No timeouts. Gotta stay focused. Thirty-six seconds left, and our enemies have thirty-five seconds to take their shot. And to think I usually love math.
Coach Wexler called out the obvious "Press!" and we stuck to our men like Ancient Greeks, yet the Marysville Marauders kept their cool and got the ball to their sure-handed center – a big six-eight brute whose massive paws had every reason to be sure of themselves. He just stood there, holding the ball away from our players' clutching hands.
Then someone clutched too emphatically. The referee's shrieking whistle sounded like a banshee's death rattle to me.
The opposing center lumbered to the foul line with seven seconds to go. If he made his two shots, we were history. I could only pray he shot free throws like Shaquille O'Neal.
His first shot was all net. Three points up. One more and we were done.
His free throw clunked off the rim and was snagged by none other than my best teammate buddy and erstwhile prison cellmate, Jim Jackson. I raced to receive the basketball, and Jim's crisp pass narrowly missed being stolen by a lunging Rashid. I caught the ball and sprinted down court. No one was near me. All I had to do was pull up at the three-point line and make the tying shot that would put us into overtime.
Sounded easy in theory. I slowed down before the top of the key, ordering my body to relax, my mouth to breathe. I jumped and brought the ball up smoothly and released it in good rhythm, my wrists and arms loose with great follow-through. The ball arced obediently toward the basket. It was going in. I could feel it. The home crowd would roar again and we'd win in overtime – likely with more great plays from moi.
Ah, but the plans of mice and men. We'd just finished reading that novel in English Lit, and Steinbeck obviously had it in for me, because I swore that basketball dove halfway into the basket when some divine, angry invisible defender – perhaps Shaquille's astral self, bristling at my negative appraisal – swatted the ball back out. It landed yards from my feet and bounced listlessly on the floor until the buzzer sounded.
In another universe – I could see this with crystalline, depressing clarity – my shot had swished unencumbered through the net to the congratulatory roars of the crown. But I was stuck in this sucky universe, and the only sound was the loud moaning you might hear coming from a medieval torture chamber. My mom was giving me a feeble wave, while my sister, sitting beside her new boyfriend, what's-his-name, was clutching her throat. Gertie and Keith looked appropriately funereal. Jim stood holding out his arms in disbelieving entreaty to a contemptuous god. Coach looked like he wanted to strangle me while straining to appear compassionate and forgiving.
In the locker room, I received a number of consoling pats and mumblings from my teammates. Coach Wexler came over and told me "I know it hurts, Aiden – believe me, I'm hurting, too – but you gave it your all and we lost against a helluva team. Truth is, there's no one else I would've wanted to take that last shot."
"Except maybe Brandon," Dexler, our power forward offered, referring to out off-guard. "He is our best outside shooter, after all."
Coach shrugged. "Maybe so. Still..."
"Or Ashton," our center suggested. "Better field percentage."
"True." Coach Wexler frowned. "But aside from those guys..."
"Or maybe Giles," said Jim. I glared at him. Traitor. He offered a helpless shrug.
"All right, all right," I said. "I get it. We would've been better off if anyone on the team had taken the last shot. Heck, even our beagle mascot, Frisco, would've had a better chance."
Coach Wexler chuckled and patted me on the back before relocating to a more central part of the room.
"Boys, if I could have your attention for a minute," he said. "First, you're a great group of guys, you worked your butts off, you improved our team from last to first place in our division, and I've never been prouder to have worked with anyone. You walk out of here tonight with your heads held high. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise."
"I'm gonna get high tonight, that's for sure," Jim mumbled, getting some laughs.
"But seriously," said Coach Wexler. "You should be proud of yourselves."
"But you had to say that, didn't you, Coach?" I asked.
"Yes, Aiden, I did." He gave me a tired smile. "Doesn't mean I didn't mean it."
He retired to his office, probably to have a few beers and then cry in them.
"You know," said Jim, sidling closer to me and lowering his voice. "I heard there was a scout from NorCal in the bleachers. Since I already have a scholarship lined up at Chico State, thanks to your superstar buddy, Ragnar, I'm guessing he was here for you."
"Not Lauder?" Matt Lauder was the Marauders' gargantuan center.
"Could be. But you played better than him – than any of us – tonight. I'm sure he noticed." Jim frowned a little. "Not that you'd be interested in small change like NorCal."
"Well, I'm more interested in the academic route." Though I liked the idea of thinking outside the box, of breaking free of the lifetime assumption that I was destined to be a math or science nerd. "Maybe Berkeley or Stanford or something. Just a two or three hour drive from Chico."
Jim brightened a bit. "That would be cool."
Later, driving home with my mom and Melanie, my mom patted my arm – how much patting can one person take? – and said, "You gave it your all" as if it weren't a hoary cliché, adding: "I could've sworn that ball was going in!"
I felt more like just plain swearing at the ball.
"Yeah," said Melanie. "It looked as if it was halfway in and then some pissed-off god spit it out."
"Note to self," I said. "Convert to some sports religion before each game."
Melanie sniggered. "And here I thought all you hypers just worshiped yourselves as gods."
I sagged back in my seat, too mentally weary to do battle with my sister.
"You were the game's top-scorer," said my mom. "The most valuable player, I'm fairly sure. I hope you'll keep that in mind."
"Don't know about that. I only had a few more points than Jim, and he had, like, eight rebounds." I sighed. "Doesn't really matter. The key thing is we lost."
"Not how you played the game?" Mom gave me a dry smile. "That Hail Mary pass and dunk was pretty spectacular."
She was really trying – even to the point of memorizing a few sports clichés and metaphors. I had to give her that.
"Thanks, Mom. I'm sure someday I'll recover from the trauma."
"I don't know," said my darling sister. "I'm sure you're still suffering from the trauma of that fifty-thousand dollar pre-paid credit card, the new BMW, and the million dollar stock certificate. Oh – and having twice the energy of most people and just about any girl you want. Sometimes life just sucks."
My mom sighed – long and loudly enough to express her eternal exasperation with my sister. Which earned her Melanie's usual daggers-in-ice smile. I was betting they'd resume their perennial argument about me being the favorite while she was tragically unappreciated, but after a few moments of silence it looked like a tense peace would prevail for the rest of the journey home.
HIGH SCHOOL the next day was like attending a wake, minus the jokes and alcohol. People moped about or spoke in muted voices as if afraid they'd be overheard. Even some of the teachers appeared to be slinking through a dark fog. A number of kids looked at me and then quickly away. To think that a few short months ago, no one even knew I was alive. Now I had the power to alter an entire school's mood. I couldn't decide whether to feel humble or grandiose.
"Hey, did you see this? The anti-estrus in school bill just passed."
Keith slid his tablet across the table to me. It was a news story about a federal law prohibiting male students of all ages from attending school during their estrus phase unless medicated with approved drugs that suppressed or blocked estrus symptoms. Not exactly new news. Teachers and parents had been complaining for some time about the disruptive influence of "boys in heat," and the legislation had rushed through Congress withou
t any real resistance. I slid the tablet back to him.
"No surprise there," I said.
"A few more dollars into the drug companies' already bulging pockets," said Gertie, her pert little nose wrinkled in disgust.
Keith rubbed her shoulders sympathetically. Their gazes settled on me as a concerned afterthought.
"I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong, Aiden," said Gertie. "At least because you've been working with CellEvolve. I know you were fighting the good fight – working on a cure for MES – even if some of your bosses are immoral assholes."
"Uh, thanks."
"Speaking of immoral assholes," Jim said, "anything new on the Big Pharma horizon?"
I had to choose my words carefully, skirting anything of substance, when talking about "proprietary secrets." I'd found it was hard to be proprietary among friends. It got a little lonely having only your mom to talk to about the dark mysteries of CellEvolve. So far my friends only knew that we'd been working on something promising that fizzled. I doubted that would violate my non-disclosure agreement, but you never knew.
"Not that I know about," I answered Jim. "Other than maybe going to another 'conference' in Northern California to pimp their latest subsidiary, LifeEvolve, nothing's scheduled. It's possible they'll just let me alone for a while, which would be great."
"Take the money and run," said Jim.
"Speaking of money," said Gertie, "guess what the average income of an adult hyper is per year?"
"One million?" Keith ventured.
"Not quite. $483,000. Some make less, some make a lot more."
Jim smiled at me. "Like Ragnar."
"Or Morgan Adams, the painter," Gertie said. "The hyper gene or whatever it is even affects your artistic sense. Unless it's just a coincidence."
"It's definitely like winning the lottery." Jim's smile was starting to look a little bitter to me.
"I've read that winning the lottery can sometimes be a curse," I said. "People don't know how to handle all the money."
"You're right." Keith grinned. "Being hyper is way better."
"I'm not so sure about that."
"Really, Aiden?" Gertie arched her eyebrows. "Would you go back to being normal, if you could?"
I hesitated – not because I wasn't sure about my answer but because I wasn't sure how honest I should be about it.
"It would be kind of hard to go back to how I was." I gave him and the others a rueful smile. "For one thing, I'm around six feet now. I wouldn't want to give up those inches."
"You might've grown that much anyway," said Gertie. "Come on, Aid, you know what we're really asking."
"I wouldn't mind being normal in the way guys once were. Still, it would be hard to give up the athletic stuff – better stamina, healing faster, being stronger – but I'd be happy to stop the attraction pheromones and dial back my desires to normal teenage lust levels."
I was sure I heard a skeptical edge in my friends' quiet laughter.
"You sure you'd give up having women cream themselves over you?" Jim asked, earning a stern scowl from Gertie. "Not to mention being able to get it up whenever you want to."
"It sounds great on paper, but in real life..." I shook my head. "I think I really would be content just being a normal guy before the Outbreak."
"You and a few billion other men," Jim snorted. "Even all of us who've never known what it's like to be normal."
"Right," said Keith. "In some ways, we're like people born blind. It's what we're used to. I for one have trouble imagining how it would feel to be in estrus 24/7. It sounds really stressful."
I laughed under my breath. "That's one way of putting it."
"But it has to be a gas, too, right?" Jim grunted as Gertie jabbed an elbow into his side.
This conversation was getting close to dangerous ground. Jim didn't know about Gertie and my special history. She'd told him that we'd been "friends." Keith had done his part and said nothing. He and Jim weren't exactly close.
I doubted Jim would care, but I respected Gertie's wishes to keep that between us. I'd learned that blurting out the truth could sometimes have unintended and really rotten consequences.
Chapter 21
MY COURSES AT UC Jefferson had taken a turn for the strange. Or maybe just a turn for the elite. CellEvolve had arranged private tutoring sessions to replace a lot of my formal university classes. The most prestigious professors and scientists at UCJ had been placed at my disposal. I'd asked my teachers how much they were paid and had gotten guilty smiles and dismissive "let's just concentrate on the science."
Regardless of the checks CE wrote them to tutor me, they saw themselves as pure scientists concerned only with the truth. Still, it was starting to seem like a suspicious coincidence that what they believed was true was also what CE and other major biotech corporations believed was true. Of course, Dr. Peter Lacey, my instructor in microbiology this evening, was the co-founder of Gen Solutions and also, Dr. Blumenthal informed me, was a major investor in LifeEvolve, so maybe Professor Lacey's adherence to the company line wasn't too unpredictable.
"The first problem was isolating genes so they could be precisely manipulated," Professor Lacey told me now. "The first answer was the discovery of enzymes that exist with certain bacterial species which defend against viruses by restricting their actions. They're called restriction enzymes. Before that, scientists used radiation and chemicals on masses of cells in a shotgun – or perhaps I should say, "shoot and pray" – approach."
Professor Lacey spoke quickly, sometimes in a low voice as if muttering to himself while gesturing distractedly at images and articles in open books spread across the big marble desk in his study – as if indifferent to whether or not I was following him. As a teacher he made a pretty good biotech firm director. Lucky I was a fast-learner.
With a contemptuous shake of his head, Professor segued from the primitive practices of "controlled breeding" and irradiating and chemically treating masses of cells to the "relative mathematical precision" of using restriction enzymes that recognized particular DNA base-sequences to "cut out the desired DNA into workable segments."
Yet the more Professor Lacey described the process, the less mathematically precise it sounded. Maybe because I was a math nerd and appreciated the way numbers worked together in deterministic cooperation – one equation neatly following another, all bowing to clean if sometimes elaborate proofs – but to me transferring DNA into bacteria seemed to get messier and less mathematically predictable at each critical juncture.
First, you need an enzyme called ligase to glue the bonds between bases. Then, because bacteria won't normally accept foreign DNA, you have to smack the bacteria with calcium salt or heat. When that didn't work, you electrocuted the bacteria to soften it up further. Kind of like the old-school dude technique of getting a girl drunk to "loosen her up." To make matters even messier, in order to identify the bacteria that contain the recombinant DNA you needed to ad a gene to the transfer-gene to make them identifiable – usually a gene bestowing resistance to a particular antibiotic, which is then used to kill the surrounding bacteria.
It was starting to sound to me a lot like the "primitive" irradiate and salt techniques. I'd read about this before, but for some reason hearing Professor Lacey describe the process in dry, self-evident tones – like he was reporting another dry, hot summer day in Jefferson – made it sound less and less mathematically precise and more like hammering round pegs into square holes.
Outside Professor Lacey's house I sucked in a clean breath of early March air, cinched up my backpack, and started jogging toward home. No Beamer tonight – partly because there usually wasn't parking within a half-mile of the professor's house in the eastern part of the Jefferson campus, but mostly because between school and my extracurricular studies there wasn't a lot of time for exercise.
At least with basketball season over I had a bit more time for myself. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing. I was already missing the camaraderie and testing m
y skills. I'd always thought that athletes were brain-dead Neanderthals – while of course knowing that Neanderthals really weren't brain-dead – but now I knew how the other half lived. I understood the sheer, primal joy of being physical. Evo-biologically, we were built to run and jump and fight and lift stuff. Not to mention other physical things.
I was reminded of those other things when I spotted Xandra, my erstwhile classmate and potential love of my life. She was riding her bike toward me, a winter goddess in her form-fitting blue coat and matching ski cap that appeared to make her blue eyes shine. A wave of desire and longing almost knocked me off my feet. In fact, I did stumble. That caught her attention, and a frown darkened her porcelain features when she recognized me.
I was tempted to give her a casual wave and keep running, but my legs slowed to a stop of their own accord. I stood staring at her, forcing a smile. I'd glimpsed her a few times while jogging around campus, but we'd never spoken since that night I'd told her the truth about me.
I thought she was going to ride past me, but she appeared to get caught in my gravity field, slowing down and coasting over to me.
"Hi," I said.
"Hello, Aiden." She spoke my name with a grave undertaker's voice.
"How's everything going?"
"Good. Just on my way to a physics class. What are you up to?"
"I just finished a private tutoring session."
"Really? I'm having trouble imagining you needing a tutor."
"It's really more part of a special – I guess you could say accelerated – studies program. I have some teachers working with me individually outside class. I'll get credit for completing the course on a much faster schedule – kind of skipping past the dull stuff and focusing on the good parts."
"By 'teachers,' you mean university professors? Or former professors...?"
"No, they're all still active to some degree, though most of them have their hands in other things. I was working with Professor Lacey tonight."
"Professor Peter Lacey? The microbiologist/geneticist? The guy who founded Gen Solutions?"
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