Mutant Star

by Karen Haber

  “And it’s worth every minute, isn’t it?” There was laughter in her voice, laughter that Julian had come to enjoy, to listen for, to induce whenever possible.

  “Absolutely. Just have a fresh lab coat ready for me when this shift is over. And a shot of brandy.”

  “For medicinal purposes?” Eva Seguy said. “It’ll be waiting.”

  Julian sank back down into the link with his tranquilized subject. In his grandfather’s time, mental flares had been feared as incapacitating illness. Now they were viewed as fascinating psychic phenomena: possibly the key to precognition. Mutants still suffered from the flares, but at least medication allowed them to function normally with a minimum of discomfort. And be studied like lab animals by other, luckier mutants.

  He had half an hour before Rick came to collect him for the meeting. And knowing his brother, that meant an hour and a half, at least. Time for another flare ride. What would he see next? Marsbase? The Tower of Babel? Wiping his wet face, Julian closed his eyes and braced himself.

  ***

  Narlydda! Alanna! We’re late and you know it. Dammit, why am I always the timekeeper for this family?

  Dad sounds impatient, Alanna thought. Nothing new about that. She turned back to her screen for a moment.

  “Cage of bone in which the red bird flutters …”

  She leaned closer, squinting at the amber words. She couldn’t decide if the line was terribly bad or terribly good. She often felt that way about her poetry. Her mother, of course, suffered no such doubts. If Narlydda saw this lyric she would praise it, call her agent, maybe even engrave it into her next sculpture. Meanwhile, Skerry would nod, stroke his beard, and say, “Nice, Teenie. Real nice.”

  Well, they had to do that, didn’t they? After all, they were her parents. But was she really any good? Did she have any talent? Would anybody ever see her as someone other than Narlydda’s daughter? Or tell her if she had a tin ear?

  I am going to leave you folks behind. Better yet, I’m going to find a family where somebody else knows how to read a clock besides me.

  Skerry’s mindspeech echoed thunderously.

  Alanna smiled, shut off her screen, and took a quick look in the mirror. Long dark hair curled down over her shoulders, over the tight black velvet spandex halter, almost to the top of her black leather pants. The dark hair against the pale skin, slightly green, a pale echo of her mother’s deeper celadon hue, made a pleasing contrast. Sparkling golden eyes didn’t hurt the effect, either.

  Dark colors made her seem older. Now that she was eighteen, Alanna would be able to vote at the Mutant Council meeting and she wanted to look the part. She gave her reflection a final once-over and hurried down the stairs.

  Her mother, Narlydda, followed on her heels.

  “We’re not late, Skerry,” Narlydda said. “You’re always in a hurry.” She didn’t bother to respond in mindspeech: hers was too weak, as Alanna knew.

  With an imperious gesture Narlydda brushed back her thick dark hair sparkling with silver threads. She used a purple crylight pin to secure it at the neck of her lavender stretch suit.

  Alanna envied her mother’s confident, dramatic style. The flash of white hair at her temple. Maybe she should have her own hair frosted that way. But with a shock of gold added. Or green.

  Skerry stood waiting, arms crossed, in the center of the main room. His gray hair was pulled back, as usual, into a ponytail, and his beard was neatly trimmed. He wore a dark blue kimono and leggings shot through with gold threads. “Good thing I am in a hurry,” he said. “Otherwise we’d never get anywhere.”

  Narlydda kissed him on the cheek. “Relax. Half an hour more or less doesn’t mean anything at the annual meeting. Besides, nobody gets to the really good gossip until after dinner.”

  “I know,” he growled. “That’s when I usually fall asleep. And don’t tell me to relax, Lydda. If I didn’t keep us on schedule, you two would primp until I fell asleep right here, standing up. And then you’d miss all the fun.”

  “Who’s going to be there?” Alanna said.

  “Everybody.”

  “Including the Akimuras,” Narlydda said. “I haven’t seen Melanie and Yosh in quite a while.”

  “I wonder if the boys will come.”

  “Boys?” her mother said. “They’re men. Julian and Rick are at least twenty-five. Julian’s almost finished his doctorate.”

  “And Rick’s probably graduated from being a part-time breen-runner into a professional dealer.” Skerry’s expression was sour. “You’d think Melanie would have checked out the sperm bank donors more carefully before she got herself impregnated. She could have had two Nobel scientists instead of one good egg and one bad.”

  “Skerry!” Narlydda’s eyes flashed. “You know she took random choice. Besides, the records were lost in that fire.”

  Alanna started laughing.

  “Enough character assassination,” Skerry said. “At least until after the meeting.” He hefted a large parcel near the door. “I’ll load this.”

  “Don’t be silly. I can do that.” Narlydda began to levitate it out of his hands.

  Skerry glared at her. “Don’t treat me like an old man, Lydda.”

  “All right. You do it. But don’t put my wallpiece in the van wrong side up or I’ll trade you in for two thirty-year-olds.”

  “Wait a couple of years and the Akimura boys will be ripe.”

  It was Narlydda’s turn to glower. The sight seemed to cheer Skerry immensely.

  “Why doesn’t the Mutant Council pay for the transport of a donated work?” he said. “Especially if it’s going to hang in the Council chamber? They’re lucky to get it.”

  Narlydda softened. “Remember to tell them that.”

  “Think I won’t?” He grinned at her wolfishly. “One of the few joys remaining to me in my declining years is the opportunity to make myself as big a pain in the ass as often as I can to as many mutants as possible.”

  “Does that include me, Dad?” Alanna’s grin matched her father’s.

  “Absolutely,” Skerry said. “Especially when you’re late.” He swatted her playfully on the rear and she scooted out of reach toward the door. “Let’s move ’em out, troops. We’ve got miles and mutants to go before we eat.”

  ***

  The road ahead was a steep, winding ribbon. Just the way Rick Akimura liked it. He gunned the motor of his jet cycle as it skimmed along over the ground and sped around a turn. And another. Old Highway 17 through the Santa Cruz mountains was a perfect roller-coaster ride when the road was clear and conditions were right. He had taken this route a hundred times and never tired of it.

  In and out, up and down. Rick nodded happily in time with the Eroica on his headset. Blue sky above the clear road below, he thought. And Ludwig van B. in my ear. His friends all thought his choice of music was odd, but then what did they expect from the son of a composer? Rick whistled along with the rollicking melody. The only thing missing was the Santa Cruz pub-crawler gang: Tuli and Dave, Maria and Henley. His crowd.

  They didn’t have golden eyes, and they didn’t care that he did. After all, he had no powers. A null was always welcome at their festivities or on the road. He’d much rather be on his way to a party in San Francisco right now than racing up the highway to the Berkeley labs to pick up his twin brother for a Mutant Council meeting. But he had promised his mother that he would attend, just this once. And he hated to break his word to her.

  She did have golden eyes like his own. And not a shred of mutant power, either. At times he felt more twinned to her than to Julian. Melanie was a null, too, and that provided a warm, empathic linkage between them. It was a powerful bond. His father, Yosh, was a nonmutant, which suited Rick just fine. Only Rick’s fraternal twin, Julian, was an operant mutant in the Akimura household. Which made him sort of the odd man out. Useful as hell, Rick had to admit. A telepath who could carry the burden of mutant power without ever complaining. His brother Julian was a trifle saintly, but a go
od guy nevertheless.

  Rick swerved to avoid a slow-moving truck and gracefully pulled ahead. His dark brown hair flew out behind him in the wind, and for a moment Rick was tempted to stand up and wave his arms in abandon. What did he need mutant powers for? Levitation? Telepathy? All that mumbo jumbo. This was real freedom.

  “Hey!”

  The road before him shimmered and grew blurry. He rubbed his eyes. That didn’t help. The knobby gray rock formations that lined the highway seemed to shift and move like living clay. He thought he heard a faint rumbling like thunder. Earthquake? A huge boulder reared up in front of him. Rick yanked the cycle to the right. The road wiggled up and down, moving beneath him. Tires shrieking, the cycle went into a wild skid. Rick fought to regain control. But the front wheel hit the edge of the roadbed and the cycle bucked him off. He tumbled through the air, up, then down into a gray-green thorny tangle of chaparral and lay there, stunned and panting, squinting up into the sunlit sky. Would the next tremor send him spiraling down into the canyon below?

  “Buddy, you all right?” A short, swarthy man in a blue delivery suit jumped out of the cab of the slug-slow truck that Rick had just passed, grabbed him by the shoulder, and pulled him out of the brambles.

  “Hey, you’re a mutant, aren’t you?” He gawked at Rick, eyes wide. “Why didn’t you just levitate out of that bush? Do you feel okay? Want to go to the hospital?”

  “Fine. I’m fine.” Rick tried to keep his irritation under control. After all, the guy could have just left him lying there with prickers up his ass. And maybe he would have preferred it that way. “I’m a little shaken up, thanks. And my cycle’s okay. Just lost my headset.”

  “Man, you really went flying.” His rescuer shook his head. “The road looks clear to me. Did you hit something?”

  Clear? Rick looked around. No sign of any boulder. Had he imagined it? But he’d felt the ground shake underneath his cycle. This couldn’t be a hangover, could it? Some legacy from the party last night. Impossible. Impossible. It was a good party, but not one that would generate hallucinations the next morning. Maybe that boulder was just up the road, out of sight. Never mind. He was late. Julian would be waiting for him. And all those other good little mutants at the Council meeting. He brushed the dirt off his cycle seat, jumped on, and started the motor.

  “Thanks a lot.” He waved and sped away up the road toward Berkeley.

  .

  ******************

  2

  Julian was waiting outside the pink concrete lab building, leaning against a pillar, blue lab coat flapping in the warm December wind. Students flowed around him, chatting, laughing, intent on books, squinting into the late afternoon sun as they shouldered their bookbags, hefted their coffeebulbs, flirted and laughed, and gloried in the luxury of being young. Of having time to learn and time to squander.

  He watched them enviously, remembering his own carefree undergraduate days with pleasure. He’d taken his degree here at Berkeley, finished in three years, gotten his master’s right after, and was on the advanced track in the psychology department. He would have his doctorate by June, if he worked hard. And then, farewell to academia. He could already feel the pressures of professional commitment from all sides.

  “Become a healer,” his mother had said. “I don’t know why you want to fight the competition outside the mutant community. You’d be a wonderful healer.”

  Hell, he knew all about the healing tradition for mutants. And yes, his mother was probably right. He would make a good healer. But Julian wanted more than the placid, remote life behind high walls that path would provide. He wanted to combine the medical knowledge of both worlds, mutant and non, in one healing, embracing discipline. And Dr. Seguy’s investigation of psychic flares was the beginning. He was convinced of it.

  The roar of Rick’s cycle announced his arrival. That damned jet-cycle engine, Julian thought. It rattles the windows of every building on the block. Strictly against decibel limitations as set by the DMV. And here he comes now, that scofflaw, riding down the street like he owns it.

  A pretty blond student gave Rick the eye. Julian smiled. His brother looked like a schoolgirl’s dream—and her parents’ worst nightmare. Those atavistic leather jeans. And the ruffled white poet’s shirt that all bikers wore. Dark blue eyeshades, tousled brown hair, small golden hoop gleaming in his left ear, and a grin so wicked it should have been illegal. Privately, Julian admired his brother’s independent spirit, even if he never said so aloud.

  Rick pulled the cycle into a tight space between two posts and killed the motor.

  “Hi,” Julian said.

  “Hi yourself.” Rick pushed his shades up over his forehead and wiped his face wearily. He looked sweaty, and his jacket was covered by a fine layer of dust. “Ready?”

  “Been ready for three hours.” Julian swung his clothes sack onto the back of the cycle. “What’d you do, hurry?” He took in his brother’s grimy face and dusty clothing. “What happened?”

  “Had a close encounter with a manzanita bush,” Rick said. “Do I look real bad?”

  “Just well used.” Julian brushed him off. Then, with practiced grace, he slid onto the cycle behind Rick and put on his helmet. Before he was even settled, Rick set out, gunning toward Marin County.

  “Anything new in the lab?” Rick shouted.

  Saw a wild vision. It was easier to mindspeak than bellow over the wind—easier, that is, for those who could.

  “Such as?”

  Woman in white, with white hair and prism eyes.

  Rick started laughing. “And I’m the one with a reputation for partying. Well, do you believe it?”

  Can’t say. Is it real? A vision? A fantasy? The common theory is that these mental flares contain precognitive material. Messages from the future.

  “And don’t the normals just go crazy over that kind of thing?” Rick said. “Read my palm, mutant. Tell me my fate.” He cackled maniacally.

  You think it’s funny, Rick, but there may be something to it.

  Julian knew he sounded defensive. Rick clammed up. Well, Rick had little curiosity about these things—he didn’t care that Julian loved the lab and lived to investigate boojums. Julian knew that his brother preferred the nuts-and-bolts purity of chips and wires at his job in the screenbrain shop at Santa Cruz mall. No uncertainty there.

  Rick took a corner with tires screeching.

  Hey! I want to get to the meeting in one piece—even if you don’t.

  “I’ll settle for leaving it in one piece,” Rick said.

  You don’t have a good track record there.

  “No,” he agreed cheerfully. “I rely on you to keep me out of fights and in line.”

  Thanks. But I resign the honor out of respect for my health.

  Rick smiled. “I don’t blame you. Hang on, bro. I’ll at least try to make it to the meeting before the vote.”

  ***

  Melanie checked her watch again and turned impatiently to her husband. “Where the hell are they, Yosh? Rick and Julian should have been here hours ago.”

  Yosh shrugged. “You know Rick. If he says noon, he means five. If he says five, he means tomorrow. Be glad he’s coming at all. You know he doesn’t enjoy these meetings any more than you did when you were a kid.” He noodled with his pocket synthesizer, striking random chord combinations. “Can’t say that I blame him.”

  Around them, the Council chamber was filling with clan members. The huge auditorium was carved into layered tiers lined with comfortable seats, headsets, and screens. There were more unfamiliar faces this year than last, and many of them were nonmutants. Not that it mattered one whit to Melanie. Hadn’t she brought a nonmutant, her husband, into the heart of the clan when she’d rejoined the Council? And why shouldn’t the meetings be open to nonmutants? If they could gain comfort from the sharing, from the chants and rituals, then let them attend and be welcome. She knew that not everybody shared her sentiments—in fact, a splinter group of mutants demanding a
return to orthodoxy had started to hold meetings somewhere near San Diego. As far as she was concerned, come one, come all. She’d have felt a bit more hospitable, though, if she would have seen her two sons among all those faces.

  “They’d better get here in time for the vote,” she said. “They should at least have a say in who the new Book Keeper is now that Rebekah Terling is dead.”

  Yosh squinted at her skeptically. “Aren’t you asking for trouble? Julian’s getting kind of stuffy. Of course, even he might pause before he voted for a hard-line conservative like Paula Byrne. She would love to lock every nonmutant out of these meetings. Including yours truly.”

  Melanie nodded. “Wouldn’t she, though? But she hasn’t got a chance. She hides down south with her little band of retrograde mutants—what do they call themselves? The True Host of the Book. I don’t know. Some people just get stuck.”

  “More like frozen. I don’t think she has a hope in hell of winning general election to a broader post. And if your favorite son has anything to say about it, he’d probably make Skerry the Book Keeper. Which might not be such a bad idea. He’d probably disband the Council just for the hell of it.”

  “Skerry as Book Keeper?” Melanie began to laugh. “Never in a million years could I see him presiding over a meeting. It’s still difficult to get used to him showing up each year.”

  “Practicing to be a patriarch,” Yosh said. “Maybe I’ll take notes.”

  “Good idea, ‘Papa Haydn.’” Melanie kissed him quickly, then turned, startled. “There’s Ethan Hawkins. I was wondering if he would show after I wangled him that last-minute invitation. I’d better go shepherd him around. Business before family.”

  ***

  Alanna helped her father unload the wallpiece. It was one of her favorites. Her mother had let her help with the glazing at the end, and the beautiful metallic sheen, repeated in a hundred glistening particles, fascinated her each time she looked at it. She was proud that the work would hang in the Mutant Council chambers. But then, her mother’s artwork graced fine collections around the world—and even beyond, on the Moon. Maybe someday Narlydda’s work would travel to Mars.