Free The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan

know what I see down there?”
    â€œMalcontents, sir?”
    â€œNo.” You sigh, as contentedly as if finishing a fine meal. “Money.”

CHAPTER 7
    The Lazarus Project
    (Kate Philo)

    W here did I come from? I don’t know. Why was I put on this earth? I don’t know. Where will I go when I die? I don’t know. What an intrepid woman scientist I am. Everything that really matters is something I don’t know.
    As I walked through the city that morning, the tang of spring sharpening the air, multitudes on their way to work, I could not shake the feeling that marching beside me was one beast of a don’t-know. What were we going to do that day? What were we daring to attempt? Sometimes I couldn’t decide if I wanted us to succeed or fail.
    By then I lived in Cambridge, in a tiny side-street apartment. Though I strolled past Harvard every day, my only affiliation was with Carthage, who had become more freelance than ever. Tolliver at the National Academy e-mailed me, told me to be careful not to ally myself too much with one enterprise. He was probably right, but there were so many directions this research could go, I felt like I had lots of options.
    So did my commute. The T could get me to the lab in minutes. I preferred to walk: crossing the Charles River, wending through Back Bay. Work was intense enough; I needed the decompression of the walk home, too. It takes time to regain a relaxed attitude about all the don’t-knows.
    We put our eye to a microscope and there’s a universe we never knew existed. We do the same thing with a telescope, same realization. There are ideas, too, from Darwin and Gauss, from Pasteur and Newton, that reveal universes as clearly as any instrument.
    That morning, an otherwise ordinary day in April, I was marching to the main lab, now known as The Lazarus Project, for possibly the biggest day of my life. Ever since I’d aligned my fate with Carthage’s, there had been a steady sequence of biggest days.
    The morning of the find, back in August, that had been huge. Within hours Dixon had called the story in from the ship to his magazine, which immediately sold it to the international press. By the next morning the whole saga was in print, from the midnight wake-up call on the ship to everyone on the team eating ice cream. My name made papers worldwide before we’d reached landfall. Strangers found my online address. Three offered me jobs. One decided I was Satan. My sister, Chloe, took it upon herself to send a snarky e-mail about me falling for another cold guy. Apparently she also could not resist the opportunity to urge me to make sure no one stole my limelight—provided that I had actually done something significant. Thanks, Chloe, for being you .
    When we docked in Halifax, TV cameras waited on the wharf. They pounced before the engines were off. We had our gear to haul, not to mention moving our frozen friend, but they insisted on a statement. I nearly asked them: What do you want me to say? Fortyscore and seven years ago some unknown guy got iced? Did you know Dixon has already named him Frank, as in Frankenstein? No? Too dehumanizing? Then how about this: We have a frozen body. We have a technique. It works on creatures an inch long, for about two minutes. Beyond that, we’ll get back to you.
    Besides, with all those cameras pointed at me, I looked about as put together as any woman would after ten weeks at sea. Skin like leather, hair like a hurricane. My fifteen minutes.
    But Carthage was there, Carthage took charge. For the first time I was glad for his overbearing ego. He made sure we received royal treatment: a nice hotel, warm meals, a hot shower so long my skin pruned like a baby’s. His insistence that Billings and I accompany the body by train, that was showy for my taste. There were trawlers right there in port equipped to haul tons of frozen fish. There were refrigerated air-freight carriers at an airport just