Darwin's Radio d-1

by Greg Bear

  Maria Konig had referred them to Dr. Felicity Galbreath after Kaye met resistance from several pediatricians reluctant to take on a SHEVA pregnancy. Her own health insurance had canceled her; SHEVA was covered as a disease, a prior condition, certainly not as a natural pregnancy.

  Dr. Galbreath worked at several hospitals but kept her offices at Marine Pacific, the big brown Depression-era Art Deco hospital that looked down across the freeway, Lake Union, and much of west Seattle. She also taught two days a week at Western Washington University, and Kaye wondered where she found time to have any other life.

  * * *

  Galbreath, tall and plump, with round shoulders, a pleasantly unchallenging face, and a tight, short head of mousy blond hair, came into Kaye’s shared room twenty minutes after she was admitted. Kaye had been cleaned up and briefly examined by the resident nurse and an attending physician. A nurse midwife Kaye had never met before also checked on her, having heard about Kaye’s case from a brief article in the Seattle Weekly.

  Kaye sat up in her bed, her back aching, but otherwise comfortable, and drank a glass of orange juice.

  “Well, it’s happened,” Galbreath said.

  “It’s happened,” Kaye echoed dully.

  “They tell me you’re doing fine.”

  “I feel better now.”

  “Very sorry not to be here sooner. I was over at UW Medical Center.”

  “I think it was over before I was admitted,” Kaye said.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Lousy. Healthy enough, just lousy.”

  “Where’sMitch?”

  “I told him to bring me the baby. The fetus.”

  Galbreath glared at her with mixed irritation and wonder. “Aren’t you taking this scientist bit too far?”

  “Bullshit,” Kaye said fiercely.

  “You could be in emotional shock.”

  “Double bullshit. They took it away without telling me. I need to see it. I need to know what happened.”

  “It’s a first-stage rejection. We know what they look like,” Galbreath said softly, checking Kaye’s pulse and looking at the attached monitor. As a precaution, she was on saline drip.

  Mitch returned with a small steel pan covered with a cloth. “They were sending it down to…” He looked up, his face pale as a sheet. “I don’t know where. I had to do some yelling.”

  Galbreath looked at them both with an expression of forceful self-control. “It’s just tissue, Kaye. The hospital has to send them to an approved Taskforce autopsy center. It’s the law.”

  “She’s my daughter” Kaye said, tears trickling down her cheeks. “I want to see her before they take her.” The sobs began and she could not control them. The nurse looked in, saw Galbreath was with them, stood in the doorway with a helpless and concerned expression.

  Galbreath took the pan from Mitch, who was happy to be relieved of it. She waited until Kaye was quiet.

  “Please,” Kaye said. Galbreath placed the pan gently on her lap.

  The nurse left and shut the door behind her.

  Mitch turned away as she pulled back the cloth.

  Lying on a bed of crushed ice, in a small plastic bag with a Ziploc top, no larger than a small lab mouse, lay the interim daughter. Her daughter. Kaye had been nurturing and carrying and protecting this for over ninety days.

  For a moment, she felt distinctly uneasy. She reached down with a finger to trace the outline in the bag, the short and curled spine beyond the edge of the torn and tiny amnion. She stroked the comparatively large and almost faceless head, finding small slits for eyes, a wrinkled and rabbitlike mouth kept tightly closed, buttons where arms and legs might be. The small purple placenta lay beneath the amnion.

  “Thank you,” Kaye said to the fetus.

  She covered the tray. Galbreath tried to remove it, but Kaye gripped her hand. “Leave her with me for a few minutes,” she said. “I want to make sure she isn’t lonely. Wherever she’s going.”

  Galbreath joined Mitch in the waiting room. He sat with his head in his hands in a pale bleached-oak armchair beneath a pastel seascape framed in ash.

  “You look like you need a drink,” she said.

  “Is Kaye still asleep?” Mitch said. “I want to be with her.”

  Galbreath nodded. “You can go in any time. I examined her. Do you want the details?”

  “Please,” Mitch said, rubbing his face. “I didn’t know I’d react that way. I’m sorry.”

  “No need. She’s a bold woman who thinks she knows what she wants. Well, she’s still pregnant. The secondary mucus plug seems to be in position. There was no trauma, no bleeding; the separation was textbook, if anybody has bothered to write a textbook about this sort of thing. The hospital did a quick biopsy. It’s definitely a first-stage SHEVA rejection. Chromosome number is confirmed.”

  “Fifty-two?” Mitch asked.

  Galbreath nodded. “Like all the others. It should be forty-six. Gross chromosomal abnormalities.”

  “It’s a different kind of normal,” Mitch said.

  Galbreath sat beside him and crossed her legs. “Let’s hope. We’ll do more tests in a few months.”

  “I don’t know how a woman feels after something like this,” he said slowly, folding and unfolding his hands. “What do I say to her?”

  “Let her sleep. When she wakes up, tell her that you love her, and that she’s brave and magnificent. This part will probably feel like a bad dream.”

  Mitch stared at her. “What do I tell her if the next one doesn’t work, either?”

  Galbreath leaned her head to one side and smoothed her cheek with one finger. “I don’t know, Mr. Rafelson.”

  Mitch filled out the discharge papers and looked over the attached medical report, signed by Galbreath. Kaye folded a nightgown and put it into the small overnight case, then walked stiffly into the bathroom and packed up her toothbrush. “I ache all over,” she said, her voice hollow through the open door.

  “I can get a wheelchair,” Mitch said. He was almost out the door before Kaye left the bathroom and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I can walk. This part is done with, and that makes me feel much better. But…Fifty-two chromosomes, Mitch. I wish I knew what that meant.”

  “There’s still time,” Mitch said quietly.

  Kaye’s first impulse was to give him a stern look, but his expression told her that would not be fair, that he was as vulnerable as she. “No,” she said, simply and gently.

  Galbreath knocked on the door frame.

  “Come in,” Kaye said. She closed and latched the lid on the overnight case. The doctor entered with a young, ill-at-ease man dressed in a gray suit.

  “Kaye, this is Ed Gianelli. He’s the Emergency Action legal representative for Marine Pacific.”

  “Ms. Lang, Mr. Rafelson. I’m sorry for the difficulty. I have to obtain some personal information and a signature, under the state of Washington compliance agreements with the federal Emergency Act, as agreed to by the state legislature on July 22 of this year, and signed by the governor on July 26. I apologize for the inconvenience during a painful time—”

  “What is it?” Mitch asked. “What do we have to do?”

  “All women carrying SHEVA second-stage fetuses should register with the state Emergency Action Office and agree to follow-up medical tracking. You can arrange to have those visits with Dr. Galbreath, as the obstetrician of record, and she will carry out the standardized tests.”

  “We won’t register,” Mitch said. “Are you ready to go?” he asked Kaye, putting his arm around her.

  Gianelli shifted his stance. “I won’t go into the reasons, Mr. Rafelson, but registration and follow-up are mandated by the King County Board of Health, in agreement with state and federal law.”

  “I don’t recognize the law,” Mitch said firmly.

  “The penalty is a fine of five hundred dollars for each week you refuse,” Gianelli said.

  “Best not to make a big deal out of it,” Gal
breath said. “It’s a kind of addendum to a birth certificate.”

  “The infant hasn’t been born yet.”

  “Then think of it as an addendum to the postrejection medical report,” Gianelli said, his shoulders rising.

  “There was no rejection,” Kaye said. “What we’re doing is natural.”

  Gianelli held out his hands in exasperation. “All I need is your current residence and a waiver to access your pertinent medical records, with Dr. Galbreath and your lawyer, if you wish, overseeing what we look at.”

  “My God,” Mitch said. He moved Kaye past Galbreath and Gianelli, then paused to say to the doctor, “You know what this means, don’t you? People will stay away from hospitals, from their physicians.”

  “My hands are pretty much tied,” Galbreath said. “The hospital fought this until just yesterday. We still plan to appeal to the Board of Health. But for now—”

  Mitch and Kaye left. Galbreath stood in the doorway, face mottled.

  Gianelli followed them down the hall, agitated. “I have to remind you,” he said, “that these fines are cumulative—”

  “Give it up, Ed!” Galbreath shouted, slamming her hand on the wall. “Just give it up and let them go, for Christ’s sake!”

  Gianelli stood in the middle of the hallway, shaking his head. “I hate this shit!”

  “You hate it?” Galbreath shouted at him. “Just leave my patients the hell alone!”

  78

  Building 52, The National Institutes of Health, Bethesda

  OCTOBER

  Your face looks pretty good,” Shawbeck said. He advanced into Augustine’s office on a pair of crutches. His aide helped him lower himself into the chair. Augustine was finishing a corned beef sandwich. He wiped his lips and folded the top of the foam box, latching it.

  “All right,” Shawbeck said when he was seated. “Weekly meeting of the survivors of July twentieth, der Fuhrer presiding.”

  Augustine lifted his eyes. “Not a bit funny.”

  “When’s Christopher going to join us? We should keep a bottle of brandy, and the last survivor gets to toast the departed.”

  “Christopher is getting more and more disaffected,” Augustine said.

  “And you aren’t?” Shawbeck asked. “How long since you met with the president?”

  “Three days,” Augustine said.

  “Black budget discussions?”

  “Emergency Action reserve finances,” Augustine said.

  “He didn’t even mention them to me,” Shawbeck said.

  “It’s my ball now. They’re going to hang the old toilet seat around my neck.”

  “Because you put together the rationale,” Shawbeck said. “So — these new babies are not only going to be born dead, but if any happen to be born alive, we take them away from their parents and put them into specially financed hospitals. We’ve gone pretty far on this one.”

  “The public seems to be with us,” Augustine said. “The president’s describing it as a major public health risk.”

  “I wouldn’t be in your shoes for anything on Earth, Mark. It’s going to be political suicide. The president has to be in shock to be promoting this.”

  “To tell the truth, Frank, after all those years in the White House’s shadow, he’s feeling his oats a little. He’s going to drag us around the old bridle path getting past mistakes straightened out, and pushing through a martyr’s agenda.”

  “And you’re going to spur him on?”

  Augustine angled his head back. He nodded.

  “Incarcerate sick babies?”

  “You know the science.”

  Shawbeck smirked. “You get five virologists to agree that it’s possible that these infants — and the mothers — could be breeding grounds for ancient viruses. Well, thirty-seven virologists have gone on record saying it’s bogus.”

  “Not as prominent, and not nearly as influential.”

  “Thorne and Mahy and Mondavi and Bishop, Mark.”

  “I have my instincts, Frank. Remember, this is my area, too.”

  Shawbeck dragged his chair forward. “What are we now, petty tyrants?”

  Augustine’s face went livid. “Thanks, Frank,” he said.

  “The public starts to turn against the mothers and the unborn children. What if the babies are cute? How long until they swing back, Mark? What will you do then?”

  Augustine did not answer.

  “I know why the president refuses to meet with me,” Shawbeck said. “You tell him what he wants to hear. He’s afraid, and the country’s out of control, so he picks a solution and you back him up. It isn’t science, it’s politics.”

  “The president agrees with me.”

  “Whatever we call it — July twentieth, the Reichstag fire — the bombing doesn’t give you carte blanche,” Shawbeck said.

  “We’re going to survive,” Augustine said. “I didn’t deal us this hand.”

  “No,” Shawbeck said. “But you’ve sure stopped the deck from being dealt out fairly.”

  Augustine stared straight ahead.

  “They’re calling it ‘original sin,’ you know that?”

  “I hadn’t heard that,” Augustine said.

  “Tune in the Christian Broadcasting Network. They’re splitting constituencies all across America. Pat Robertson is telling his audience these monsters are God’s final test before the arrival of the new Kingdom of Heaven. He says our DNA is trying to purge itself of all our accumulated sins, to…what was his phrase, Ted?”

  The aide said, “Clean up our records before God calls Judgment Day.”

  “That was it.”

  “We still don’t control the airwaves, Frank,” Augustine said. “I can’t be held responsible…”

  “Half a dozen other televangelists say these unborn children are the devil’s spawn,” Shawbeck continued, building up steam. “Born with the mark of Satan, one-eyed and hare-lipped. Some are even saying they have cloven hooves.”

  Augustine shook his head sadly.

  “They’re your support group now,” Shawbeck said, and waved his arm for the aide to step forward. He struggled to his feet, shoved the crutches into his armpits. “I’m tendering my resignation tomorrow morning. From the Taskforce and from the NIH. I’m burned out. I can’t take any more of this ignorance — my own or anybody else’s. Just thought you should be the first to know. Maybe you can consolidate all the power.”

  When Shawbeck was gone, Augustine stood behind his desk, hardly breathing. His knuckles were white and his hands shook. Slowly, he took control of his emotions, forcing himself to breathe deeply and evenly.

  “It’s all in the follow-through,” he said to the empty room.

  79

  Seattle

  DECEMBER

  They moved the last of the boxes out of Mitch’s old apartment in the snow. Kaye insisted on carrying a few small ones, but Mitch and Wendell had done all the heavy hauling in the early morning hours, packing everything into a big orange-and-white U-Haul rental truck.

  Kaye climbed into the truck beside Mitch. Wendell drove.

  “Good-bye, bachelor days,” Kaye said.

  Mitch smiled.

  “There’s a tree farm near the house,” Wendell said. “We can pick up a Christmas tree on the way in. Should be terrifically cozy.”

  Their new home stood in a patch of low brush and woods near Ebey Slough and the town of Snohomish. Rustic green and white, with a single front-facing gable window and a large screened-in porch, the two-bedroom house lay at the end of a long country road surrounded by pines. They were renting from Wendell’s parents, who had owned the house for thirty-four years.

  They were keeping their change of address a secret.

  As the men unloaded the truck, Kaye made sandwiches and slipped a six-pack of beer and a few fruit drinks into the freshly scrubbed refrigerator. Inside the bare and clean living room, standing in her socks on the oak floor, Kaye felt at peace.

  Wendell carried a lamp into the living ro
om and set it on the kitchen table. Kaye handed him a beer. He took a deep swallow gratefully, his throat bobbing. “Did they tell you?” he asked.

  “Who?Tell us what?”

  “My folks. I was born here. This was their first house.” He waved his hands around the living room. “I used to carry a microscope outside in the garden.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Kaye said.

  “This is where I became a scientist,” Wendell said. “A sacred place. May it bless you both!”

  Mitch lugged in a chair and a magazine rack. He accepted a Full Sail ale and toasted them, clinking his glass against Kaye’s Snapple.

  “Here’s to becoming moles,” he said. “To going underground.”

  Maria Konig and half a dozen other friends came four hours later and helped arrange furniture. They were almost done when Eileen Ripper knocked on the door. She carried a lumpy canvas bag. Mitch introduced her, then saw two others waiting on the outside porch.

  “I brought some friends,” Eileen said. “Thought we’d celebrate with news of our own.”

  Sue Champion and a tall older man with long black hair and a well-disciplined barrel of a belly stepped forward, more than a little ill at ease. The tall man’s eyes glinted white like a wolf’s.

  Eileen shook hands with Maria and Wendell. “Mitch, you’ve met Sue. This is her husband, Jack. And this is for the wood stove,” she said to Kaye, dropping the bag by the fireplace. “Scrap maple and cherry. Smells wonderful. What a beautiful house!”

  Sue nodded to Mitch and smiled at Kaye. “We’ve never met,” Sue said. Kaye opened and closed her mouth like a fish, at a loss for words, until they both laughed nervously.

  They had brought baked ham and steelhead for dinner.

  Jack and Mitch circled like wary boys sizing up each other. Sue seemed unconcerned, but Mitch did not know what to say. A little tipsy, he apologized for not having any candles and decided the occasion called for Coleman lanterns.

  Wendell switched off all the lights. The living room became a camp tent with long shadows and they ate in the bright center amid the stacked boxes. Sue and Jack conferred for a moment in a corner.