Dead Hunt (6 page)

Sitting on the mantle above a giant fireplace
was an old fiddle that had belonged to Heslin's father.
Occasionally, when he needed to clear his thoughts, Heslin would
play the old fiddle, but that was a rare occasion as he was usually
too busy working in his lab, trying to perfect his formula. The
rest of the pictures in the massive lounge area were all of Robin.
There was one old wedding photograph with a much younger Heslin and
his pretty bride but the other pictures were of his sweet, little
Robin.

Heslin hoped to acquire some of Bell's
inspiration by building his lab on his own Beinn Breagh, which was
Gaelic for Beautiful Mountain. Gaelic was a dying language on the
island, save for a few small communities buried deep in the
highlands. Heslin understood some of the Scot Gaelic words and he
marveled at the fact that Scottish musicians often traveled here to
learn the Cape Breton style of fiddling, which remained practically
unchanged by time. Cape Breton fiddling was said to be closer to
original Scottish fiddle music than in Scotland itself.

On a quite summer night, Heslin could
sometimes hear the faint sounds of a fiddle, carried by the warm
summer breeze. Other times, he heard the majestic drone of highland
pipes. Both were music to his ears and a welcomed distraction.

Heslin’s lab, controlled by Robin and filled
with modern equipment, was a stark contradiction to Bell’s modest
laboratory, forever captured in time at the Bell Museum located in
the village of Baddeck, a place Heslin occasionally visited for
inspiration. Unlike Bell’s modest lab, Heslin's was a sterile,
clinical white, lit by huge florescent lights and flickering
computer monitors. He had everything a modern laboratory needed.
Well, almost everything.

At first, just like all his junior lab
assistants when they first arrived on the mountain, he too had been
taken aback by the sheer size and beauty of the old log cabin,
standing proud on the mountain with a million dollar view. The
spruce and pine trees seemed to hug the giant log building as if
the lodge was meant to be there. It was beautiful and breathtaking.
And, just like his assistants, he quickly grew to hate the fact
that this kind of beauty and seclusion had a very steep price:
modern conveniences, or lack thereof.

No cable, no phone, and no running water
except for a small electric pump that drew water from an outdoor
well, and worst of all, no proper toilet. An outhouse stood ten
yards from the back door and proved to have two major flaws: In the
summertime it smelled really, really bad. And it was freezing cold
in the winter.

When the construction of the lab was
completed on the main lodge, Heslin had planned on installing
proper facilities, but with the lab ready, every day a new idea or
a new experiment took hold, it pushed further renovations
aside.

Now, three years later, Heslin still used an
old diesel generator as backup power for the lodge. The main power
was supplied by massive solar panels. A temporary hot water shower
was installed in one of the upstairs rooms by running rows of
copper pipe across the roof. In the summer time, the sun baking the
pipes on the black shingles provided them with all the hot water
anyone could ever need. In the wintertime the pipes had to be
drained and everyone settled for sponge baths.

Solar panels supplied enough electricity to
keep the lab warm during the winter, but Heslin had to manually
pump water from the deep well because the sub zero temperatures of
a typical Margaree winter froze the waterline; and every winter he
still had to freeze his ass off in the outhouse. Heslin hated that
outhouse. He hated it so much that some days he prayed for
constipation just so he would not have to go to that disgusting
place. But, his steady diet of cold coffee made sure that prayer
was never answered.

With his hand freshly wrapped in too much
gauze, Heslin headed to the lounge area and poured himself a
scotch. He swallowed it in one drink then refilled his glass.
Distraught with failure, he flopped in the big Lazy Boy chair and
stared at the picture of Bell hanging above the fireplace. He took
another drink, stood up, and walked towards the picture.

"Well Alex," he said to the picture, "now
what do I do?"

Heslin stared at the picture as if he was
waiting for an answer. The picture said nothing. Heslin gently
picked up his father's old fiddle and tucked it under his whiskered
chin. He fumbled with the bow, the gauze on his hand making it
difficult to tighten the bow or properly hold it. With a soft,
quiet breath, Heslin gently pulled the bow across the strings.

The once quiet room was now filled with sound
as Heslin played the old Scottish tune, “Neil Gow's Lament for the
Loss of His Second Wife”.

Playing the tune always seemed to clear
Heslin’s cluttered mind and soothe his feelings of failure. As he
played, Bell’s picture seemed to take on a new look.

The picture itself never changed, only
Heslin's image of it. In his mind, Bell seemed to smile in
appreciation.

Birds and crickets seemed to appreciate it as
well, for their singing became louder, drifting in the open windows
in harmony to Heslin’s playing. The sound of the little creek that
flowed just a few feet from Heslin’s lab before traveling down to
the valley also seemed to bubble a little bit louder. A symphony of
nature joined the gentle sounds of Heslin’s fiddle.

As he played, Heslin's mind drifted back to a
time three years earlier when he’d sat looking across a large, oak
conference table with the twelve men he had invited to hear his
proposal. They were all wearing tailored suits and expensive
watches, obvious signs of wealth. Each knew of Heslin’s recent
loss, but when a Nobel Prize winning scientist requested a meeting,
especially one whose last proposal had generated a huge return on
investment, only a fool would not attend that meeting.

It was at this meeting they quickly learned
his new proposal was far beyond anything they could have ever
imagined.

CHAPTER 4 – The Proposal

“So what you are saying, Professor Heslin,”
one of them finally broke the cold silence that swallowed the room,
“is that you want to bring the dead back to life? Sounds more like
science fiction than a business investment.”

Several chuckles followed. Heslin stood up
abruptly, silencing the chuckles. His thick, wavy hair, once a rich
brown, was now a bright shade of gray and made Heslin look older
than his forty years. He stared intently at the man for the
briefest of seconds, but it was enough to make the man shrink in
his chair. Heslin broke his piercing stare then looked at the men
with smiling eyes as he began the speech he had prepared for
exactly this moment.

“Science fiction. I’ve heard that before,”
Heslin’s lips curled into a boyish smirk. “From scientists no
less.”

The men smiled with him, the tension in the
room subsiding.

“Gentlemen,” Heslin continued in a commanding
voice, “I could go on and on about how the mere thought of being
able to hear a human voice across hundreds of miles on copper wires
was thought to be mere science fiction; yet Bell created his
telephone, and let’s not forget Marconi. Sending messages across
the ocean without the wires! Preposterous!”

Heslin paused a practiced pause, scanning the
eyes of his audience. “How many inventions have we witnessed since
their time? Artificial hearts, the iron lung, computers, cell
phones, satellites… The list of science fiction turned reality goes
on and on.”

Heslin paused as he pulled a tiny locket from
his vest. He opened it carefully, glanced at it, and smiled. None
of the men dared interrupt him. He snapped the locket shut.

“I’m sure everyone in this room believes it
is the death of my little Robin that is fueling this project.”

The men nodded hesitantly.

“It is.” Another practiced pause. “No parent
should have to bury their children.”

He let that thought linger in the air then
turned his attention to the man to his left.

“John, you know exactly how I feel right now.
Didn’t you lose a child less than a year ago?”

“Yes,” John answered. “Anna, she died of
leukemia.”

“She was only seven years old wasn’t she?”
Heslin softly asked with sympathetic eyes. It was a redundant
question, Heslin had done his homework. Not only did he already
know the answer, he had picked each of these dozen men for a
specific reason, a reason other than their check books.

John nodded a yes and Heslin continued.
“Imagine, if you will, that somebody could have waved a magical
wand and given you your Anna back. What would you have given to be
able to hold her again?”

John didn’t have to think what he would give,
his answer came immediately: “Anything. Everything.”

“Anything and everything,” Heslin repeated it
slowly. “In fact, I believe every man in this room has a child.
Imagine for a moment if your child was snatched from your life like
Robin was snatched from mine or Anna from John’s. What would you
give to have your child back? To have the power to be able to hold
your precious, sweet and innocent child in your arms once
again?”

All eyes focused on Heslin, hanging intently
on his every word.

“Gentlemen, I do not have a magic wand,” he
slammed the written proposal on the desk, startling the twelve men.
“And I don’t deal in science fiction! When I succeed,” he deepened
his voice emphasizing his words, “and I will succeed, each and
every one of you will have that power.”

Heslin could see he had their interest, so he
turned their attention to the more practical applications of his
proposal. He understood these men well enough to know that
“practical application” to them meant making money.

“While every medical center struggles to meet
rising organ demands, we will have the power to all but eliminate
the need for donors. We will have the power to repair and revive
the patients’ own organs.”

Heslin sat back in his chair, clasping his
hands behind his head. “My colleagues think I am a madman.”

He smiled. The men smiled with him.

“Oh yes, they think I have completely lost my
mind.” he paused with a devilish smile. “Of course, they said the
exact same thing right before I won the Nobel Prize. People live,
people die, accidents happen and diseases kill. Such is life.”

Heslin leaned forward. “There is no reason
for a lot of things in this world, but yet these tragedies continue
to happen. It does not have to be that way! We could have the power
to change that! We will have the power to add years to someone's
life, or even bring back a loved one from an untimely death.
And…”

Heslin ended his performance with one final
pause, then added, “With this power we will be able to charge
whatever the market will bear.”

He let his last sentence hang in the air.
Life was a beautiful commodity to sell and, with hundreds of
thousands of people not quite ready for death, the market would
bear a lot. As the men talked amongst themselves in hushed
whispers, Heslin swore he could see dollar signs in their eyes. It
was only a few minutes before the men unanimously decided to invest
in his unique and rather bizarre proposal. It was a gamble to say
the least, but if anyone could pull it off, they knew Heslin had
the drive and expertise to do exactly that. And, if he did succeed,
they would be far beyond the mere cutting edge of science. They
would be reinventing it and making more money than they could ever
imagine. They agreed to fund his research for the next three
years.

When the last of the men left the room,
Heslin pulled the tiny locket from his vest pocket once again and
lovingly stroked the picture.

“Soon,” he whispered to the picture.
“Soon.”

The clouds that cluttered Heslin’s mind
dissolved and a new spirit took hold. He remembered the mess he’d
made in the lab, so he promptly returned his father’s old fiddle to
its case, grabbed his scotch and headed back to the lab. He stopped
at the microscope to dispose of the ruined culture dish when, like
a young boy who finds his father’s Playboy Magazine, he just had to
look. He leaned over the eyepiece and instantly bolted up straight,
dropping his glass of scotch. It bounced on the floor, throwing the
scotch at Heslin’s feet, but the heavy glass did not break.

It rolled to a stop as Heslin, wide eyed,
fumbled with the sleeve of his lab coat and stared at his watch.
6:49 A.M..

The corners of his mouth turned up in a tiny
smile.

Heslin dared another look. This time he
stared more intently into the eyepiece. Again he stood up straight.
His tiny smile now replaced with a wide, foolish-looking grin.

“We did it, Robin!” he announced proudly. “We
did it! The formula works!”

Heslin danced around his lab in joyful
hysteria, completely oblivious of the translucent, green liquid
oozing out the open window. Tracks of green ran down the outside of
the lodge, pooling into a little, green puddle. But gravity wasn’t
quite finished with Heslin’s green liquid. Not yet.

It pulled the liquid out of the little pool
and down the sloped landscape, swerving around tiny rocks,
following the path of least resistance. At the head of the green
trail, a tiny drop of Heslin’s creation was poised over the edge of
the small creek, threatening to jump. It just sat there, like a
nervous diver too scared to take the final plunge. Another bubble
of green raced down the last incline and slammed into the timid
diver, pushing it over the edge. It hit the creek with the tiniest
of splashes, barely creating a ripple, and began its long journey
to the valley below.

Heslin danced around his lab in triumphant
victory, but his dance was cut short by a sharp pain in his stomach
that doubled him over. A few seconds later, the pain subsided. As
he stood up he finally noticed the open window and the green stain
above it.