Theory of Bastards

by Audrey Schulman

  So long as she stood here, near him, she felt no fear, not of anything. She didn’t think about the cold water. She wasn’t waiting for rescue. Her blood pulsing in her skin.

  He whispered, Tess.

  That single word pushed them apart as distinctly as if the child herself were there, shoving with her hands.

  Without a word, Frankie backed up, then waded out onto the shore to get dressed. He followed a moment later, heading for his clothes, as much pale dignity as though he still wore the tux.

  They dressed quickly. Afterward, filled with nervous energy, she huffed and ran circles round the bonobos, clapping her hands, trying to warm up. Stotts did jumping jacks with a true ferocity, his eyes closed.

  Then he marched again toward the east, moving even faster than before, all of them following.

  *

  Stotts was 50 yards ahead climbing a small hill, when he reached the top and stared in amazement, still as a statue. He strode forward and disappeared. Without him in sight, she felt terror and calling the bonobos, ran after him.

  She saw the ditch first.

  A trough of earth ripped into the field, 30 feet wide, arrow straight to disappear into the distance, a wave of dirt and boulders shoved out of the way, a furrow for a seed too big to be imagined.

  At the far end of the field, the giant wing of a plane gleamed, the shattered end cantilevered up on the broken trunk of a tree. She walked that way, mesmerized, face canted to the side, sucking air through her mouth, the stench now rising.

  On the other side of the tree, the furrow slewed hard to the right, debris beginning, scattered suitcases and plastic cups, fabric fluttering. Walking so slowly now, unwilling, heading toward Stotts who sat in the field, legs sprawled.

  Closer now, she saw a shoe—a blue sneaker, a thick river of ants flowing along the shard of bone. She stopped, staring. The bonobos were spreading out, on the periphery of the stench, investigating the detritus.

  Stotts held a paper boarding pass—must have been an unaccompanied child on board, young enough not to have BodyWare. His mouth open, he stared blindly in the direction of the airplane tail rising in the distance. He was making a panting sound.

  She reached forward and wiggled the pass from his hand.

  COSTA RICA AERLINIA C52SAN JUAN A CHICAGO

  HALL / NICKOCT 28 8:45 A.M.E7

  She glanced at him, relieved this couldn’t have been his daughter’s plane. Wrong direction. Wrong day. This wasn’t why he was reacting this way.

  She turned back to the ticket, trying to understand what he’d seen. The date and time, she studied for a while, tracking the days backward, before understanding.

  This plane had been in flight at the point the avatar had started talking gibberish.

  No, she said.

  Stotts had his hands over his head now, rocking.

  She looked around at the debris, frantic to disprove the thought rising inside her. She began to lope across the field, searching the littered objects for proof of any kind. She found the bloated arm with the retro watch still on it.

  Using the corner of a tray table, she turned the arm to see the shattered watch face. She held her breath and got close enough to peer through the broken glass. Time frozen at 10:51.

  She could see the scene: the human backup pilot dozing in his seat, the plane droning on, boring and calibrated. Then on the dashboard screen, the avatar of the autopilot appeared, stated the time—10:48— and began to speak nonsense. By this point it was too late. No time to warn the passengers, each of them left terribly alone for these final few minutes as the pilot struggled for control, yelling commands and slapping buttons while the plane lurched through the sky, overhead compartments popping open, the frame juddering, seats squealing, luggage and water bottles pinwheeling by, until the engines just cut out, a whistling silence where the roar had been, that final slide beginning, the destination apparent.

  She said, Everywhere?

  She stared out at this new world she’d been walking through for days without realizing it. Scattered garbage on a desolate landscape, apes wandering about, picking up whatever caught their fancy. On the airplane tail was the logo of a palm tree waving in the wind.

  Stotts’ wife and daughter were in England.

  How helpless we are without technology, naked and defenseless, a soft-limbed creature without wings or fins, our oversized cerebellum able only to grasp the sheer expanse of an ocean.

  Her thumbs, she realized, were rubbing the edges of the tray table as though she could absorb this information like braille—its importance, the full scope of its meaning. The rasp of her skin over broken plastic.

  Forty Six

  This was where she lost track of time. Days passed.

  Stotts walked on wooden and mechanical, his face frozen. He still headed to the east—there was no other direction in which he would walk—but he no longer moved quickly. If she talked to him, he took a moment before turning, as though listening to something inside that was taking all his attention, some inner voice relaying complicated information at a speed he couldn’t absorb, neither the details nor the basic premise, no matter how hard he concentrated.

  Normally moving with an attentive power, at times now he stumbled. She held his hand, helping him along. She talked to him, telling him what she could. Watching his face.

  England, she said, doesn’t get all that cold. Winter there is easy.

  She looked around to the bonobos to make sure they were all in sight and added, A thick sweater is all you need.

  She turned around to walk backwards for a moment to make sure nothing other than the dog followed. She said, What do they call them? A jumper? One or two thick Fair-Isle jumpers and you’re fine.

  *

  That night, in the house they’d broken into, she asked, They in the countryside?

  There was a delay before her words reached him. He nodded.

  What area?

  That delay again, as though he wasn’t actually here, but far away, trying to hear her words faint with distance. He answered, Norfolk.

  She ripped open a bag of beef jerky and dumped the contents onto the plate between them. She didn’t know a thing about Norfolk, so she bluffed. She said, Carrot farms everywhere.

  She handed him a piece of jerky. She said, The carrots would be ready for harvest now. Anyone could walk into a field, grab the leaves and yank one out.

  He listened, staring at the food in his hand.

  She nudged it closer to him and said, Wouldn’t take much strength. A child could do it.

  *

  Each night they slept in a different house. Since it was getting colder, they stayed inside later each day, until the sun was well up. The bonobos wore jackets or sweaters on the top half of their bodies and, before they went out, she helped them pull clothes onto the bottom half also—sweatpants or skirts. Their legs were short so she had to roll the pants up. Children’s pants fit them the best.

  When they did leave, the bonobos hustled forward through the cold, knuckling only so far as the next house to the east that had water in the toilet tanks, more food and a fireplace. Each day they managed only a mile or two.

  Adele found a wedding dress she loved, refusing to take it off for days. It had narrow sleeves and a low-cut bodice that showed off her hairy décolletage. Frankie cut the skirt short in front so Adele’s back legs didn’t get tangled. Wearing the dress, Adele loved galloping across the fields, the white train fluttering over the ground behind her—Guinevere cantering forward on her charger, only in this case the horse wore the dress. The train was gradually ripped to shreds, plastic pearls littering the ground.

  Each day the dog eased in a little closer to the group. It wanted attention, whining and dancing on its feet, twisting itself into a U so both its head and wagging tail faced them. Still, any time it got within 20 feet, Marge or Adele cough
ed and it would flee.

  In the afternoon, breaking into whatever new house they’d selected, Frankie would light a fire while the bonobos searched for blankets and food. For the dog, she’d dump a can of something edible outside—sardines, spam, cat food.

  The next morning they’d leave that house, heading east again. She always tried to ease Stotts’ direction slightly south. If she did this for long enough, it might make a difference.

  *

  She said, Let’s talk about potatoes.

  After a slight delay, he turned.

  She said, The Irish are famous for eating potatoes, right? It’s a classic. They grow all over the British Isles.

  His eyes were pointed in her direction, not quite focused.

  She said, You can dig them out with your hands. Some serious calories in a potato.

  Perhaps he heard her. From his expression, she wasn’t sure.

  *

  When she ran out of things to say about England, she talked about whatever else she was thinking, what she was worried about, anything so long as she was talking and his head bent toward her voice, some counterpoint to his terrible thoughts. He might not listen to the words, but he would hear at least the tune of her caring.

  She said, I’ve been watching Sweetie.

  Behind her, she heard Sweetie chirp at his name, happy to be mentioned.

  She said, He’s always grooming others or offering them food or cuddling with them.

  She said, It’s neoteny. Not only does it give him a baby’s oversized eyes, it makes him more social, more gentle.

  She looked at Stotts and said, Kindness and nice eyes. What more could a gal want?

  *

  Manhattan was something she tried not to think about, the restaurants and stores and classrooms, the noisy hustle of its streets, its chaotic drive. She didn’t want to imagine what it might be like now.

  *

  At times she talked about what could have gone wrong, naming the possibilities. EMP. Cyberwar. Poly-roach. Cata­strophic solar storm. Each day she came up with a few more ideas, felt strangely reassured by each. She might not be able to control their situation, change it back to the way it was, but at least she could understand the likely causes.

  She considered the options, turning them over in her mind, coming up with variants. Her imagination open now, the scope of the empty horizon in front of her, she felt surprise that the society she’d known, had grown up with, had lasted as long as it did.

  *

  At mealtime, she offered him a glass of water and said, Cows. Lots of cows in Norfolk.

  She wrapped his hand around the glass and raised it to his mouth, then continued, It’s easy to milk a cow. Even a child can do it. Milk’s filled with protein.

  She waited, eyebrows raised. She wouldn’t speak until he started drinking.

  He took a sip, like an android would touch its lips to liquid, obedient and without interest.

  She said, The cows need to be milked. It hurts otherwise. They’ll stay still for anyone to do it.

  The bonobos seemed to understand something was wrong, especially Houdina. When Stotts was sitting, she’d knuckle forward to hold his ears and peer into his face, clucking. She’d sit beside him and rest her head on his shoulder.

  Each morning when they left one house to walk to the next, Houdina would hand Id to him. Id would crawl into his shirt for warmth and Stotts actually responded, cupping his hand under her rump and resting his nose in the hair on top of her head, his eyes shutting for a moment. Id patted his cheek, running her fingers over his growing whiskers while Houdina stood up to take his other hand, leading him along, every few feet glancing at his face.

  Houdina didn’t look like a zoo animal anymore, well fed and sleepy in her cage. Breastfeeding two now, she’d lost weight, stripped down to muscle in a way she hadn’t been before, her stride loose and feral, her eyes alert. She was somehow so much more present. When she spotted food, she moved toward it with speed. Lately, with her feeding Tooch, the others didn’t bark at her as much. They shared their food with her.

  At night, Frankie lay down on one side of Stotts, Houdina on the other. Frankie rested her head on his chest, so if he stirred, she’d wake. Once in awhile Houdina shoved at Frankie’s head with her elbow, but Marge and Adele would grunt, irritated, and she’d settle down.

  Each night Frankie fell asleep listening to his heart.

  *

  She said, Cows means milk and cheese. You know how many British cheeses there are?

  He cocked his head, maybe listening to her or perhaps to his own thoughts.

  Stilton, she said counting them off on her fingers, Shropshire, Gloucestershire . . .

  He looked at her with blank eyes.

  She said, You’re right. I’ve no idea. Let’s just say lots.

  *

  She did no recognizable work anymore: no reading, no note-taking, no experiments, no meetings. Instead she slept when she was tired, ate when she had food. She was never alone. She was always holding someone’s hand, getting her hair groomed, Tooch tucked inside her sweater.

  She watched the bonobos, letting her eyes run over them, checking they were fine. She spent a lot of time counting, making sure there were still 13 of them. As the days went by, they began to play again, chasing each other, cantering, such slender hairy people.

  *

  At night Tooch woke at the slightest noise; perhaps he was listening for Mama. He and the dog had become the watchmen for the group. Whenever the dog bayed outside or Tooch whimpered, the rest of them would wake. Stotts would get to his feet and walk to the window. The rifle in his hand, he became Stotts again, for the moments while he stared out into the dark.

  In every house, Frankie first searched for matches or anything made of paper in order to light the fire, occasionally discovering a set of paper books, part of the decor like candlesticks and probably used as often. One day, she grabbed a book and was ripping out a handful of pages, when she saw it was a Boy Scout Handbook. She paged through it—how to identify poisonous plants, track animals, fight hypothermia—then put it to the side to read later. Instead she started the fire with a book about the Beatles.

  *

  Sweetie was sharing a box of raisins with Stotts. Each time he handed Stotts a raisin, he waited, brows raised, for Stotts to put the raisin in his mouth.

  Frankie said to Stotts, I wish we were more like Sweetie.

  Sweetie peeped at his name.

  She explained, Us humans should be more like him.

  Stotts chewed on the raisin with little interest, as if it were old gum.

  She said, Especially the person who made this happen.

  She said, Someone probably did it. Some leader of a country ordered the cyberwar or a programmer created the poly-roach. Someone built the EMP device. Someone decided this should happen to all of us. I just . . . I wish that person had been nicer.

  Stotts turned to her.

  She said, Maybe if the mom of that person had chosen someone like Sweetie, someone with big eyes and a generous soul, maybe then he would have been born a little different, wouldn’t have done what he did.

  Stotts watched her from so far away.

  *

  She was surprised by how good food tasted—prepared in a rush, without the right ingredients, sometimes just served raw. Perhaps it was the cold air or the walking or that she wasn’t sure when she would get to eat again.

  Even water tasted better. She’d never thought much about water before, never paid much attention, how its taste varied depending on where it came from: sweet, coppery or flat. The origin in her mouth. A gift running down her throat.

  Maybe the difference came partly from how time had shifted. She’d been accustomed to waking at seven each morning to the beep of her EarDrums, her head already filled with a predetermined schedu
le, tasks to accomplish. Now, without messages scrolling across her Lenses or her next appointment highlighted, without graphs to analyze and papers to write, time began to stretch, became rubbery and intense. Each morning the group left when they were ready, traveled until they found a house they liked, ate whenever they discovered food.

  Perhaps it was the simple action of being able to flip forward through a calendar from this year to the next that had seemed to her essentially a promise, luring her into a sense of life as predictable and safe as a long hallway stretching toward an always-distant vanishing point.

  At times she heard the wet crack of Mama’s neck breaking, the crunch of vertebrae. It came most often when she was eating, biting into an apple or a cracker. Strangely enough, the sound acted like salt, making the flavor pop in her mouth. She tasted so clearly the finite amount of food she would eat in this life, the water she could swallow, the air she could breathe. She closed her eyes to chew.

  Throughout her life, she’d been accustomed to waking each day in her own bed, knowing she would be warm and dry, assured of her morning shower and time on the toilet.

  Now without any certainty, each object she passed became worth noting, worth exploring. Each morning she left behind an entire building’s worth of useful objects—blankets, pans, food—hoping by nightfall to find others. Under these circumstances, just sitting down felt like a prize.

  She knew now the experience of loss was a prerequisite to holding anything tight enough to feel it. Each day she lay down next to Stotts, her head on his chest, hearing his heart, smelling the heat of him. She wrapped her arm around him and waited.

  Forty Seven

  All of the bonobos could now pull on their own clothes before the walk. Outside they peered about with interest, no more plexiglass between them and the world. They cantered toward interesting objects, their energy returning, their physical grace. They trotted through each field and orchard, searching for leftover produce, climbing through the trees. No longer grooming each other all day, bored and waiting to be fed, they were waking up. They smelled water from a distance, loping toward it, noses raised. They recognized fields of potatoes (Frankie wasn’t even sure how, the withered plants, the smell?) and would dig into the earth, searching. They learned something new every day, how to open the toilet tank to get to the water or to blow on cooked food to cool it. Marge kept trying to use a can opener to open cans of fruit and got a little closer to managing it every day.