Medusa

“Nan Madol is a far cry from the city on the Adriatic,” he said, “but it is impressive nonetheless. It consists of ninety-two artificial islets dating back to 1100 A.D. The builders rafted hexagonal basalt pillars to the tidal flats and reef off Tenwen, some of the pillars more than twenty feet long, and stacked them horizontally to make artificial, flat-topped islets. A grid of shallow canals co

“What do you think, Mr. Whittles?” Lee asked.

“I think that the reality is more prosaic but still marvelous. The city was the site of temples, administrative centers, burial vaults, houses for priests and nobles, and a pool said to have been the home of a sacred eel . . . How may I help you, Dr. Lee?”

“Do you know of any ruins engraved with unusual carvings similar to those on another island?”

“Only one instance,” Whittles said. “The temple known as the Cult of the Healing Priests. I’ve heard reports of a similar temple elsewhere but have never been able to verify it.”

“What exactly was this cult?” Austin asked.

“It originated on one of the islands near Pohnpei. The priests traveled around the islands tending the sick and became known for their miraculous healing.”

Austin exchanged glances with Lee.

“As a doctor,” she said, “I’m very interested in the healing part.”

“Wish I could tell you more,” he said, “but the civilization degenerated from the effects of internecine warfare. And while there is a good chance that the beliefs and ceremonies of the cult survived in some more primitive form, most of what we know today was passed down by word of mouth. There is no written record.”

“Wouldn’t the carvings be considered a written record?” Austin asked.

“Sure,” Whittles said. “But from what I’ve seen, they’re more symbolic and allegorical than historical.”

“What do the carvings at Nan Madol represent?” Lee asked.

“I can show you better than I can tell you,” Whittles said.

He went into his study and dug through his file cabinets, returning with a brown envelope. He opened the envelope and pulled out a stack of five-by-seven photos. He fa

“This is the facade of the temple as seen from a canal,” he explained. “There’s a hollow space under the temple’s floor that seems to have been some sort of pool. This picture shows the carvings on the interior.”

Lee stared at the photo for a moment, then passed it over to Austin, who studied the bell shapes in it and then looked up.

“Jellyfish?” he asked.

“It appears to be,” Whittles said. “Not sure why they decorated the wall of a temple with those creatures. But, as I said, there’s a pool dedicated to the sacred eel, so why not one to jellyfish?”

“Why not indeed?” Lee said, her dark eyes sparkling with excitement.

“I’d like to see this place in person,” Austin said. “Can you tell us where it is?”

“I can show you exactly, but I hope you brought your bathing suit. The platform the temple rested on got knocked around in an earthquake years ago and sank into the canal. Not too deep. Maybe twelve feet or so.”

Austin looked at Lee.

“What’s your pleasure, ma’am? Head off to our ship or check out Nan Madol?”

“I think the answer to that question is obvious,” she said.

He wasn’t surprised by her reply, given what he had seen of her determination.

Austin asked to borrow a local telephone book and within minutes had arranged to rent a boat and some scuba equipment. Whittles marked the temple’s location on a tourist map of the ruined city. They thanked him and said their good-byes, then went back out to the waiting Pontiac station wagon. As the taxi headed toward the harbor, the Chevy Silverado pulled away from the curb and followed a few lengths behind.

CHAPTER 35

DR. LYSANDER CODMAN GREETED THE TROUTS IN THE LOBBY of a building that overlooked the grassy square off Longwood Avenue where Harvard Medical School was part of a campus with some of the most prestigious such institutions in the country. The professor was a tall, loose-boned man in his sixties. He had the type of long, big-toothed face that seemed to raise the possibility that some of the old Yankee families had bred with horses.

Codman led the way along a hallway and swept the Trouts into his spacious office. He asked his visitors to make themselves comfortable and poured cups of Earl Grey from an electric kettle. He then plunked himself behind his desk and asked a few questions about their work with NUMA, then held up a bound report so the Trouts could read the title on its dark blue cover:

THE NEW BEDFORD ANOMALY:

A STUDY OF IMMUNE RESPONSE AMONG

CREW FROM THE WHALING SHIP PRINCESS

Codman took a noisy slurp from his cup.

“I’ve had a chance to browse through Dr. Lee’s paper,” he said. “It’s even more curious than I remember.”

Paul asked, “Curious in what way, Professor Codman?”

“You’ll understand when you get into it. The first section of Dr. Lee’s treatise is based mostly on newspaper reports. The reporter was interviewing retired whaling men, looking to chronicle their exploits, and realized that he was onto something. He noticed that a group of whalers in their seventies and eighties had been almost completely disease free for a good part of their very long lives.”

“We were in the New Bedford Seamen’s Bethel earlier today,” Gamay said. “The walls are lined with tablets memorializing whaling crews. Paul remarked at how tough the old-timers must have been.”

“It went beyond toughness in this case,” Codman said. “These men had never suffered a single illness, not even the common cold. They died at an advanced age, usually from some geriatric condition such as congestive heart failure.”

“Newspaper writing can be overblown,” Gamay said.

“Especially in the nineteenth century,” Codman said. “But the stories caught the eye of a doctor in immunology named Fuller here at the medical school. He organized a team of physicians to investigate. They talked to the men and the physicians who had treated them. What they found was even stranger than what newspapers had reported. The men enjoying the most robust health had all served on the whaling ship Princess during a single voyage in 1848. They had been infected on that voyage with a tropical illness then making the rounds through the Pacific whaling fleet. While some of those men shipped out again later and died in whaling accidents, fourteen were still living. They were compared to men from other ships, and the statistical differences healthwise were startling. The doctors backed up their findings with tables and graphs and so on.”

“Yet you expressed doubts over Dr. Lee’s findings,” Gamay said.

Professor Codman sat back in his chair, tented his fingers, and stared into space.

“The preliminary stating of facts didn’t bother me as much as her conclusions,” he said after a moment. “The basis for Dr. Lee’s paper was built on empirical evidence that I found hard to swallow: primarily, her observations on the anecdotes told by the men involved. Unfortunately, the ship’s captain died before the interviews took place. His logbook was never found.”

“Don’t firsthand observations have some validity?” Paul asked.

“Oh, yes, but think of it: these men had been ill at the time, some even in fever comas, and their recollections were recorded decades after the event.”

“What was the nature of those recollections?” Paul asked.

“They all had the same story: they fell ill after leaving port, became unconscious, and woke up the next day in good health.”