This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Peter Sargent
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Divide The Sea
I saw him light the fire, but I don’t think Sam even knew I was there. There were five or six of us, and I trailed along in the back ‘cause I was the smallest brat in town. Since I was just an idiot kid, I didn’t know what he was going to do. But then we left the woods, and we were at the trailer park where all the household help in our town lived. We were at the home of Sam’s laundry lady. I remember that he had a matchbook and a bundle of rags. Sam wrapped the rags around the propane tanks at the back of the trailer, and he pulled the hoses out. I remember the sound of the gas hissing and the smell of it. Sam lit the rags and we all ran.
The blast shook us and I fell on the ground. I hope the laundry lady was gone in a flash, because my dad told me about the rest. He said he was driving when a mob of people dashed across the road, flames flapping behind them like burning flags. They were trying to get out of the inferno, but I also think they knew that the other half had done it to them, and maybe they wanted to stick us with the mess of cleaning them up. The police found charred piles of them lying in the road like a plague of frogs.
* * * *
It’s fitting that I’m writing this as I sit on the train, because from the elevated tracks I can see the expanse of smoking rubble that used to be my town. It’s been years since I was that brat, but at last the ghosts of those trailer people have gotten their revenge. The rows of gigantic birthday cake houses where all of us rich kids used to live are now spots of cinders and ash in about the shapes of the foundations. And little Nelson, who was the smallest brat in town, is one of the last survivors.
I know you think you know how it began, but you can’t really imagine how it was before. These days genetically engineering children is a cheap and dirty deed done in back alleys and ramshackle clinics. The results are the masses of deformed creatures that walk around us today. We had that back then too, but we also had the good stuff. If she had the money, your mom could walk into a hospital that looked like an up-scale shopping mall, with marble floors and shining glass atriums. She would walk out with a single fertilized cell in her womb, and it would have Mommy’s eyes and Daddy’s nose. But it would also have brains and muscles and bones manufactured at the gene factory.
That’s what we rich kids had, but the trailer people had either the stuff God gave them, or the back alley stuff that gave you a 50/50 chance of going up or going down. You could join the ranks of the holy, or you could wind up a three-armed Cyclops with no teeth, pan-handling on the street corner, wrapped up in a blanket even in the summer so no one would puke when they looked at you.
I think you get the idea. Now, as I search for a place to begin my story, I’m trying to tell you how it was for me. Just as you know how it ended up in the war, you know how it ended up with me. But the thing that everyone really wants to know about the war is how it really was before, and what everyone asks me is how I found out what I really was and what it was like.
I’ll start with the spring of my senior year of high school, the time when the seniors tried to poison the freshmen.
* * * *
It was a prank the boys at Adams Prep School played every year to make the freshmen prove they weren’t natural born monkey kids trying to get into the school. Monkey kids. That was one of our names for the unmodified natural borns. Like the trailer people. In theory you didn’t have to be an engineered super brat to get into Adams. The directors liked to go on and on about how we were a merit-based institution. But face it, we were all mutants of a sort, and merit came easy when it came from a bottle.
The name monkey kid came from monkey pox. Decades ago, some loggers in Brazil caught the pox from ape effluence. Once it jumped species, the pox spread like a rumor around the world. Of course everyone who could afford it bought immunities for his or her kids.
So, every spring during midterms, the frosh boys rushed to the showers to be on time for their tests. At the height of that rush hour, the seniors burst into the freshman shower room with buckets full of mushy bread mixed with chocolate pudding and vinegar. They tossed handfuls of the lumpy, fowl-smelling stuff into the showers stalls, and called everyone that ran out a monkey boy. You see how stupid we all were.
I slept in that morning. As a senior I was immune to the prank, but it annoyed me just the same. When I got up, it was all over and the seniors were in their own shower room. So I went to the frosh shower room and I had the place to myself. I just had to find a clean stall.
I finished, and then Sam tore the curtain back. It was the same Sam that had burned down the trailer park, the same Sam I hadn’t talked to in four years. He had a bucket in one hand.
“Nelson!” he said. “What the hell? I thought I had another one.”
I stepped out fully dressed.
He said, “Get the hell out of the freshman shower.”
His eyes bulged a little because he’d been up all night at senior parties. The yellow color in what was supposed to be the whites of his eyes was darker than usual. The one thing that gave away a franken-kid was that color, which came from the drug we took. In those days, our engineering technology resulted in a defect that would cause our enzymes to deform, killing us in much the same way a fever kills a natural born. The drug we take to stop it is the only one most of us will ever need to take, but we pay the price. Those ugly yellow rims mar all of our sculpted faces. And so the natural borns call us piss-eyes, the same way we call them monkey brats.
Sam said, “Get the hell out of the freshman shower. And did you wash in your clothes?”
“Are my clothes wet? I don’t like walking out in the open naked. I might get mushy stale bread tossed at me. And I’m in this shower room because – well, what makes you think I’m someone who wants to be around the same people I’ve been around the last four years?”
I thought of ripping Sam’s bucket from him and tossing big brown chunks at him. God knows I could’ve done it. I used to be the smallest, and you’ve already figured out that Sam was the biggest bully around. But then our freshman year, the seniors played the old trick on us, and I just got worked up and I tore from the shower and plowed one of the seniors into the wall. I was butt naked and dripping, and he was trying to rip me off him. Somehow I knew that wouldn’t work this time, but I was still surprised when I kept him pinned there. Then I shocked everyone by twisting around and shoving the other kid into the next wall. He hit a mirror and it shattered and I kept ramming him into the broken shards still hanging on the wall until they were covered with pulpy shreds from his back.
The directors took me in and told me they might expel me. That was a joke. My dad ran Chemical Construction. Kids like me didn’t get expelled. But it’s never been the same for me since.
So I could’ve flung the fake ape junk at Sam and he would’ve run; thank God I had a cooler head by then. Anyway, I’d learned to lay low, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the directors.
* * * *
I liked being alone most of the time; I was just fine with it. But that wasn’t the only thing that separated me from the others. I was dying.
That afternoon I planned an errand that I hoped would save my li
fe. I was sitting in my private room, listening to the hum of the air conditioner and thinking of what I needed to say to that damned Doctor Kane. Then Mom called. Mom knew I’d hang up on Dad if he called. Dad and I weren’t speaking, because I had no place to go the next fall. Most Adams kids had their colleges picked out by sophomore year.
I said, “Is Dad listening in?”
“No honey, he’s away on business this week.”
Honey. That meant she was telling the truth. The one great thing about Mom is that she could still be a mom, so long as Dad wasn’t around. I think after my older sister died, she’d been hanging on to all she had. As for Dad being away on business during graduation – well, he knew what would be best for the both of us.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“Honey of course. Why?”
“I don’t get to ask you unless you’re alone. How else would I know?”
“Don’t worry about your old mother.”
“Then don’t worry about me. You know I’ll be fine. You know I don’t have to do it the usual way.”
And she knew it. When I was six, I asked her to pose so I could draw her portrait. At first she smiled at me as I studied her and worked the page with my little hands. But I was working on it for so long that she started asking me if I was okay. I kept saying I was almost done, almost done. It must have been something in my eyes that worried her, or the way I hunched closer and closer to the picture.
Then I jumped up, smiling and yelling, “Done!” She took it, and my smile vanished. She was gaping at the page and gasping as though she couldn’t breath. I was crying, “Mom, mom, what did I do?” She wouldn’t tell me then, but she kept the picture.
The morning of my freshman year when I bloodied the back of a senior, I understood. There was nothing wrong with the picture, except that it was as clear and detailed as a photograph. It had scarred Mom just as I’d scarred my classmates. And there was more to it. Last year Mom admitted that when she looked at that portrait, she saw more than a mirror in pencil lines. She saw how sad she was. She saw how much hope she had for her son, and how much fear because of what had happened to his sister. She saw more of herself in the eyes of that woman in the picture than she wanted to know, and the hand of a first grader drew it. But she kept it.
The drawing skill came first, and then came other stuff. Each year a new talent appeared, and my Dad was more and more proud of me. I had surpassed even the best equipped of our engineered neighbor kids. But Mom grew more and more afraid. Dad was pissed that I didn’t apply myself. But Mom and I knew it was best to keep it under wraps for awhile.
“I know…” she was saying. “But your father thinks it’s not going to be enough…” her voice trailed away. I felt like yelling, what does Dad know? He was never there to see how it worked. But Mom knew that, and it was no use yelling about it. And I made a rule not to interrupt her, even when her voice trailed away and I couldn’t hear her words - because who else was going to listen to her? It was just my job.
I said, “Are you coming?”
“I’ll be there if I can. If your father comes home early… he won’t let me.”
I had a question on the tip of my tongue. If Mom knew my life was in danger, she might be able to tell me what I needed to do. If not – well, that was one more log I didn’t need to add to the fire. So I kept my mouth shut and got off the phone with her, and went back to my planning.
* * * *
“Are you coming, Nelson?”
“Hmm?” I was standing in the center plaza where all the school’s halls intersected. I was surrounded by glass cases full of sports trophies. Several of these, each for Olympic swimming, were engraved with Sam’s name. Now the boy himself was standing there and looking off into the distance. He looked impatient and rocked on his feet as if about to sprint off at the sound of a gun.
“Here.” He shoved a small blue piece of paper into my hand without ever looking at me. “My Dad says I should invite you. He liked you that last time you came over, I guess.” With those words he began his sprint and disappeared.
I saw that the small blue piece of paper was an invitation. Nearly four years ago Sam’s father had invited every one in the Adams freshmen class to his home. This year it was the same, except that now it was time to celebrate our freedom from this gold-plated prison. I thought to myself – it’s true, I had enjoyed the last time I spoke with Sam’s dad.
* * * *
But first I had my errand. No one at school knew I was fighting for my life. That year I had discovered that I would die around my thirtieth birthday. Call it fate if you want, but I’d found the cause and I intended to find the solution.
I went to Lafayette Park, a place where most Adams kids had never been. It was a place where the monkey people lived. I got off the bus at the square. This is what passed for a commercial district this far out of downtown. There was a pond and a road that went around it. A drug store, a pizza place, and a barbershop lined the circle’s outside rim. There were kids feeding the ducks in the pond, and some other kids fishing it. You have to understand that everything looked perfectly normal. The monkey pox only affected a small part of the population. It was just that those kids fishing the pond could get it, and we couldn’t, and that made us think of them as dirty masses in tattered clothes begging on the street. All things being equal, you wouldn’t cross the road if you saw one of these people. But sometimes I had to anyway, because they might see the yellows of my eyes.
We don’t go near them. It’s not because we’re scared of any one of them. After all, we were built tougher and faster than any of them. In the old days, Adams boys used to come out and beat a quick bone break into a monkey every couple of weekends. It got their minds off exams. But then the monkeys got smart. We piss-eyes know calculus by the second grade, but that didn’t make the monkeys dumb. They put together protection gangs, and they’d lay honey pot traps with one of their pretty young things out on a street corner and looking like she was all alone. Only she wasn’t. So we stay away.
I went into Lafayette wearing sunglasses. I was practiced at fading into a crowd, because I had to do it at Adams too. You see, despite all that engineering, we were all still cannibals. Sure, Adams kids could leave monkey kids in the dust. But when every rich kid’s parents bought his brains at an upscale genetic boutique, there’s always room for competition. I didn’t want to make everyone run for his money. It was partly because I just didn’t want to be a part of that scene, and partly because Adams kids could form gangs just the same as the monkeys. If they could burn down a trailer park just for the hell of it, they could corner an academic threat and rip out his lungs.
It happened to my older sister.
God, don’t get me started on that now. They cut her up good… I’ll get to that part, but it’s painful and I don’t want to go into it now.
But I had another problem that was going to kill me anyway, and that’s why I was in Lafayette Park. You remember how I told you that in those days we had the fly-by-night genetic clinics that sometimes produced horrifying results. We had laws back then, and those clinics were illegal. They were in places like Lafayette, so the monkeys could come in and pay their life savings for a chance at jumping the ladder. What you’ve probably never heard of is an even more illegal procedure we called Monte Carlo eugenics. That trick was so dangerous that not even the licensed clinics did it
When I was a kid, I saw the baby crematorium where the Monte Carlos went. I saw piles of dead newborns with bones grown over their eyes and huge bloated faces. A conveyor dragged them into a big stinking oven. The image sticks to me.
The difference between Monte Carlo and the usual back alley stuff was that nearly all newborns made that way died in the delivery room. Those who did survive were usually born with a muscular disorder that would stop their lungs before they reached thirty. You might’ve guessed that despite such a curse, surviving Monte Carlos were usually blessed with physical and mental abilities far superior to anything seen
in humans so far on planet Earth. It was the only back alley procedure that rich parents tried, because that might give them the vital edge. God knows why it mattered if the kid was going to die anyway, but in some people hope springs eternal.
I didn’t know for sure if I was a Monte Carlo, but you can see how the evidence piled up. If my Dad did it to me, that explained why he was so disappointed that his plan didn’t work out. I wasn’t going to ask him about it though. I didn’t want him to know I was on to him. I never did trust that bastard.
It’s hard to find the quacks who do these operations, but I’d found one in Lafayette and I hoped that he could tell me who made me. And if I found that guy, I’d see if he could fix me. If not, maybe I’d bash his head in. What the hell?
I went into the pizza place. I was supposed to meet the doctor there, and I needed to eat. The place was small, with a row of windows on one side looking out to the street and a counter on the other looking into the tiny kitchen. I made my order and sat by the windows.
It was stinking hot in there, because of the oven and the heat outside. The tables were sticky, and there was a fly on my table picking at dried up spots of mustard or pizza sauce. I was still watching the fly when someone came in and stooped over me. He waited for a second and then said my name.
I looked up and saw a man wearing enormous dark glasses on a face made of gray crumpled newspaper. He held a walking stick in one hand and kept the bottom of it pressed against the floor. He looked like a pool shark about to make the killer move.
“Doctor Kane?” I said. Who else would it be?
He sat down. He said, “Of course, you were right. You’re the only yellow in this place.”
“Is it too obvious?”
“Only if you’re looking for it. Give me your hand.” He took my hand and held my wrist under his thumb. He dropped my hand and looked up at me with a long open mouth. “God almighty, is this normal?”
“I’ve never taken my pulse before.”
“It’s about 15. That’s about average for a pro sprinter, but you’re just a kid. You do track?”
“I try to keep still.” There was still a fly sitting on the counter, picking at the dried goo. I wanted to show Doctor Kane a trick; to see what he’d do. I watched the fly and lifted a thumb over it; slowly to avoid scarring it away. I also heard voices from the kitchen, saying, “Look, it’s a piss-eye. Over there with that old man.”
Divide The Sea Page 1
