Darwin's Children Part 3

"I don't believe that."

Gianelli reached into his desk drawer and took out a bottle of Tums. "Everyone around here has fire in the belly. I have heartburn."

"Give me something to take home, d.i.c.k. Please. We need hope," Mitch said.

"Show me your hands, Mitch."

Mitch held up his hands. The calluses had faded, but they were still there. Gianelli held his own hands beside Mitch's. They were smooth and pink. "Want to really learn how to suck eggs, from an old hound dog? I've spent ten years with Wickham. He's the smartest hound there is, but he's up against a bad lot. The Republicans are the country's pit bulls, Mitch. Barking in the night, all night, every night, right or wrong, and savaging their enemies without mercy. They claim to represent plain folks, but they represent those who vote, when they vote at all, on pocketbooks and fear and gut instinct. They control the House and the Senate, they stacked the court the last three terms, their man is in the White House, and bless them, they speak with one voice, Mitch. The president is dug in. But you know what the congressman thinks? He thinks the president doesn't want Emergency Action to be his legacy. Eventually, maybe we can do something with that." Gianelli's voice dropped very low, as if he were about to blaspheme in the temple. "But not now. The Democrats can't even hold a bake sale without arguing. We're weak and getting weaker."

He held out his hand. "The congressman will be back any minute. Mitch, you look like you haven't slept in weeks."

Mitch shrugged. "I lie awake listening for trucks. I hate being so far from Kaye and Stella."

"How far?"

Mitch looked up from under his solid line of eyebrow and shook his head.

"Right," Gianelli said. "Sorry."

7.

SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY.

The old frame house snapped and popped in the morning heat. A moist breeze blew through the small rooms in lazy swirls. Kaye walked from the bedroom to the bathroom, rubbing her eyes. She had awakened from a peculiar dream in which she was an atom slowly rising to connect with a much larger molecule, to fit in and complete something truly impressive. She felt at peace for the first time in months, despite the barbed memory of last night's fight.

Kaye ma.s.saged the fingers of her right hand, then wriggled her wedding ring over a swollen knuckle into its familiar groove. Bees droned in the oleanders outside the window, well into their day's work.

"Some dream," she told herself in the bathroom mirror. She pulled down one eyelid with a finger and stared at herself speculatively. "Under a little stress, are we?"

A few freckles remained under each eye from her pregnancy with Stella; when she was upset, they could still change from pale tan to ruddy ocher. Now, they were darker but not vivid. She splashed water on her cheeks and clipped her hair back, preparing for the hot day, ready to face more difficulties. Families were about staying together and healing.

If the bees can do it, so can I.

"Stella," she called, knocking on her daughter's bedroom door. "It's nine o'clock. We slept in."

Kaye padded into the small office in the laundry room and switched on the computer. She read the lines she had written before the squabble last night, then scrolled back through the last few pages: "The role of SHEVA in the production of a new subspecies is but one function performed by this diverse and essential cla.s.s of viruses. ERV and transposons-jumping genes-play large roles in tissue differentiation and development. Emotion and crisis and changing environments activate them, one variety at a time, or all together. They are mediators and messengers between cells, ferrying genes and coded data around many parts of the body, and even between individuals.

"Viruses and transposons most likely arose after the invention of s.e.x, perhaps because of s.e.x. To this day, s.e.x brings them opportunity to move and carry information. They may have also emerged during the tumultuous genetic shuffling of our early immune system, like soldiers and cops running wild.

"Truly they are like original sin. How does sin shape our destiny?"

Kaye used a stylus to circle that last awkward, overreaching sentence. She marked it out and read some more.

"One thing we know already: We depend on retroviral and transposon activity during nearly every stage of our growth. Many are necessary partners.

"To a.s.sume that viruses and transposable elements are first and foremost causes of disease is like a.s.suming that automobiles are first and foremost meant to kill people.

"Pathogens-disease-causing organisms-are like hormones and other signaling molecules, but their message is challenge and silence. Our own internal lions, pathogens test us. They winnow the old and weak. They sculpt life.

"Sometimes they bring down the young and the good. Nature is painful. Disease and death are part of our response to challenge. To fail, to die, is still to be part of nature, for success is built on many failures, and silence is also a signal."

Her frame of mind had become increasingly abstract. The dream, the drone of the bees . . .

You were born with a caul, my dear.

Kaye suddenly remembered the voice of her maternal grandmother, Evelyn; words from nearly four decades ago. At the age of eight, Evelyn had told her something that her mother, a practical woman, had never thought to mention. "You came into this world with your tiny head covered. You were born with a caul. I was there, in the hospital with your mother. I saw it myself. The doctor showed it to me."

Kaye remembered squirming with delicious antic.i.p.ation in her grandmother's ample lap and asking what a caul was. "A cap of loose flesh," Evelyn had explained. "Some say it's a mark of extraordinary understanding, even second sight. A caul warns us that you will learn things most others will never comprehend, and you will always be frustrated trying to explain what you know, and what seems so obvious to you. It's supposed to be both a blessing and a curse." Then the older woman had added, in a soft voice, "I was born with a caul, my dear, and your grandfather has never never understood me." understood me."

Kaye had loved Evelyn very much, but at times had thought her a little spooky. She returned her attention to the text on the monitor. She did not delete the paragraphs, but she did draw a large asterisk and exclamation point beside them. Then she saved the file and pushed the chair under the desk.

Four pages yesterday. A good day's work. Not that it would ever see the light of day in any respectable journal. For the last eight years, all of her papers had appeared on clandestine Web sites. For the last eight years, all of her papers had appeared on clandestine Web sites.

Kaye listened closely to the morning house, as if to measure the day ahead. A curtain pull flapped against a window frame. Cardinals whistled in the maple tree outside.

She could not hear her daughter stirring.

"Stella!" she called, louder. "Breakfast. Want some oatmeal?"

No answer.

She walked in flapping slippers down the short hallway to Stella's room. Stella's bed was made but rumpled, as if she had been lying on it, tossing and turning. A bouquet of dried flowers, tied with a rubber band, rested on the pillow. A short stack of books had been tipped over beside the bed. On the sill, three stuffed Shrooz, about the size of guinea pigs, red and green and the very rare black and gold, hung their long noses into the room. More cascaded from the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. Stella loved Shrooz because they were grumpy; they whined and squirmed and then groaned when moved.

Kaye searched the big backyard, tall brown gra.s.s faded into ivy and kudzu under the big old trees at the edge of the property. She could not afford to let her attention lapse even for a minute.

Then she returned to the house and Stella's bedroom. She got down on her knees and peered under the bed. Stella had made a scent diary, a small blank book filled with cryptic writing and dated records of her emotions, scents collected from behind her ears and dabbed on each page. Stella kept it hidden, but Kaye had found it once while cleaning and had figured it out.

Kaye pushed her hands through the b.a.l.l.s of dust and cat toys beneath the bed and thrust her fingers deep into the shadows. The book was not there.

Peace the illusion, peace the trap, no rest, no letting down her guard. Stella was gone. Taking the book meant she was serious.

Still shod in slippers, Kaye pushed through the gate and ran up the oak-lined street. She whispered, "Don't panic, keep it together, G.o.d d.a.m.n it. G.o.d d.a.m.n it." The muscles in her neck knotted.

A quarter of a mile away, in front of the next house down the road in the rural neighborhood, she slowed to a walk, then stood in the middle of the cracked asphalt road, hugging herself, small and tense, like a mouse waiting for a hawk.

Kaye shaded her eyes against the sun and looked up at bloated gray clouds advancing shoulder to shoulder along the southern horizon. The air smelled sullen and jumpy.

If Stella had planned this, she would have run off after Mitch left for Washington. Mitch had left between six and seven. That meant her daughter had at least an hour's head start. That realization shoved an icicle down Kaye's spine.

Calling the police was not wise. Five years ago, Virginia had reluctantly acquiesced to Emergency Action and had begun rounding up the new children and sending them to camps in Iowa, Nebraska, and Ohio. Years ago, Kaye and Mitch had withdrawn from parent support groups after a rash of FBI infiltrations. Mitch had a.s.sumed that Kaye in particular was a target for surveillance and possibly even arrest.

They were on their own. They had decided that was the safest course.

Kaye took off her slippers and ran barefoot back to the house. She would have to think like Stella and that was difficult. Kaye had observed her daughter as a mother and as a scientist for eleven years, and there had always been a small but important distance between them that she could not cross. Stella deliberated with a thoroughness Kaye admired, but reached conclusions she often found mystifying.

Kaye grabbed her handbag with her wallet and ID, pulled on her garden shoes, and exited through the back door. The small primer gray Toyota truck started instantly. Mitch maintained both their vehicles. She ground the tires down the dirt driveway, then caught herself and drove slowly along the country lane.

"Please," she muttered, "no rides."

8.

Walking along the dirt margin of the asphalt road, Stella swung the plastic Gatorade bottle, rationing herself to a sip every few minutes. An old farm field plowed and marked for a new strip mall stretched to her right. Stella tightrope-walked a freshly cured concrete curb, not yet out of its mold boards. The sun was climbing in the east, black clouds stacked high in the south, and the air spun hot and full of the fragrances of dogwood and sycamore. The exhaust of cars going by, and a descending tail of carbon from a diesel truck, clogged her nose.

She felt at long last that she was doing something worthwhile. There was guilt, but she pushed aside concern for what her parents would think. Somewhere on this road she might meet someone who would not argue with her instincts, who would not feel pain simply because Stella existed. Someone like herself.

All her life she had lived among one kind of human, but she was another. An old virus called SHEVA had broken loose from human DNA and rearranged human genes. Stella and a generation of children like her were the result. This was what her parents had told her.

Not a freak. Just a different kind.

Stella Nova Rafelson was eleven years old. She felt as if she had been peculiarly alone all her life.

She sometimes thought of herself as a star, a bright little point in a very big sky. Humans filled the sky by the billions and washed her out like the blinding sun.

9.

Kaye swung left just beyond the courthouse, turned the corner, drove half a block, and pulled into a gas station. When she had been a child, there had been little rubber-coated trip wires that caused a bell to ding whenever a car arrived. There were no longer any wires, no bell, and n.o.body came out to see what Kaye needed. She parked by the bright red-and-white convenience store and wiped tears from her eyes.

She sat for a minute in the Toyota, trying to focus.

Stella had a red plastic coin purse that held ten dollars in emergency money. There was a drinking fountain in the courthouse, but Kaye thought Stella would prefer something cold, sweet, and fruity. Odors of artificial strawberry and raspberry that Kaye found repugnant, Stella would wallow in like a cat in a bed of catnip. "It's a long walk," Kaye told herself. "It's hot. She's thirsty. It's her day out, away from mom." She bit her lip.

Kaye and Mitch had protected Stella like a rare orchid throughout her short life. Kaye knew that, hated the necessity of it. It was how they had stayed together. Her daughter's freedom depended on it. The chat rooms were full of the agonized stories of parents giving up their children, watching them be sent to Emergency Action schools in another state. The camps.

Mitch, Stella, and Kaye had lived a dreamy, tense, unreal existence, no way for an energetic, outgoing young girl to grow up, no way for Mitch to stay sane. Kaye tried not to think too much about herself or what was happening between her and Mitch, she might just snap, and then where would they be? But their difficulties had obviously had an effect on Stella. She was a daddy's girl, to Kaye's pride and secret sadness-she had once been a daddy's girl, too, before both her parents had died, over twenty years ago-and Mitch had been gone a lot lately.

Kaye entered the store through the gla.s.s double doors. The clerk, a thin, tired-looking woman a little younger than Kaye, had out a mop and bucket and was grimly spraying the counter and floor with Lysol.

"Excuse me, did you see a girl, tall, about eleven?"

The clerk raised the mop like a lance and poked it at her.

10.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

A tall, stooped man with thinning white hair sauntered into the office carrying a worn briefcase. Gianelli stood up. "Congressman, you remember Mitch Rafelson." tall, stooped man with thinning white hair sauntered into the office carrying a worn briefcase. Gianelli stood up. "Congressman, you remember Mitch Rafelson."

"I do, indeed," Wickham said, and held out his hand. Mitch shook it firmly. The hand was dry and hard as wood. "Does anybody know you're here, Mitch?"

"d.i.c.k snuck me in, sir."

Wickham appraised Mitch with a slight tremor of his head. "Come over to my office, Mitch," the congressman said. "You, too, d.i.c.k, and close the door behind you."

They walked across the hall. Wickham's office was covered with plaques and photos, a lifetime of politics.

"Justice Barnhall had a heart attack this morning at ten," Wickham said.

Mitch's face fell. Barnhall had consistently championed civil rights, even for SHEVA children and their parents.

"He's in Bethesda," Wickham said. "They don't hold out much hope. The man is ninety years old. I've just been speaking with the Senate minority leader. We're going to the White House tomorrow morning." Wickham laid his briefcase down on a couch and stuck his hands in the pockets of his chocolate brown slacks. "Justice Barnhall was one of the good guys. Now the president wants Olsen, and he's a corker, Mitch. We haven't seen his like since Roger B. Taney. A lifelong bachelor, face like a stoat, mind like a steel trap. Wants to undo eighty years of so-called judicial activism, thinks he'll have the country by the b.a.l.l.s, six to three. And he probably will. We're not going to win this round, but we can land a few punches. Then, they'll lash us on the votes. We're going to get creamed." Wickham stared sadly at Mitch. "I do love a fair fight."

The secretary knocked on the door jamb. "Congressman, is Mr. Rafelson here?" She looked right at Mitch, one eyebrow c.o.c.ked.

Gianelli asked, "Who wants to know?"

"Won't use her name and sounds upset. System board says she's on a disposable cell phone using an offsh.o.r.e line. That's no longer legal, sir."

"You don't say," Wickham said, looking out the window.

"My wife knows I'm here. No one else," Mitch said.

"Get her number and call her back, Connie," Wickham said. "Put it on the puzzler, and route it through, oh, Tom Haney's office in Boca Raton."

"Yes, sir."

Wickham gestured toward his desk phone. "We can link her line to a special scrambler for congressional office communications," he said, but tapped his wrist.w.a.tch. "Starts and ends with garbage, and unless you know the key, it all sounds like garbage. We change the key every call. Takes NSA about a minute or so to break it, so keep it short."

The secretary made the connection. Mitch stared between the two men, his heart sinking, and picked up the receiver on the desk.

11.