Darwin's Children

by Greg Bear

  “Take credit where it's due, Kaye,” Bloch said. “We're presenting a paper to the president within the week. Marge sent us your conclusions about genomic viruses, along with a lot of other papers. We're still digesting them. I'm sure there are lots of questions.”

  “Wow, I'll say,” chuckled a middle-aged man named Kendall Burkett. “Worse than homework.”

  Kaye remembered Burkett now. They had met at a conference on SHEVA four years ago. He was a fundraiser for legal aid for SHEVA parents.

  Luella returned from the kitchen carrying a pitcher of orange juice and a plate of cookies and celery stalks with peanut butter and cream cheese fillings. “I don't know why you folks come here,” she told the group. “I'm not much of a cook.”

  Bloch put her arms around Luella's shoulders. They made quite a contrast. Kaye could tell Luella was six months or more along, although it was only slightly apparent on her ample frame.

  “Come sit,” said the younger woman. She pointed to an empty chair beside her and smiled. Her name, printed neatly on her tag, was Linda Gale. Kaye knew that name from somewhere.

  “It's our second meeting,” said Burkett. “We're still getting acquainted.”

  “Orange juice okay for you, honey?” Luella asked, and Kaye nodded. Luella filled her glass. Kaye felt overwhelmed. She did not know whether to resent Cross for not warning her in advance, or to just hug her, and then hug Luella. Instead, she walked around the table and settled into the seat beside Gale.

  “Linda is assistant to the chief of staff,” Bloch said.

  “At the White House? For the president?” Kaye asked, hopeful as a child looking over a Christmas package.

  “The president,” Bloch confirmed.

  Gale smiled up at Bloch. “Am I famous yet?”

  “About time,” Luella said, passing around the plate. Gale demurred, saying she had to keep in fighting trim, but the others snatched the cookies and held out glasses for juice.

  “It's the legacy thing,” Burkett said. “The polls are going fifty-fifty. Net and media are tired of being scaremongers. Marge tells us the scientific community will come out in support of the conclusion that the SHEVA kids won't produce disease. Do you go along with that?”

  In politics, even a fragile certainty could move mountains. “I do,” Kaye said.

  “The president is taking advice from all sectors of the community,” Gale said.

  “They've had years,” Kaye said.

  “Linda is on our side, Kaye,” Bloch said softly.

  “Won't be long,” Luella said, and nodded, her eyes both angry and knowing. “Mm hmm. Not long now.”

  “Dr. Rafelson, I have a question about your work,” Burkett said. “If I may . . .”

  “First things first,” Bloch interrupted. “Marge knows already, but Kaye, you have to be absolutely clear on this. Everything said in this room is in the strictest confidence. Nobody will divulge anything to anybody outside this room, whether or not the president chooses to act. Understood?”

  Kaye nodded, still in a daze.

  “Good. We have some papers to sign, and then Kendall can ask his questions.”

  Burkett shrugged patiently and chewed on a cookie.

  Two phones rang at once—one in the kitchen, which Luella pushed through the swinging door to answer, and Laura Bloch's cell phone in her purse.

  Luella clutched an old-fashioned handset on a long cord. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Where?” Her eyes met Kaye's. Something crossed between them. Kaye stood and clutched the back of her chair. Her knuckles turned white.

  “LaShawna's with them?” Luella asked. Then, once more, “Oh, my God.” Her face lit up with joy. “We caught a bus in New Mexico!” she cried. “John says they got our children! They have LaShawna, dear Jesus, John has my sweet, sweet girl.”

  Laura Bloch finished her call and clacked her phone shut, furious. “The bastards finally did it,” she said.

  38

  OREGON

  “You found them,” a voice said, and Mitch opened his eyes to a haze of faces in the shadows. The migraine was not done with him, but at least he could hear and think.

  “The doctor says you're going to be okay.”

  “So glad,” Mitch said groggily. He was lying on an air mattress under a tent. The mattress squeaked beneath his shifting weight.

  “One of your migraines?”

  That was Eileen.

  “Yeah.” He tried to sit up. Eileen gently pushed him down again on the mattress. Someone gave him a sip of water from a plastic cup.

  “You should have told us where you were going,” a woman he did not know said disapprovingly.

  Eileen interrupted her. “You didn't know where you were going, did you?” she asked him. “Just what you wanted to find.”

  “This whole camp is on the knife edge of anarchy,” the other woman said.

  “Shut up, Nancy,” said Eileen's colleague, what was her name again, Mitch liked her, she seemed smart: something Fitz. Then, it came to him, Connie Fitz, and as if in reward, the pain flowed out of his head like air from a balloon. His skull felt cold. “What did I find?”

  “Something,” Fitz said admiringly.

  “We're taking scans now with the handheld,” said Nancy.

  “Good,” Mitch said. He took a plastic bottle of water from Eileen and swallowed long and hard. He was as dry as a bone; he must have lain out on the rock and dirt for at least an hour. “I'm sorry,” he said.

  “De nada,” Eileen said with a hint of pride.

  “It's a tibia, isn't it?” Mitch asked.

  “It's more than that,” Eileen said. “We don't yet know how much more.”

  “I found the guys,” he said.

  The women would not commit.

  “Just be happy you didn't die out there,” Eileen said.

  “It's not that hot,” Mitch said.

  “You were three feet from the bluff,” Eileen said. “You could have fallen.”

  “They weathered out,” Mitch mused, and took another swallow of water. “How many are left, I wonder?”

  He peered into the blue light of the tent at the three women: Nancy, a tall, striking woman with long black hair and a stern face; Connie Fitz; Eileen.

  The tent flap opened and the light assaulted him, bringing back a stab of pain.

  “Sorry,” Oliver Merton said. “Just heard about the incident. How's our boy wonder?”

  “Explain it to me,” Merton said.

  Mitch sat alone with Oliver under the sun shade. He sipped a beer; Oliver was working away, or pretending to, on his small slate. He had a tracer cap on one finger and typed on empty air. All the archaeologists from the camp, except for two younger women standing guard at the main site, were at the bluff, leaving Mitch grounded, “to recover,” as Eileen put it, but he strongly suspected it was to keep him out of their hair, out of trouble, until it was determined what he had found.

  “Explain what?” Mitch asked.

  “How you do it. I sense a pattern.”

  Mitch covered his eyes with his hands. The sunlight was still dazzling.

  “You undergo some sort of psychic revelation, enter a trance state, troop off in search of something you've already seen. . . . Is that it?”

  “God, no,” Mitch said, grimacing. “Nothing like that. Was I showboating, Oliver?” he asked, and did not know himself whether he spoke with satisfaction, pride, or real curiosity as to what Merton thought.

  Before Merton could answer, Mitch winced at a spike in his thoughts. His neck hair prickled.

  Something's wrong.

  “Oh, most definitely,” Merton said with a nod and a sly little grin. “Sherlock Holmes, I presume?”

  “Holmes was not psychic. You heard them. They still don't know what I found.”

  “You found a hominid leg bone. All of Eileen's students, searching for two months around this site, haven't found so much as a chip.”

  “They were making us look bad,” Mitch said. “Men in general.”<
br />
  “A camp full of angry women digging out a camp full of abandoned women,” Merton said. “Look bad? Right.”

  “Have there ever been any men here?”

  “Beg your pardon?” Merton asked petulantly.

  “Working at the camp. Digging.”

  “Besides me, not a one,” Merton admitted, and scowled at the screen on the slate.

  “Why is that?” Mitch asked.

  “Eileen's gay, you know,” Merton said. “She and Connie Fitz . . . very close.”

  Mitch thought this over for a few seconds but could not connect it right away with reality, his reality. “You're kidding.”

  Merton tried to cross his heart and hope to die, but got it wrong.

  The closest Mitch could come to acknowledging this bit of information was to wonder why Eileen had not introduced her lover to him as such. He said, very slowly, “You could have fooled me.”

  That's not what's wrong.

  “Mr. Daney is amused by it all. He takes quite an anthropological view.”

  Mitch pulled back from somewhere, an unpleasant place coming closer. “They're not all gay, are they?”

  “Oh, no. But it is a bit of a crazy coincidence. The others appear to be single, to a woman, and not one has shown any interest in me. Funny, how that slants my view of the world.”

  “Yeah,” Mitch said.

  “Nancy thinks you're trying to steal their thunder. They're sensitive about that.”

  “Right.”

  “It's just you and me, until Mr. Daney gets here,” Merton said.

  Mitch finished the can of Coors and propped it gently on the wooden arm of the camp chair.

  “Shall I crush that for you?” Merton asked with a twinkle. “Just to keep up masculine appearances.”

  Mitch did not answer. The camp, the bones, his discovery, suddenly meant nothing. His mind was a blank sheet with vague writing starting to appear, as if scrawled by ghosts. He could not read the writing, but he did not like it.

  He jerked, and the can fell off the arm of the chair. It struck the gravel with a hollow rattle. “Jesus,” he said. He had never had a hypnagogic experience before.

  “Something wrong?” Merton asked.

  “Eileen was right. Maybe I'm still sick.” He pushed up out of the chair. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Of course,” Merton said.

  “Thanks.” Mitch sidled awkwardly one step to the left, as if about to lose his balance, perhaps his sanity. “How secure is it?”

  “Very,” Oliver said, watching him with concern. “Private trunk feed for Mr. Daney.”

  Mitch did not know whom to trust, whom to turn to. He had never felt more spooked or more helpless in his life.

  No ESP, he thought. Please, let there be no such thing as ESP.

  39

  NEW MEXICO

  Dicken sat beside Helen Fremont on the couch in the trailer. She was staring at the wall opposite the couch, fever-scenting, he suspected, but he could not tell what she was hoping to accomplish, if anything. The air in the trailer smelled of old cheese and tea bags. He had finished his story ten minutes ago, patiently going back over old history and trying to justify himself as well: his existence, his work, his loathing for the isolation he had felt all these years, buried in his work as if it were another kind of plastic suit, proof against life. There had been silence for several minutes now, and he did not know what to say, much less what would happen to them next.

  The girl broke the silence. “Aren't you at all afraid I'll make you sick?” she asked.

  “I'm stuck,” Dicken said, lifting his hands. “They won't let me out until they can make other arrangements.”

  “Aren't you afraid?” she repeated.

  “No,” Dicken said.

  “If I wanted to, could I make you sick?”

  Dicken shook his head. “I doubt it.”

  “But if they know that, why keep me here? Why keep any of us away from people?”

  “Well, we just don't know what to do or what to believe. We don't understand,” he added, speaking softly. “That makes us weak and stupid.”

  “It's cruel,” the girl said. Then, as if she was just coming to believe she was pregnant, “How will they treat my baby?”

  The door to the trailer opened. Aram Jurie entered first and was almost immediately flanked by two security men armed with machine pistols. All wore white isolation suits. Even through the plastic cowl, Jurie's pallid face was a pepperball of irritation. “This is stupid,” he said as the security men stepped forward. “Are you trying to sabotage everything we've done?”

  Dicken stood up from the couch and glanced at the girl, but she did not seem at all surprised or disturbed. God help us, it's what she knows. Dicken said, “You're holding this young woman illegally.”

  Jurie was comically incredulous for a man whose face was normally so placid. “What in God's green Earth were you thinking?”

  “You're not an authorized holding facility for children,” Dicken continued, warming to his subject. “You illegally transported this girl across state lines.”

  “She's a threat to public health,” Jurie said, suddenly recovering his calm. “And now you've joined her.” He waved his hand. “Get him out of here.”

  The security men seemed unable to decide how to react. “Isn't he safe where he is?” one guard asked, his voice muffled inside the hood.

  The girl reached up to Dicken and tightly gripped his arm. “There is no threat,” Dicken told Jurie.

  “You do not know that,” Jurie said, staring hard at Dicken, but the comment was more for the benefit of the guards.

  “Dr. Jurie has stepped way over the line,” Dicken said. “Kidnapping is a tough rap, guys. This is a facility doing contract work under EMAC, which is under the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services. All of them have strict guidelines on human experimentation.” And nobody knows whether those guidelines still apply. But it's the best bluff we have. “You have no jurisdiction over the girl. We're leaving Sandia. I'm taking her with me.”

  Jurie shook his head vigorously, making his hood waggle. “Very John Wayne. You got that out very nicely. I'm supposed to growl and play the villain?”

  The situation was incredible and tense and fairly funny. “Yeah,” Dicken said, abruptly breaking out in a shit-kicking, full-out hayseed grin. He had a tendency to do that when confronted by authority figures. It was one reason why he had spent so much of his life doing fieldwork.

  Jurie misinterpreted Dicken's smile. “We have an incredible opportunity here. Why waste it?” Jurie said, wheedling now. “We can solve so many problems, learn so much. What we learn will benefit millions. It could save us all.”

  “Not this girl. Not any of them.” Dicken held out his hand. The girl got to her feet and together, hand in hand, they walked cautiously toward the door.

  Jurie blocked their way. “How far do you think you'll get?” he asked, livid behind the cowl.

  “Let's find out,” Dicken said. Jurie reached out to hold him, but Dicken's arm snaked up and he grabbed the edge of the faceplate, as if to remind Jurie of their unequal vulnerability. Jurie dropped his hands, Dicken let go, and the man backed off, catching up against a chair and almost falling over.

  The security men seemed rooted to the trailer's floor. “Good for you,” Dicken murmured. “Hire some lawyers, gentlemen. Time off for good behavior. Mitigating factors in sentencing.” Still murmuring legal inanities, he peered through the door of the trailer and saw a cluster of scientific and security staff, including Flynn, Powers, and now Presky, hanging back beyond the open gate in the reinforced acrylic fence. “Let's go, honey,” Dicken said, and they stepped out onto the porch.

  Behind, he heard a scuffle and swiveled his head to see Jurie, his face contorted, trying to grab a pistol and the security guards doing an awkward little dance keeping their weapons out of his reach.

  Scientists with guns, Dicken thought. That really was the living end. Somehow, the
absurdity cheered him. He squeezed the girl's hand and marched toward the others standing by the gate.

  They did not stop him. Maggie Flynn actually held the gate open. She looked relieved.

  40

  CALIFORNIA

  Stella and Will had left the car after it ran out of gas near a town called Lone Pine. They were in the woods now, but she did not feel any closer to freedom, or to where she wanted to be.

  They had left Mrs. Hayden asleep in the car, drained after driving all night and then cutting back and forth across the state routes and freeways and back roads all morning. Will trudged ahead of Stella, carrying two empty plastic bottles.

  At noon, the air was cool and hazy. Summer was turning into fall. The pines and larches and oaks seemed to shimmer as breezes blew and clouds raced over the low mountains.

  They had seen very few houses along the road, but there were some. Will talked about a place that was in the middle of nowhere, with no humans for tens, if not hundreds, of miles. Stella was too tired to feel discouraged. She knew now they did not belong anywhere or to anyone; they were just lost, inside and out. Her feet hurt. Her back hurt. The discomfort from her period was passing. That was a small blessing, but now she was beginning to wonder who and what Will really was.

  He looked more than a little feral with his hair sweaty and sticking straight up at the back where he had leaned against the rear seat in Mrs. Hayden's car. He smelled gamy, angry, and afraid, but Stella knew she did not smell any better.

  She wondered what Celia and LaShawna and Felice were up to, what had happened to the drivers trussed up and left by the side of the road.

  She had only a dim idea how the map in Will's back pocket correlated with where they were. The road looked like a long black river rolling into the distance, vanishing around a tree-framed curve.

  For a moment, she stopped and watched a ground squirrel. It stood on a low flat rock beside the shoulder, hunched and alert, with shiny black eyes, like the Shrooz in her room in Virginia.

  She hoped they would end up on a farm and she could be with animals. She got along well with animals.