Frozen Solid: A Novel by James Tabor Read Free Book Online

had told them how, as a child, he’d survived by eating cats and dogs and rats. Now even those had grown scarce.
    “Someone will come for her after dark. There are fifteen million people in this city. Half of them are starving.”
    Two hours later, they stood on a twelfth-floor hotel room balcony.
    The light was failing, and through the haze Dhaka shimmered like a city under foul water. A putrefying reek rose even this high. Clots ofred taillights blocked every street and highway as far as they could see.
    “Behold the future,” Gerrin said.
    “London in fifty years, give or take,” Kendall said. He was a blocky man with a boxer’s face and an earl’s accent. His appearance, which included an ear like a handful of hamburger, came not from prizefighting but from four years of Oxford rugby. A geneticist, he was old and brilliant enough to have worked under Francis Crick and was, as well, the kind of Englishman who never made mention of that.
    “Paris, as well.
France
, for that matter,” Belleveau said. He had remained slim despite a childhood overly rich in every way. His skin was pale and, after kind, curious eyes, his best feature was lustrous curly black hair. Born to wealth, he had earned a medical degree from the Sorbonne and could have practiced obstetrics and gynecology in a gilt-edged
seizième arrondissement
office suite. He worked in New Delhi instead, caring for any and all, payment accepted but never requested. Mostly he delivered babies and, as frequently these days, aborted them. He had come, as had Kendall, to meet with Gerrin one last time before Triage launched. After that, there would be no stopping it, and thus no reason to meet again.
    “But for Triage.” Gerrin raised his tumbler of Laphroaig, and they touched glasses.
    They drank, watched the darkness congeal, and no one spoke. Sometimes there was only waiting. Then Gerrin’s phone chimed. He answered, listened, hung up. From the room’s wall safe he retrieved a Globalstar satellite phone. He walked out onto the balcony, adjusted the long antenna, input a string of numbers, waited. Again he listened, very briefly this time, hung up without saying a word.
    “The replacement has arrived,” he told the other two.
    “Thank God.” Kendall sounded like a man breathing air after surfacing from great depth. He drank, shook his head, looked straight out, away from Gerrin and Belleveau. “We’ve always been honest with each other, haven’t we? So I must tell you that I am afraid, a little anyway, now that we are almost there.”
    “No shame in that, Ian, given what we are about,” Gerrin said. “Galileo was lucky not to be burned at the stake.”
    “One wonders how many others
were
burned, doesn’t one?” Kendall asked.
    “Your countryman Edward Jenner,” Belleveau said. “Accused of serving Satan. Cutting children and scraping animal pus into their wounds. His own
son
. He was fortunate to escape the gallows.”
    “Given druthers, some might’ve drawn and quartered poor old Darwin,” Kendall said.
    “Still,” Gerrin said, and the others smiled.
    “I, for one, am glad that capital punishment is no longer used,” Belleveau said.
    “Tell that to Saddam Hussein. And bin Laden,” Kendall said.
    “We are
not
like them.” Gerrin was their firebrand, Belleveau their heart, Kendall their diplomat.
    “Of course not. Such a comparison is odious,” Belleveau agreed. “But the point is that their actions would be viewed as mischief compared to Triage.”
    “Without Triage, this planet is
doomed
.” Gerrin turned to look directly at them.
    “We all agree on that, David,” Kendall said, his hand on Gerrin’s shoulder. “Else we would not be here, would we?”
    “No. We would not.” Gerrin drank his whiskey, his expression softening. “I’m sorry. I think we are all a bit on edge.”
    “I wonder if this is how the men who flew to Hiroshima felt? Just before it dropped?” Belleveau asked.
    No one spoke for a moment. Then