Evolution

by Teri Terry

  I tilt my head, look back at him. “Why do you ask why, rather than what does it do so we can try to work out how to stop it?”

  “Changes in the genetic code of a species over time: what do they mean?”

  “Changes can be from environmental and other pressures; mutations that are random are then perpetuated if they give a survival advantage.”

  “Yet ninety-five percent don’t survive this epidemic. It’s like it’s going the other way.”

  “Unless these genetic differences are just random. Until the epidemic hit, they didn’t mean anything.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know.” I try to focus closely and fail. I lean back, eyes closed. Sleep is coming for me at last, no matter what either of us may want, and my thoughts are floating the way they do before you nod off, random fragments and images flickering through my mind. How’d we end up having junk DNA that most people don’t? DNA that makes us survive?

  I open my eyes again. “How can you get wholesale repeating sections of DNA in some people and not others? Random mutation here and there couldn’t do that. It’s almost like…it was done on purpose.”

  He’s thinking. “The best gene splicing and editing technology we have now probably couldn’t do that. Even assuming it could be done, and even if the changes could be made in germ cells so they’d be passed on to offspring, it would take generations to distribute it in the population like it is. If you go back long enough ago to distribute an applied change through the population, that technology wasn’t even dreamed of then.”

  “All this talking about why is very interesting, but isn’t the whole point to try to come up with a way to stop people from getting sick, stop them from dying? All I can see is that the immune and those who die lack these sequences—assuming that what I’ve seen in the small sample sizes is the same for everybody. So maybe we can predict who will survive if they get sick after being exposed to the epidemic, but that isn’t going to help anybody else. And me adding a chunk of DNA to somebody to save them isn’t something I think is possible. It’s not like when I made my hair straight—that was a tiny adjustment to a gene that was already there. I can’t create whole repeating sections of DNA from nothing. And we still have no way to predict who will be immune.”

  “You need subjects who haven’t been exposed to the epidemic—to study the differences further and, once you know if they are immune or not, to compare more closely between immune and non-immune subjects.”

  “No.”

  “No?” He’s surprised I’m objecting to the obvious next step—the one I’d realized myself earlier—but no no no. I’m not experimenting on healthy people, not like that. It’s wrong. Besides, all I need right now is to sleep.

  I close my eyes and slip into black.

  CHAPTER 9

  CALLIE

  BY THE TIME I GET BACK TO THE HOUSE, Shay is fast asleep. She’s on the sofa, a blanket around her. Did she fall asleep midsentence?

  Xander is still there, on a chair across the room. He’s got a certain look Cepta used to have sometimes, one I’d learned meant do not interrupt, no matter what. He’s thinking.

  Then his eyes weird out, and I know he’s gone; his mind is off doing whatever it is that survivors can do. The house could burn down and I doubt he’d notice.

  CHAPTER 10

  SHAY

  I WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT and stretch. The fatigue has been reduced, but it’s not gone, though I must have slept a good ten hours at least. My head is pounding.

  Tea. That’s what I need.

  When I open my door, there’s a faint light down the hall. Callie’s door is partway open. I look in, and her eyes look back at mine.

  “You’re awake?” she says.

  “So are you. Tea?”

  She gets up, and we walk to the kettle together.

  “I know why I’m awake: because I slept all day long. How about you?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. Funny dreams.”

  “Funny, but not funny?”

  “Yeah.” There is a shadow across her aura. What is it?

  We make our drinks, go to the sofa. There’s something niggling at me, something about Callie—there was something I was supposed to do…and then I remember: the edge of the world.

  “You mentioned you wanted me to see if there are other blocks in your mind.”

  “Yes,” she says, and she’s being truthful, but there is something else too. Something she’s keeping close.

  “Do you want me to look for blocks now?” I ask, and she nods.

  I close my eyes—not that it is necessary to do so, but it seems easier when I’m still tired—and reach out, touch Callie’s mind.

  I’ve already removed some blocks before. There were ones that stopped her from being herself, others that made it so she couldn’t break certain rules, like where she could go around Community. Shouldn’t being able to see how to leave this place be the same sort of thing? But all the superficial, obvious ones are gone. What else could there be?

  Gently, I sift through her memory of going to what she calls the edge of the world. When we went there together a while ago, I saw through her eyes how the world disappears, but I still can’t understand why she sees it this way. I search closer and closer, but I can’t detect any psychic barriers. If they are there, they are so deep I can’t find them.

  I let her go, open my eyes, shake my head. “I couldn’t find anything. I’m sorry.”

  “So, I guess I’m just crazy, then.”

  “No! Of course not. Just because I can’t find something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I’ll think about it. Maybe if we actually go there and I try again, I might find something?”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “Is there something else that is worrying you?”

  “No. Well, not really.”

  “Not really?”

  Callie looks down so she’s not meeting my eye. She shakes her head.

  “Maybe I can help if you tell me?”

  She sighs. “It’s…well, it’s Jenna.”

  I’m startled. “Jenna? What about her? Ah. Is it that nightmare—have you been having it again?”

  “The burning one? No.”

  “Something else?”

  “Yes. I’ve dreamed about her a few times.”

  “You haven’t woken up screaming.”

  “No. I don’t seem to do that anymore; not since I know who I am, and who she is. But it’s awful.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s like I’m flying through the air. It’s at night, but there’s enough light to see, like the sky isn’t quite dark even though the sun is gone. You’re there, with my brother, walking across an island. It’s like it’s all been in a disaster or something; everything is blackened, burned.”

  I’m listening to Callie’s words, but they’re drawing me back to my memory of Shetland. The wasteland after the fires.

  “And then there’s what looks like a burned-out barn,” Callie says. “There is a crack inside it that I can make myself thin enough to flow through. And then I fly down and down, and it’s awful.” She shudders. “There’s skeletons, and you can see their eye sockets. Usually I wake up about then.”

  The hair is standing up on my back, my neck, and I shiver.

  She looks up now and meets my eyes. “What’s wrong, Shay?”

  “That’s all real—it happened. I was there.”

  “I don’t understand. How do I dream about things that I didn’t see myself? Why?”

  I take her hand. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m crazy. That’s it, isn’t it?” She says the words with a bit of a wobble in the middle, like she’s trying to face something.

  “No, you’re not!”

  “Sure. These things that happen in my head are all very reaso
nable and rational.”

  “Look, it’s not like you’re making things up and thinking they are real. Somehow you know things that actually happened to Jenna, as if you have her memories. I don’t understand how, or why, but it’s real. You’re. Not. Crazy. All right?” I nudge her shoulder. “All right?” I say again.

  “All right.” She gives me a small smile.

  I reach out, hug her, and she hugs me back.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you much lately.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, but it really isn’t—she spends too much time alone for a thirteen-year-old—especially one who appears to be channeling a dead girl.

  CHAPTER 11

  CALLIE

  SHAY GOES BACK TO SLEEP, but I can’t.

  Jenna is in the shadows. She knows I’m alone.

  I’ve spent a lot of time trying to hold her away, to pretend she’s not there—because if I accept she’s real, doesn’t that prove that I can’t tell the difference between things that exist and those that are only in my mind?

  But Shay said I’m not crazy. That Jenna was real, that things she’s shared with me actually happened.

  If I’m not crazy, then what does it mean?

  Maybe I don’t have to slip to unconsciousness and wait for Jenna to reach out to me in a dream. Maybe I can reach out to her.

  “Jenna?”

  She’s happy—that’s understating what she feels. Her mind joins with mine in overwhelming joy.

  I see so many things. She’s excited and shows one memory after another, until we get to the day she first found Mum in Newcastle. I see through her eyes, savor the memory—watching Mum. I feel Jenna’s joy and my own to see her again.

  I want to leave this place and go to her—to Mum. I have to find the way to get beyond the edge.

  Jenna’s approval fills me.

  But all of the things she shows me are from when Jenna thought she was me.

  “Who was Jenna as herself?” I ask her, and there is quiet. She’s withdrawing, and then she’s gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  SHAY

  AS SOON AS I’M AWAKE THE NEXT DAY, Xander is there.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asks.

  I shrug. “Physically, yes.”

  “I’m sorry the last days have taken so much out of you.”

  I turn to him, surprised.

  “I do know that they did, and I’m sorry. But you can see how important it is. Maybe you can find a way to change the course of the illness. You seem to have a particular knack for healing work, one that I don’t share. If you figure this out and then if you could teach others how to do it too? Think how many lives we could save.”

  “I’m not saying it isn’t a good cause. I’m just not convinced there is anything we can do.”

  “Just because a problem is hard doesn’t mean it isn’t worth tackling. Solutions often hide, but they will be there, presenting themselves when you least expect it—usually when you’re thinking or doing something else.”

  And this brings my mind to another problem: Callie. I know I have reason to be cautious with what I tell Xander, yet he may know something that I could use to help her.

  “Speaking of which…”

  “Yes?”

  “Callie. She’s been having more nightmares.”

  “Do you want me to get Cepta to—”

  “No! Whatever it was you were going to suggest—no. She’s okay; she’s not freaking out or anything. It’s what Callie has been dreaming about that concerns me.”

  “This is more Cepta’s area.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. Callie has been dreaming about Jenna.”

  “I don’t understand this obsession she seems to have with that girl.”

  “It isn’t that. She’s been dreaming things that she’d have no way of knowing, things that happened to Jenna when I was there, so I know they are true. It’s like there’s some sort of link between them, tangling their memories together. I don’t understand it at all.”

  “Isn’t Jenna gone now? Didn’t you say she was destroyed in that bomb blast?”

  “Yes. At least, I was sure of it at the time. And if somehow I was wrong, I can’t believe Jenna wouldn’t come to me. If there was any way she could reach me—she would. And she hasn’t.”

  He has that faraway look, thinking, and I don’t interrupt. Finally his eyes focus back on mine. “Assume for a moment that you were wrong and Jenna did survive. How could she communicate with Callie? Only survivors could see and hear Jenna, and if she were here, you would see her too.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So if Jenna as she was can’t be here, and she couldn’t communicate with Callie anywhere regardless, then she must be in existence somewhere else and as something else. What is she? Where is she? Why is it only Callie who is aware of her?”

  “I don’t know. They’re not together in the same time and place in any way I can understand—how could they be? Yet somehow they are.”

  “If it is true, it is outside our understanding with the laws of physics as we know them: two people—or one person and an entity of some sort—tangled together. At a distance. Spooky action at a distance?”

  Now I’m really startled. He’s quoting Einstein’s criticism of quantum physics—that entangled quantum particles that instantly influence each other no matter how far apart they are break the rules of relativity. My head is spinning. “Do you really think that is in operation here?”

  “No. I’m just pointing out that the perceived impossibility of something is often explained when you understand the rules more fully.” He tilts his head to one side, looking at me closely until I’m struggling not to squirm. “How about a psychological explanation? If there is a link, could it instead be between you and Callie? You are the one with memories of Jenna: perhaps you are projecting them onto Callie.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me. But then I shake my head. “No, that can’t be it. Callie was having nightmares about Jenna before I got here.”

  “Hmmm. True. There must be another explanation. No idea what it is at the moment, though.”

  “Don’t dismiss a problem just because it’s hard. There’ll be a solution in there, somewhere—you’ll probably see it when you least expect it.”

  He smiles to hear me saying his words back at him. “I’ll think about it some more,” he says, and I know he will; he’s intrigued by a question he can’t answer. “But before I go, there is something I came to tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Prepare the spare room: a guest will be arriving soon.”

  CHAPTER 13

  CALLIE

  I’M RESTLESS. Even though the flames of the pyres are finally out, I feel as though the smoke still lingers and stains this place.

  I have to get away from Community, and there is only one place to go.

  My feet know the way, and I hurry until, at last, I sit by the edge, willing myself to see beyond it. Jenna creeps back, closer.

  She isn’t anything I can see either, just something—someone—I can sense without seeing. Like the world out there that can’t be seen, but I still know it’s there.

  If I can communicate with Jenna, then there must be a way to move beyond this place too.

  Jenna shows me her memory again: of Mum’s face. And my tears fall.

  I hold out my hands. What if Mum were right there, in the nothing? Could I step forward and reach out—hug her? Feel her arms wrap around me and hug back?

  No. But I don’t know why.

  There’s a faint sound in the distance—a mechanical thing in the sky—the helicopter? I thought I heard it go off hours ago. I sit and listen, and it’s coming closer, but I can only see it in the sky when it crosses this boundary.

  It stirs up t
he air, the dust. I wish it could clear the cobwebs in my mind.

  CHAPTER 14

  SHAY

  SHAY, YOUR GUEST WILL BE WITH YOU SOON. Come to the field above. We’re landing.

  I frown, uneasy. I asked him before who it was and try again now, but he’s not answering. There’s a vague sense of amusement from him, and then he is gone.

  I step out of the house just as Callie returns from her walk.

  “Where are you going?” she says.

  “To the landing area. Xander says he’s bringing a guest.”

  “Can I come?”

  “I don’t know who it is, or whether this is good or bad.”

  “I’ll come,” she says, and there is a ripple through her aura, one that says she has to come and look out for me. And even though things should probably be the other way around, I’m glad she’s coming.

  We walk out under gray skies together. The helicopter has landed, the blades going around and around stirring up the trees and long grasses.

  Who has he brought?

  If I could make it be whoever I want, it would be Kai. And then my wishing and longing for him are so strong that I almost can’t make my feet go on.

  It can’t be him, can it? Just because I want it to be Kai won’t make it happen.

  I want to know, but I don’t want to know yet. Until I know it isn’t him, there is always a chance, however small, that it could be.

  But I force myself to reach out to the helicopter—to see if Kai’s familiar pattern of energy is there.

  No. Disappointment rips through me. I knew it was beyond unlikely; it shouldn’t hit me so hard.

  Yet it shows I’m still alive. That somehow, I still know how to hope. At least a little.

  So, who is it going to be, then? I reach again. Whoever it is, I’m registering a mix of strong emotions—fear, anger—mostly being quelled by Xander, but they’re giving him a good fight. A guest? I don’t think so. Whoever it is doesn’t want to be here.