Prototype

by Brian Hodge

  Their project — and all similar studies — ended after seven years, largely from public outcry over shoddy ethics. Apparently the researchers had never considered the harm done to children by the application of stigmatizing labels, or the potential harm of overreacting to the typical aggression displayed by nearly all little boys. Apparently they had never considered the likelihood of self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Yet someone was doing this again, with Helverson's subjects?

  Yes and no.

  "It was initiated two years ago," Mendenhall said. "Standard screenings of newborns in forty-seven hospitals in twenty-five cities across the country. All they're supposed to do is track the Helverson's babies. There's to be no contact, no counseling, no intervention … just statistical analysis of what happens to them down the road. It all goes into a central database at MacNealy Biotech in Boston. The parents aren't even informed when a baby's found to have the extra chromosome."

  "So they've already located more, then?"

  "Oh yes," he said, a fatalistic grumble of a laugh.

  Her stomach tightened. "How many?"

  "After two years, as of last week … six hundred and eighty-three. With a sixteen percent birth increase from year one to year two. Now, that may only be a statistical blip. A big blip, but…"

  Adrienne sat, just sat. Holding the phone and listening to its soft electronic silence swallow her whole. Fill her empty hollows. Six hundred and eighty-three. And counting. In two years.

  And these were just the known births. Someone who loved to crunch numbers would have compared that birth rate with national averages, maybe that of all industrialized nations, even globally. They would have estimates, how many were really out there. Unfound and unnamed, on no rosters. But out there.

  The ones already studied? The adults? The Clay Palmers, the Mark Alan Nances, the Timothy Van der Leuns? They seemed like such rarities because they had been discovered by accident; oh, but what an informed and directed effort could pinpoint.

  And in that gulf between the first adults who had been found to carry their rogue chromosome, and these infants, how many resided? How many teenagers, how many grade-schoolers had found themselves maladapted to a world not made for them? How long before they began to make that world over, in their own image?

  Six hundred and eighty-three, and birth rates on the rise.

  They were filling cribs, and soon enough would fill streets. Perhaps that turbulent makeover had already begun.

  "Adrienne? You still with me?"

  "Yeah." Always functioning.

  "I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. Although it's nothing you weren't expecting eventually." Mendenhall cleared his throat. "AAL informed me this afternoon that they'll be cutting your funding at the end of the year. Which gives you another week to wrap things up with Clay Palmer."

  "Wrap things up?" she said. "The kind of issues we're dealing with can't just be wrapped up." Her volume was rising. "It's the height of callousness to pretend otherwise."

  "You knew this was coming, Adrienne." Mendenhall's voice had gone flatter, sterner. "Therapy never led the priority list. You knew that when you agreed to this."

  She drew a strong breath through her nose, let it out the same way, right into the mouthpiece. "Thank you for giving me the news, Ferris. You're a good administrator … and that's about it."

  She hung up, and wouldn't it have felt better to rip the phone from its wall plug, hurl it across the room? Of course it would. Clay would have done so.

  She left her desk and drifted along in subconscious circles, slow and lazy, mildly dazed. After a few moments of staring out over the deck, Adrienne shoved open the sliding door and stepped across the redwood and the snow.

  It was still coming down out here, clinging to her sweater and melting cold upon her skin, while the pines looked choked with it. She walked to one side of the deck, where the peculiarities of wind had sculpted days' worth of snow into a low, rounded drift. She sank into it as she might into a sagging throne.

  Her legs and behind soon began to feel the creeping chill; maybe would go numb before long. She could stay here until Sarah came home and forced her in, brushed away the caked snow and asked what she was trying to do, catch pneumonia and ruin Christmas?

  God rest ye merry lesbians, let nothing you dismay.

  Adrienne tilted her head back upon the icy pillow and looked straight into the milky gray depths of the sky. No color, no warmth, no fury, nothing up there at all. Just snowflakes coming down to brush her cheeks, soft as angels' tears.

  Six hundred and eighty-three.

  And did the heavens think to grieve?

  Twenty-Seven

  Patrick Valentine picked him up at Logan Airport two days after Christmas. A Monday — he was hoping to avoid the crush of too many holiday travelers, but by the looks of the crowded gates and terminal, a lot of people were stretching out a long weekend. Lots of shopping bags in hand, clutched as proudly and carefully as if they contained gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Oh, it was touching.

  He had yesterday, among their kind, played the game once more, the game devised a month ago. The Colt Python in the pocket; one bullet, one spin, one disciplined squeeze of the trigger. He had come to think of the game as snake-in-the-grass. Yesterday's flood of gift refunds and exchanges supplied a bounty of backs from which to choose. It had taken two hours of department store roaming before finding the one that screamed to be taken.

  Another click. In the end, another reprieve.

  Another month of sweet anticipation.

  Next time he would ruin someone's Super Bowl, maybe.

  As the late-afternoon flight from Seattle began to disgorge its passengers through the gate, Valentine scanned faces. Fifty or more he discarded until experiencing a frisson that went deeper than mere recognition. A face familiar because it was his own, twenty years younger and half-concealed behind heavy round shades of metal and amber glass, almost like blast lenses for a nuclear test site: Daniel Ironwood.

  Valentine took several steps forward while other passengers split around him, like a swift stream encountering a rock, and he barred Daniel Ironwood's path. Face-to-face, they stared.

  Strangers who liked to people-watch in airports would think them relatives. Naturally, the resemblance was there, if no warmth upon first meeting. Those same curious sleek faces and contoured skulls. They could be father and son, and anyone who stared, impolite or compelled by the sight of such fine-boned peculiarity, might believe them estranged. Years gone by since they last embraced, perhaps, while the younger grew to manhood on an opposite coast, turning into more of his jaded elder than he would ever have dreamt possible.

  How deceiving looks could be.

  Daniel dug into a coat pocket for a crumpled pack of Salems, popped one into the corner of his mouth, and lit up. "Fucking airline regs, that must be the longest I've been without a smoke since I was twelve."

  "Let's get your luggage," said Valentine, and led the way.

  "Is she with you? She didn't come with you? What's her name — Ellie?"

  Valentine glanced back over his shoulder, saw Daniel quicken his pace to keep up. "No, Ellie's not with me." Laughing then, "What's the matter, turbulence up there give you a hard-on?"

  Daniel said nothing, might have glared with embarrassment or offense, but the dark glasses contained it well. No doubt he found them a survival tool, never betraying a thought if he could help it. Blank faces go unnoticed, unchallenged. Blank is a little bit like dead, and in dead there is a certain strength, for dead means nothing left to lose. Daniel would know this, had done his time as a juvenile offender; teen-age burglaries and robberies, a rape.

  "This is weird, I don't mind telling you," he said. "This feels really really weird."

  "I don't care how it feels, as long as it doesn't cause you any problems." And Valentine remembered the one from Indianapolis, that colossal disappointment back in late summer; the shame and impotence that seemed to have even embarrassed Ellie, who h
ad until then seemed shockproof.

  "And how's it make you feel? Doesn't it leave you feeling just a little like a pimp?"

  Valentine laughed, clapped a hand down on Daniel's shoulder, drew them closer as they walked until he could feel the young man's body stiffen against him, resistant. Lean, hard … the same body he'd once had until growing into a thicker muscularity with stubborn traces of fat around the middle. The cancer rooted in his groin had changed him in all ways — metabolically, intellectually, even his inner essence.

  And with this son given him by destiny, he wanted to lean in until Daniel squirmed, his rough stubbled cheek scraping Daniel's smoother one as the kid smelled the coffee on Valentine's breath. He would slap his cupped hand down over Daniel's crotch and squeeze just to the point of pain. Protect these, he would say. Because in that sac lives a hope that I lost a long time ago.

  Would a pimp do that?

  "Pimps make money," he told Daniel instead. "You're costing me. Remember that and maybe you'll eventually figure out how I really feel."

  "Right," Daniel said. He shrugged off Valentine's hand. "You don't plan on … you know … watching us go at it, or anything like that. Do you?"

  And that really tore it, such an insinuation beyond the pale of reason. Valentine clenched his jaw and dragged him by the arm halfway across the terminal's walkway, thumped him against the wall by a row of telephone carrels before Daniel really knew what was happening. They drew passing glances, but Valentine could not have been more oblivious. Face-to-face, then, nose-to-nose. Heavy sunglasses or not, Daniel Ironwood could not hide his sudden trembling with fear. Yeah, taste it now, and learn not to be a little brat, and maybe it'll spare us a worse clash down the road.

  "Is that why you think I flew you here?" Valentine whispered into the tightly impassive face. "I'm not a voyeur, I'm not a pervert. I didn't bring you here for my pleasure — I can't feel it in the first place. I brought you here to do a job, first, and maybe learn something. Now, are you going to keep that in mind?"

  Nothing.

  "Or are we going to have to go through frequent reminders?"

  "I'll remember," said Daniel, and when they stepped away from the wall, Valentine noticed that he kept a half step behind; the farther they walked, the more he appreciated the ambiguity in that. Back there, Daniel Ironwood could either be playing the subservient or plotting to club him across the back of the head.

  A fine specimen, Daniel Ironwood.

  Maybe there was hope for the future after all.

  *

  He took Daniel to Charlestown so he could shower and clean up, dump off his luggage, anchor his life for the next couple of weeks. They grabbed a quick dinner at a pub a few blocks from the house, and by then evening was chilling into a hard, crisp night. It was time. Introductions were in order.

  They drove back across the Charles and up to the penthouse where he kept Ellie, and it generally went well. No mad burst of passion and fireworks, no instantaneous surge of lust. But he preferred a low-key beginning, had hoped for it, because if their hormones locked into immediate and earnest sync, what would prevent them from really pairing off, deciding his money did not matter, and striking off on their own?

  Like ungrateful children.

  So there they sat, in the living room, television and stereo playing in jarring discord. Ellie nervously flipped through channels for the first thirty minutes, then seemed to calm herself. Valentine had taken a sniff of her on arrival, of that razored violet hair, and it appeared that she'd washed it today. Good girl. Daniel was at first no calmer than Ellie, sat behind the big marble table as if it were a fortress, chain-smoking himself into a fuming cloud.

  No mention was made of the real reason for their coming together, but its undercurrents charged the air all the same. Valentine watched with viper's eyes, watched their body language toward each other, made note of their eye contact — fleeting at first, then held longer. They spoke of doctors, psychiatrists; an unusual turning point, but … whatever works.

  "The last doctor they made me see, he told me why I turned out so screwed up," said Daniel, deadpan behind his glasses. "He said I'd been molesting my inner child."

  Ellie frowned for a few moments, unsure whether or not to take him seriously, finally laughing when she saw him break his veil and grin crookedly toward the floor.

  "Are you ever going to take those damned glasses off?" she asked. "Patrick, make him take those things off."

  Daniel took care of it himself, drawing them slowly away from his face, as if performing an amputation.

  "Okay," Ellie said, "okay. I just wanted to be sure you had eyes. You didn't really seem quite human."

  Daniel shrugged. "The jury's still out."

  Shaking her head, Ellie narrowed her eyes, smiled the aloof and vicious smile that came to her in odd moments, moments that to Valentine felt to stretch much longer, somehow, for in them she seemed older than he, and far more mysterious than he had ever suspected.

  "The jury can be bought," Ellie said, pointing at Valentine. Pointing at his heart. "Just ask him."

  *

  He wasn't used to the phone ringing before he woke in the morning. When it came to associates he generally initiated the calls, and wrong numbers were rare.

  Valentine dragged the receiver to his ear and croaked out a simple "What."

  "I have a number but I don't know a name," came a voice, the voice of a stranger, "so I don't know if you're the one I need to talk to or not."

  "About what?"

  From the other end came a slow breath. If he didn't like the answer, this conversation was terminated. Feds — he wouldn't put it past them to bug his phone, call him up when they knew he'd be groggy. Call it entrapment.

  "Chromosome twelve."

  Valentine sat up, scooting back against the headboard while scrubbing the sleep from his face. This was long-distance; he could hear the miles of humming lines between. Could it be…?

  "How did you get this number?"

  "You mailed it to Denver. Does that narrow it down?"

  Valentine broke into a broad smile, a morning rarity, as the heavy burden of sleep began to flush from his system in a surge of excitement. This would be how Magellan had felt upon sailing past the known boundaries demarked by the maps of his day.

  "Clay Palmer," he said with genuine pleasure. "It's good to speak to you, finally."

  "Are you going to tell me your name?" Clay asked.

  "It's still too early for that. You understand. I have to protect myself. Nothing personal."

  "I'm coming your way," said Clay Palmer, with all the inborn inevitability that Valentine knew had made them what they were, had made them cogs in a greater machine that would one day finally get around to meshing. "I'm coming because all I have left is to see if what I have ahead of me is even worth trying to get to, and I don't know if you can tell me, but I don't know anyone else who could even try. So maybe you'll tell me who you are when you know I'm calling from a local phone."

  Sitting in bed, his first impulse was to say no, bad timing. He had a new houseguest, after all, and eugenics on the mind. But reconsideration was swift, as soon as he remembered an evolutionary given that did not escape the human species:

  Sperm production was boosted higher in competing males.

  "I'll look forward to it," he said, and let it be all the invitation that Clay Palmer was likely to need.

  PART THREE/AND DARWIN LAUGHED

  Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! … The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

  — Joseph Conrad

  Heart of Darkness

  Twenty-Eight

  Late December should have made a terrible time to travel cross-country by car, although Sarah found it perfect. The th
ree of them shielded from hostile winds and ice in their steel cocoon, skimming over snowy plains, a scarred white earth as far as the eye could see and the imagination reach.

  This is right, she thought. It shouldn't end in a condo with him walking out one last time. It should finish out here, or wherever this road ends up taking us.

  There had been no talking Clay out of this once he'd made up his mind. He was going to Boston, by way of Indianapolis, and that was final. He would drive and drive, and if his car fell to pieces along the way, he would walk, and if he froze, he would die where he fell.

  There had been no talking Clay out of it, but Sarah didn't think Adrienne had really tried. Perhaps because she recognized its futility and was now past doing things for the sake of obligation. Or perhaps because, by insisting she accompany him as he went to confront his mysterious mentor, she might wring a few extra final days out of their allotted time before bureaucracy slammed the door on them for good. She would thwart institutional callousness with one last act of defiance.

  "You've really gone rogue now, haven't you?" Sarah asked her, barely an hour out of Denver but already they were crossing chilly white plains, the mountains forgotten. Adrienne behind the wheel of her own car, no less — it was newer and more reliable than Sarah's, and certainly Clay's.

  "I guess I have," said Adrienne. "Do you think I'm wrong?"

  "Well of course not, it's not like you've kidnapped a minor, now, is it?"

  "No, but … I'm not sure exactly what it is I've done."

  At the moment Clay lay sleeping across the backseat. He had looked very tired when they'd left; had looked that way each time Sarah had seen him during the past few days, as if he were slowly wearing away from some effort within that she could only imagine. Sleeping, he looked worse; fragile, even.