The Relic Keeper (12 page)

Rei had been slightly rattled by Philip, although she hoped she hadn’t shown it. Perhaps there was some danger to Mathew. She heard the letters to the papers stating that the procedure that had resurrected him was unethical, but she’d never taken it too seriously. Philip obviously believed that this would get worse, while Rei was expecting it to all blow over. Then as she made her way into the building this morning she was greeted by evidence that things were getting more intense. She turned the corner towards the staff entrance when she heard a noise by the main door. A small crowd was gathered around the front of the clinic shouting at the people entering the building. She rushed through the small staff-door to the side of the main entrance and hurried to the inside of the front entrance, where her colleagues were grouped around the lobby beneath the atrium, alongside the flowing water of the central feature. She sidled up to Roy, an intern in paediatrics whom she knew slightly.

“What’s happening?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know, Reiko. It’s your department.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your patient, Lyal. The Christians are complaining about him.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve been bombarding the press all weekend, apparently, and these,” he motioned to the outside crowd, “arrived about an hour ago. I’ve been trying to leave for the last half hour, but security doesn’t think it’s safe to go. The police won’t come until something happens, and this lot of dinlows won’t leave.”

“What do they want?”

“As far as I know they want the project you’re on closed down and a ban on any further resuscitations.” They looked out at the crowd who were now shouting at the staff taking sanctuary in the lobby. As more employees arrived they were jeered and an egg was hurled, splattering on the glass of the door.

“Bloody Luddites,” said Roy. “I bet they’re the first to complain when they can’t get the latest pharmaceuticals. Ethics and progress, they just don’t mix.”

“No. I wonder what they would like us to do with Mathew,” Rei mused.

“Probably want to see him burned at the stake. And if we turned all the life support off, would they be happy? No, they’d be calling us murderers then.”

The crowd kept chanting and shouting and Rei walked back to the elevators. She had more pressing issues than some vociferous protesters today.

Rei spent the day working with the osteopath in Mathew’s room. The c-pac he had wasn’t allocated news coverage, and Rei doubted that Mathew could work it on his own anyway, so in the safety of the 54
^th
floor he remained oblivious to the demonstration below. But there would come a time when someone would speak to him. She was sure that James was genuine in his intentions, although he actually worried her slightly since this Brading character had linked him to extreme factionalism. She had to put her fears out of her mind for the time being to concentrate on Mathew’s recovery. That, after all, was her main purpose.

Mathew could just stand on his own and walk a few steps, although he needed a stick for support, but he was becoming far more mobile and the pain seemed to have subsided considerably. He was making exceptionally good progress and the possibility that he could leave the clinic in a matter of weeks rather months was now real. Rei could tell that he was beginning to recover because he was able to talk more about his past, rather than concentrate on his present condition. That would, however, bring out a whole new set of problems and she wondered how he was going to cope psychologically, especially when he left the safety of the clinic. And where would he go? What would he do for money? Could he get a job? There were a million questions that would have to wait. She reset the monitors and prepared to leave Mathew studying the details of twenty-first century living on the c-pac.

“Rei?”

“Yes Mathew.”

“I was just wondering, do you have any of my things?”

“Which things? Tell me what you need and I can get it for you.”

“Well, I don’t
need
anything, it’s just I wondered what had happened to things like my wallet, photographs, my wedding ring. Those sorts of things. I kept them on me all the time but I’ve no idea what would have happened to them.”

She had no answer. This man’s life had been left behind nearly three-quarters of a century ago, and a great deal had changed in that time. “I’m sorry Mathew. If the clinic kept those possessions I have no clue where they’d have deposited them. They would probably have been left with your wife.” She winced as she realised that she should not have said that. Paula was probably in a cryonic chamber herself. “I’ll try to find out,” she added. He smiled half-heartedly at her.

“I didn’t expect that you’d be able to find them, I just wondered. I had a picture of Jessie in my wallet. I took it at her second birthday, and I….” He laid his head back into the pillow.

“Should I get you anything, Mathew?”

“No,” he said quietly. “There’s nothing that I need that you or anyone else can get.” And he closed his eyes and commanded the lights to switch off.

Rei left him to his thoughts and headed off to try to do something constructive before she left. She took the stairs instead of the elevator and began the slow climb down 22 floors. The stairwell was hardly ever used and the emergency lighting was barely adequate. In the corners piles of rubbish left for years rotted away, and the occasional noise of scurrying animals hurried Rei’s pace. The smell was bad and it seemed unbelievable that beyond the sealed doors on each floor the clinic was superficially a pristine environment. Her shoes echoed as she walked down, although there would be no-one to hear the sound, and she counted the turns to ensure that she exited at the right floor. She wondered if this was how James slipped onto the 54
^th
floor, or had he managed to find a way of making the elevator stop at a level he was not authorised to go to. She doubted it; he’d need to be able to by-pass the retinal scanner to achieve that. She stumbled in the subdued light, bashing into a box, and wished that she’d found out if it was possible to use the elevator. She swore in Japanese and rubbed her bruised leg, then carried on down to the level she needed.

The door opened more easily than she’d expected and she walked into a darkened corridor. It seemed strange that for all the security and restricted areas in the clinic it was never assumed that people would use the old fire escape to connect floors. Casually she brushed some of the dust and cobwebs from the stairwell and walked slowly down the passageway. There were a series of doors positioned along both walls. They were of standard size, but fireproofed and heavier than any of the others in the building. Rei took the small slip of paper from her pocket and studied the plan. Taken from one of the files that James had managed to extract from their attempt to search the archives several days ago, it listed the layout of the archives, and by cross-referencing it against the old building’s codes she had been able to work out the security codes for each room. There was nothing of the technicalities she was used to; these doors simply had a keypad with a 7-digit code to each. But then there was no reason for high security levels here. There was nothing here less than about 40 years old, and most of the people that these records related to were dead now; although at least one of them was now back in the world.

She let herself into the room she needed and looked up at the series of racks that held the ancient boxes packed with paper files dating from the previous century. Each was categorised into years, months, and then alphabetically by name within that. In theory you should be able to look up the name on the database, but that system had failed to exist years previously. With no current information on the year that she needed it was going to take a while. She walked along the rack looking at the files.

“Well, Mathew died 14
^th
June 1999, and Paula was alive then, so let’s start at June 1999,” she said to herself out loud. She took the box down and flicked through the files. Finding nothing she went to the next one, and then the next after that.

There was not an entry for every month of year, and there were few names starting L in any of them, but even so it took four hours for Rei to work her way through the possible files in the archive room. Although she had no file for a Paula Lyal, she had found an extra six people put into cryonic suspension by Live Right. She made a note of their details on her c-pac and slipped the files back where they came from. So perhaps Paula was not here, or maybe she had changed her mind and cancelled suspension, although Mathew seemed to have been positive that she would be preserved.

Rei had been expecting to find some evidence and was slightly unsure of what do in the lack of any. She looked at the six names on her c-pac. Could one of these be the file she was looking for? Was it possible that the name was changed? She could look at the present files for these and see if there was any correspondence. She accessed her patient file, input her pass-code, and asked for lists with the names in any files. A selection returned and she scanned them for anything that would help. Four of the names were listed as NIL DATA: EXCEPTIONAL ARCHIVE PATIENT: REGISTERED: NO ADMINISTRATION: NO FURTHER ACTION: DO NOT REMOVE FILE: Snr ADMINISTRATION Dr TM WARWICK. These must be the ones still held in suspension, she thought. Which left two people unaccounted for: Andrews, S T, and Palmer, M P S. She input the details into the system. The files for these were short. The message read: PATIENT REMOVED. ACCESS RESTRICTED, then listed the year of admission and the initials.

“Removed to where?” she whispered looking at the notes. There was no date nor was there any indication of the whereabouts of the rest of the files. She deactivated her c-pac and left the cold grey room. She clicked the door shut and noticed the layers of dust that fell from the handle as it locked. As she walked back to the stair well she passed the lines of silent doors guarding the archives of decades of work. All of these were bolted shut as they had been for years, but as she approached one of the doors something struck her as strange. The handle was clean, and apart from the room she had just left, it was the only one that was. There was little reason to come down here; she had not even bothered to check that the area would be empty, yet this door had obviously been opened recently. She stared at the handle for a second, and even tried it in case it was open. It wasn’t. She checked her list of codes and found the one relating to the room. She input it and the latch clicked open. She instinctively checked the corridor, and then entered the room.

Deon was glad to be inside the clinic, and kept a low profile. He pushed trolleys and wheeled equipment and patients between wards. Occasionally he’d stop to check that there was no more blood coming from his nose, or to take a painkiller. But mostly he did his work and hoped to leave soon. He’d spent half an hour getting cleaned up once he was inside, and now he focused on his duties.

He hadn’t been expecting the greeting he’d received as he approached the clinic. At first he’d thought there had been a fire because of the people standing in the street outside the building, but as he came nearer he heard the chants and jeers aimed at staff entering.

“What’s happening?” he’d asked an woman carrying a bag in one hand and hurling insults at the security guards who stood outside the large glass doors, uncertain what to do.

“This is the place where they’ve got that man,” she shouted, although Deon was standing only a few feet away. “The one they brought back to life.”

Deon played dumb, and asked if it wasn’t a great medical breakthrough.

“Playing bloody God, those doctors are,” she shouted at him. “It’s bad enough that they decide who’s born, now they’re going to dictate whether or not we should die. That’s not their decision.”

“You’re quite right, it’s not.” Deon looked around to see who had spoken and saw a short man of about 40 dressed in black. “This is not the sort of medical breakthrough that people should be striving for,” the man said in an accent that Deon thought didn’t suit his clothes. “Think about the money that could be spent on the deserving poor, instead of this creature. And consider his soul, ripped from wherever it was and forced to Earth for a doctor’s whim.”

Deon faltered a little, he wasn’t sure what to say or do. This wasn’t how he saw the situation at all.

“I suspect that they haven’t told him what they’ve done,” continued the man. “Let the departed rest in peace, that’s what I say.”

“What if there’s a reason that he’s there, though?” suggested Deon. “Jesus brought Lazarus back, and he was resurrected himself from the dead.”

“Well my friend,” said the man, “firstly, I don’t believe that this man is Jesus. Do you?”

“Well no I’m not saying that, but…”

“And secondly, what do you think happened to Lazarus when he was brought back, eh?”

Deon had never thought of the consequences of a resurrection. He wondered what Caroline would do if she were still alive. She had always been an advocator of the preservation of life; surely she’d see the monumental importance of the miracle that had occurred here.

“This man,” he said loudly, “has seen God; he’s passed through heaven and returned. Think of the things he could teach us.”

The woman turned round to face him. “You’re as bad as they are,” she said pointing at the clinic. “Why don’t you just fuck off?” Deon looked around at the small crowd. These people, mostly middle-aged and, well, ‘normal’ looking, seemed so animated in their hatred. He felt nervous and alone, and wanted to leave. He wanted to be in the apartment away from these strange people. He could see the door to the clinic and the road that led away and he stood wondering which way to go. There was no help, no intervention, he felt trapped and confused, and the noise from the crowd started to become a cacophony of abstract sound. The people were more like animals, bound by the rules of the pack, and he was alone here amongst them, and if he didn’t move they’d turn on him. He could see the truth but they were blinkered. He remembered Caroline telling him that the non-believers would not see the truth, nor the evil of their ways. He could hear a sound, high-pitched above the cries of the pack around him, and he felt his body pushed as a cry went up. Vaguely, through the mist that fogged across his senses he could see the cordons of police charge the small crowd. He became slightly aware of the screams, the batons smashed against arms and skulls, the writhing figures trying to escape as the police kicked and punched them where they lay. A smear of something wet and red splashed on his hand and he stared at it, not comprehending. He felt a pain on his leg and then realised he was on the ground. He turned and a foot connected with his stomach and something hard smashed into his face. He half raised himself and felt another blow to his side, then a hand caught his shoulder. He tried to brush it away, but was unable to, and felt himself get dragged along the floor. He thrashed about trying to connect with something as someone held his arms down. And somewhere he heard a voice.