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“Are they good for pain? Because I hurt all over.”
“Yes, they have an analgesic effect,” he says, and pops another. “Quite amazing. Several popes knew of the beneficial effects. The Vatican keeps it quiet, but there are records!”
“Could I… could you give me one?” The idea of eating a piece of Penny Dahl’s daughter makes her feel almost nauseated enough to throw up, but she tries to look both pleading and hopeful.
He smiles, pulls one of the little brown balls from the pocket of his robe, and starts toward her. Then he stops and shakes a finger at her like an indulgent parent who has caught his three-year-old drawing crayon pictures on the wallpaper. “Aah-aah-aah,” he says. “Perhaps not, Miss… what was your name?”
“Holly. Holly Gibney.”
Roddy glances at the broom they use to push food and water through the flap, then shakes his head. He starts to put the brown ball back into his pocket, then changes his mind and tosses it into his mouth.
“If you don’t want to help me, what did you come down for, Mr. Harris?”
“Professor Harris.”
“I’m sorry. Professor. Did you want to talk?”
He just stands there, looking off into space. Holly would like to wring his scrawny neck, but he’s still at the foot of the stairs, twenty or twenty-five feet away. She wishes her arms were that long.
He turns to go back up, then remembers why he came down and turns to her again. “Let’s talk liver. The human liver that has been awakened. Shall we?”
“All right.” She doesn’t know how she can entice him to come closer, but as long as he doesn’t go upstairs—or if his wife, whose brains appear to be in better working order, doesn’t come down—something may occur to her. “How do you wake up a liver, Professor?”
“By eating another liver, of course.” He gives her a look that asks how she can be so stupid. “Calves’ liver is best, but I suspect pigs’ liver would be almost as good. We’ve never tried it. Because of the prions. Also, if it’s not broke—”
“Don’t fix it,” Holly finishes. Her head is pounding so fiercely it makes her feel like her eyeballs are pulsing, and her thirst is enormous, but she gives him her best I’m eager to learn smile. Her hand squeezes and releases, squeezes and releases.
“Correct! Absolutely correct! What’s not broken need not be fixed. It’s axiomatic! I suspect human liver would be best of all, but to feed a person fresh human liver from another person, the problem would be… obviously… would be…” He frowns into space.
“That you’d need two prisoners,” Holly says.
“Yes! Yes! Obvious! Axiomatic! But the liver… what was I saying?”
“Awakened,” Holly says. “Possibly… made ready?”
“Exactly. The liver is the grail. The true holy grail. A sacrament. Did you know the human liver contains all nine essential amino acids? That it’s especially high in lysine?”
“Which prevents cold sores,” says Holly, who is prone to them.
“That’s the least of its attributes!” Harris’s voice is rising in pitch. Soon it will reach the ranting near scream that disturbed some students so much that they dropped his classes. “Lysine cures anxiety! Lysine heals wounds! The liver is a lysine treasure chest! It also revitalizes the thymus gland, which creates T-cells! And Covid? Covid?” He laughs, and even that is a near scream. “Those who are fortunate enough to eat of the human liver, most particularly the awakened human liver, those fortunate ones laugh at Covid, as I and my wife do! Oh, and iron! Human liver is richer in iron than the livers of calves… sheep… pigs… deer… woodchucks… you name it. There is more iron in a human liver than in the liver of a blue whale, and a blue whale weighs one hundred and sixty-five tons! Iron wards off fatigue and improves circulation, especially in the BRAAIIIN!” Roddy taps his temple, where a node of small veins is pulsing.
Holly thinks, I am speaking to an authentic mad scientist. Only of course she’s not speaking; she’s listening. Nor is Rodney Harris lecturing. Not anymore. He’s hollering at an invisible audience of unbelievers.
“Ounces, MERE OUNCES, of human liver contain seven hundred per cent of EVERY VITAMIN needed for the creation of red cell formation and cell METABOLISM! Look at my skin, my good elf, just look at it!”
Roddy grasps one hollow wrinkled cheek and palpates it like a dentist preparing to inject Novocain into a patient’s gum. “Smooth! Smooth as the fabled BABY’S BOTTOM! And that’s just the LIVER!” He pauses to catch his breath. “As for the consumption of brain tissue—”
“All bullshit,” Holly says. It just pops out. She has no plan, no strategy. She’s just had enough. Thoughts of humoring him have gone straight out the window.
He stares at her, wide-eyed. He has been speaking to that invisible audience, swaying them, and some callow undergraduate with nothing but high school biology as a foundation has had the temerity to challenge him. “What? What do you say?”
“I call bullshit,” Holly replies. She’s holding the crossbars loosely in her right hand, the left fisted above her right breast, her face pressed into one of the squares, staring at him. Her care not to use vulgarities, learned at her mother’s knee, has also gone out the window. “This is medicine-show crap, right up there with copper bracelets and magic crystals. Smooth skin? Have you looked in a mirror lately, Professor? You’re as wrinkled as an unmade bed.”
“Shut up!” His cheeks are glowing dull red. That snarl of veins in his temple is pulsing faster, faster. “Shut up, you… you twerp!”
They’re going to kill me, but I’m going to tell this man a few basic truths before they do.
“As for improved brain function… you’re suffering Alzheimer’s, Professor, and not just early-onset. You can’t remember my name, and in a few months, maybe only a few weeks, you won’t be able to remember your own, either.”
