by Julius Fast
"Nothing seemed to matter. Nothing was really important, food, work ... nothing." She laughed harshly. "I had my first real affair with a man, and I think that was the most terrible part of all. I found out one thing, and it's the reason for this whole business with Jack. I could never know a man physically, never go to bed with a man and have it mean anything, unless he could link his mind to mine."
"Tell me how Jack fits into all this," Clifford said.
She shook her head. "Let me finish my story first. There isn't much more to tell. I found Rhoda a year after Livia died. It was a hell of a year, but somehow I had pulled myself out of the rut I was in. I'm telling you all this so you'll understand why I had to do what I did. I was passing through Albany when I heard her scream, mentally scream."
She was quiet, her eyes turned inward, her face pained. Then she went on. "It happened to Rhoda in the same way it had happened to me, the stripping away of the veil. But her father was killed in an accident, and his mental screams tore the veil aside. I was able to reach her, to calm her. She was just a child then, just fifteen years old."
"Wait a minute. I don't understand," Clifford protested. "Are you trying to tell me that every woman can do this, whatever it is, under pressure? That she can hear mentally, like mental telepathy or whatever it is?"
"No, no. There are only a few of us, maybe a hundred in America, who are born like this, who have this built-in receptor, this clouded ability. There have probably always been women like this. Sometimes the veil is never lifted and they go through life a little different and not understanding that difference. Maybe a bit more psychic. Then some stress or trauma causes the veil to be lifted, and unless they find someone else, they must face this endless loneliness."
She shuddered. "We learned how to find others, even when the veil was still there, when they were still unawakened. We learned to spot them easily. Wherever we went we would build up a little group, a community of women who could meet on this level."
"Only women?"
"Only women. Only grey-eyed women." She looked up at him, her eyes wide, her face peculiarly young and defenseless.
After a while she sighed and went on. "I did some work one summer for a Dr. Cecil Jacobson at the George Washington University school of medicine and I became very involved with genetics and chromosome counts. That's when I began to understand what this is, this freak talent of ours."
"What is it?"
"A mutation, but a recessive mutation on the X chromosome. That's why it happens to women, why we've never found a man with it. For all we know women may have been mutating like this for thousands of years."
Clifford stared at her in bewilderment. "If that were so, then by now every woman would be—telepathic."
Steve shook her head impatiently. "I don't know how much you understand about genetics. It's a recessive gene. That means it takes two, one on each X chromosome to have an effect. A woman has to get one gene from her mother and one from her father. That doesn't happen often."
"And a single gene has no effect?" He seemed hypnotized by her intensity, accepting what his mind told him was absolute nonsense.
"Perhaps it has some effect," Steve said slowly. "You know, a woman has two X chromosomes. A man has an X chromosome and its mate is called the Y. It's too short to match up with the X all along its length. Part of it matches." She chuckled harshly. "You men were shortchanged there. Anyway, my father must have had one mutant gene on his X chromosome. Maybe that's why, under the terrible stress of his death, I could hear him mentally." She was quiet for a long moment. When she went on, her voice was lower, tighter.
"Not many men have that single gene. When they do, we can usually sense it, a sort of vague, mental awareness. They're also —how can I say it? Incomplete. They can never be complete as we are, but they're still not like other men. They know something is missing, and that knowledge can play hell with their entire lives."
Clifford fought back a growing annoyance. There was a little too much arrogance in her attitude. "I don't understand why it hasn't spread out if it's been around for such a long time—this mind-reading trick." He chose the word trick deliberately, a way of hitting back at her, but it was Rhoda who flinched.
Steve frowned and stood up, pacing the room uncomfortably. "Without a man carrying the mutant gene on his Y chromosome, where it could match our X—there are such recessives carried on the Y chromosome, you know—without such a man, the trait can't become part of humanity. Women who have it, women like us, are reluctant to marry once we've been awakened." She looked at him challengingly. "A lesbian relationship is more rewarding, even if we're sexually normal. But I don't think a man could understand that."
"No, I don't think we could."
She shrugged his interruption aside. "Even if we do marry, we can only offer one X chromosome with a mutant gene to our children. Most of us don't marry, and there isn't much chance of the frequency of the gene increasing. But if one man, only one, appeared with this same mutation on his Y chromosome, everything would change. It would spread throughout the world without mankind being aware of it. I don't know how long it would take, how many generations..." She turned to face him, her eyes gleaming. "That's the man of tomorrow, the next step forward in evolution."
"Why?" Clifford asked flatly.
"Why? Can you imagine wars in a telepathic species? Can you imagine poverty or want?"
Drily, Clifford said, "Easily. As long as men were still human." He shook his head. "Look, what has this all to do with Jack and what's happened to him? You tell me a wild story, and for all I know it's true. All right." He silenced her quick protest. "Let's say I accept it as truth. Where does Jack fit in?"
Rhoda, who had been silent till now, leaned forward intently. "Haven't you realized what Steve has been getting at?"
"No, I haven't. What is it all leading up to?"
"But if you accept it, you must realize what it means. We are the next step forward for mankind. What man is to the ape, we are to man."
"If he can take the step," Steve added intently. "If man can take it."
Were they both mad? He shook his head. What Steve had said carried a ring of conviction, but it was Rhoda's quiet, decisive voice that impelled him to belief. What man is to the ape!
"And Jack?"
Slowly Steve said, "The UNA I gave Jack was not Stiener's experimental UNA alone. It was my own as well. It's something I've spent years working on, UNA isolated from our own cell Cultures, as well as DA synthesized from the basic amino acids. What I wanted to do..."
She spread her hands, groping for the proper words. "What I wanted to (Jo was rearrange Jack's basic genetic structure. Jacobson calls it genetic manipulation. 1 he synthetic DNA should have shaken up his chromosomes. It's done so to experimental animals. Our own DXA I hoped would change the DNA in his germ cells, change Ins chromosomes, his genes, implant our genetic pattern over his."
"And make him what?" His voice rose. "In Other words you were experimenting on Jack?"
She waved it aside with a motion of her hand and there was a ruthless edge to her voice. "I developed the technique with three other biophysicists I worked with. They were all women, all like us. All right. I experimented on Jack, but he would have died anyway, and if Stiener was right he would have lived.
Perhaps he will live."
"To be a stud for your new race?"
Steve walked to the window and drew the drapes aside to stare out into the street. "Don't use the word race like that. We're not racists. There are Negro women among us. Indian and Chinese too. This isn't a function of race. This is above rare. It's a matter of species." She turned to face him, her back to the window. "We need a man. Not physically- we need his sperm. Jack could have been that man. His X chromosome was mutant."
"What do you mean?"
"I could sense it, the uncertainty, 'lie awareness, the incompleteness of fnm." She turned her palm down. "He said himself he had nothing to lose."
"Is it so bad a thing we've
done?" Rhoda asked softly, leaning forward. "If it works, it will save Jack's life and give us an answer."
"If what works?" Clifford asked harshly. "Stiener's anticancer DNA or the stuff you mixed with it?"
"Either one," Steve said tightly. "If either one works, it's worth it."
"To you, perhaps." He thought of Jack crouching naked and terrified in the park. "Doesn't it matter what he has to go through, thinking he's God-knows-what kind of animal?"
Steve nodded. "Not thinking, Clifford. He is God-knows-what kind of animal. You still don't understand."
Clifford, remembering Anna's words, "He was a wolf," stared at Steve and shivered. "I won't let you go on with this, whatever you're going to do."
Instead of answering she slipped into her shoes, then walked to the closet to get their coats. It was only as they were leaving that she answered him in a cold, ruthless voice. "You can't stop us, Clifford. Believe me, you can't. I won't let you. There's just too much at stake."
Chapter Ten
The "MARFAYAN" had been named as a compromise attempt by Tom Dickenson to pacify his wife, Martha, his daughter, Ann, and his mistress, Faye Hunter. The Marfayan was a 36-foot cabin cruiser, charted out of Greenport, Long Island, and if Tom had been able to raise the necessary 60 dollars she would have been out of the water a month ago, her bottom scraped and her engines rinsed with alcohol.
As it was, she was the last of a few lonely fishing boats huddled at the Port of Egypt pier near the seafood restaurant where Faye waited on tables. Tom had spent the weekend with Faye after walking out on Martha for the sixth time that year.
"It's like anything I say is automatically wrong," he told Faye. "The kid is after me for one thing and Martha for another. The only time they stop fighting with each other is when they take off after me."
Faye, hazy with fatigue, had poured a drink for Tom and groaned with relief as she slipped out of her shoes. When Tom sat down next to her on the bed she winced away. "For Christ's sake, not tonight! I've been on my feet since nine this morning. You be a good boy, Tommy, and go down to the bar and put your drinks on my tab. Coots'll take care of you. Seems to me he was asking for you tonight."
Coots, the bartender, poured Tom a stiff shot as he pointed out a table of three. "Guy by the name of Hartsdale's been asking about your boat. I think he wants to charter it, Tommy."
Holding his drink, Tom made his way to the table, his head filled with pleasant visions of the Marfayan hauled and scraped on the fee of one last charter. "You the party that's looking for some fishing?"
Hartsdale, a bulky man in his forties, stood up and shook hands, then waved Tom to a seat. "Meet my sister Alice, and this is Mike."
Mike, sandy-haired and handsome in a florid way, stared up with a sullen nod of recognition. "If yuh crazy enough to go fishing in weather like this, let's go and get it over with."
Alice, hardly more than a teenager, pretty in spite of her bleached hair and heavy makeup, put a coaxing hand on Mike's arm. "Come on, Mike, it's gonna be fun." She stared at Tom eagerly. "What can we catch now, this time of year?"
Tom shrugged. "There's plenty of striped bass still running, and out beyond Montauk some blues."
"I want a tuna," Hartsdale said. He stared at Tom out of blue, sun-bleached eyes, his black hair cut so short he seemed bald. "I want a good fight with a tuna."
Tom scratched his head and wondered how far he could stretch the truth. The boat really needed hauling. "You might get a tuna, it's still not too late."
"You got the rig for it?"
"I sure have. The boat's all set too, right out here at the pier." If this lunatic wanted to go hunting tuna this time of year, it was okay with him. "I take seventy bucks this late in the season."
Hartsdale took a roll of bills out of his pocket and peeled off three twenties and a ten. "That's for the boat. Find me a tuna and there's thirty more."
Tom pocketed the money, nodding. "When do you want to go?"
"Now. Right now." Hartsdale pushed his chair back. "Come on Alice, Mike, let's get cracking."
"You mean now, tonight?"
"Why not? They don't bite at night? You know, fish don't sleep. You know that? Hell, night's even better than day, and who knows where we'll be tomorrow."
"Not in this dump," Mike said tightly.
Tom stood there for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay. I'll meet you out at the pier. Better get some warm clothes on. You stay in' here at the hotel?"
"Yeah." Hartsdale picked up the check. "You tend to the boat. We'll dress up."
Later, out on Peconic Bay and headed around Shelter Island towards Plum Gut, the three were silent, bundled up and watching Tom at the wheel. The lights of Greenport fell away behind them, and the clean brilliant bowl of stars moved down to meet the horizon.
"You know these waters pretty well?" Hartsdale asked as they cut around Gardiner's Island and headed towards Montauk Point.
"Like the back of my hand," Tom grinned. "I've been out on them since I was old enough to walk, and maybe before. My daddy was a scallop fisherman in the bay."
Sobered by the cold air and dark water, Alice asked, "Is it kind of crazy to go out like this, at night?" She had brought a bottle of gin along and she cuddled it to her breast. "Do the fish still bite at night?"
"Mr. Hartsdale's right," Tom said with a grin. "Night or day, it's the same to them, only not many people like to fish after dark. But there's some good fields out there beyond Montauk," he added quickly.
"Well, you open her up." Hartsdale held up a bottle of Scotch. "With this and Alice's gin we're all prepared. Let's start stoking some heat into us."
Surprisingly, two miles out beyond Montauk, they began to pull in a huge catch of striped bass. "They're running like crazy," Tom said in surprised satisfaction.
Mike, half paralyzed with Scotch, fished groggily but methodically and Alice screamed with joy each time a fish fought at her line. Only Hartsdale seemed unsatisfied. Pacing the deck unhappily, he finally burst out, "To hell with this. I want to try for tuna."
Tom finally gave in, knowing with guilty certainty that his vague talk about tuna had been nothing but talk. There was almost no chance of getting anything larger than striped bass this late in the season. He set up the fighting chair in the rear of the boat and rigged up the heavy equipment for Hartsdale. Maybe he could hit a swordfish. If it was a fight he wanted, even a shark would do it.
He slowed down to trawling speed, and glanced back at Hartsdale uneasily. He was settled in the chair, his mouth clamped around a cigar, a grim look on his face that said Tom had better produce or else.
He shrugged. They were all loaded with liquor by now. He might as well be prepared to spend the night out here. He took a swig of the Scotch bottle, thought regretfully of Faye and happily of the seventy bucks, and then inched the Marfayan up a bit while Hartsdale played the line out to about 200 feet. It was going to be a long night!
But the strike, when it came, took them all by surprise. "I've got one, I've got it!" Hartsdale screamed. "Man, it's a live one!"
Mike, pulling out of his drunken apathy, yelled, "Play him! For Christ's sake, play him, man."
Tom slowed the boat down to little more than an idle, and turned to watch Hartsdale, his rod bent almost double, playing out and reeling in, out a little, in a little more, inch by inch till the violently battling fish was almost to the stern of the boat.
"I've got it, I've got it!" Hartsdale gasped. Tom swung the light to the rear and lit up the black water, churned now to a white froth by the still-violent struggle of the fish.
"The gaff," he shouted at Mike. "Get the gaff and hook it."
Alice screamed as Mike stumbled forward with the gaff and leaned over the rear of the boat, clumsily trying to hook the threshing fish. At the third attempt, as Hartsdale with a titanic lunge pulled it clear of the water, he caught it under the gills, and while the white froth of water turned pink, he tugged and hauled the battling fish into the boat.
Hartsd
ale dropped the rod and unbuckling his belt sprang forward to help. With one enormous heave they had the monster over the rail and onto the deck of the boat.
"Jesus Christ, it's a shark," Tom cried out. He let go of the wheel and tore the fire axe off the side rail. "Stand clear. It can still rip the hell out of you. Let me kill it before it fastens those teeth in one of us."
Alice, huddled back against the cabin, screamed, "Throw it back. Throw it back!"
"Kill it first," Mike said heavily. The shark's blood had splashed over him and he wiped his face, staring with disgust at his blood-streaked hands.
"Man-oh-man, what a beast," Hartsdale whispered. "I caught that!"
On the deck the shark threshed frantically, the gills streaming blood where the gaff had torn them and the mouth closing and opening violently as it gasped for breath.
Then, as Tom rushed up with the axe, the long, streamlined body of the shark changed, seeming to blur like plastic before their eyes. The color changed from blue-black to light blue, then pale green and yellow and finally flesh color. The back broadened, thickened, split at the tail into two legs while below the head the body sprouted two arms.
Alice screamed with horror instead of excitement, and the three men stared unbelievingly, in a fog of bewilderment. The axe fell to the deck and Tom crossed himself automatically. Mike retreated at once into the alcoholic fog he had moved in before. He fumbled his way to the rail and started to heave over it.
Tom and Hartsdale watched the full metamorphosis, the emergence of a face, a torso, a full-grown man from the body of the shark, a naked man who scrambled to his feet to face them with wide, blank unintelligent eyes.
He was young, hardly out of his teens, perfectly built and muscled, a Greek statue of a man, ideally proportioned and featured. He stood there, staring at the men, at the boat, and then, lifting his head slowly, at the bowl of stars above.
