Doctor Berman came into his room to find Nathan flexing the fingers of his left hand like a pianist preparing to play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5.
He stood at the end of the bed watching him for a few moments, and then he said, ‘It’s almost back to how it was before you burned it, isn’t it?’
Nathan clenched his fingers into a fist, and then splayed them open again. ‘Yes, it is,’ he admitted. ‘The tendons still feel kind of tightish, but that’s all.’
There was a very long pause, but then Doctor Berman cleared his throat and said, ‘You want to tell me what’s going on here?’ ‘I’m not sure I understand you. Nothing’s going on, except a little light physiotherapy.’
‘I’m a doctor, Professor. I deal with people every day who have agonizing and permanently disfiguring burns. To do that, I have to be a psychiatrist and a counselor as well as a surgeon.’
‘OK.’
‘When you were brought in here, you had full-thickness burns to your hand and you were suffering intense pain. We dealt with the pain by giving you morphine. But you also faced the prospect of losing the use of your hand, maybe for good. That should have been very daunting and distressing, especially for a man in your profession.’
He paused again, and took off his spectacles.
‘The thing of it is, Professor, you were not daunted and you were not distressed. Not especially, anyhow. Maybe I sensed a little apprehension, yes – but only that kind of “fingers crossed” apprehension when a person is hoping that everything goes according to plan. Now that I’ve seen how rapidly your hand has restored itself, I think I know why.’
‘All right then, doctor,’ said Nathan, guardedly. ‘You tell me.’
‘I think you were ninety percent sure that your hand was going to heal as quickly as that, because you treated yourself somehow to make sure that it would. I’ve been Googling your research this morning, Professor. As far as I can tell you’ve been trying to recreate extinct species in the hope of discovering cures for diseases and medical conditions that are currently incurable. Such as MS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Alzheimer’s, and reconstruction after third-degree burns and other serious traumas.’
‘You’re right,’ said Nathan. ‘Well, you’re ninety-nine percent right. My objective is certainly to find ways to cure all of those conditions, and more. But the creatures that I’ve been trying to bring back to life aren’t so much extinct as mythical.’
‘Mythical?’
Nathan nodded. ‘I’m talking gryphons and wyverns and chimera. They all flew and swam and walked on this planet once, for real, and their DNA is still traceable. My idea was to recreate them in the laboratory, and then extract their stem cells to give human beings some of their attributes. The trauco, for instance, which was a mythical humanoid from Chile, was supposed to have been capable of making even the most infertile woman pregnant. Stem cells from a trauco could make IV redundant.’
‘So what about your hand? What creature’s stem cells did you use to heal that – if that’s what you did?’
‘A phoenix. We successfully recreated it in the laboratory on Monday, using a dragon-worm whose DNA we had combined with that of an Egyptian scavenger hawk. We burned it alive and out of the flames came the phoenix.’
‘So I assume that when your colleagues came to visit you, they injected you with stem cells from this phoenix?’
‘Twice only. Once this morning and once at four p.m. this afternoon.’
Doctor Berman carefully put his glasses back on. ‘You do realize what could have happened to me if this little experiment had gone wrong, don’t you? That would have been the end of my career.’
‘I do realize, and I’m truly sorry. But I couldn’t think of any other way. Schiller was cutting off my funding so I couldn’t afford to test the phoenix stem cells on any other burns victims. You can imagine the medical insurance premiums. They would have been staggering.’
Doctor Berman stared at him. ‘You burned yourself deliberately? You did it on purpose?’
‘How else was I going to find a willing burns victim?’
‘Gott in Himmel. You must have been damn confident that it was going to work.’
Nathan said, ‘Confident? Not totally. I have to admit that when my hand was actually on fire I wished to hell that I hadn’t done it, and that’s an understatement. I never knew burns could hurt so much.’
Doctor Berman came around to the side of the bed. ‘May I?’ he said, and took hold of Nathan’s hand. He examined it closely, and then he shook his head and said, ‘It’s remarkable. It really is. Do you think it will have the same effect on any type of burn?’
‘I don’t see any reason why not. And my research has indicated that it doesn’t matter how old the scar tissue is. Somebody might have been burned by napalm in Vietnam, thirty years ago, but even after all this time their skin could be regenerated.’
‘Remarkable.’ Doctor Berman bent Nathan’s fingers back. ‘You have almost total flexibility, and your skin is barely even discolored, let alone scarred.’
He thought for a moment, stroking at the prickly silver stubble on his double chin. Then he said, ‘One of the patients we’re treating here at the moment is a five-year-old girl. She was trapped in a blazing auto wreck, and she suffered very serious burns to her face and hands. We’re giving her the very best treatment we know how, but she’s still going to end up badly disfigured.’
‘You want to try the phoenix treatment on her?’
‘I’m not sure. If it had any unwanted side-effects, I could wind up in very deep trouble.’
‘Well, Doctor, I can’t give you any guarantees. But it’s worked on me, hasn’t it, and so far I feel fine. All I can say is, if you do decide to try it, my team and I will give you all the help you need. And we’ll keep it totally confidential. Except if that little girl gets healed, of course. Then we’ll want all the publicity we can get.’
Doctor Berman said, ‘Why don’t you come take a look at her?’
Nathan climbed out of bed. He put on his slippers and Doctor Berman handed him the dark blue robe that was hanging behind the door. Together they walked along the corridor until they reached the room where Susan Harris was being treated, her face still protected by the shiny Jaloskin covering. Braydon was dozing in an armchair beside her bed, but when they walked in he opened his eyes with a jolt and said, ‘Jesus!’
‘Sorry,’ said Doctor Berman, laying a hand on his shoulder. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘No, no,’ said Braydon. ‘Don’t worry about it. I was having this really scary dream, that’s all. More of a nightmare.’
‘Well, you’ve been under considerable stress, Mr Harris. It’s not surprising that you’re having nightmares. I’ll prescribe something to calm you down, and you should sleep better. Meantime, I want you to meet Professor Nathan Underhill.’
‘Sure. Great,’ said Braydon, standing up and holding out his hand. ‘Are you a patient, too?’
‘Professor Underhill has been undergoing some minor procedure, that’s all. We’ll be discharging him tomorrow morning, most likely. But he was very interested to see what treatment we’ve been giving your Susan.’
Nathan approached the bed. Sukie was fast asleep, breathing deep and slow, with a slight catch in her throat. Even beneath the Jaloskin, Nathan could see how severely her face had been seared. No matter how expert it might be, conventional treatment would still leave it looking like a taut, expressionless mask. The twisted face of the doll lying beside her on the bed was a horrible parody of what she would eventually become.
‘What – are you some kind of burns specialist?’ asked Braydon.
Nathan nodded, and then turned around. ‘You could say that, sir. I’m so sorry for what’s happened to your little girl. But I know that she’s being given the best possible care here at Temple. Doctor Berman here is something of a genius when it comes to burns.’
‘Thanks, Professor,’ said Braydon. ‘Thanks, Doctor Berman.’
‘By the way, Mr Harris,’ said Nathan. ‘What was your nightmare about? You practically jumped out of your skin when we came in here.’
Braydon gave a dismissive flap of his hand. ‘Ah, nothing. It was just like a nightmare that Sukie always has. I must have been thinking about it, that’s all, and when I fell asleep I started to have the same nightmare myself.’
‘OK.’
‘It was all about these huge shadowy creatures flying through the sky. Like dragons, you know? And they were making this terrible screaming noise. Sukie calls them Spooglies. For some reason they scared the living crap out of me, excuse my language.’
‘I think they would have scared the living crap out of me, too,’ said Nathan. ‘Make sure that Doctor Berman gives you that Rx. Nightmares like that you can do without.’
They said goodbye to Braydon and went back out into the corridor.
‘Well?’ asked Doctor Berman. ‘What do you think?’
Nathan said, ‘I can’t give you any guarantees, but I think there’s every chance that the phoenix treatment will give young Sukie her face back, just as it was.’
‘So – if I agreed to go ahead with it – how soon could you call in your associates?’
‘I can arrange for them to give her the first injection tomorrow morning, early. Do you want to say seven a.m.?’
‘Very well. Seven a.m. I just hope I know what I’m letting myself in for.’
‘Fame and fortune, Doctor, with any luck.’ He lifted his left hand and said, ‘See? You have my hand on it.’