”
“She told me about her brother,” Susan said. “He tried to kidnap her the day she moved. You think he’s involved in this?”
“That would be an obvious suspicion. Nothing is certain, of course. All we really know is that she left without leaving a message.”
“Maybe she just got tired of us all.”
“That’s possible.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”
They crossed the city limits. Coming down Yonge Street, John slowed to deal with traffic. Susan watched a TTC bus slide into an intersection, its wheels locked. A pickup truck swerved to avoid it; John pumped the brake and kept the Honda a carlength back. A brisk wind peppered the windshield with crystals of yesterday’s snow, glittering in the sunlight.
They were well into the city when Susan felt the Honda’s motion grow more erratic; she heard John catch his breath as they fishtailed coming around a curve. Just north of Eglinton he pulled into a parking lot. “Can you drive us the rest of the way? It shouldn’t be too hard. The roads have been cleared since morning.”
He was sweating. Susan frowned. “Are you all right?”
John held up his hand to show her the tremor, which was obvious and pronounced.
Oh, God, Susan thought.
“I think we’d be safer,” John said calmly, “if you took over for a while.”
There was this to deal with, too: his “change.”