Chapter Forty Five

Happy Birthday

Since his discovery of the cavern Oscar had spent many months extracting rock samples. These he subjected to the conventional analyses, and then more refined examinations which he developed in response to the unique qualities inherent in the structures. He invariably brought Frank with him when he visited the site, and while the father plumbed the geological past, the son was creating the biological future. This was a very personal future, and Frank, even as he approached his ninth birthday, had no intention of sharing his discoveries with the distant world.

As Oscar ventured more deeply into the strata that the cavern contained, Frank slipped into the space that his father could never enter and there floated organic matter, secretly obtained from the larder at home. With each day that passed it seemed to Frank that home became less the sturdy hut built upon the permafrost and more this dark geological womb. The black water of the pool was like a magnet to him, and he had offered it small parts of his life. It had begun with a piece of paper upon which he had listed the geological periods in the order described to him by his father. He had watched the ink separate into sub divisions of colour and infect the entire surface of the paper. His fascination was so intense that he hardly heard his father calling for him, and was surprised to see the patina of panic upon his father’s flesh evaporating as the son revealed himself, worming out of the hole.

“What have you been doing?” Oscar demanded.

“Playing: I have a little cave and I pretend it is my laboratory,” Frank replied. His father smiled, no doubt delighted by his son’s use of the scientific term.

“That is good, Frank, but do not go too deep into your cave,”

“Of course not father; it is very small anyway, and there are no interesting rocks.”

According to the rules of the Kørner household that was enough: the father was satisfied that all was well, Sylvia would never know about the cave and Frank was free to continue his childish games.

That night Frank tried to calm himself towards sleep by envisioning the spreading ink; the names of the eons, dissolving in the black pool. Calmness eluded him however, because he already had a sense, an image in fact, of the cold geological past giving way to the eternal warmth of life. At this point he became an experimental biologist; the greatest biologist of his time, and his futures were presented to him. He knew a little of Darwin and Wallace because his father made sure that along with physical necessities, the intellectual nutrition was also delivered from Norway. His father had concentrated on the work that justified Baronet Lyell’s theories concerning the age of the earth; but now, as the still eight year old Frank tried to sleep, it was the mechanism of evolutionary change that illuminated his very particular future. During that sleepless night, he conceived of a series of experiments that were to make him, quite literally, immortal.

Over the following weeks Frank deposited carefully selected organic samples into the pool, dated them and recorded their appearance at regular intervals, both with drawings and fine measurements using his father’s micrometer. With a week to go before his ninth birthday, that is to say on February 20^th 1870, he was able to dispense with the micrometer. Each of his samples had begun to grow exponentially, as the cells were doubling in number exactly as the zygote does in the natural way. Frank even detected signs of cell specialisation. It was as if the parts of a potato or a herring were growing into the original life form.

It was eventually his birthday. Sylvia was delighted by such events and Oscar, realising this, wished that Frank would spend the day with his mother, preparing a special cake and a stew of venison for the evening celebration. Frank had already decided upon his birthday present to himself, although he did not yet realise how enormous this was to be. He struggled to find a way to accompany his father to the cavern. In the end it was only by pretending that he had left his favourite plaything, an oriental globe, in his little cave that he managed to avoid the baking and return to the cold heart of his future.

Oscar drew the sled up against the wall of the stone mound and they entered the cavern. “I will collect my samples and then we will be straight back home for the party,“ he said “I won’t be long, for we must not upset your mother on his wonderful occasion.”  Frank didn’t need much time. He squeezed into the hole and carefully removed the blade from his pocket. He had expected that he would have to close his eyes as he cut himself, but in fact he watched with a detached  fascination as he removed his boot and sock and excised a small lump from his heel. He dropped this into the pool and somehow knew that this was at once his ninth and second birthday.