Darwin's Children Part 42

27.

ARIZONA.

They pumped a thick strawberry smell into the dorm at eight in the morning. Stella opened her eyes and pinched her nose, moaning.

"What now?" Celia asked in the bunk below.

The humans did that whenever they wanted to do something the children might object to. Shots, ma.s.s blood samples, medical exams, dorm checks for contraband.

Next came a wave of Pine-Sol, blowing in through the vent pipes slung under the frame roof. The smell came in through Stella's mouth when she breathed, making her gag.

She sat on the edge of the bed in her nightgown, her stomach twisting and her chest heaving. Three men in isolation suits walked down the center aisle of the dormitory. One of the men, she saw, was not a man; it was Joanie, shorter and stockier than the others, her blank face peering through the plastic faceplate of the floppy helmet.

Joanie reminded Stella of Fred Trinket's mother; she had that same calm, fated expectancy of everything and anything, with no emotional freight attached.

The suited trio stopped by a bed four down from Stella's. The girl in the top bunk, Julianne Nicorelli, not a member of Stella's deme, climbed down at a few soft words from Joanie. She looked apprehensive but not scared, not yet. Sometimes the counselors and teachers ran drills in the camp, odd drills, and the kids were never told what they were up to.

Joanie turned and walked deliberately toward Stella's bunk. Stella slid down quickly, not using the ladder, and flattened her nightgown where it had ridden up above her knees. She hid her chest with her hands; the fabric was a little sheer, and she didn't like the way the men were looking at her.

"You, too, Stella," Joanie said, her voice hollow and hissy behind the helmet. "We're going on a trip."

"How many?" Celia asked.

Joanie smiled humorlessly. "Special trip. Reward for good grades and good behavior. The rest get to eat breakfast early."

This was a lie. Julianne Nicorelli got terrible grades, not that anyone cared.

28.

BALTIMORE.

"Heads up. Marge will be here in twenty minutes," Liz Cantrera said. "Ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Kaye said, and took a deep breath. She looked around the lab to see if there was anything that could be put away or cleaned up. Not that it mattered. It was her last day.

"You look fine," Liz said sadly, straightening Kaye's lapels.

Marge Cross understood the messy bedrooms of science. And Kaye doubted that she wanted to check up on their housekeeping.

Around Kaye, Cross was almost always cheerful. She seemed to like Kaye and to trust her as much as she trusted anybody. Today, however, Cross was saying little, tapping her lip with her finger and nodding. She lifted her head to peer at the pipes hanging from the ceiling. She seemed to study a series of red tags hanging from various pressurized lines.

Only three people accompanied Cross. Two handsome young men in charcoal gray suits made notes on e-tabs. A slender young woman with long, thin blonde hair and a short, upturned nose took photos with a pen-sized camera.

Liz kept to the background, conspicuously allowing Kaye the point position. She gave them all a brief tour, well aware they were taking inventory in preparation for a transfer or a shutdown.

"We've lost," Cross said. "Everything this company has been charged to do by the government and by the people has turned into a can of worms," she added quietly, and chewed her lower lip. "I hear you did a good job on the Hill this week." Cross regarded Kaye with a faint smile.

"It went okay." Kaye shifted her eyes to one side and shrugged. "Rachel Browning tried to pull down my shorts."

"Did she succeed?" Cross asked.

"Got them down to my curlies," Kaye said.

The young men looked ready to appear shocked, should Cross be. Cross laughed. "Jesus, Kaye. I never know what I'm going to hear from you. You drive my PR folks nuts."

"That's why I try to keep my head down and stay quiet."

"We're not learning how to stop SHEVA," Cross said reflectively, still examining the ceiling pipes.

"That's true," Kaye said.

"You're glad."

Once again, Kaye felt it was not her place to answer, that she had responsibilities to others besides herself.

"La Robert is failing, too, but he won't admit it," Cross said. She waved her hands at the others in the lab. "Time to go, kiddies. Leave us sacred monsters alone for a while."

The young men filed through the door. The slender blond tried to remind Cross of appointments later in the morning.

"Cancel them," Cross instructed her.

Liz had stayed behind, solicitous of Kaye. The way she twitched, Kaye thought her a.s.sistant might try to physically intervene to protect her.

Cross smiled warmly at Liz. "Honey, can you add anything to our duet?"

"Not a thing," Liz admitted. "Should I go?" she asked Kaye.

Kaye nodded.

Liz picked up her coat and purse and followed the blond through the door.

"Let's take the express to the top floor," Cross suggested pleasantly, and put her arm around Kaye's shoulder. "It's been far too long since we put our heads together. I want you to explain what happened. What you thought you'd find in radiology."

The Americol boardroom on the twentieth floor was huge and extravagant, with a long table cut lengthwise from an oak trunk, handmade William Morrisstyle chairs that seemed to float on their slender legs, and walls covered with early twentieth-century ill.u.s.trative art.

Cross told the room what to do and two of the walls folded up, revealing electronic whiteboards. Sections of the table rose up like toy soldiers, thin personal monitors.

"If I were starting over again," Cross said, "I'd turn this into a kindergarten cla.s.sroom. Little chairs and wagons with little cartons of milk. That's how ignorant we are. But . . . We do cling to our beauty and wealth. We like to feel we are in control and always will be."

Kaye listened attentively, but did not respond.

Cross pushed another b.u.t.ton and the whiteboards replayed long strings of scrawled notes. Kaye guessed these were a frozen record of several late-night and early-morning pacing sessions, Cross alone up here in the heights, wielding her little pen wand, moving along the boards like a sorcerous queen scattering spells on the walls of her castle.

Kaye could decipher very few of the scrawls. Cross's handwriting was notorious.

"n.o.body's seen this," Cross murmured. "It's hard to read, isn't it?" she asked Kaye. "I used to have perfect penmanship." She held up her swollen knuckles.

Kaye wondered where Cross intended to go with this. Was it all some devious way of letting her go gracefully, with a hearty handshake?

"The secret of life," Cross said, "lies in understanding how little things talk to each other. Correct?"

"Yes," Kaye said.

"And you've maintained, from before the beginnings of SHEVA, that viruses are part of the a.r.s.enal of communications our cells and bodies use to talk."

"That's why you brought me to Americol."

Cross dismissed that with a slight frown and a lift of one shoulder. "So you turned yourself into a laboratory to prove a point, and gave birth to a SHEVA child. Gutsy, and more than a little stupid."

Kaye clenched her jaw.

Cross knew she had touched an exposed nerve. "I think the Jackson clique is right on the money. Experience biases you in favor of believing SHEVA is benign, a natural phenomenon that we'll just have to knuckle under and accept. Don't fight it. It's bigger than all of us."

"I'm fond of my daughter," Kaye said stiffly.

"I don't doubt it. Hear me out. I'm going somewhere with this, but I don't know where just yet." Cross paced along the whiteboards, arms folded, tapping one elbow with the remote. "My companies are my children. That's a cliche, but it's true, Kaye. I am as stupid and gutsy as you were. I have turned my companies into an experiment in politics and human history. We're very much alike, except I had neither the opportunity-nor, frankly, the inclination-to put my body on the line. Now, we both stand to lose what we love most."

Cross turned and flicked the whiteboards clean with the press of a b.u.t.ton. Her face curled in disgust. "It's all s.h.i.t. This room is a waste of money. You can't help but think that whoever built all this knew what they were doing, had all the answers. It's an architectural lie. I hate hate this room. Everything I just erased was drivel. Let's go somewhere else." Cross was visibly angry. this room. Everything I just erased was drivel. Let's go somewhere else." Cross was visibly angry.

Kaye folded her hands cautiously. She had no idea what was going to happen, not now. "All right," she said. "Where?"

"No limos. Let's lose the luxuries for a few hours. Let's get back to little chairs and cookies and cartons of milk." Cross smiled wickedly, revealing strong, even, but speckled teeth. "Let's get the h.e.l.l out of this building."

A gray, drizzly light greeted them as they pushed through the gla.s.s doors to the street. Cross hailed a cab.

"Your cheeks are pinking," she told Kaye as they climbed into the backseat. "Like they want to say something."

"That still happens," Kaye admitted with some embarra.s.sment.

Cross gave the driver an address Kaye did not recognize. The gray-haired man, a Sikh wearing a white turban, looked over his shoulder.

"I will need card in advance," he said.

Cross reached for her belt pouch.

"My treat," Kaye said, and handed the driver her credit card. The cab pushed off through traffic.

"What was it like, having those cheeks-like signboards?" Cross asked.

"It was a revelation," Kaye said. "When my daughter was young, we practiced cheek-flashing. It was like teaching her how to speak. I missed them when they faded."

Cross watched her absorbedly, then gave a little start and said, "I learned I couldn't have children when I was twenty-five. Pelvic inflammatory disease. I was a big, ungainly girl and had a hard time getting dates. I had to take my men where I found them, and one of them . . . Well. No children, and I decided not to reverse the scarring, because there was never a man I trusted enough to be a father. I got rich pretty early and the men I was attracted to were like pleasant toys, needy, eager to please, not very reliable."

"I'm sorry," Kaye said.

"Sublimation is the soul of accomplishment," Cross said. "I can't say I understand what it means to be a parent. I can only make comparisons with how I feel about my companies, and that probably isn't the same."

"Probably not," Kaye said.

Cross clucked her tongue. "This isn't about funding or firing you or anything so simple. We're both explorers, Kaye. For that reason alone, we need to be open and frank."

Kaye peered out the taxi window and shook her head, amused. "It isn't working, Marge. You're still rich and powerful. You're still my boss."

"Well, h.e.l.l," Cross said with mock disappointment, and snapped her fingers.

"But it may not matter," Kaye said. "I've never been very good at concealing my true feelings. Maybe you've noticed."

Cross made a sound too high-pitched to be a laugh, but it had a certain eccentric dignity, and probably wasn't a giggle, either. "You've been playing me all along."

"You knew I would," Kaye said.

Cross patted her cheek. "Cheek-flashing."

Kaye looked puzzled.

"How can something so wonderful be an aberration, a disease? If I could fever scent, I would be running every corporation in the country by now."

"You wouldn't want to," Kaye said. "If you were one of the children."

"Now who's being naive?" Cross asked. "Do you think they've left our monkey selves behind?"

"No. Do you know what a deme deme is?" Kaye asked. is?" Kaye asked.

"Social units for some of the SHEVA kids."