Luca's Grief

Luca Ferrara read the contract three times, and on the fourth he stopped reading and began to look at the wall.

It was a plain white wall in the little office behind the lab, with a calendar on it three months out of date. He sat at his desk in a rumpled shirt and a cardigan buttoned wrong, with Otis's pen drive plugged into his terminal and nine pages of legal prose open on the screen. A cup of tea stood at his elbow. It had gone cold. His glasses lay folded on the blotter. Without them his eyes looked naked and old.

"Retained in situ," he said.

"Dr. Ferrara—"

"Pending completion of final data collection." He turned the words over slowly, like a man examining a bone. "They would be left there, Otis. The four of them. William would sell the Gate, and the equipment, and the data, and the four of them, to a corporation that makes its money from other people's death. And the pods would go on humming, quite quietly, until someone at CorVitae decided that the cost of the electricity exceeded the value of the subjects."

"I know."

"And he sat here. In this lab. For two years. And brought me coffee."

"I know. I'm so sorry."

"Don't." Luca lifted a hand. It trembled. "Don't be sorry, Otis. You found it. You, of all of us. You went upstairs in your socks." A faint ghost of a smile touched his mouth. "Matteo would have laughed."

He folded his hands on the desk. He was silent for a very long time.

Then, very quietly, he began to talk.

…

It had been fifteen years ago, in March, on a Thursday.

Matteo had been twenty-five. He had been the cleverest person in any room, and the kindest, and the most hopeless at cooking. He lived in a small apartment in Cambridge with three roommates and a cat named Schrödinger, and he wrote notes on everything, in a minuscule hand, in a hundred notebooks, which Luca teased him about and secretly treasured. He had a laugh like a door slamming. He had a way of tipping his head when he listened, as if the words were music.

He had also, that winter, begun to bruise easily.

"It was leukemia," said Luca. "Acute. Very aggressive. They gave him eleven months. Twelve, if the chemotherapy took." He smiled, bleakly. "It did not take. He lost his hair. He lost twenty pounds. He sat in the hospital with his laptop on his knees and wrote equations on the bed tray, because he could not stand to be idle. He used to say that the thing about dying was that it was boring."

Otis said nothing. He had perched on the edge of a stool with his hands between his knees, and was listening, wide-eyed, like a child.

"I promised him. In the corridor. I put my hand on his shoulder, and I said, I will save you. I was thirty-eight. I thought I was a god." Luca shook his head. "I had been working on the Gate for six years. It was nothing then. A prototype. A theory. A very expensive piece of mathematics. The idea was that consciousness could be lifted out of the body and held in a field, preserved, in suspension, while the body was repaired. I thought, if I can do that, if I can only hold him there, in the light, for a year, for six months, I can find the cure."

"And the Dimensions?"

"I did not know about the Dimensions." Luca gave a short, helpless laugh. "That was the joke. I thought I was building a lifeboat. I did not know I'd built a door."

…

The first experiment was on the ninth of March.

There were three volunteers. (He had told the new four there had been one. He had not been able to say three; it made the failure too large to speak aloud.) Luca remembered them all: a Navy commander named Halvorsen, who talked without drawing breath; a schoolteacher from Tucson, Elena Vasquez, dying of lung cancer, who brought a thermos of tea and a bag of orange slices for the technicians; and Matteo.

Matteo had insisted. Luca had begged him not to. They had fought, in the corridor, in low terrible voices, for an hour. You're my brother, Luca had said. You are the only family I have left. And Matteo had looked at him, gray and wasted and shining, and said, Then trust me.

So he had.

"They went in at nine fourteen." Luca's voice was flat. "I remember the time exactly. The Gate lit, and the three of them stepped into the light, one after another. Elena first. She waved. Halvorsen next, still talking. And Matteo." He stopped. "He turned, at the very last. He looked back at me through the glass. And he did a thing with his hand."

"What?"

"He put two fingers to his brow. Like a salute. It was an old joke. A thing our father used to do." Luca's mouth twisted. "And then the light took him."

"And they didn't come back."

"The Gate closed. That was all. It simply closed. The field collapsed, and the power died, and three bodies lay in three pods, breathing, with their eyes shut. And they went on lying there. For one year. Then two. They did not wake." He looked at his hands. "And then they did. In a way. Their brain waves changed. Something was happening, behind the sleep. Dreams, I thought. Vast ones. I could see patterns, structures, whole architectures of thought. They were somewhere, Otis. They were somewhere."

"And the bodies?"

"I kept them alive. For five years." A long breath. "And then one night the monitor went flat. Elena's first. Then Halvorsen's. And I knew. I knew, sitting in that chair, that I was watching them die."

"But they didn't," said Otis, softly. "Their minds are still there."

"Yes." Luca raised his head. His eyes were wet and burning. "That is the only reason I am still sane. Because they didn't. Because something in them held on. I do not know how. I only know that every time I have looked into the Gate, for fifteen years, I have seen a light at the far end. A lamp. A small one. Burning."

…

He had spent the fifteen years building it again.

It was a quiet obsession. He had resigned his post. He had sold his house. He had gone round the world, cap in hand, to investors and foundations and rich old men with bad hearts, and been laughed at in seven languages. He had written a hundred grant proposals. He had lectured to empty halls. And when, at last, after thirteen years of failure, a smooth and courteous young man named William Cross had walked into his office with a checkbook and a charming smile, Luca had wept.

"I thought he was an angel," he said. "I thought God had sent him. He asked no questions. He did not want credit. He only said, Dr. Ferrara, I believe in your work. No one had said that in a decade."

"He was lying."

"Yes. But he was so very good at it." Luca gave a cracked laugh. "He gave me everything I wanted. Funding. Equipment. A staff. He even found me Otis." He glanced at the boy on the stool. "A brilliant young man, he said. Loyal. Gifted. He had read your thesis, you know. Before he introduced you. He knew exactly what you were."

Otis went red. "I thought I got the job on merit."

"You did, my boy. That is the horror of it. He picked you because you were good. A good young man, with a good heart, who would never think to question the man who hired him." Luca reached out and squeezed his shoulder. "It was not your fault. It was mine. I was so hungry."

"What did you want?"

"Two things." Luca counted them off on his fingers. "First, to save the new four. Truly. I did not lie about that. Archie, Zoe, Jin, Venn. I looked at them, and I thought, I will not fail again. And second..." His voice dropped. "To find Matteo."

The word hung in the air.

"I have never said it aloud," said Luca. "To anyone. Not to William. Not even to the board. I let them think it was a medical project. A noble cause. But from the first day to this, my whole purpose has been to open that door, and step through it, and find my brother." He smiled, tremulously. "I am an old fool. I know. But I could not rest."

…

He rose at last.

He did it slowly, with a hand on the desk, as though every joint hurt. He took his glasses from the blotter and settled them on his nose. He straightened his cardigan, which had been buttoned wrong, and rebuttoned it. When he looked round at Otis, the old gentle absent-mindedness had gone out of his face. What remained was thin and hard and quite calm, the face of a man who has made up his mind to something he knows will cost him.

"We have to protect the Gate," he said.

"How?"

"William has the primary keys. I gave them to him. It was in the contract. He may cut the power whenever he likes, and there is nothing in this building that can stop him." He put his hand into the neck of his shirt and drew out a cord. On it hung a small brass key, worn smooth, with a ring of faded blue thread tied round the bow. "Except this."

Otis stared. "What's that?"

"My brother made it."

"It looks like a house key."

"It is not." Luca smiled faintly. "It is a hardware override. A physical one, hidden in the Gate's housing, wired to nothing and monitored by no one. Matteo built it, the week before he went in. He told no one. He gave me the key at the airport, in an envelope, with a note. In case, it said." He closed his hand over it. "I have kept it fifteen years. I never knew what it was for."

"And now?"

"Now I think I do." He drew a long breath. "It will lock the primary system against any outside command. Even William's. If I turn it, he cannot close the Gate. He cannot cut the power. He cannot touch it at all."

"And he doesn't know."

"He has no idea." Luca's smile turned wintry. "A man like William thinks of everything he can see. He does not think of the things that were built by someone who loved me."

…

William was in the observation suite when they came for him.

He sat in a leather chair with his back to the door, and a cup of coffee on the arm, and a view of the pods through the glass. He heard them come in. He did not turn at once. He finished the sentence he was writing, and tapped a final key, and only then swiveled, with a smooth pivot of one foot, to face them.

He was smiling. It was the same pleasant smile. It faltered, very slightly, at the sight of Luca's face.

"Luca. Otis. It's early." He glanced at his watch. "Is something the matter?"

"I have turned the key," said Luca.

"I beg your pardon?"

"A small thing. A brass one. Matteo's." Luca's voice was perfectly steady. "I have locked the primary system. You can no longer close the Gate, or cut the power, or issue any command whatever. I would be obliged if you would give me your passwords."

William sat quite still.

For a moment the mask held. Then something changed behind the blue eyes, a swift, subtle shifting, like a fish turning in deep water, and the smile did not so much fade as simplify. It became a plain, flat, businesslike curve. It was far more frightening than the other.

"I see," he said. "Someone's been talking."

"I have read your contract."

"Have you indeed."

"Four hundred million dollars." Luca took a step forward. "And the subjects retained in situ. Is that the phrase? Pending completion of data collection." His lip curled. "You would leave them. You would sell the whole of this work, my brother's work, to those people, and leave four human beings to die in a dream."

"I would hardly call it dying," said William. "They'd be quite comfortable."

"Comfortable."

"Don't be naïve, Luca." William spread his hands. "Do you honestly believe this project could have survived without me? Do you? Ten years ago it was a pile of notebooks and an overheated generator. It was a hobby. I gave it a building. I gave it staff. I gave it a future." He leaned back. "Without my money, you would still be giving lectures in empty halls."

"I would rather."

"You would not."

"I would," said Luca. "I would rather die with nothing than watch you turn this into a toy for billionaires."

William laughed. It was low and genuine and entirely without malice. "My dear fellow," he said, "you are not in a position to refuse. I own fifty-one percent of the patent. I own the equipment. I own the lab. I own, God help you, the very chair you're standing next to." He raised his coffee, toasting. "You have a key. How charming. But you have no authority. The courts will see to that."

"Then let them."

"I fully intend to."

They looked at one another across the room. Neither moved. The pods hummed through the glass, in the half-dark, in a long steady chorus, and behind Luca's shoulder, small and white and trembling, Otis stood with his fists clenched and his chin high.

"Then we are at war," said Luca, quietly.

"Not at all." William smiled. "We are in litigation."

He rose, and set down his cup, and straightened the cuffs of his shirt.

"But I would advise you, both of you, to consider your positions carefully. Dr. Ferrara is an old man with a weak heart and a great deal of debt. And young Mr. Brennan..." The blue eyes glanced across. "Has a thesis to defend."

He walked out of the observation suite without haste.

Behind him, the door swung gently shut.

…

Luca sat down on the nearest stool.

He sat for a moment with his hands on his knees, breathing. Then, without warning, he began to laugh. It was a wild unsteady sound, half sob. Otis stared at him in alarm.

"Dr. Ferrara?"

"Forgive me." Luca wiped his eyes. "Forgive me. I am only. I am only thinking of my brother." He drew a ragged breath. "He would have enjoyed that."

Otis let out a shaky laugh of his own. "He'd have thrown something."

"He'd have thrown the coffee."

"At his face."

"At his suit."

They laughed together, helplessly, in the half-lit lab, two men at the end of their strength. And through the glass, in the pods, the four sleepers breathed on, in the quiet blue light, held safe by a brass key and a promise.

It would not hold forever. They both knew that. But for the moment, the Gate was open.