Beyond Regeneration

by Jenny Schwartz

  Chapter Nine

  Jack’s kitchen was a refuge. For a start, it wasn’t at New Hope.

  Charley unpacked the groceries she’d bought, switched the radio to a popular music station, and refused to think; refused totally and utterly. Her brain and emotions were too battered.

  Jack walked into the kitchen, having changed his professional image for jeans and sweater, the sleeves pushed up for work. He stood in the kitchen and looked awkward. “Can I help?”

  His uncharacteristic helplessness raised a half-smile from her. “Not really. I’m a solitary cook.” The curve of her mouth widened to a full smile as she realized the gift he’d just given her. Too many people refused to accept that she’d adapted to her disability. Jack simply accepted that she could function effectively. It felt good. “If there’s anything you need to do, this will take about thirty minutes.” She intended to grill two steaks and serve them with a tossed salad and pasta with store-bought sauce.

  “Well,” he hesitated. Then he returned her smile. “Actually, I don’t want to do anything. Shall I open a bottle of wine? I think there’s a cabernet mix somewhere, unless you don’t drink red wine?”

  “Red’s fine. I’m not fussy.”

  He poured them both a glass and drank his slowly, watching her dinner preparations. A thought seemed to strike him. He opened the fridge and stared at the nearly empty shelves. “We’ll have to go shopping, tomorrow.” A tinge of color touched his face. “Sorry. Of course you don’t have to come grocery shopping with me.” He settled his glasses more firmly on his nose and continued with self-deprecating, recovered assurance. “Only I’m not much of a cook. I tend to eat dinner at New Hope or in town, so I usually buy foods to put together meals for eating on the fly. If I shop alone, I’m not sure what you’ll end up eating.”

  “It’s okay.” She laughed. “I know what you mean. Bread and cheese, or pre-prepared meals. Living alone, you get into lazy habits. If you can fit grocery shopping into your day tomorrow, I’ll be happy to go with you—you can push the trolley—but don’t put yourself out for me.”

  “I won’t.” He toasted her. The wine glass caught the light and flashed a deep, clear red.

  They ate at the dining table adjacent to the kitchen. Evening shadows had colonized the garden and through an open window came the bass notes of frogs from the creek. The ugly, discordant chorus was oddly comforting. Any out of place visitors would silence the frogs instantly.

  Jack refilled their glasses.

  Charley sighed, caught his eye, and smiled. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Yes.” He seemed to force away the memories. “It’s good to be home.”

  After dinner, she filled the dishwasher and set it sloshing while he scrubbed the grill. She finished her task first and leaned back against a counter to watch him work. She’d forgotten the comfort there was in simply sharing space with another person. “Are you ever lonely out here?”

  He paused in his final wipe over of the grill. “New Hope keeps me busy. Being alone here is a kind of balance.” He stopped. “Sometimes I’m lonely.” He set aside the grill and washed his hands. The topic had gotten too personal, and was closed. He dried his hands and lifted the wine bottle.

  She shook her head. “No more for me.” She had a gentle buzz, a soft cloud obscuring worry. She wouldn’t risk falling over into tipsiness, and returning again to personal territory.

  He put the bottle down. “I’ll make tea.” He opened a cupboard. “Fudge for dessert, locally made. I bought it at a weekend market.”

  “Jack,” she interrupted. “I met Solomon this afternoon. He seemed intent on telling me all Michael’s secrets.”

  Surprisingly, his response was a wicked grin. “I very much doubt Solomon, or anyone, knows all Michael’s secrets.” He sobered when she didn’t respond to his humor. “Are you saying Solomon warned you against Michael?”

  “Yes. Solomon’s interested in the Jabberwocky trial, though he doesn’t know its name or, I suspect, the details of it. He wanted me to spy on you.”

  Jack took off his glasses and rubbed his face. When he replaced his glasses, all he said was, “I’ll make that tea. Then, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”

  She frowned at the back of his head. She was sure he hadn’t intended to vanish into his study until she’d mentioned Solomon. “Will you contact Michael?”

  He shook his head, not in denial, but in a refusal to answer.

  She swallowed the last of her wine in an angry gulp. She might want answers, but she couldn’t force them from him. She was annoyed, mostly with herself for her rampant curiosity. “You’d better make my tea a soothing blend.” Her request won an all-too-knowing grin from him. “So I’m curious. It’s what journalists do.”

  “Then you’re a very good journalist, Charley.”

  She punched his shoulder by way of retaliation.

  “Have some fudge,” he offered.

  She accepted a square of the peace offering and tasted it. “Yum.” She licked the sweetness from her lips, looked up and caught him watching.

  He said, easily. “Which tea do you want, Sleepy, Dozy or Zen?”

  “Cute names.” She must have imagined his intentness. Too much wine, no doubt. “I’ll try Zen.”

  He dropped teabags into two mugs. The kettle shrilled and switched off. “Here you are.” He handed her a mug. He took his own and a square of fudge. What he didn’t do, was retreat to his office.

  She put her mug on the counter so she could pick up a second piece of fudge. She studied him uncertainly as she did so. “Do I need to say I don’t intend to spy on you?”

  “I assumed as much.” He frowned. “Let’s sit in the living room.” Noticing the fudge she held, he picked up her mug to carry it through. In the large living room with its comfortable earth tones and unlit fireplace, he put her mug down on a low coffee table in front of a long sofa. He sat at the other end of the sofa.

  Charley curled up in her corner. It was nice to spend an evening with company, even if the subject was serious. She smiled at Jack, waiting for him to speak.

  After a moment, he smiled back. He laughed. “Charley, you’re magic.”

  “Um, why? It’s a lovely compliment, but…” She reached for her mug of herbal tea, sipping it through the lingering sweetness of the fudge.

  “I was going to be all serious about the day and the challenges for bio-enhancement, and now I don’t want to. I’m sorry Lillian’s dead. It’s a tragedy, and I’m sorry for Alan. But here and now, I’m surprisingly content. It’s nice to have you, here.”

  “Someone to talk with,” she said quietly.

  He nodded. “My work has been my life, but just now, I don’t want to talk about it, the reasons for Solomon’s interest, Michael, anything.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about you?”

  “And bore you?”

  Her smile dismissed the notion. “Tell me what you do for exercise. You’re very fit.”

  He glanced at her, as if her question had surprised him. “I surf. It’s only a short drive to the beach. I meant to buy a place right on the coast, but I liked this house.”

  “So you can be impulsive,” she teased.

  “When my heart’s involved. Otherwise I’m annoyingly methodical.”

  “Your home is fantastic, so I understand why you fell in love with it.” She looked up at the high vaulted ceiling of the living room. “There’s space and room to breathe.”

  “Where do you live in Sydney?”

  She grimaced. “A tiny flat. I ought to move. I miss not having a garden, but housing is so expensive in the city.”

  “Do you ever think of returning to Perth?”

  “Not really. I…I think I’m afraid I’d miss Eric too much. It’s where we lived, together. Sydney doesn’t have those memories.” She looked at Jack and found him watching her expressionlessly. “My family miss me, and I miss them. I should think about coming home.”

  “If Perth is home,
is living in Sydney exile?”

  The warm buzz of the wine faded. Exile. She put her mug down on the coffee table and stared at the stump of her arm. Was Sydney not about protecting herself from memories of Eric and happiness, but about punishing herself for being alive?

  “I liked Eric,” Jack said. “And I respected him. He knew what he wanted in life and he went for it. He knew, too, how to value what he had. He loved you very much.”

  Her smiled was a wobbly effort.

  “I can put the television on,” he offered. “We’ll stop talking about deep and meaningful things. But, Charley, Eric wouldn’t just want you to be happy, he’d expect you to be. He used to brag on your brave, bright courage, and how you were going with him to Africa, how much you were enjoying your time there—”

  She launched herself along the length of the sofa and burrowed into him. His tea splashed her and him. “Your fault,” she mumbled. “For being kind, but calling me on my cowardice. I need a hug.”

  He shifted, putting his mug down, then hugged her tight yet awkward. He lifted her, putting her on his lap. He rested his face against her hair. “Whatever happens, Charley, live your life with all the beauty you bring to it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Charley walked along the creek, trying to come to terms with how different she felt. The loss of her hand caught her at unexpected moments, like now, when she wanted to break a stick into little pieces, hearing the crack and shatter that would express some of the tension and uncertainty inside her.

  Last night, Jack’s words and her tears had unlocked a final stage of her mourning. She’d been denying that life continued after tragedy, but it did. She did.

  She’d refused his offer of a lift to New Hope that morning. He’d accepted her excuse of wanting to concentrate on the information she’d already collected, but she suspected that he thought she was uncomfortable with him after the emotions of yesterday evening, and that those feelings were her reason for not accompanying him to the clinic. He was wrong. She felt surprisingly comfortable with him. It wasn’t embarrassment, but fear, that kept her away.

  “Those damn QNA.” She was scared to return to New Hope. Her weird behavior in the QNA lab made her doubt her sanity.

  She stooped and picked up a long, thin stick. She poked violently at the shallow bed of the creek, overturning a scatter of gravel and stirring the muddy bottom. A gilgie, a small freshwater shellfish, scuttled for the shelter of its hole beneath a larger rock. Charley flung the stick away.

  “It could be my imagination.” But imagination didn’t invade your whole body. Her memories had been visceral, as raw as if occurring at that moment.

  In fact, the more she tried to reject or rationalize away her experience at the QNA lab, the more she reluctantly believed it. Because there was also Alan Do’s response. If she accepted the impossible just for a moment and blamed the QNA for dredging up her memories of pity, worry and reassurance, what had they woken in Alan?

  She shivered.

  How crazy was she? Did she really believe that the QNA were a living intelligence, aware and communicating? Even assuming that they weren’t intelligent, the idea that a swarm of QNA could mess with her emotions was a short trip to the funny farm.

  Jack showed no evidence of responding to communications from the QNA, or thinking of them as anything more than bio-tools for his work.

  However, Alan had run from them. Did he share her sense of awareness?

  “I’m crazy.” She didn’t even want to imagine what Jack would do if she told him her thoughts. Hi, Jack, you’ve created an alien intelligence in your lab and it seems to delight in rummaging through my memories.

  Appositely, a cloud driven by the high fast wind covered the sun.

  An alien intelligence.

  It was a stark thought, totally beyond anything she’d ever dreamed of encountering. Aliens from outer space would be less trouble. At least a visible encounter with “the other”, the alien, would bring the consequences and interruption of human life into the open. The QNA, if it were real, could be more insidious. Not only would humans be sharing the planet with another sentient species, but via bio-enhancement, the QNA would change the very nature of what it meant to be human. Would the boundary between human and animal blur? Could a co-sentience develop or would the QNA be parasitic?

  Could it be feeding off her emotions? Ew.

  “Bloody scientific progress.” She kicked at the leaf litter underfoot. She had no place in the cauldron of philosophical, ethical and scientific revolution that regeneration and bio-enhancement provoked. She worried, though, that pursuit of scientific developments was once again, as so often in human history, outstripping humanity’s conceptual, political and moral ability to cope with it.

  Dr. Peverill had raised those issues.

  Charley kicked again at the leaf litter and breathed in the damp scent of eucalyptus and wet earth. When it came right down to it, it wasn’t the improbability of the QNA that scared her; it was the possibilities of its reality that flat out terrified her.

  A willywagtail that had been trailing Charley for the insects her scuffing walk sent up, scolded loudly. She looked up. Unnoticed, the sun had come out again, and she shaded her eyes against the glare.

  She saw a young woman, standing in the shade of a tall gumtree and watching her with total self-possession.

  “Charlotte Weiss?”

  Charley nodded.

  The young woman strolled forward to stand at the edge of the creek, balanced on a rock.

  “I’m Nicola Payne, from Jabberwocky.” The exercise clothes she wore emphasized her athletic figure. Her face was a noncommittal mask, the wide mouth compressed with control. Only her long, curly brown hair tied in a high ponytail softened the impression of fierce competence. “I’m here to invite you to Jabberwocky.”

  “Oh.” Charley fumbled for words. She was mentally off-balance. From worry about QNA sentience, she was now scrabbling after other, older worries—like the implications of sensory bio-enhancement. If she wanted to explore that topic, she had to accept Nicola’s invitation.

  Was Nicola one of the names Jack had mentioned? Was she one of the test subjects?

  “We thought it was time we met you,” Nicola said, cool and distant.

  Did you? “We who?” And how long had Nicola been observing her before the willywagtail gave away her presence? Charley glanced down at the small bird that had accepted Nicola’s presence and was once more darting after insects.

  Nicola stepped off the rock and back onto dry ground. “Aaron, Ted and me. We’re John’s trial subjects.”

  “Jack mentioned you,” Charley said absently. She noticed, though, the quick sharpening of Nicola’s attention at that statement. Was it because of Charley’s familiar “Jack”, or because he’d confided in her? And thinking about confidences…“Have you spoken with Jack? How did you know I was here?”

  “Oh, we keep an eye on comings and goings at New Hope. We heard of Lillian’s death.” Nicola’s clear gaze flickered away from Charley to observe the antics of the small black and white bird.

  Lillian’s death. Charley rubbed her forehead. It could be the reason for this visit and the invitation. It was understandable that the test subjects would want to know more about Lillian’s sudden death, and in a sense Charley was an eye witness, or at least, someone early on the scene. The only point where this explanation fell down was that Jack could supply more background. Why not speak with him?

  Still, Charley was curious. Why did Nicola’s daunting confidence, her direct stare, falter at the mention of Lillian’s death?

  Charley knew she would give in and go with Nicola to Jabberwocky, but she did want one final question answered first. “Does Jack, or Michael, know that you’re asking me to Jabberwocky?”

  “John, no,” Nicola said instantly. “Michael, probably. He bugs our conversations.”

  Charley blinked.

  A slight, smug grin tilted Nicola’s mouth. “Or at least, those conver
sations we want him to hear.”

  “Oh.” Evidently more games than Charley was aware of were being played around New Hope. And if all those games started from the QNA and the bio-enhancement they made possible? Charley frowned. The tangle started with the QNA and if she wanted to unravel it, then she had to follow each thread. For her own peace of mind, she needed to learn more about the QNA. For instance, how did it affect the test subjects?

  “You really should come out to Jabberwocky.” Nicola interrupted Charley’s thoughts. “There are things you need to know.”

  “There are a lot of things I’d like to know. I don’t know how much right I have to that knowledge.”

  “Knowledge belongs to the people who receive it,” was Nicola’s cryptic response.

  Charley stared at her. “Okay,” she said abruptly. “I’ll go.”

  The drive to Jabberwocky took thirty minutes; ten minutes down the highway, another twenty travelling fast along country roads. Wattle blurred into streams of gold on either side of the road. Nicola wasn’t bothered by speed limits.

  Charley checked her seatbelt and controlled the urge to step on an imaginary brake pedal. Clearly, despite the two years since she’d last driven, the instinct of self-preservation roused old skills.

  Nicola slowed at a gravel track, and Charley breathed easily again. Fifty meters in, a gate set into a high wire fence stood open.

  “We only shut it when we have to,” Nicola said.

  Charley wondered what Nicola and the two men might want to shut out. It wasn’t a comforting thought. The house was invisible somewhere beyond the trees. “How big is Jabberwocky?”

  “Fifteen hectares.”

  If the whole property was enclosed, that was some serious fencing. Michael must have paid a lot of money for the security.

  The trees thinned and ended as the driveway approached the coast, and the house emerged. It fitted seamlessly into the open heath landscape between the dunes and the tall eucalypt forest they’d driven through. Like Jack’s, the house was built of the local, creamy limestone and sat snug to the ground, a single story that could withstand the blast of storms off the ocean. The garden around it was minimal, designed to merge into landscape. Although only late winter, a few early spring flowers were blooming: blue leschenaultia and a small red flower Charley couldn’t identify.