The Fountain of Age by Nancy Kress Read Free Book Online Page A

Donovan said suddenly. “But only two times, like you said. Tuesday and yesterday afternoon. What are you after here, doc? You saying there’s something going around? Is it dangerous?”
    Henry, holding onto the walker, turned to stare at him. “You felt it, too?”
    “I just told you I did! Now you tell me—is this some new catching, dangerous-like disease?”
    The man was frightened, and covering fear with belligerence. Did he even understand what a ‘physicist’ was? He seemed to have taken Henry for some sort of specialized physician. What on Earth was Bob Donovan doing with Anna Chernov?
    He had his answer in the way she dismissed them both. “No, Bob, there’s no dangerous disease. Dr. Erdmann isn’t in medicine. Now if you don’t mind, I’m very tired and I must eat or the nurse will scold me. Perhaps you’d better leave now, and maybe I’ll see you both around the building when I’m discharged.” She smiled wearily.
    Henry saw the look on Donovan’s face, a look he associated with undergraduates: hopeless, helpless lovesickness. Amid those wrinkles and sags, the look was ridiculous. And yet completely sincere, poor bastard.
    “Thank you again,” Henry said, and left as quickly as his walker would allow. How dare she treat him like a princess dismissing a lackey? And yet . . . he’d been the intruder on her world, that feminine arena of flowers and ballet and artificial courtesy. A foreign, somehow repulsive world. Not like the rigorous masculine brawl of physics.
    But he’d learned that she’d felt the “energy,” too. And so had Donovan, and at the exact same times as Henry. Several more data points for . . . what?
    He paused on his slow way to the elevator and closed his eyes.

    When Henry reached his apartment, Carrie was awake. She sat with two strangers, who both rose as Henry entered, at the table where Henry and Ida had eaten dinner for fifty-years. The smell of coffee filled the air.
    “I made coffee,” Carrie said. “I hope you don’t mind . . . This is Detective Geraci and Detective Washington. Dr. Erdmann, this is his apartment . . .” She trailed off, looking miserable. Her hair hung in uncombed tangles and some sort of black make-up smudged under her eyes. Or maybe just tiredness.
    “Hello, Dr. Erdmann,” the male detective said. He was big, heavily muscled, with beard shadow even at this hour—just the sort of thuggish looks that Henry most mistrusted. The black woman was much younger, small and neat and unsmiling. “We had a few follow-up questions for Ms. Vesey about last night.”
    Henry said, “Does she need a lawyer?”
    “That’s up to your granddaughter, of course,” at the same moment that Carrie said, “I told them I don’t want a lawyer,” and Henry was adding, “I’ll pay for it.” In the confusion of sentences, the mistake about “granddaughter” went uncorrected.
    Geraci said, “Were you here when Ms. Vesey arrived last night?”
    “Yes,” Henry said.
    “And can you tell us your whereabouts yesterday afternoon, sir?”
    Was the man a fool? “Certainly I can, but surely you don’t suspect me , sir, of killing Officer Peltier?”
    “We don’t suspect anyone at this point. We’re asking routine questions, Dr. Erdmann.”
    “I was in Redborn Memorial from mid-afternoon until just before Carrie arrived here. The Emergency Room, being checked for a suspected heart attack. Which,” he added hastily, seeing Carrie’s face, “I did not have. It was merely severe indigestion brought on by the attack of food poisoning St. Sebastian suffered yesterday afternoon.”
    Hah! Take that, Detective Thug!
    “Thank you,” Geraci said. “Are you a physician, Dr. Erdmann?”
    “No. A doctor of physics.”
    He half-expected Geraci to be as ignorant about that as Bob Donovan had been, but Geraci surprised him. “Experimental or theoretical?”
    “Theoretical. Not, however, for a long time. Now I teach.”
    “Good for you.” Geraci rose, Officer