She opened the door, dropped her pack in the hall and hung her jacket on a hook. She could see her mother sitting on the couch scrolling through a magazine on the homescreen. Saw the pink wine glass on the table by her side, half empty. The scent of vermouth mingled with warm cooking smells.
Kelly hoped it was only her first martini. Joanna McLeod usually didn’t start drinking until after the sun had gone down. It was a habit she’d acquired since they’d returned from Berlin last year. From Germany to New Jersey. What a comedown. Kelly didn’t blame her mother for drinking. What else did she have to do, anyway? As far as Kelly was concerned, suburbia was one big green lawn and carwash. Swimming lessons and computer camp. The American dream. Her dreams led her elsewhere, although she didn’t quite know the final destination, yet.
“Hi,” she called, preparing to escape up the tan-carpeted steps to her room.
“Oh, Kelly.” Her mother glanced away from the viewer, smiled, then looked down at her watch in dismay. “My God, what time is it?”
“Relax. Dad is probably over at the airfield in the hangar, playing with his ultralight.”
“You’re right. He had a meeting at one, but it couldn’t have lasted this long, could it? Since he retired from the Air Force, negotiating these government contracts seems more like a hobby than a job for him.” Her mother smiled again, nose wrinkling. Kelly wished she’d been dealt that button nose in the genetic gin game. But it was Cindy who seemed to have inherited all of their mother’s sunny blondness.
“Dear, Michael Ryton called. He said he’d try again later. I want to talk to you about that.”
Kelly saw trouble coming. “About what?”
“Your father is a little worried about your friendship with him.”
“Figures. And you?”
“Well, Michael seems nice, but…”
Kelly sighed and imitated a computer voice drone: “Dean’s list at Cornell, member of the tennis team, Merton Scholarship recipient, graduated with honors, youngest partner in Ryton, Greene and Davis Engineering…”
“Yes, I know all that.” Her mother’s tone was slightly impatient. “What I don’t know is if it’s such a good idea for you to be so friendly with someone so much older than you are. You haven’t even graduated from high school.”
“Oh, come on, Mom. You and Dad practically threw me at Don Korbel when he was home from Yale last Easter. Just because he’s the son of Dad’s old army buddy. You don’t care about Michael’s age. You’re worried because he’s a mutant.”
Her mother looked embarrassed. “Well, we’ve seen more of these mutants than you have. They’re very close-knit, clannish. And strange. We’ve seen them floating along the seashore or whatever it is they do that puts them up in the air. They keep to themselves. I’m just afraid of your being hurt.”
“Cindy has a mutant friend.”
“Yes, but Reta is the same age as your sister…and sex.”
“So that’s it.” Kelly wanted to laugh. “I should have guessed. You didn’t seem all that worried in Germany when I was dating those soldiers. And they were even older than Michael.” She paused, watching her dart hit home. “Don’t start worrying now. I can take care of myself. He’s a very nice guy, and three times more interesting than those jerks at that dumb backwater school you put me in.”
“I’m sure he is.…” Her mother reached for her glass and took a long sip. “We’re just worried. You don’t seem very happy.”
Exasperation began to erode Kelly’s self-control. The last thing she wanted was to get started on this subject with her mother, to bring up questions even she couldn’t answer.
“I’d be a lot happier if you’d stop trying to run my friendships,” she said. “Why aren’t you worried about Cindy, too?” She stared angrily at her mother. “Don’t bother answering. I know why. It’s because Cindy’s always happy. Lucky girl.”
“Kelly, I—” Her mother cut herself off as the front door slammed. “There’s your father. Why don’t you go upstairs for a while before dinner?” It was not a gentle suggestion.
James Ryton sat in the chilly conference room, arms folded, impatiently waiting for the meeting to end. He would be late for the annual clan meeting if McLeod didn’t wind things up soon; it was a two-hour drive to the shore. What he was proposing was insane, of course. These normals never thought ahead. No wonder his engineering group was constantly busy with government contracts. The added safety features only made it worse.
“We’ll transmit the paperwork to your office tomorrow morning,” McLeod said, shutting down the roomscreen.
“Fine. The sooner we can get started, the better.” He shook hands with McLeod, nodded and walked toward the rose-carpeted reception area. These face-to-face negotiations were a blasted waste of time, he thought, but government regulations required them. Infuriating when he had a perfectly good conference screen set up in his office especially for these purposes. Stupid. Wasteful.
He hated waste and stupidity. Normals seemed to specialize in it.
He made a mental note to have Michael handle future negotiations. Perhaps he could relinquish this task to his son entirely, since he liked to talk to nonmutants so much.
Ryton thought of the wall he longed to build around his home, his family, his life. It had all started with the violence in the nineties. The murders. Oh, he’d been an idealistic young fool then, hot-blooded and optimistic. But Sarah took all that with her, and more, when she died. His beautiful sister, raped and bludgeoned.
Shivering in the December air, Ryton got into his skimmer. Those fools who sought out unnecessary contact with the normals were asking for trouble, he thought. Mutants had never been accepted. Never would be.
Some interaction with nonmutants was inescapable, of course. They controlled the economy, the government, and the schools. Even worse, their puling, whiny emotions clung to him like cobwebs each time he stepped forth into their world. He cloaked his clairaudience as much as he could, but some leakage always occurred. With a sigh, Ryton turned the skimmer onto the highway access road.
Little people, these normals. With small concerns, contemptible interests. Fearful of strangeness. Otherness. If he awoke tomorrow to find them vanished and gone, he would never miss them. They’d already taken too much from him. His youth. His trust. Sarah. No, he’d never miss any normal. Never.
2
the muffled pounding of the surf stopped in midbeat as the door closed. Michael shrugged off his jacket, grateful for the new space heaters, and saw fifty too familiar faces, one hundred familiar golden eyes, most of his clan, sitting around the large table in the dining area.
His mother gave a slight smile and indicated two gray folding chairs near her. With a sigh, Michael gingerly settled his lanky frame onto the cold metal seat. He could feel it right through his pants. Melanie sat down next to him. He scanned the room; his father was nowhere in sight. Must have been delayed.
“As I was saying,” Uncle Halden intoned. “In this year of our wait 672, standard calendar 2017, we’ve had two births, one death, one disappearance, but that’s Skerry, and he’s done it before. We’ve got the usual people looking for him.
“Our outreach efforts have located two singletons in rural Tennessee, and they’ve joined us. There’ve been three marriages.” A pause. “Two mixed marriages. But we will monitor the offspring.” Was it Michael’s imagination, or, all around him, had a hundred golden eyes shed tears of woe? Fifty mouths sighed with disappointment?
“The community maintains.” Halden said staunchly. He was Book Keeper this quarter, and the formal words seemed odd coming out of his mouth. Michael preferred to see him at night, by the fire with his banjo, roaring out the old songs, light dancing on his broad cheeks and bald head. The serious mask he’d assumed for this meeting didn’t suit his expansive nature.
“And the season was fruitful?” asked Zenora, Halden’s wife, as ritual demanded.
“Indeed.”
“May it ever be so,” came the rit
ual answer from all attending. Michael nudged Melanie, who appeared to be dozing. She chimed in on the last two words.
“What about the debate on the Fairness Doctrine?” Ren Miller asked. His round face was red with anger, as usual. “When are we going to be allowed to compete in athletic competition?”
“Ren, you know we’ve approached Senator Jacobsen about it,” Halden said. “She’s reviewing the possibility of a repeal.”
“It’s about time.”
“Personally, I think you make too much of this,” Halden retorted. “Our enhanced abilities do give us unfair advantage over normals. You can’t deny it.”
Miller glared at the Book Keeper but remained silent.
The clan shifted uneasily.
Michael knew that the doctrine was a sore point with most mutants and had been ever since it was made law in the 1990s.
Halden took a deep breath.
“Let us read from the Book,” he said. “The fifth refrain of The Waiting Time.” His voice was calm.
He paused to page through the huge old volume. Michael found himself holding his breath in anticipation. The Book Keeper found his place and in a rich voice intoned the familiar passage.
And when we knew ourselves to be different,
To be mutant and therefore other,
We took ourselves away,
Sequestered that portion of us most other,
And so turned a bland face to the blind eyes
Of the world.
Formed our community in silence, in hiding,
Offered love and sharing to one another,
And waited until a better time,
A cycle in which we might share
Beyond our circle.
We are still waiting.
Halden shut the Book.
“We are still waiting,” the little group intoned around him.
“Join hands and share with me now,” Halden whispered, lowering his head, closing his eyes. He reached out his hands to either side and grasped others who in turn had reached out, and so it went around the table until every hand held another.
Reluctantly, Michael closed his eyes and felt the familiar tickle of the linkage take hold. He both dreaded and enjoyed this moment, as self-awareness faded, to be replaced by the hum of the groupmind, the mental sound not one of distinct words, but, rather, a reassuring tonality, like several bees buzzing in shifting harmonies. He relaxed, bathing in the warmth of the connection. All was understood, all was accepted and forgiven. Here was love. He floated, suspended in it, stretched in the warmth of the groupmind like a lazy kitten in a golden sunbeam. When, by imperceptible degrees, the subvocal hum shifted, tilting him back toward and into his own lonely head, he swam with that gentle tide as well.
He opened his eyes. His watch told him it was an hour later. As often as he’d experienced it, Michael was always surprised by so great a passage of time in what seemed like only moments. He resealed his green jacket against the cold.
Nearby, people were yawning, rubbing their eyes, smiling gently. His aunt Zenora winked across the table and he grinned, thinking of the wonderful brownies that she had probably hidden away for later. Their aroma hung in the air, a tantalizing chocolate perfume.
The front door opened and Michael’s father walked in, his lips pursed.
“James, you’ve missed the sharing,” Halden rumbled at him. “Business, as usual?”
“Afraid so,” Ryton said, his expression softening. “You know how I hate to miss a sharing. Especially now that you’re Book Keeper, Halden.”
“Well, there’s always tomorrow’s session, Cousin,” Halden said. “Come have a drink.”
The two men embraced briefly, slapping each other on the back.
What a strange pair, Michael thought. His father was lean and blond while his uncle was swarthy and bearlike. But then, many of his mutant relatives were odd-looking. There was an explanation for that in the Chronicles, he knew. There was an explanation for everything, if you looked hard enough. But the Chronicles were written in archaic, non-scientific language, which did not dispel his uncertainty.
The mutants had first appeared over six hundred years ago. Some kind of meteorological occurrence had apparently preceded them. The Chronicles told of skies raining blood and cows being delivered of two-headed calves. But as far as Michael could tell, that kind of thing was happening all the time in the fifteenth century.
He also knew that mutant scientists and normal theorists believed that a natural tendency toward mutantism was enhanced by exposure to certain kinds of radiation. A comet or meteor shower, maybe, which resulted in all sorts of mutations in the generation immediately following exposure. Many were terminal mutations: peculiar, sterile, doomed. But the successful Homo sapiens strains flourished. Mental powers were enhanced. Some mutants developed telepathic skills of varying levels. Others gained telekinetic powers, again, of different strengths. Occasionally, a mutant had more than one power. Precogs. Sense clouders. Telepyros. Occasionally, a mutant with impressive strength and skill would emerge. But that was rare. Mutant powers were quirky, often difficult to control.
The eyes were a weird side effect about which there were many theories. Half the time, Michael thought it all sounded like a fairy tale. Until mutant season came around in the year’s cycle again.
As a child, he’d listened, riveted, when the tale of his clan unfolded during the ritual telling each year. Now he could almost repeat it in his sleep. How his forebears had struggled to survive, painfully aware of their strange powers and the potential for violent, panicked reactions to them from the “normal” majority. So they’d created enclaves, hidden away from prying eyes and damning questions. For centuries, mutants had lived on the periphery of society as thieves, alchemists, witches, and medicine men. Some were burned at the stake. Some enjoyed lives of unimaginable wealth. Several joined the circus. Mutants made good carnies. And better cat burglars.
Odd, reclusive, aloof, they survived and multiplied, but always under many shadows. Aside from the fear of public discovery and persecution in ages past, mutants had to cope with the knowledge that their life spans were shorter than those of regular Homo sapiens. Often, a mutant male lived only into his late fifties. To survive longer was to court madness. Michael had listened with shivers to tales of the storehouses maintained by his clan where their elderly raved, far from normal ears and eyes. The suicide rate among older mutants was twice that of the normal population. In return for their brief lives, they had the use of powers that were, at best, unreliable.
Communities within communities. The mutant strain had been preserved by careful inbreeding. And the price was dear. No wonder people like his father were touchy when it came to public scrutiny. They were proud of their heritage and uncertain of how normals would react, even now. But the thought of spending his life locked in this closet with his family was beginning to feel unendurable. Four years of college had shown Michael a world glittering with possibilities outside the clan.
Michael looked around the room. He saw a big, loving group that probably would never understand how he felt. His Uncle Halden was large-boned, with a generous belly. Against his bearlike solidity, Michael’s father looked much shorter, slimmer, golden-skinned and blond. Michael knew he resembled his father, although his mother’s Asian ancestry had given his skin a trifle richer hue, his eyes a somewhat more exotic cast. Just another flavor in the mutant pot, he thought. But Michael believed mutants were one hundred percent Homo sapiens. Whatever those rogue mutagens were all about, well, leave that to the geneticists in the clan.
He’d heard of mutants with one eye, scaled skin, or seven fingers on each hand, but they were rumored to live on the West Coast, in seclusion. He was grateful that the oddest physical feature he had was the epicanthic fold creasing his eyelids, thanks to Sue Li Ryton, his mother. Melanie appeared a bit more Asian with her darker hair, and Jimmy was the most like their mother of the three. Michael searched around the room for his prankster younger brother
but didn’t find him. Probably giving somebody a mental hotfoot someplace. And he’d get away with it, too. Somehow, their father managed to overlook Jimmy’s transgressions.
The meeting seemed to be over. Michael began to sidle toward the door. These clan meetings were becoming a bore in their predictability, and he wanted some time to himself. There’d be precious little of it once they got home; the trip to Washington loomed, and after that, the NASA contracts.
“Leaving so soon, Michael?” James Ryton’s voice, pitched high in disapproval, cut knifelike through the room and stopped him in midstep. “Well, I’m glad you could drop by.”
Michael ignored the sarcasm. “I just wanted to get some fresh air.”
“In that cold?” His father stared at him. “What’s the matter, your family isn’t good enough company?”
“I just want to take a walk. To think.”
His father snorted. “About some girl, probably. Well, you’re wasting your time. You should be thinking about mutant business. Our trip to Washington. It’s time you looked upon yourself as a responsible member of this community. You’re a partner in the firm. You must consider your future. Our future.”
Michael’s temper flared. “I think plenty about the business,” he snapped. “What about me? What about what I want?”
“Well, what do you want?”
Around the room, conversations stopped as clan members turned toward them. Michael knew what he was about to say would hurt his family and friends, but he couldn’t help it.
“I’m tired of worrying about tradition,” he said. “This is supposed to be the time in which we come forth, isn’t it? We’ve got Eleanor Jacobsen in Congress now, and—”
His father cut him off. “Some people are not convinced this is the moment for openness with the nonmutant world. I think it’s best that we observe the old ways and move cautiously. Normals can be dangerous.”
“Yes, I know,” Michael said impatiently.
“Then you must understand, I have your best interests at heart,” his father said. “We may occasionally socialize with outsiders but we don’t marry them.”
The Mutant Season Page 2
