The Burning Road

by Ann Benson

  “You can start by eliminating all the females.”

  “I did that already. There are still seven males. But there’s a problem.”

  She hated that sinking feeling.

  “My supervisor won’t let me do seven complete sequences.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was a property crime where no one was hurt. Genetic sequencing on that sort of violation has to take a number behind crimes against people. That’s the usual policy. And I’m sorry to say, we’re a little backlogged right now. All of a sudden we seem to have an awful lot of unidentifieds … more than we had yesterday.”

  Already? she found herself thinking. It’s way too soon for that.

  “DR SAM–type unidentifieds?”

  Michael waited for a few seconds before answering, then quietly confirmed her fears. “Yes. That type.”

  A moment of silence passed.

  Then Michael told her, “They’re spreading the victims out over all the divisions, mine included.” His tone of voice was flat and informational. “I assume that’s to minimize the shock of the numbers while they do whatever it is they try to do about it.”

  His matter-of-fact recitation was no surprise to Janie. He’d cleaned up all sorts of Outbreak messes. But she felt cold nausea creeping into her own belly at the thought of what might be coming. When this had happened the first time, no one had known what to expect. Now they all did. She heard Bruce’s advice, too harsh when it was given, now more appropriate, saying, Get out, run, go anywhere to hide.

  But there was nowhere to hide.

  And there was so much she had to do before she could make her escape. It made her mission seem all the more urgent, so she set aside her fears as best she could and concentrated. “Just give me the bottom line, Michael.”

  “It’s slim, I’m sorry to say. She’s agreed to let me do one complete sequencing for ID purposes, because of the journal’s value. And because I told her there was a lot more genetic material from one particular individual than any other, and we thought it logical to assume that it would identify the perpetrator.”

  “Was there?”

  “A bit more, but not enough to really say for sure that it was your chap. It could just as easily be from the gent who bound the book. He’d be all over it too.”

  After a few seconds’ pause, Janie said, “Can you give me the information you got off the journal?”

  “I think I can make a case that because you’re the owner, you have a right to see the evidence.”

  “Good. Beam it all over, then.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I’m not quite sure. But there might be something I can do to narrow it down, at least a little.”

  It was not something she liked requesting over the phone. In person would be far better.

  He had to have left a mark on the older one, too, a fingerprint, a teardrop stain, anything would do.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” Myra said with a smile when she greeted Janie in the reception area of the depository. “I hope everything came out as you expected it would. It was quite interesting around here earlier. I don’t mind telling you the whole thing absolutely exhausted me—I was just about to leave for the day.”

  “I’m glad I caught you, then. I can’t tell you how I appreciate what you did. I know you had to go to a lot of trouble.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. I just took the journal out and laid it on top of a display case, then whacked the case with my elbow. It went off like a rocket, just like it was supposed to.” She smiled. “Then I stood over in the corner and watched as all sorts of handsome young policemen swarmed over the area picking things up. That’s probably what has me feeling so drained. But I survived the whole ordeal quite nicely.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear. Especially since I need another little favor.”

  She explained her thinking.

  But in this case, Myra was not so supportive. “Absolutely not. That manuscript is much too fragile for anything of the sort.”

  “All I need is a fingerprint. A tear. Any physical trace at all.”

  Firmly, “No.”

  “Myra, please, I just have to identify Alejandro, and if I could match something—”

  Suddenly Myra’s brow furrowed in concentration. Her expression intensified and she said, “Wait a minute—would a hair do?”

  “A hair would be perfect, if it was the right one. I just need to see if I have the same two people in both books. Then I’ll know it’s him. It’ll have to be him.”

  “Come with me.”

  Janie followed her to the same room where they’d done their previous examination of the journal. As she stood in the doorway and watched, Myra went to a refrigerated storage unit and passed her hand over its sensor. The door clicked open. Myra turned to Janie and said, “This will just take a second.”

  She closed herself inside the unit. Janie could not hear what she was doing beyond the door, because its thick insulation muted the sound. But as promised, Myra came out shortly. The door swung closed almost silently behind her and Janie heard the latch click.

  Myra held in her hand a medium-sized plastic bag with a zip-type closure, and inside that bag were several smaller ones, each containing some minute archaeological treasure. “We found all this material when Abraham’s manuscript first came to us.”

  Janie saw at least one hair. And there were flakes of papyrus, some stained.

  “I’ll want them back,” Myra said. “As intact as possible.”

  Janie’s eyes settled hungrily on the bag. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll be very careful.”

  “Now, I have no idea who these things came from, but one of them might be from your fellow Canches. And now you’ve got me curious too, so hurry up and do your work. I’m dying to know.”

  “Two,” Michael said.

  “Two?”

  “Two of the same people show up in both of them. But one is very faint in the journal.”

  “Still, I can’t count on that to be the determining factor … God, how am I going to tell?”

  “Do you have any idea what this chap looked like?”

  “He was described in the journal to a degree by the woman who had it after him.”

  “Then why don’t you put both of these gents up on an imager? Take a look at them.”

  She was about to say, I don’t have an imager. But then she remembered—Virtual Memorial did.

  “Beam them over,” she said.

  It was a well-witnessed and thoroughly momentous event. Janie sat in Tom’s loaned study—now temporarily a birthing room of sorts—and balanced Virtual Memorial on her lap with Kristina at her side and Tom looking over her shoulder. The first of two male human figures unfolded slowly on the screen before them as the image compiler did its work of clarifying, sharpening, and defining what it assumed the contributor of the rough genetic code would look like. The resulting apparitions would not be perfectly clear—a complete sequenced code was required for that, or to delineate other more specific traits—but they would show the general characteristics of the subjects.

  “Do you think this will be enough?” Kristina asked.

  “I hope so,” Janie said quietly as she stared at the screen. “I don’t know where we’re going to go from here if it’s not.”

  “Then there’s that other small matter of whether or not the strip we need is going to be there.”

  Janie reached over and patted Kristina’s arm. “I’m keeping a positive attitude.”

  The face of the first man was beginning to come into rough focus. When his naked image was complete, she looked it over carefully, with a kind of curiosity that was almost disturbing to her. She wanted to feel cold and clinical about the work before her, but instead she was nervous and excited, as if she were meeting a long-lost brother for the first time. How deep would their kinship extend? There was no way to tell. It would just have to unfold.

  The image that h
ad appeared was of a man darkcomplected and well formed, and his features were Mediterranean-looking, which was what she had expected to find in Alejandro’s case. But unclothed, unbearded, uncircumcised, she simply could not say with any certainty that it was the man she wanted.

  The second image was just as slow in building; cell by cell, it followed its predestined pathway from zygote to fetus to infant to childhood, and finally to adulthood, growing, reshaping and transforming itself in million-fold acceleration until the fully formed man appeared. He too was nicely shaped, but slimmer than his counterpart, an ectomorph to the other’s mesomorph.

  “What a marvel,” Tom said as he watched from behind her. “It’s like seeing someone born.”

  “But it pales in comparison to the real thing,” Janie said.

  After a slight pause, Tom said, “I’m sure you’re right.”

  Janie looked up at him briefly, realized her gaffe, and wanted to apologize. His childlessness was a somewhat sore subject. But she continued. “Now, for the moment of truth.” She put the two images up on a split screen and directed the imaging display program to zoom in on their faces.

  “What are you doing?” Tom asked.

  “Closing in,” Kristina said as she watched.

  Janie centered the zoom over the eyes and went closer, closer and closer, until finally she had nothing but eyes on each side of the screen.

  Image One: brown eyes.

  Image Two: blue.

  “It’s number one,” she said, dropping the other from the screen.

  It was not as clear as she would have liked, but it was there for her to see, finally, and it would have to do for now. There would be time later to get to know this man better.

  “Hello, Alejandro,” she said softly.

  She looked over her shoulder at Tom; his eyes were full of excitement, reflecting perfectly what she herself felt, though understandably less deeply. She would not get the same reaction from Bruce when she told him; he would correctly point out how silly it all seemed, how compulsive and obsessed she was, how illogical her thinking had become. In an entire nation of DNA she couldn’t find the little segment she needed. But in one ancient Jew she would. It was absurd.

  But it was undeniably possible. He fit the profile perfectly.

  “I need some answers,” she said aloud to the brown-eyed man. “You always seem to have them.”

  27

  The abandoned stone longhouse with its thatched roof was plain and anonymous, and probably long forgotten by its previous occupants. It was set well off the road, so it was not overly visible, but it was near enough for convenience. It was sound and looked to be weatherproof, and it had everything they needed to headquarter a rebellion in the making. They found no decomposing bodies inside, nor any fresh graves in the near vicinity, so Karle and Alejandro assumed that the former tenants had either lost hope and left, or incurred the wrath of their overlord and were carried away. There was adequate room for the three of them and their two horses, and the stone walls were stout and would be impervious to arrows, should the rebellion ever be brought to their doorstep.

  A stream ran nearby with clean-enough water for the horses, and the previous occupants had left behind cisterns into which the rain might fall, or in lack of rain, into which they could filter the water from the stream for their cooking and drinking needs. Not far away was a meadow where the horses might be grazed and trained, and where the peasants they intended to gather might be magically transformed from their base-metal selves into golden warriors to the cause of freedom. Small game was no more plentiful than in any other area, but it seemed adequate, so they would not starve.

  Kate and Alejandro set about a practiced routine of establishing themselves into a new home, for they had done it many times in their decade of wandering and they knew the rhythm and feel of settling in. Karle did as he was directed to do, for it was to his benefit that they chose this site and made these preparations. Try as he might, Alejandro could not convince his daughter to abandon Guillaume Karle, though there was sure and certain danger ahead if they stayed in his company. But stay they did, at Kate’s insistence.

  As was always their habit, they cleaned first, to remove the remnants of those who had been there before them. The father cut for the daughter a straight branch, and she herself gathered some straw, and with a thong of leather they tied the straw to the stick to fashion a simple broom. Kate promptly took it away from him, for she understood that sweeping was the work of women, while men saw to the things that required their greater strength. Besides, she had told him many times before, you have not the innards to do it as well as a woman.

  Alejandro let his own tasks lie for a moment and watched as she swept the dirt floor smooth and made sure it was free of vermin, and as the dust rose up around her he lost himself in it and saw …

  … the tiny child who bravely worked the broom left behind in Mother Sarah’s cottage, who wiped away the cobwebs, and when she was through with that silky but offensive stuff, attacked her own tears with her dirty little hand, a little girl who plumped the straw and carried in the armloads of faggots, who hurried to get things ready as he shivered and slumped and finally fell to the straw, in the grip of the Plague Maiden, and whether he rose again or not was up to the child entirely, and would be determined by the strength of her small will.

  She had done then what was needed, as she did now. And somehow, as they went about the work of providing for themselves, Guillaume Karle managed to slide himself into the old rhythm as if he had always been there, eventually usurping Alejandro’s tasks like some young buck with velvet antlers bent on unseating the aging King of the Stags. Out, on Kate’s banishment, went the dirt and dust and cobwebs, and in, on the back of the amber-haired Christian, came the faggots that would light their nights and cook their food and boil their water. And when Karle was done carrying faggots, the Frenchman cut great quantities of fresh straw for their bedding and carried it in bursting armloads into the longhouse. He piled it in a corner in a great heap.

  When he judged the pile to be high enough, he said, “Where shall it be laid?”

  They all stopped what they were doing. Kate and Karle looked at Alejandro, and Alejandro looked back and forth between them. The unspoken question hung in the air, awaiting settlement, as the sun glowed in the west on its way to sleep.

  Finally Kate said, “Père, I would have a word with you.” She glanced briefly at Karle, who nodded his head and then quietly stepped outside.

  When they were alone, the daughter put a gentle hand on her father’s arm. “He is a good man, Père. You could not have known how well you chose my protector.”

  Alejandro stroked her hair and smiled, a bit sadly. “I think it was not I who chose, daughter, but perhaps God.”

  “Then I hope you will understand that I wish to stand before God and take this man to husband.”

  “Will he take you to wife?”

  “You must speak with him for that answer.”

  He did not wish to remove his hand from her hair; it felt clean and cool, and wonderfully familiar, as it had always felt since he had first taught her to brush it.

  “Must I?” he said softly.

  “Aye, Père. You must.”

  An unsavory notion settled in on him, that before him was a full-grown woman, and not the tiny child he had brought out of England. Under its troublesome weight, he understood what he would be required to do.

  He took his hand away. “Karle,” he shouted, loud enough to be heard outside.

  Karle appeared in the doorway. He glanced quickly at Kate, who made a small smile and then quickly lowered her gaze.

  The two men faced each other in silence for a moment, then Alejandro said, “My daughter says you would speak to me.”

  As de Chauliac looked around the now vacant room, he saw nothing except a neatly folded pile of courtier’s clothing to indicate that a human being had recently occupied it. He leaves no traces of himself anywhere, at least none that are visible
. No detritus, no pot of bodily wastes to be emptied. He had arrived spare, and departed just as spare, leaving in his wake only the one item that the guard had managed to yank away as he made his escape and his small fortune in gold.

  But that was understandable; he had become a vagabond and had learned in the course of his wanderings to live by vagabond habits. And wisely, de Chauliac thought, for a Jew never knew when he would need to uproot himself. Best to be prepared.

  But had he needed to take his spirit too? Could he not have left behind just a faint trace of the wonderfully curious character that was so irresistible and seductive? De Chauliac had the manuscript, and certainly there were leavings of the man within it. But now he would have only Flamel to share it with. And Flamel would not be pleased that the translation remained unfinished.

  They found a priest an hour’s ride north of Compiègne, an old, drunken, and very smelly friar who could barely recall the words of the ceremony he’d been commandeered to perform. Kate wore a garland of late-summer flowers in her golden hair, and Karle had brushed his clothing clean for the occasion and tied his own amber waves back into a string Alejandro gave him. They stood reverently before the ragged cleric and promised to be faithful unto each other until death did them part.

  And then they returned to their new home, and Alejandro dutifully rearranged the straw. An unlucky pheasant, encountered on the ride back from the small church, served as their wedding feast, and they ate apples gathered from a tree on the other side of the meadow.

  And as the sun made ready to fall again, Alejandro said, “Were we in Spain and celebrating your wedding properly, you would right now be receiving the bride gifts of your well-wishers and relatives. You would receive a feather bed from all of your grandparents, and candlesticks from your parents, and cloths and beaters and wax from your neighbors. All manner of useful things, big and small, to start your life together.” He sighed. “But I am the sole relative, and the sole well-wisher, and I have none of these necessities to give you. So I will give you what I have.”