The Fountain of Age

by Nancy Kress

“You mean the once-a-week?”

  “Yes. I’m going to show you exactly how much to take, and you must do it every single week.”

  “I know. Or I will die.”

  Ben shut his eyes, then opened them again. “Is that what she told you?”

  “Yes.” Something inside him trembled, like a tremor deep in the earth. “Is it true?”

  “Yes. It’s true. In a very important way.”

  “Okay.” All at once Cixin liked speaking the secret language again. It made Mama seem closer, and it made Cixin special. Suddenly he had a thought that made him jerk upright in bed, rattling his head. “Are you really from America?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Mama was, too?”

  “She lived there for a while, yes.”

  “She liked it there?”

  “Yes, I think she did.”

  “Take me to America with you!”

  Ben didn’t look surprised—why not? Cixin himself was surprised by his thought: surprised, delighted, frightened. In America he would be away from the village boys, away from the school that threw him out. In America he could have an iPod. “Please, Cousin Ben, please please please!”

  “Cixin, I can’t. Auntie is your closest relative and she—”

  “She’s not really my Auntie! She was Mama’s amah, is all! You’re my elder cousin!”

  Ben said gently, “She loves you.”

  Cixin fell back on his bed, hurting his head even more. Love. Mama loved him and she died and left him. Auntie loved him and she was keeping him from going to America. Cousin Ben didn’t love him or he would take him away from this evil village. Love was terrible and ugly. Cixin glared savagely at this horrible cousin. “Then after you go I won’t take my once-a-week and I will die!”

  Ben stood. “I will not be blackmailed by a nine-year-old.”

  Cixin didn’t know what “blackmail” was, but it sounded evil. Everywhere he was surrounded by evil. Better to die. Again he turned his face to the wall.

  Later, he would always think that had made the difference. His silence, his turning away. If he had fought back, Ben would have said more about blackmail and gone away, angry. But instead he ran his hand through his red hair until it stood up like bristly grass—Cixin could just see this out of the corner of his eye—and then put his hand over his face.

  “All right, Cixin. I’ll take you to America. But I warn you, it may take a long, long time to arrange.”

  Six: BEN

  It took nearly two years.

  If Ben hadn’t had family contacts at the State Department, it would have been even longer, might have been impossible. The Chinese were discouraging foreign adoptions; Cixin was from within formerly quarantined Sichuan; the death certificate for Haihong needed to be obtained from a glacially slow bureaucracy and presented in triplicate. But on the other hand, Chinese-American relations were in a positive phase. Ben could prove Haihong had been his second cousin. Ben had received a Citizens’ Commendation from the FBI for exposing the surrogate-ring of American girls exploited by a sleazy Mexican fertility clinic. And Uncle James was on the State desk for East Asia.

  During those two years, Ben sent Auntie money and Cixin presents. An iPod, which seemed to be a critical object. Jeans and sneakers. Later, a laptop, to be used at the vineyard foreman’s house to communicate with Ben. They exchanged email, and Cixin’s troubled Ben. Fluent in spoken English, Cixin was barely literate in any language, and he didn’t seem to be learning much from the school software Ben supplied.

  Cuzin Ben this is Cixin. Wen r yu comin 4 me. Anty is sik agen. Evrybuddy hates me. I hate it hear. Com soon or I wil die.

  Cixin

  Cixin—

  I am making plans to bring you here as fast as I can. Please be patient.

  Could Cixin read that word? Maybe not. The backward connection at the foreman’s house didn’t permit even such a basic tool as a camlink.

  Please wait without fuss.

  Haihong saying during her pregnancy, “Ben, please don’t fuss at me!”

  Take your once-a-week, use your school software, and be good.

  What else? How did you write to a child you’d barely met?

  You will like America. Soon, I hope.

  Ben

  Soon, I hope. But did he? Cixin would be an enormous responsibility, and Ben would bear it mostly alone. His parents, old when Ben had been born, lived in failing health in Florida, his sisters in Des Moines and Buffalo. Ben worked long hours in his lab. What was he going to do with a illegally genemod, barely literate, ADH adolescent who shared less than three percent of Ben’s genetic heritage and nothing of his cultural one?

  And then, because complications always attracted more complications, he met Renata.

  A group from his department at the Institute went out for Friday Happy Hour. Ordinarily Ben avoided these gatherings. People drank too much, barriers were lowered that might better have stayed raised, flirtations started that proved embarrassing on Monday morning. But Ben knew he was getting a reputation as standoffish, if not downright snobbish, and he had to work with these people. So he went to Happy Hour.

  They settled into a long table, scientists and technicians and secretaries. Dan Silverstein, a capable researcher fifteen years Ben’s senior, talked about his work with envelope proteins. Susie, the intern whom somebody really should do something about, shot Ben smoldering glances across the table. Ben spotted Renata at the bar.

  She sat alone. Tall, a mop of dirty blonde curls, glasses. Pretty enough but nothing remarkable about her except the intensity with which she was both consuming beer and marking on a sheaf of papers. At Grogan’s during a Friday Happy Hour? Then she looked up, pure delight on her face, and laughed out loud at something on the papers.

  Ben excused himself to go to the men’s room. Taking the long way back, he peered over her shoulders. School tests of some kind—

  “Do I know you?” She’d caught him. Her tone was cool but not belligerent, looking for neither a fight nor a connection. Self-sufficient.

  “No, we’ve never met.” And then, because she was turning back to her papers, dismissing him, “Are you a teacher? What was so funny?”

  She turned back, considering. The set of her mouth said, This better not be a stupid pick-up line, but there was a small smile in her eyes. “I teach physics at a community college.”

  “And physics is funny?”

  “Are you at all familiar with John Wheeler’s experiments?”

  She flung the question at him like a challenge, and all at once Ben was enjoying himself. “The nineteen-eighty delayed-choice experiment?”

  The smile reached her mouth, giving him full marks. “Yes. Listen to this. The question is, ‘Describe what Wheeler found when he used particle detectors with photon beams.’ And the answer should be . . .” She looked at Ben, the challenge more friendly now.

  “That the presence or absence of a detector, no matter how far down the photon’s path, and even if the detector is switched on after the photon passes the beam splitter, affects the outcome. The detector’s presence or absence determines whether the photon registers as a wave or a particle.”

  “Correct. This kid wrote, ‘Wheeler’s particles and his detectors acted weird. I think both were actually broken. Either that or it was a miracle.’” She laughed again.

  “And it’s funny when your students don’t learn anything?”

  “Oh, he’s learned something. He’s learned that when you haven’t got the vaguest idea, give it a stab anyway.” She looked fondly at the paper. “I like this kid. I’m going to fail him, but I like him.”

  Something turned over in Ben’s chest. It was her laugh, or her cheerful pragmatism, or . . . He didn’t know what. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Ben Molloy. I work at the Neuroscience Institute.”

  “Renata Williams.” She shook hands, her head tipped slightly to one side, the bar light glinting on her glasses. “I’ve always had a thing for scientists. All that arcane knowledge.�
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  “Not so arcane.”

  “Says you. Sit down, Ben.”

  They talked until long after his department had left Grogan’s. Ben found himself telling her things he’d never told anyone else, incidents from his childhood that were scary or funny or puzzling, dreams from his adolescence. She listened intently, her glasses on top of her head, her chin tilted to one side. Renata was more reticent about her own past (“Not much to tell—I was a goody-goody grind”), but she loved teaching and became enthusiastic about her students. They were carrying out some elaborate science project involving the data from solar flares; this was an active sun-spot year. Renata pulled out her students’ sunspot charts and explained them in the dim light from the bar. Eventually the weary bartender stopped shooting them meaningful glances and flatly told them, “Leave, already!”

  Ben drove to her apartment. They left her car in the parking lot of the bar until the next day. In bed she was different: more vulnerable, less sure of herself. Softer. She slept with one hand all night on Ben’s hip, as if to make sure he was still actually there. Ben lay awake and felt, irrationally but definitely, that he had come home.

  Renata worked long hours, teaching five courses (“Community colleges are the sweatshops of academe”), but with a difference. When she wasn’t working, she had a life. She saw friends, she kick-boxed, she played in a chess league, she went to movies. Ben, who did none of these things, felt both envious and left-out. Renata just laughed at him.

  “If you really wanted to kick-box, you’d take a class in it. People generally end up doing what they want to do, if they can. My hermit.” She kissed him on the nose.

  If they can. Ben didn’t tell Renata about Cixin. The first month, he assured himself, they were just getting to know each other. (A lie: he’d known her, recognized her, that first night at Grogan’s.) Then, as each month passed—three, four, six—it got harder to explain why he’d delayed. How would Renata react? She was kind but she was also honest, valuing openness and sincerity, and she had a temper.

  I’m adopting a Chinese boy for whom I’ve broken several laws that could still send me to jail, including practicing medicine without a license and administering untested drugs that induce socially disabling side-effects. Perfect. Nothing added to romance like felony charges. Unless it was medical experimentation on a child.

  Sometimes Ben looked at Renata, sleepy after sex or squinting at her computer, glasses on top of her curly head, and thought, It will be all right. Renata would understand. She came from a large family, and although she didn’t want kids herself, she would accept Cixin. Look at how much effort she put into her students, how many endless extra hours working with them on the sunspot project. And Cixin was eleven; in seven more years he’d be off onto his own life.

  Other times he knew that he’d lied to Renata, that Cixin was not an easy-to-accept or lovable child, and that his arrival would make Ben’s world fall apart. At such times, his desperation made him moody. Renata usually laughed him out of it. But still he didn’t tell her.

  Then, in August, Uncle James called from Washington. His voice was jubilant.

  “I just got the final approval, Ben. You can go get your cousin any time now. You’re a daddy! And send me a big cigar—it’s a boy!”

  Ben clutched his cell so tight that all blood left his fingers. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Tell me how it works,” Renata said. They were the first words she’d spoken in fifteen long minutes, all of which Ben had spent talking. Her dangerous calm reminded him of Haihong, all those years ago.

  They were in his apartment, which had effectively if not officially become hers as well. His half-packed suitcase lay open on the bed. Ben stood helplessly beside the suitcase, a pair of rolled-up socks in his hand. Renata sat in a green brocade chair that had been a gift from his mother and Ben knew that if he approached that chair, she would explode.

  He took refuge in science. “It’s an alteration in the genes that create functional transporter proteins. Those are the amines that get neurotransmitters across synapses to the appropriate brain-cell receptors. The mechanisms are well understood—in fact, there are polymorphic alleles. If you have one gene, your body makes more transporters; with the other version, you get less.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “It affects mood and behavior. Less serotonin, for example, is connected to depression, irritability, aggression, inflexibility.”

  “And this alleged genemod in your cousin gave him less serotonin?”

  “No.” Alleged genemod. Ben dragged his hand through his hair. “He probably does have less serotonin, but that’s a side effect. The genemod affected other proteins that in turn affected others . . . it’s a cascade. Everything’s interconnected in the brain. But the functional result in Cixin would be a flood of transporters and neurotransmitters in two brain regions, the superior parietal lobes and the tempoparietal region.”

  “I don’t want jargon, Ben. I want explanations.”

  “I’m trying to give them to you. I’m doing the best I can to—”

  “Then do better! Six months we’ve been together and you never mention that you’re adopting a child . . . what is the effect of the extra transporters on those parts of the brain?”

  “Without the inhibiting drug I designed for him, near-total catatonia.”

  “That doesn’t make sense! Nobody would deliberately design genes to do that!”

  “They didn’t.” Suddenly tired, he sat on the edge of the bed. His flight to Shanghai left in six hours. “Those brain areas orient the body in space and differentiate between self and others. The research company was trying to develop heightened awareness, perception of others’ movements, and reactions to muscular shifting.”

  She got it. “Better fighting machines.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why—”

  “They were rogue geneticists, Renata. They didn’t have access to all the most recent research. They screwed up. They’re all in jail now.”

  “And the Neuroscience Institute—”

  His patience gave way. “Of course the Institute wasn’t involved! I told you—we helped shut the whole thing down.”

  “Except for your little part in supplying this kid with homemade inhibitors. His other problems you mentioned, the restlessness and aggression—”

  “Most likely side-effects of the inhibitor,” Ben said wearily. “You can’t alter the ratio of neurotransmitters in the brain without a lot of side effects. Cixin’s body is under huge stress and his behavior is consistent with fluctuating neurotransmitters and high concentrations of cortisol and other stress hormones.”

  She said nothing.

  “Renata, I promise you—”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve seen what your words are worth.” She got up from the green chair and walked around him, toward the door. He knew better than to try to stop her. “If you’d told me about Cixin from the beginning—even only that he was coming here to live with you—that would be one thing. I could have accepted it. I mean—that poor kid. It’s not his fault, and I understand family ties as well as you Chinese, or part-Chinese, or whatever you’re calling yourself now. But, Ben, I asked you. I said after our first week or so, ‘Do you see yourself ever wanting children in your life?’ And you said no. And now you tell me—” She broke off.

  All this time he’d been holding the socks. Carefully, as if they were made of glass, he laid them into his suitcase. A small part of his chaotic mind registered that, like most socks nowadays, they had probably been exported from China. He said, “Will you still be here when I get back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They looked at each other.

  “I don’t know, Ben,” she repeated. “I don’t know who you really are.”

  It was the rainy season in Sichuan and over ninety degrees. Ben’s clothing stuck to his body as he waited in the bus station in Chengdu; Cixin’s village still had no maglev service. The station looked cleaner a
nd more prosperous than when he’d come to China two years ago. Children in blue-and-white school uniforms marched past, carrying pictures of giant pandas. Ben had emailed Cixin to ask Auntie to bring him to Chengdu, but Cixin got off the bus alone.

  He hadn’t grown much. At eleven—almost twelve—he was a small, weedy boy with suspicious dark eyes, thin cheeks, and an unruly shock of black hair falling over his forehead. A large greenish bruise on one cheek. He carried a small backpack, nothing else. He didn’t smile.

  Ben locked his knees against a tide of conflicting emotions. Apprehension. Pity. Resentment. Longing for Renata. But he tried. He said, “Hey, buddy” and put a hand on Cixin’s shoulder. Cixin flinched and Ben removed the hand.

  He tried again. “Hello, Cixin. It’s good to see you. Now let’s go to America.”

  Seven: Cixin

  He didn’t know who he really was.

  Not now, in these strange and bewildering places. Cixin had never been out of his village. He’d assumed the videos on his laptop had been made-up lies, like Mama telling him about Tibet. But here was Chengdu, full of cars and pedicabs and scooters and huge buildings like mountains and buildings partly fallen down and signs that sprang up from the ground but dissolved when you walked through them and flashing lights and millions of people and men with big guns. . . . Cixin, who just last week had beaten up three village boys at once and thought of himself secretly as “The Tiger,” clutched Ben’s hand and didn’t know what this world was, what he himself was anymore.

  “It’s all right, buddy,” Ben said and Cixin glared at him and dropped the hand, angry because Ben wasn’t afraid.

  They sat together in the back of the plane to Shanghai. For a while Cixin was content to stare out the window as the ground fell away and they rose into clouds—up into clouds! But eventually he couldn’t stay still.