by C. P. James
He padded over to the huge picture window that overlooked the valley, the firs lightly dusted with frost as the sun inched westward. His single-serving coffee wafted steam up into his nostrils, and he took a sip. There was so much beauty in the world—his world, even, despite its many flaws—and for a few precious moments he felt happy to be a part of it. The silence in the house just then was a hopeful one, so he moved slowly as he put on his jacket, as though the feeling might somehow follow him out the door.
25
Toward the end of her 23rd year, Heidi threw herself a farewell party. A good number of PGs did. For them, it was pretty easy to focus on living a full life, fear of death removed from the equation. For friends and loved ones, it was harder to understand. Harder to face the inevitability of it. So rather than saddle their families with the pain of a funeral, they’d wait until they were close to the end (but not too close), and through a big, raging party.
The past four years had gone fast, as years spent on the road often did. She was a decent musician and above-average actor with a strong singing voice. A few decades ago, that wouldn’t have been enough to do anything or go anywhere, but artists were in high demand. For every person who thought creating art was folly now, half a dozen thought it was the only thing that still mattered. Outside the PG community, regular workaday people needed to tug free of reality, if only for a while. Or maybe they needed to watch young people be young, and beautiful, and joyful. In any event, Heidi was happy to oblige.
The role of music and theatre harkened back to Victorian times. Artists maintained loose associations at best. Theatrical performances were thrown together over an afternoon and largely improvised, not unlike the old penny dreadfuls. A whole culture sprang up around the care and feeding of PGs. Many of the same grizzled misanthropes who otherwise would’ve yelled at kids to get off their lawn now opened their homes to young strangers.
No PG ever said anything like, “Don’t feel sorry for me,” or, “I don’t want your pity,” because it wasn’t true. There was great empathy for them. The years hosts recalled most fondly were those PGs could never hope to reach. That fact alone inspired kindness and hospitality on an unprecedented scale. PGs couldn’t be expected to just get a job like their parents had. They needed help to live any kind of life, and for the most part, they got it.
Heidi had stayed with so many hosts over the years it was hard to keep track. But she did. Every single one of them received an invitation to her party, and almost all of them came. The Thompsons from Tulsa. Angela and Karen, from Santa Fe. Paul and Bettina from San Bernardino. A few couldn’t make it because they had a family member, often a PG themselves, whose time was up. Others couldn’t afford the trip. But counting her extended family, which was already large, and all the hosts who made the trek to Middleton, nearly 170 people came to see her—some for the first time, some for the last.
Friends of her parents, John and Linda Westfield, owned a catering business and fell over themselves to make barbeque, her favorite. There was brisket, ribs, turkey, hot links, creamed corn, a few different kinds of beans, fresh rolls and blackberry cobbler. She couldn’t remember seeing so much food in one place. The Westfields’ son, Jason, was a PG who died three weeks shy of his 25th birthday. She knew him reasonably well when they were little, though not as well as his parents seemed to believe. Either that or she’d forgotten. Remember when you and Jason tried to make milkshakes? Jason used to make you laugh so hard you couldn’t breathe.
Yes, she said, those were fun times.
About 20 people with whom she’d played or acted on the road came. Milo Sutton, a talented guitarist she’d met in Louisiana, presented her with a two-act musical based on he knew of her life. What he didn’t know he extrapolated based on his own. They all had similar stories. Despite her protests, she was forced into the audience, seated on rows of crisp, fragrant summer hay bales arranged in concentric arcs around the wagon that carried them there. The “pit orchestra” sat immediately in front. Heidi’s father had rigged Christmas lights overhead. Her mother and aunt came around with drinks during the show like a hillbilly dinner theatre. It was pure magic. These were her people, and the only tears shed were from laughter.
As she watched the musical version of her life play out, it dawned on her, for the first time, just how much living she had done. The events depicted mostly involved Milo or his recollections of stories she’d told him, but she’d been to so many places, done so much, and met so many people it made her head spin. There, in the makeshift lights and the Southern Wisconsin humidity, she came to believe that her fate was equal parts gift and curse. A gift for the sense of urgency with which she lived, and a curse for how surely and violently it would end.
She finally joined Milo and the entire ensemble on the wagon to sing a dumb little ukulele song she’d written called “Honeysweet.” He’d handed out lyrics so he could lead sections of the audience in an impressively complex round, eventually all ending on the same big note. By then, everyone had risen and locked arms across their shoulders, swaying back and forth like drunks in a pub. The company pushed her to the front of the wagon, where she received a warm ovation and curtsied, tears streaking her face. Milo came up and took her hand, flanked by the rest of the cast, and led them all in a final bow.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and he winked.
It was well after 2 a.m. before the taillights of the last departing car disappeared into the night. Most spent the night in a tent city arranged on the vast lawn. Heidi made a point of saying goodnight to each of them, and Milo was the only one left. Words weren’t necessary, so they didn’t speak. Milo never had a party, and never would. He was 24 and seven months. His number would be up any day, and the young, talented man he was would be gone. She would never see him again, nor he her. He unzipped the side of his tent, and she followed him inside.
Four months later, Heidi received word of Milo’s death. She was in Minneapolis at the time, deciding whether she would want his son or daughter to live. The very oldest children of a PG parent were about a year younger than she. No one, not even the geniuses at GIG, knew what would happen to them. It was as blind a roll of the dice as you could possibly take, and that definitely wasn’t her style. It didn’t matter what Milo would have said; it wasn’t she who would have to raise a child—it was her family, and they had been through quite enough. There was only one decision she could make.
26
It was a good show. Not great, but good. Marius’ standards were higher than his bandmates’, but anyone who’d seen them a few times would’ve agreed. Some of it was the acoustics of Soldier Field, which were surprisingly bouncy for an open-air stadium, but Naldo’s amp developed a buzz over the course of the show and Kris’ harmonies were pitching sharp all night. Once, he might have sat everyone down and gone over such notes before returning to their respective hotel rooms, but those days were past.
Marius knew a less-than-perfect Clockwatchers with all six members was still better than losing one to his perfectionist nature. Marius could play any instrument in the band, but not all at once. Every time he thought about being hard on someone after a show or even at rehearsal he had visions of playing some little club by himself for a $50 and a place to stay, and he’d think better of it. Besides, it’s not like they had a lot of competition.
To call music in post-Cure America an industry would’ve been generous. The handful of remaining labels mostly worked with foreign artists and distributed music digitally in markets where almost no one was still willing to pay for it. Clockwatchers didn’t record anything; they just broadcast the mix wirelessly from the board so anyone could record it. This was how their music was distributed, and they didn’t need any help to do it. Likewise, they didn’t sell their own merchandise. Fans made their own and either wore it themselves or gave it to friends. If someone wanted to sell their Watchers stuff at a show, they simply paid a fee to set up shop and had to use a point-of-sale system that deducted 10 percent of all receipts.
Between that and tickets, they made more than any of them could ever hope to spend in the time they had left. Mostly they were thinking about taking care of their families.
Marius was the oldest by a year. To him, there was a certain tragic beauty in the brevity of their journey together. They began as a quartet; Marius met JT, Yancy, and Naldo at a PG-focused festival in Nevada when they were barely in their teens. They jammed under some giant tents and got to open for a professional band. A short time later, they headed to Vegas in JT’s van in hopes of landing a gig. The days that followed were a combination of luck, timing, and talent that launched their careers.
As the songs became more complex they brought in Kris on keys and backing vocals. Finally the added Billy, a multi-instrumentalist cut from the same cloth as Marius who generally played percussion, strings, and a third guitar on the big anthems. It wasn’t long before they could afford a tour bus, and by then there wasn’t a PG in America who didn’t know the Clockwatchers.
Marius loved his bandmates as much as he’d ever loved anything or anyone. Making music was all he ever wanted to do. He was on this ride for as long as it lasted. After Chicago it was on to Minneapolis, Missoula, Boise, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and finally Denver. The last night of those three shows would fall on their 10th anniversary—June 3, 2063. Their agent came up with a whole 6/3/63 thing and persuaded them to do three nights at Red Rocks. Six guys, three nights—it was gimmicky but they all went for it. Their catalog was plenty deep.
They didn’t always agree, but they had a pact: Clockwatchers was all of them or none of them. If someone left—voluntarily or otherwise—then that was it. Their chemistry was the only thing between them and a regular Without it, they would all embrace that life and not look back. Perhaps that was central to their mystique—a special thing that could, and eventually would, go away.
He packed a fresh bowl and smoked it on the veranda, peering out at the surprisingly quiet night. The metropolitan areas had done okay. Cheap housing and plentiful employment lured scores of thirty-somethings into (or back to) the cities, since the service businesses that held the suburbs together crumbled around them. From a hotel room, Chicago was still Chicago.
He wondered if he would be back to this place, or if this was his swan song—a middling show followed by a night alone. If he’d just been visiting, or working there for a few years, his last night in town would have been an event, with friends from work and drinks and a final, sweaty encounter with whomever. His real life was a string of nights, each with a greater chance of being his last. When he wrote, he wrote with urgency, and that came through in the songs. When he was gone, only the music would remain.
He went inside to fetch his notebook.
27
No PG lived to 27. Nobody. It wasn’t possible that Heidi Robb—that Heidi Robb, the granddaughter of his mentor—was sitting across from him. Yet there she was, as much a medical anomaly at age 27 as 127.
“Are we going to have to go over all this again at some point?” she said, after several candid and slightly embarrassing answers in a row.
“Probably, but I’m trying to build a list of environmental and chemical factors so—“
“So you can ride in on your horse and save the day.”
“—so I can see if anything in your history aligns with the subjects who made it to 26.”
“How many of those are there?”
“Four.”
The questions continued for the better part of an hour, during which time Geller filled one notebook and started on another. Because there were only four PGs who made it to age 26 (as far as he knew), he knew their histories intimately. Nothing in Heidi’s history correlated obviously to the others, and none of them had correlated to each other.
Heidi had led a rich and interesting life—not all that unusual for PGs. She left high school of her own accord, since the Exception Act hadn’t been passed yet, and decided that her foreshortened life should be spent in service to others. Since traditional avenues like the Peace Corps hadn’t changed their age policy yet, she started laying the groundwork for her own nonprofit organization, The PURE Project.
Her great uncle Pat, Jim’s brother, had devised a very inexpensive and effective system for purifying water cheaply and on a large scale, like from a polluted well or dirty stream. His was a slight twist on an old idea, and though it was elegant and dependable he found himself with a warehouse full of units he couldn’t sell. He showed one to her when it was just a prototype and she was 12, and she felt bad that he was just late to market.
So, when she left school she got about $10,000 in donations, purchased a handful of Pat’s purifiers at cost and flew to Ethopia with him and a few Laird students to set up clean-water stations at small villages. She documented the entire process on video and was able to show how, after just a month of improved access to clean water, incidences of disease plummeted. After showing the documentary to potential donors in the US, it was off to the races for both of them. Heidi was effectively the CEO of a multinational nonprofit at age 17, and Pat couldn’t make his purification units fast enough.
As she told the story, Geller couldn’t help but think of Lyle, who had poured so much of himself into similar endeavors. He made them sandwiches while she talked, only half listening.
When she was done with the story, Geller said, “Take your time eating. I need to make a call.”
Les Hilliard, GIG’s longtime CFO, was going over highlights of the most recent financials in Baz’s office. Baz was having trouble acting invested. If Les had said they were bankrupt, Baz would have nodded, shaken his hand and headed out to his car. The only reason he was still around at all was because he didn’t know what else to do with himself. GIG was like a child into whom he poured all his hopes and dreams, only to be disappointed with how they turned out.
All he knew how to feel anymore was trapped. Perfecto’s death shattered his marriage, and Lucia gave up trying to pick up the pieces. She was gone—happy, he heard, and in a relationship with some hotelier back in Spain. As for his work, it was just too late at this point to do much about it. Unlike Erik, who was still driven to find a solution, Baz was no longer actively involved in research. Occasionally he would answer questions from Erik’s team about the Cure's development, but mostly he kept his head down and acted like the figurehead he was. If he’d had any idea what else to do with himself, he would’ve left years ago.
GIG’s financials were a complex system of break-even ventures, massively profitable ones and others that hemorrhaged cash. They were still growing, though not at pre-Cure levels. Guilt was part of the company’s DNA by then. It was remarkable that it even survived. Part of him didn’t think it still should, but he never said so.
He was fighting a heavy pair of eyelids—and losing—when a pressure change in the room jostled him to attention. Wanda, Les’ admin, had opened the heavy glass door and leaned her curly head inside.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I need to borrow Baz for a few minutes.”
Les glanced at Baz and smirked. He obviously had seen him start to nod off.
“Something tells me he won’t mind stepping out,” Les said.
The look on Wanda’s face was inscrutable, somewhere between gravity and confusion. Baz grabbed his empty coffee mug and followed her out. His back still hurt; he felt each of his 70 years just getting out of his chair, and assumed he looked it.
“What’s up?” he said, still groggy. He found himself wondering if it was warm enough to take his lunch outside. Fresh air was what he needed.
“A call for you,” she said, and led him into an adjacent conference room.
“Okay … “ he started, encouraging her to identify the caller. “The suspense is killing me.”
He settled into Les’ chair—a much nicer one than his—and only heard her say, “I’ll put it through on line one,” as she pulled the door closed behind her. He guessed it was someone in Washington, perhaps the White House or the Penta
gon. That happened occasionally.
Line one rang softly. He cleared his throat and answered as assertively as he could manage.
“This is Dr. Montes.”
A familiar voice said, “Did anyone feed my fish?”
Baz felt his face flush. With what precise emotion, he couldn’t have said.
“We dumped them in the Arkansas River,” he managed, after a brief pause.
“They were tropical.”
“They seemed patient.”
Geller managed a chuckle. He sounded healthy, his voice clear and sure. One advantage of a self-imposed exile, Baz thought. You never have to face anyone.
“Long time, old man.”
“Very,” Baz said flatly, and waited for him to get to the point.
Geller explained matter-of-factly about Heidi, finding it odd that Baz wasn't more excited about it. Of course, Baz was too cynical himself to think of it as anything more than a curiosity that would quickly be explained. Still, he listened and thought about Perfecto, and what two more years would have meant.
“I’ll make the arrangements.”
“I’m coming with her,” Geller said.
Baz stared at a painting on the wall for several seconds, trying to decide how he felt about that. Geller hadn’t set foot there in more than a decade. Though he didn’t endear himself to many people there (few remained who ever knew him), he cast a very long shadow. If there was anything to Heidi’s longevity, no one stood a better chance of finding out than Geller and Erik. He hated that fact, but it didn’t change the truth of it. He let go with a long sigh, right into the phone.
“Get her here in one piece.”
28
