The Fountain of Age by Nancy Kress Read Free Book Online

He wore an ill-fitting sports coat over a red T-shirt and jeans. There seemed to be grease under his fingernails—grease, in St. Sebastian’s? Henry would have taken him for part of the maintenance staff except that he looked too old, although vigorous and walker-free. Henry wished him at the devil. This was going to be difficult enough without an audience.
    “Miss Chernov, please forgive the intrusion, especially so early, but I think this is important. My name is Henry Erdmann, and I’m a resident on Three.”
    “Good morning,” she said, with the same practiced, detached graciousness she’d shown the nurse. “This is Bob Donovan.”
    “Hi,” Donovan said, not smiling.
    “Are you connected in any way with the press, Mr. Erdmann? Because I do not give interviews.”
    “No, I’m not. I’ll get right to the point, if I may. Yesterday I had an attack of nausea, just as you did, and you also, Mr. Donovan. Evelyn Krenchnoted told me.”
    Donovan rolled his eyes. Henry would have smiled at that if he hadn’t felt so tense.
    He continued, “I’m not sure the nausea was food poisoning. In my case, it followed a . . . a sort of attack of a quite different sort. I felt what I can only describe as a bolt of energy burning along my nerves, very powerfully and painfully. I’m here to ask if you felt anything similar.”
    Donovan said, “You a doctor?”
    “Not an M.D. I’m a physicist.”
    Donovan scowled savagely, as if physics were somehow offensive. Anna Chernov said, “Yes, I did, Dr. Erdmann, although I wouldn’t describe it as ‘painful.’ It didn’t hurt. But a ‘bolt of energy along the nerves’—yes. It felt like—” She stopped abruptly.
    “Yes?” Henry said. His heart had started a slow, irregular thump in his chest. Someone else had also felt that energy.
    But Anna declined to say what it had felt like. Instead she turned her head to the side. “Bob? Did you feel anything like that?”
    “Yeah. So what?”
    “I don’t know what,” Henry said. All at once, leaning on the walker, his knees felt wobbly. Anna noticed at once. “Bob, bring Dr. Erdmann the chair, please.”
    Donovan got up from the chair, dragged it effortlessly over to Henry, and stood sulkily beside a huge bouquet of autumn-colored chrysanthemums, roses, and dahlias. Henry sank onto the chair. He was at eye level with the card to the flowers, which said from the abt company. get well soon!
    Anna said, “I don’t understand what you’re driving at, Dr. Erdmann. Are you saying we all had the same disease and it wasn’t food poisoning? It was something with a . . . a surge of energy followed by nausea?”
    “Yes, I guess I am.” He couldn’t tell her about Jim Peltier. Here, in this flower-and-antiseptic atmosphere, under Donovan’s pathetic jealousy and Anna’s cool courtesy, the whole idea seemed unbelievably wild. Henry Erdmann did not like wild ideas. He was, after all, a scientist .
    But that same trait made him persist a little longer. “Had you felt anything like that ever before, Miss Chernov?”
    “Anna,” she said automatically. “Yes, I did. Three times before, in fact. But much more minor, and with no nausea. I think they were just passing moments of dozing off, in fact. I’ve been laid up with this leg for a few days now, and it’s been boring enough that I sleep a lot.”
    It was said without self-pity, but Henry had a sudden glimpse of what being “laid up” must mean to a woman for whom the body, not the mind, had been the lifelong source of achievement, of pleasure, of occupation, of self. What, in fact, growing old must mean to such a woman. Henry had been more fortunate; his mind was his life source, not his aging body, and his mind still worked fine.
    Or did it, if it could hatch that crackpot hypothesis? What would Feynman, Teller, Gell-Mann have said? Embarrassment swamped him. He struggled to rise.
    “Thank you, Miss Chernov, I won’t take up any more of your—”
    “I felt it, too,”