by C. P. James
Erik tucked the tube in his coat pocket and walked away without another word. Geller never saw him again.
55
Colorado had its share of great fishing, but for Geller it never quite measured up to Montana. The water seemed cleaner and colder, the trout more eager and large. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the stretch through Geller’s vast property was basically inaccessible from above or below, on account of a strong current that made upstream travel virtually impossible. During the nearly 20 years he’d spent alone there, Geller had only seen two kayakers come through, and only one while he was actually in the water. The point was that he’d sought privacy and gotten it.
Three years had passed since serum one went to Erik, and he still didn’t know what happened to it. It wasn’t entirely true that he didn’t care, but it was true that it didn’t matter. Maybe serum one would’ve been the right thing, and maybe neither serum was. Maybe people were supposed to acquire horrible afflictions and die.
His indicator stopped abruptly at the end of a riffle, and he tugged quickly on the line. A strike! He pulled quickly on the line with his left hand while raising the rod and moments later landed a fat, surprised-looking rainbow. He admired it for a moment and slipped it into his creel, and that was it. He only took fish when he planned on one for dinner. He could’ve stayed longer, but he was getting tired. There was no more dawn-to-dusk fishing in him, as much as he would’ve liked to. He carefully crossed back to his low spot on the opposite bank, climbed up onto the well-worn path back up to the house and started walking.
He removed his waders and boots on a rug inside the garage, which he left open so his gear could dry. Then he picked up his creel and went to the back door of the house. When he entered the kitchen, the last thing he expected to see was a man sitting on one of the barstools around the island, yet there he was.
“I see you had some luck,” he said. He was dark-skinned, perhaps of Pacific Islander descent, barrel-chested, and roughly Geller’s age. There was a touch of an accent.
“Who’re you?” Geller asked calmly, setting the creel down in the sink. He made a mental note to install a more secure property fence.
“My name is Rubin Beecher,” he said, and paused to see if the name meant anything to Geller. Seeing no recognition, he continued. “Marius Beecher was my son.”
This name Geller knew.
“The singer.”
“That’s right.”
“Connie’s— er, President Earle’s daughter—she never quite came to terms with what happened to him. I’m sure you read all the stories.”
“He was a special young man.”
Geller moved far enough to the side of the island that he could see Beecher’s hands. He was carrying a silver semiautomatic pistol, though it wasn’t pointed at him just then.
“Can I get you a drink, Mr. Beecher?” he said. “I’m having one.”
“I don’t drink anymore.”
“Suit yourself.”
Geller opened a bottle of 22-year-old Scotch and poured some into a rocks glass. It was smoky and smooth.
“I take it you’re here to kill me,” Geller said.
“That’s right,” Beecher said.
“Mind if I enjoy my drink for a bit?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Geller walked straight into the living room. “Those stools are terrible. Come in here. These are covered in Italian leather. Like sitting on your momma’s lap.”
Beecher obliged, choosing the couch across from Geller’s enormous lounge chair. He remained on the edge, leaning forward. His right hand, which held the pistol, rested across his leg.
“Most people would’ve just offered me something non-alcoholic. Like water. When I said I quit drinking, I mean.”
“You showed up in my house with a gun. I hardly think I’m the impolite one here.”
“You really think now’s the time to be an asshole?”
“I’ve always been an asshole,” Geller said matter-of-factly, and leaned back in his chair. “So you blame me for what happened to your son and you’ve come after all these years to settle the score. Is that about the size of it?”
“Have you watched a PG die, Dr. Geller?”
Geller remembered the conversation he’d once had with Heidi, and how vividly she described it. Still, he hadn’t ever seen it with his own eyes.
“I’m sorry to say I haven’t.”
“Oh. Well, then let me show you.”
Beecher turned on Geller’s living-room display and navigated to an amateur video taken six years ago at the Clockwatchers show called “Marius Beecher dies at Red Rocks 6/3/63.” Geller heard about this, of course, and read about it but he never had the nerve or desire to watch one of the videos. He shifted in his seat. Beecher’s eyes never left him.
The amateur video was taken by someone in the crowd, maybe 50 feet from the stage. Everyone was standing and remarkably quiet because the band had gathered downstage to sing their quiet, sweetly harmonized version of “I’ll Fly Away.” Many were gently swaying back and forth. You could barely hear the music it was so soft. And then it happened. Marius, crumbling to the stage and convulsing. And blood. Everywhere blood. It was violent and ugly, made all the more so by the context. After a few minutes of the stunned crowd watching it all happen close-up on the screens to the side of the stage, people started crying and hugging each other. What happened to Marius was going to happen to every single one of them and they all knew it.
Geller didn’t truly understand the significance of the event until that moment, nor had he ever understood why it robbed Jayla Earle of all hope. Between what he’d just watched and the resigned look on Beecher’s face, it was starting to sink in.
Beecher turned off the display and turned to look at him.
“My wife died 10 years ago,” he said, running his fingers along the barrel of the pistol. “Huntington’s. She believed in your Cure. Ot at least she wanted to, for our baby. But she wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t gone along. Thirteen years I watched her suffer. Thank God she didn’t live long enough to see Marius … I’m only here now because she wouldn’t have approved. Woman didn’t have a vindictive bone in her body. But I do. And I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
“I’m sorry about your boy,” Geller said. “And your wife.”
Beecher continued staring at Geller as though expecting him to continue, but he only sipped from his glass and returned Beecher’s gaze.
“All the pain you’ve caused me—my family—and you’re sorry?”
“What more is there?”
“That’s just one man!” he shouted, pointing at the blank screen. “One of millions. What do you have to say to their mothers and fathers, who trusted you? Who trusted your so-called science when playing God was closer to the truth? What do you say to them?!”
“They aren’t here. If they were, I’d say the same thing. What else can I offer? You didn’t want a drink.”
Beecher raised the pistol suddenly and pointed it at Geller, who only flinched a little. “There’s a lot more you can give me, you goddamned sociopath. A lot more.”
Geller set his glass down on a small, glass-topped end table crafted from some exotic-looking tree stump, then shifted in his seat to face Beecher directly.
“Then do it. If it’ll make you feel better, then go ahead. I’m ready. But you did say you’d let me finish this, so …”
Beecher’s hand shook. Tears streamed down his face as he grimaced, wrestling with the choice before him. Geller was still trying to place the subtle accent and his features. A wide nose. Close-set eyes. Prominent jaw. Fiji, maybe? Samoa? He closed his eyes, fully expecting to hear a shot and then find out what came next—the greatest mystery of all. The only one he was still interested in.
“He was barely 25 years old,” Beecher said, his voice cracking. “He meant so much to so many people. Brought so much joy and life into the world. That hole that runs through the middle of every PG—he tried to fill t
hat with music. Marius was hope. Do you understand? Never mind that he was all we had in the world. He was all a lot of people had. You didn’t just take him away—you took people’s hope away. There’s no reason to live without hope.”
“I don’t disagree. Do what you have to do.”
Geller closed his eyes and waited for the muffled explosion—the last sound he would ever hear. What came instead was a soft rustle of clothing. He opened one eye to see that Beecher had lowered his arm and was sobbing uncontrollably. He half expected Beecher’s arm to come back up to level the gun at his own head, but that never happened either. There was only him and a man with nothing left to feel. This wasn’t his bailiwick. He thought about saying something else, but reasoned it might be tragically counterproductive. He felt as much empathy for Beecher as he had for anyone, which wasn’t saying much.
“Maybe I will take that drink,” Beecher said.
56
Erik was getting tired, not to mention dizzy.
“Faster!” said Otto, clinging to the outside of the aptly named merry-go-round, his toes on the very edge.
And so he obliged, again, now more concerned with breaking what surely was a state record for dad-powered RPMs on a playground implement. It briefly crossed his mind that his son’s grip might not be strong enough for the centrifugal force he was creating, but by then his equilibrium had passed a crucial point and it was he, not Otto, who lost out to physics. He slipped and went headlong in the sand, then rolled out of the way to make sure Otto’s feet wouldn’t slam into him.
He rolled onto his back, the world still spinning, as Otto’s wide-eyed face went by him again and again, laughing merrily. He stared at a tree limb overhead, eager to reacquaint himself with a fixed point. He was in excellent shape for 58, but this seriously messed with his equilibrium. It was a bit too late; he lolled onto his side and retched about half his breakfast onto the grass. Then he was okay.
He looked around to see if anyone witnessed this, and immediately saw they had. Young mothers were lined up shoulder to shoulder on long benches around the playground, seemingly amused by his exertions and their aftermath. He was accustomed to gawkers, though less so now. The community of Emerald Creek was overwhelmingly GIG employees, and even though he knew many of them personally it was still a novelty to see the CEO out and about, let alone rolling around in the sand with his son.
The New Generation Project, or NGP, was a $200 billion nationwide program undertaken by GIG to get the next generation of kids off to a fast start, giving kids a normal, happy childhood while helping prepare them to be little economic, entrepreneurial engines. Most of the money went toward education, renovating underused or vacated schools (and colleges) and building new ones. Dozens of foundations had stepped forward to match GIG’s contributions, seeding endowments that would eventually provide millions of college scholarships. There were massive investments in early childhood education, ensuring that all kids got the help they needed to succeed. And of course, there were the new playgrounds that replaced thousands of old ones in virtually every decent-sized town in the country. You could tell an NGP playground by its hexagonal layout, meant to evoke a benzene ring—a major building block of organic molecules. Denver alone got 27 new playgrounds.
All of this was a form of damage control. Most people now viewed GIG in a favorable light but it was hard to say whether that was a function of time or its enduring contributions to global society. In any event, it had the cash and access to cheap debt that it needed to fund such an ambitious undertaking without taking on much risk. The way Erik saw it, no restitution could ever be enough.
Heidi remained an artist at heart, and had started a children’s theatre in town that had trouble accommodating all the kids who wanted to take part. Otto had proven himself to be quite the talent, with a sweet voice that made Erik cry the first time he heard it on stage and a fair sense of rhythm (for a five year old, anyway). Plus, he was drop-dead funny without trying. Sometimes he made Erik laugh until it hurt.
Lars’ revelation that he was going to live a normal, full life affected him in ways that Erik couldn’t understand. For a while he traveled, ostensibly to surf some of the world’s most famous breaks again, but he had no way of knowing if that was his real objective. He’d been back stateside for weeks before he heard from him, at which time he said he was helping the last remaining PG bands on the East Coast organize a big music festival. He was working on this until Otto was almost three, but after the festival wound down—which brought nearly 100,000 PGs together on a former golf course in Eastern Tennessee for five days—Lars returned to Colorado for what Erik hoped would be a long time. Though they began as strangers, the two half-brothers took to each other quickly, and so Lars experienced a normal childhood vicariously through Otto. He would watch him play for hours, winnowing time away like he didn’t have a care in the world, endlessly fascinated.
Erik hadn’t seen Geller since Baz’ funeral. Though he still carried a lot of resentment toward his former mentor, and always would, he’d come to understand why the truth about Lars had been kept from them. In the process, he also saw how expertly Geller had concealed his fallibility and self-doubt over the many years of their association. The most brilliant scientific mind in generations had been willing to roll the dice on a generation of strangers, but not on someone close to him.
As angry as he was with the old man, he always tried to remind himself that Lars was alive and would be until long after Erik and Heidi were gone. His old life was rich and full, and he would likely continue to live this way because that was who he was. Heidi wouldn’t have come forward were it not for her grandfather’s association with Geller, and so they might never have met. His family owed a somewhat perverse debt to the man, which very few families could have said.
The last members of the Perfect Generation numbered about 5 million—the youngest of them now 23. By 2068, satisfied by the science showing that the children of PG parents didn’t inherit the genetic defect, there was a new baby boom. Birth rates in the US had returned to levels not seen since the 1960s, and little kids returned to doing the things little kids were supposed to do. The oldest of the post-Cure generation were just graduating from college, and finding that the job market was very, very ready for them. GIG, naturally, was arranging to fund the graduate educations of hundreds of these students, and many more from outside the US. Things were slowly getting back to normal, but they weren’t the same—they were better. The Cure had taught America a painful lesson, and though Erik doubted that lesson would be retained forever, he held out hope that it would. He absorbed a lot from Geller, but not his cynicism.
Otto stood over him, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Are you okay, Daddy?”
Erik smiled. “Yeah, buddy. I just got really dizzy. Did you get enough spinning for one day?”
He nodded, though Erik suspected this wasn’t true. The kid liked to spin.
“So now what?”
“Snow cone!” Otto exclaimed.
“That sounds good,” Erik said. “Are you buying?”
Otto suddenly looked worried, so he let him off the hook.
“I’m just teasing, pal. Snow cones are on me today.”
With that, he brushed himself clean, doing his best to ignore the stares of other park goers. Otto held his hand as they crossed to the other side of the park, where a lonely snack bar attendant sat playing a game on his phone. He was maybe 19, an ordinary American slacker with all the time in the world. There wasn’t much acknowledgement when he first glanced up at Erik, but then he did a double take and sprang into action. Erik was nowhere near the household name that Geller became, but he was still well known. The young man looked down and saw Otto in tow and shifted his focus immediately.
“Hey, little man. You hot, hungry, or both?”
Otto merely nodded, either out of shyness or puzzlement at the question.
“Two rainbow snow cones, please,” Erik said.
“You go
t it, Dr. Heiser,” he said. Erik was rarely seen wearing shorts and sandals, with a three-day beard and a generally disheveled look.
A few minutes later, he handed them two enormous snow cones, which appeared all the larger in Otto’s tiny hand. Erik paid the attendant and led Otto to a small table nearby. They sat and ate their treats, which melted quickly in the June sun. By the time Otto tipped the cone back and drained the slurry of syrupy water into his mouth, half his face was a sticky, splotchy rainbow. Erik fetched a wad of napkins, dampened them in the fountain, then set about cleaning Otto’s face. He grimaced as Erik wiped, but after a few moments his small face was clean and framed a bright smile.
Erik stared at him for several seconds, admiring the unadulterated newness of him. His skin was clear and elastic, his eyes a sharply delineated white and blue. His mop of light blond hair fell partly over his eyes, as it had (and still did) with Lars.
In the healthy symmetry of his boy was an unsubtle perfection, the kind that could never be wrought by man and all his flaws. His hubris. His foolish determination to improve and bring order to nature’s chaos. The best any man could hope for was that this chaos would never intrude in the lives of his children, though Erik had more hope than most.
A Note to Readers
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