Darwin's Children Part 22

"What will that be? She isn't like us, not really."

"She's more like us than she's different."

Kaye wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. She could still feel the caller, and when she touched touched it with her thoughts, waves of comfort surged through her and her eyes flowed over. She could not understand this feeling of glorious ease in the midst of their fear. it with her thoughts, waves of comfort surged through her and her eyes flowed over. She could not understand this feeling of glorious ease in the midst of their fear.

Mitch touched her cheek. His finger gently dabbed the wet corner of one eye.

"What's it like to have a stroke?" she asked. "Or a seizure?"

"You're the doctor," Mitch said, taken aback.

"Sam had a stroke," Kaye said. Sam was Mitch's father.

"He went down like a tree," Mitch said.

"He was paralyzed and he died in a couple of hours."

"It was fast. What are you getting at?"

"Do people have seizures that make them feel good good? They wouldn't go to the doctor for that, would they?"

"I've never heard of such a thing," Mitch said.

"But it wouldn't be reported, would it, unless they happened to catch it . . . on an MRI or CAT scan or something. The brain is so mysterious."

"What brings this on?" Mitch asked. "We make love and you talk about having good strokes." He tried to smile. "It's called having an o.r.g.a.s.m having an o.r.g.a.s.m, little lady."

Kaye lifted her head and rolled over to face him, refusing to be amused. "Have you ever felt something or someone touch your thoughts? Approving of everything about you, filling you with understanding?"

"No-o-oo," Mitch said. He did not like this conversation at all. There was a glow about Kaye's face that reminded him of when she was pregnant, a soft and intimate light in her eyes.

"Is it rare? What do people do, who do they talk to, when it happens that way?"

"What way?"

Kaye sat up and put her hands on his shoulders, staring at him imploringly, helpless. "Is that what makes people religious?"

The look on Mitch's face was so serious, she had to smile. "Maybe I'm becoming a priestess. A shaman."

"Generally," Mitch began, putting on a professorial tone, "shamans are a little crazy. The tribe feeds them and puts them to work. Shamans are more entertaining than reading entrails or tossing knucklebones."

Kaye clenched her jaw. "I'm trying to understand something."

"Out on the dock, did you feel like you were having a stroke?" Mitch asked, unable to keep the concern from his voice.

"I don't know." She smiled as if at a pleasant memory. "It's still with me."

"You're pregnant again, morning sickness?"

"No, d.a.m.n it," Kaye said, poking his arm. "You're not listening listening."

"I'm not hearing anything I can understand. Tell me, straight . . . did it feel like an episode, a breakdown? We've been under a lot of stress." He stood up by the side of the bed, leaving the short robe behind. Kaye watched him, his forearms and chest and the tops of his shoulders covered with coa.r.s.e hair, and her gaze dropped to his genitals hanging at postcoital parade rest, waving with the nervous swing of his arms.

She laughed.

This stopped Mitch cold. He stood like a statue, staring down on her. He had not heard Kaye laugh like that, at him, at the ridiculousness of life, in well over a year, maybe two; he couldn't remember the last time.

"You sound happy," he said.

"I'm not happy happy," Kaye insisted indignantly. "Life's a bowl of s.h.i.t, but our daughter . . ." Her face crumpled. Through her fingers, she sobbed, "She's going to live, Mitch. That's a blessing, isn't it? Is that what I'm feeling-thankfulness, relief?"

"Thankful to what?" Mitch said. "The G.o.d who gives little children nasty diseases?"

Kaye spread out her arms, gesturing with her fingers at the bedroom, the lace coverlet, wood-paneled walls, pressed flowers under gla.s.s in ornate gold frames, the decorative water pitcher on the little white wicker table by the nightstand. Mitch watched her puffy eyes and red face with real concern. "We are are luckier than others," she said. "We are so lucky our daughter is alive." luckier than others," she said. "We are so lucky our daughter is alive."

"G.o.d didn't do that," Mitch said, his voice turning sour. "We did that. G.o.d G.o.d would have killed her. would have killed her. G.o.d G.o.d is killing thousands like Stella right now." is killing thousands like Stella right now."

"Then what am I feeling?" Kaye asked. She held out her hands and Mitch gripped them. A blackbird sang. Mitch's eyes went to the window.

"You're bouncing back," he said, his anger smoothing. "We can't feel like s.h.i.t all the time or we'd just give up and die." He pulled her up on her knees on the bed, and expertly hugged her until her back popped.

"Ow," she said.

"That did not hurt," Mitch said. "You feel better now."

"I do," Kaye affirmed, arms around his neck.

Stella pushed through the door. "I've got this thing on my wrist," she said, tugging at the medical tape. "My skin hurts." She stared at them, naked, together. There was no use keeping secrets from her; she could smell everything in the room. Stella had seemed to instinctively understand the whys and wherefores of s.e.x even as a toddler. Nevertheless, Mitch released Kaye, swung his body away, and reached for the robe.

Kaye pulled the coverlet into a wrap and went to her daughter. Stella leaned into her arms and Kaye and Mitch carried her back to her bed.

51.

OHIO.

"Our last link to the outside world," Augustine said, holding up a satellite phone. "Secret Service, bless them. But I had to think of it. They're hiding out in their cars, and they did not volunteer." He climbed the flight of steps to Trask's office. Dried vomit-not his own-ran in streaks down his leg.

d.i.c.ken sidled up the steps behind Augustine. "The school has a secure server. I have Jurie's pa.s.sword for the lab computers, but not the pa.s.sword to go outside the school."

"I know. What are we looking at, anyway?"

"c.o.xsackie, a new strain," d.i.c.ken said. "The children have hand, foot, and mouth disease."

Augustine pushed the door to the office open. "Like the cattle?"

d.i.c.ken shook his head. "You're tired. Listen to me. Not foot and mouth, it's HFMD. Hand, foot, and mouth. Common childhood viral infection."

"Recombined?" Augustine sat behind the desk and propped the phone on the desk. He punched a number, got a rasping and wheedling noise, then swore and punched another.

"Yes," d.i.c.ken said.

"With old endogenous viruses?"

"Yes."

"s.h.i.t. How is that possible?"

"It's a mechanism I haven't seen before."

"Then why bother to call?" Augustine stopped in mid-dial, disgusted. His fingernails were black with dirt and secretions. "It's all over."

"No, it isn't. The recombined genes can't possibly be from the children," d.i.c.ken said. "They don't have them. They were excised and discarded when their chromosomes reformed during supermitosis."

Augustine raised his chin. "We helped the virus recombine?" helped the virus recombine?"

d.i.c.ken nodded. "It may have traveled in us and mutated silently for years. Now it's making its move-against the children."

"Proof?"

"Proof enough," d.i.c.ken said. "Most of what we need, anyway. We can send in my results. The CDC just needs to do their own a.n.a.lysis, compare my findings with their own. I'm sure they'll match. Then, we tell Ohio to back off and get Emergency Action to calm down. This is not a killer plague-not for us."

"Will anyone listen?" Augustine asked.

"They have to. It's the truth."

Augustine did not seem convinced that would be enough to turn the tide. "Who's the best contact at CDC?"

d.i.c.ken thought quickly. "Jane Salter. She's in charge of statistical a.n.a.lysis at National Center for Infectious Diseases. She never did put in with the Emergency Action people, but they respect her judgment. She's trusted and objective." He took the handset from Augustine and dialed Salter's direct number in Atlanta.

They were in luck, finally. The call went through, and Salter answered in person.

"Jane, it's Christopher."

"The famous Christopher d.i.c.ken? Long time, Christopher. Forgive me, I'm a little loopy. I've been up for days, crunching numbers."

"I'm in Ohio, at the Goldberger School. I have something important."

"About a certain recombined c.o.xsackie virus?"

"That's the one. Population dynamics, virus flow, a.n.a.lysis," d.i.c.ken said.

"You don't say."

"You'll want my results."

He heard a click.

"I'm recording, Christopher," Salter said. "Make it quick. There's a key meeting in five minutes. Go or no go, if you know what I mean."

Augustine looked up at a distant roaring noise. He walked to the window and looked across the traffic circle, beyond the main gate. "What the h.e.l.l is that?" He swung up a pair of binoculars from the windowsill and peered through them. "Helicopters."

DeWitt stamped up the stairs, screaming, "Helicopters are coming!"

"Troops moving in?" d.i.c.ken asked.

"They wouldn't dare. We're in quarantine." Augustine tried to hold the image steady. "They're civilian. Who in h.e.l.l would fly them down here?"

"Someone bringing in supplies," d.i.c.ken suggested.

"Is that possible?"

"Someone rich who has a kid here," d.i.c.ken said.

"There's two of them," Augustine said. "Not nearly enough." Then, his voice breaking, "G.o.dd.a.m.n. I don't believe it. They're shooting. The troops are shooting at them!"

"What's happening?" Salter asked on the phone.

"Just listen to me," d.i.c.ken said. He could hear the crackle of a.s.sault weapons on the school perimeter. "And for G.o.d's sake, work fast."

He began reading her his results.

52.

PENNSYLVANIA.

The air was cooling and clouds were sliding in above the trees. Mitch sat on the dock. Kaye was in the house, sleeping beside Stella in the big bed, which Stella preferred now that she was feeling a little better.

It could be days before she could travel, but Mitch knew their time would come sooner than that. Somehow, though, he could not bring himself to roust them and pile them in the back of the Jeep.

It wasn't just Stella's health that concerned him.

There was something else, and small as it might seem in retrospect, it disturbed him, the way Kaye had looked, talking about what she had felt on the dock. If after all these years, his partner, his wife, was faltering . . .

Kaye had always been the reservoir of their strength, the rooted tree.

The air was heavy and moist. He watched the overcast move in and felt the first spatters of rain, big drops that changed the air's taste and smell. His nose twitched. He could smell the forest getting ready for the storm. His sense of smell had been sensitive even before they had had Stella. He had once told Kaye "I think with my nose." But that ability had been enhanced by being a SHEVA parent, and for two years after Stella's birth, Mitch had reveled in what it brought into his life. Even now, he smelled things acutely that others could only vaguely detect, if at all.