I lay in darkness for an indefinite period. I think I may have been unconscious again, for after a faint and distant sound of voices and the soft breathing of my companion, I heard nothing at all. My first intimation of returning body control was the sound of a groan — my own.
A hand covered my mouth. At the same time I felt a stab of pain in my chest.
“Feel that?” Seth whispered in the darkness. “I hope you can — for your sake. You want to live, you lie still an’ do what I say. One false move, one squeak, the knife goes through your heart. You hear me?”
I did not point out to him that his own rules presented me with an insoluble problem. If I replied or did not reply, I would be stabbed. Nor, despite increasing evidence of returning muscular control, was it at all clear to me that I could answer. What I could and did do was gasp.
The knife pricked harder. “You are awake. Say something — softly.”
“Muscles.” My throat was full of phlegm, but I hoped he could understand my gargle. “Cramps. Bad.”
“All right. I’ll try to help you through. Keep as quiet as you can, an’ let me know if 1 hafta muffle you.”
I did not ask how. I lay, cold but sweating, as cramps attacked every muscle of my body in turn. After the first two I didn’t need to say a word.
West Virginia Seth felt what was coming and covered my mouth with his scarf until the spasm was over.
After a while, between bouts, I said, “What year is it?”
He didn’t run me through the heart. He said, “What?”
“What year is this?”
“2026. Are you Dr. Oliver Guest?”
“Yes.”
“The telomere treatment pioneer?”
“Yes.”
Another surprise. A more natural next question would have been, “The serial child murderer?” Like me, West Virginia Seth had his own unusual priorities.
That was the end of the conversation for a while. I pursued my own thoughts and I assume that he followed his. Before the cramps had run their course, thirst took over as a worse torment. I tried to sit up. He restrained me with a rough hand on my chest and a terse “Quit that.”
“I don’t care what you do to me,” I said. “I have to drink, or die.”
“You might do both. You oughta be used to dying.” But he wriggled around in some way I could not see, and the body drawer moved out on its runners. “Been a while since I heard anythin’. Let’s see if Art an’ Dana handled ’em.”
I could walk, but barely. The hardest part was the descent from the body drawer. After that I had a strong arm and the stair rail to help me. As we approached the ground floor the unmistakable stench of decomposing human flesh assailed my nostrils. Previous experience, both professional and personal, allowed me to ignore it.
I stumbled at last through the big double doors, released my hold on West Virginia Seth, and fell on my face. If he spoke while I licked and crunched and swallowed mouthfuls of blessed snow, I have no idea what he said.
Finally he reached down and lifted me bodily. He was strong, far stronger than he looked. “I don’t know if you’re overdoin’ it there, Doc,” he said, “but I can’t afford you to get sick. We got enough worries as it is. Come on.”
He helped me walk around to the back of the building and seated me on a concrete block free of snow. He sat down beside me, the knife again prominently displayed. I had a first clear impression of the outside world.
A great square building of gray concrete stood at my back. In front of me, trees with the foliage of late spring stood with their trunks deep in snow. The breeze on my forehead felt summertime hot. Beyond them, a great river or bay sat lazy in the sunlight. I saw waterfowl, thousands after thousands of them, floating placid on the calm surface.
“Might be our dinner there,” said West Virginia Seth. “How you feelin’?”
“I was sentenced to judicial sleep for six hundred years,” I said slowly. “That meant until 2621, and I’d have been dead long before that. I thought I had a deal. I was supposed to be put in abyssal sleep instead.”
“Lucky for you that you weren’t. Otherwise you’d now be real dead dead.”
“What happened?”
“To your deal? Damned if I know. But other stuff happened, a whole shit-pot full.” He went quiet.
“Are you going to tell me?” I said after a while. I was still scooping up snow, quietly, and transferring it to my burning mouth.
“I’m going to trade with you. You tell me what I need to know, I tell you stuff.” He still held the knife, but now he was using it to shave thin slices from a piece of cooked ham. “Before we start, just so you don’t get a wrong notion in your noggin, I’ll tell you the deal. I know what’s been goin’ on in the world for the past six years. You have no idea. You’re also in bad shape physically. For all we know, the next few days you fall down in a fit or burn up in a fever. S’pose you need help an’ I’m not here to give it. What you gonna do? Go to some house an’ ask? I don’t think so. They find out who you are, Dr. Oliver Guest the famous child murderer, they run screamin’ or they turn you in. I won’t do that. You may not believe it, but you need me as much as I need you.”
I realized there was important information in that statement, though I was not yet in a position to assess fully its significance.
“I didn’t know that you did need me,” I said.
“I do. We do. But don’t kid yourself. If I have to, I’ll gut an’ flay you.”
Anyone from my former life could have told Seth that it was not wise to make jokes at my expense. I am a person who takes himself seriously. However, I did not judge that he was joking. My uncouth West Virginia companion was deadly serious.
Caveat, Doctor. I would be very careful.
“You first,” he said. “Talk. Tell me all about telomod therapy.”
“All? The subject has evolved over many years of research.”
“Gimme the highlights, then. We got lots of time, and I’m in no hurry. Talk.”
“Where should I begin?”
“Assume I don’t know a thing.” He presented me with a handful of greasy ham shavings and a piece of dry bread. “I was a businessman, not a scientist.”
This was a businessman, this crude and dangerous ruffian? No. He was a businessman. And now?
In a world apparently gone mad, a little more insanity made no difference.