Forever (45 page)

Ducking down, Colonel Valerio ran to open
the passenger door. From inside, someone passed him a red-and-white
moulded plastic container, much like an oversized thermos fitted
with a handle. Holding it in one hand, he used his other to help a
small woman in a white lab coat climb out. Then, while the pilot
shut his machine down, the four of them, leaning forward to avoid
the rotor wash, quickly made their way to the nearest stairs and
disappeared.

Stephanie looked across the table at
Eduardo.

'That was Dr Vassiltchikov,' she said
thoughtfully.

Eduardo didn't have to turn around to look.
'Yes,' he said.

Stephanie frowned. 'She was carrying
something, like a thermos. What's in it?'

'Medication.'

'But what for?'

'Long ago,' he explained, 'on a trip through
the Amazon, my mother and father caught a very rare opportunistic
infection. It is incurable.'

'Incurable!'

He nodded, incurable and deadly. Luckily, Dr
Vassiltchikov was with them, and formulated their medication.
Unfortunately, without their daily doses, they could die.' He added
softly, 'Now you know why we have the hospital facilities with the
treatment rooms aboard.'

'And the medication has to be flown in?'

'Each and every day.' He nodded.

'But surely they must have enough of it
stockpiled!'

Eduardo shook his head. 'You do not
understand. It has to be manufactured fresh daily, and used within
a twelve-hour period. Otherwise, it loses its potency.'

And Stephanie thought: Medication? Or the
elixir of eternal youth? I wonder . . . which is it? But instead of
asking Eduardo further questions, she said, 'Oh-oh.'

'What's the matter?'

She pushed back her chair and smiled
sheepishly. 'I have to use the powder room. I'll be right back. You
don't have to get up.'

But he proved himself a gentleman all the
same, only sitting back down as Stephanie drifted aft. Once certain
she was out of his sight, her footsteps quickened purposefully.
Hurrying inside, she gripped the gold banister and went down the
stairs which Zarah, Ernesto, Colonel Valerio, and Dr Vassiltchikov
had just used. From the deck below, she could hear fragments of
their receding conversation.

Grateful for the thick carpeting which
muffled her footsteps, she hurried after them. When she reached the
deck below, she could see them walking down a corridor towards a
flood of refracted brilliant white light which was shot through
with rainbows.

She recognised the source of that
splintering light at once. It had to come from the midship atrium:
the effect of its soaring crystal columns and skylight was
unmistakable. Then, seeing Colonel Valerio turning to look back,
she quickly ducked around the corner and flattened herself against
the panelled bulkhead.

She counted to fifteen, then edged her head
around the corner for another peek. The foursome was descending the
atrium's curving staircase now, the little doctor in the lead and
Colonel Valerio, carrying the container, bringing up the rear.

Stephanie waited until his head disappeared
from sight, and then strode briskly forward. Now, if only I don't
run across anyone, she thought hopefully - and of course, at that
very moment, a door opened a mere twenty feet ahead of her.

A young crewman stepped out.

Stephanie forced herself to keep walking
towards him at a pace which signalled that she was in a hurry and
had a clear destination in mind. He shut the door and walked
towards her, the light from a sconce momentarily shining through
his curly black hair.

Too young to have any authority, Stephanie
thought with relief. He won't question my roaming. As they passed,
shoulder to shoulder, she acknowledged him with an automatic,
reserved kind of smile.

After a few moments, she glanced back over
her shoulder. He was opening another lacquered door and going
inside a cabin. She waited to hear the door snap shut behind him,
then sped up again until she reached the octagonal, light-flooded
atrium.

Now her pace slowed and she approached with
caution. Turned a full 360-degree circle, eyes sweeping every
direction.

There was no one in sight, but from below
drifted the faint murmur of receding voices. Best she hurry lest
she lose them.

Silently she trotted down the wide, carpeted
stairs. She found the massive, fluted crystal columns all around
intimidating rather than stately. When she reached the deck below,
Stephanie's eyes flicked here and there, systematically checking
corridor, doorways, rounded corners. She was relieved to find no
one in sight - and herself suddenly in familiar territory. She had
been here earlier with Eduardo, and knew exactly where she was.

This corridor was short, and at the end of
it was a set of swinging double doors with glass inserts.

The entrance to the shipboard hospital!

She hesitated, all her senses on high alert.
If she remembered correctly, the hospital only had that one set of
double doors; she could not recall having seen any other entrances
or exits. At least, that had been her impression. Perhaps there was
another way in and out - possibly through Dr Vassiltchikov's
forbidden laboratory?

Stephanie's heart stuttered and tension,
like sharp little pinches, twitched in her arms.

She stared at the doors. Dared she slip in
and spy on whatever they were doing? And what if she was discovered
keeping her reluctant hosts under surveillance - what then?

She told herself that some things were
better left unanswered. Still, she couldn't help but cast a longing
glance up the thickly carpeted stairs: the urge to turn around and
flee right up them was overwhelming. Then, as her eyes flicked back
to the double door, her heart really started to jump. Through the
inset glass, she could see someone approaching the door from
inside.

Someone was leaving the hospital! Would see
her when he or she came out - perhaps had seen her already!

Like lightning, she darted back out of
sight, flattening herself behind the fluted rainbow distortions of
the nearest crystal column. She held her breath, aware of her
clammy hands, the nervous tic in her fingers. Would she be seen? Or
would the clear, dazzling column of icy light protect her?

Tense seconds ticked by with excruciating
slowness. Nothing . . . nothing - and then she heard the hospital
doors swing open and flap shut again, and moments later she saw
-

- Colonel Valerio! Striding past her and
starting up the stairs. So close she could have reached around the
column and tapped him on the shoulder, could smell his spicy
aftershave lotion. Surely he must see her! Smell her! Somehow sense
her presence -

But he continued climbing the shallow stairs
with that ramrod military bearing of his.

Relief was painful and swollen in her chest.
The instant he disappeared from sight, she slid out from behind the
column and swiftly tiptoed down the corridor to the hospital. Just
outside the doors, she stopped and flattened herself against the
wall. Then, cautiously, she peered in through one of the glass
insets.

The coast was clear. Could it be? Well, it
was - at least as far as she could see from here.

She drew a deep breath, gently pushed one
door open, and stuck her head inside. Quickly she glanced around in
all directions.

Incredible! The coast really was clear!

She slipped inside on mouse feet, careful to
let the door shut without so much as a whisper. A wrinkling of her
nose dismissed the medicinal odour of antiseptics; through a
half-open doorway she could hear voices conversing softly.

Like the proverbial moth drawn to the flame,
so too was Stephanie drawn to that door. She peered through the
crack between the hinges with one eye, her hand crawling to her
mouth, the index finger nervously, soundlessly, thrumming her lower
lip.

She saw Zarah and Ernesto waiting by the
hatch leading to the treatment room while Dr Vassiltchikov was bent
over the computer console, busy punching keys, the red-and-white
thermos container on the counter beside her. As the little doctor's
scarlet-tipped fingers darted over the keyboard, the colour video
monitors built into the wall came on, one by one, like orderly
screens in an electronics emporium - or mission control at
NASA.

Stephanie held her breath, her attention
riveted. Each 27-inch, high-definition screen - three rows of six,
eighteen in all - showed a different angle of the same . . .

. . . treatment room? Art gallery? Which was
it?

Stephanie's eyes scanned the monitors - top
row, left to right; centre, right to left; bottom, left to right -
seeing eighteen views of the same streamlined, monochromatic
cocoon. Soft glowing pools of light. Beige, geometrically sheared
seamless carpet. Two side-by-side grey leather chaises, each
slightly different, contoured to a specific human form. She could
not help but notice how flawlessly everything had been put
together, so that an almost Oriental kind of serenity had been
conjured from the hardest surfaces and roughest textures: lacquer,
leather, bronze, steel. And hanging on the textured beige walls,
art. Major art. Museum of Modern Art-type art. A de Kooning, a
large Helen Frankenthaler, a Hans Hofmann, and a very long and
narrow Kenneth Nolan.

Strangely, it was not the living trio but
the televised, closed-circuit pictures which hypnotised Stephanie
and held her in thrall - perhaps, she thought, because she was
subconsciously using the familiarity of television to still her
agitation, her fear of discovery?

Suddenly a voice caught her attention and
her eyes abandoned the monitors, flicked down towards Dr
Vassiltchikov, who was saying something - in Portuguese or German,
Stephanie couldn't be sure which. She saw Ernesto turn slightly to
murmur a reply, and then heard the musical scale of Zarah's soft
glissando laughter.

With all the flourish of a concert pianist
hitting the final note, Dr Vassiltchikov tapped one last key and
picked up the plastic thermos by its handle. Leaving the video
monitors switched on, she joined Zarah and Ernesto at the hatch,
where she took a piece of plastic, like a credit card, out of her
lab coat pocket and fed it into a slot by the door. There was a
moment's wait, then came a stanza of soft electronic beeps, a
yellow light blinked on, and then a green and - low and behold -
the hatch slid aside.

Dr Vassiltchikov waited, hand extended,
until her card slid back out and she pocketed it and led the way
in, stepping over the sill of the open hatch on thin, bird-like
legs. Stephanie glanced at the monitors, but the hatch obviously
did not lead directly into that room. Her gaze flicked back to the
hatch. Zarah was tugging off her silver turban, shaking out her
rich head of honey-blonde hair. Ernesto took her hand, helped her
step through the hatch, and then followed. To Stephanie's surprise,
the hatch did not automatically close, but remained open.

Relaxing slightly, she moved away from
behind the half-open door and peered around it, her eyes
instinctively sweeping the walls and ceiling for security cameras.
Seeing none, she took a deep breath, swiftly made up her mind, and
hurried inside. She stopped right in front of the video monitors,
close enough to make out the smallest details on the
high-definition pictures. She listened intently, but the voices she
heard coming from the hatch were receding, seemed far away now. She
glanced back at the monitors. Still nothing but an empty room.

Perhaps she was wasting her time? Imagining
a mountain when she was seeing a molehill?

She straightened her spine determinedly. No.
She was not wasting her time. Every sharply-honed instinct, every
bone in her reporter's body knew, knew instinctively and for a
certainty, that she was on the right track.

A sudden movement on the video monitors
caught her attention. The trio was entering the room, all eighteen
images transmitted from different heights and angles, so that with
the sound turned off, Stephanie had the peculiar feeling that she
was watching a silent movie shot with eighteen different
cameras.

Every movement - Dr Vassiltchikov setting
down the thermos on a sleek brushed-steel table, Zarah and Ernesto
casually starting to get undressed, all the while keeping up a
conversation Stephanie couldn't hear, the way Zarah picked up a set
of headphones, pressed one foam cup against an ear and frowned
slightly until she was satisfied with what she was hearing
-everything, every last movement and gesture had that air of
routine, of having been performed many hundreds, perhaps thousands
of times before. Even the way Dr Vassiltchikov handled the thermos,
as if she were some priestess performing an oft-repeated
ritual.

Abruptly, one of the screens began
malfunctioning so that it blinked and sent the picture into
oscillating waves. Stephanie did her best to ignore the flashes,
and kept her eyes on a close-up of the thermos.

Not that it was a thermos, really. She could
tell now that it was shaped differently from the usual tall drink
container; it was fatter, and had been moulded so that it bulged
outward at the centre. Also, it had a built-in combination lock
centred on the top of the lid. Still, it looked benignly, almost
ridiculously ordinary and insignificant. Yet Dr Vassiltchikov was
handling it as reverently as if it contained the relics of some
saint. She spun the combination lock to the left, then the right,
then the left again, and with a practised twist of the wrist, had
the lid unscrewed and lifted it.

Swirls of vapour escaped . . . cold.
Freezing cold. Stephanie was spellbound.

Now if only the screen above would stop
oscillating! It really was maddening, the way it impinged upon her
concentration! And just as Dr Vassiltchikov was extracting
something from within.