Darwin's Children Part 52

Kaye let that information sink in, but could not find any emotion to attach to it-not after seeing Carla Rhine. "Christopher didn't tell me."

"Well, I can see why."

Kaye deliberately switched her thoughts, a survival tactic at which she had become adept in the last decade. "I'm flying out to California to meet with Mitch. He's still searching for Stella."

"Any signs?" Freedman asked.

"Not yet," Kaye said.

She got up and Freedman held up a special disposal basket marked "Biohazard" to receive her tear-dampened tissue. "Carla might behave very differently tomorrow. She'll probably tell me how glad she is you dropped by. She's just that way."

"I understand," Kaye said.

"No, you don't," Freedman said.

Kaye was in no mood. "Yes, I do," she said firmly.

Freedman studied her for a moment, then gave in with a shrug. "Pardon my bad att.i.tude," she explained. "It's become an epidemic around here."

Kaye boarded a plane in Baltimore within two hours, heading for California, denying the sun its chance to rest. Scents of ice and coffee and orange juice wafted from a beverage cart being pushed down the aisle. As she sat watching a news report on the federal trials of former Emergency Action officials, she clamped her teeth to keep them from chattering. She was not cold; she was afraid.

Nearly all of her life, Kaye had believed that understanding biology, the way life worked, would lead to understanding herself, to enlightenment. Knowing how life worked would explain it all: origins, ends, and everything in between. But the deeper she dug and the more she understood, the less satisfying it seemed, all clever mechanism; wonders, no doubt, enough to mesmerize her for a thousand lifetimes, but really nothing more than an infinitely devious sh.e.l.l.

The sh.e.l.l brought birth and consciousness, but the price was the push-pull of cooperation and compet.i.tion, partnership and betrayal, success causing another's pain and failure causing your own pain and death, life preying upon life, dragging down victim after victim. Vast slaughters leading to adaptation and more cleverness, temporary advantage; a never-ending process.

Viruses contributed to both birth and disease: genes traveling and talking to each other, speaking the memories and planning the changes, all the marvels and all the failures, but never escaping the push-pull. Nature is a b.i.t.c.h G.o.ddess. Nature is a b.i.t.c.h G.o.ddess.

The sun came through the window opposite and fell brilliant on her face. She closed her eyes. I should have told Carla what happened to me. Why didn't I tell her? I should have told Carla what happened to me. Why didn't I tell her?

Because it's been three years. Fruitless, painful years. And now this.

Carla Rhine had given up on G.o.d. Kaye wondered if she had as well.

2.

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA.

Mitch adjusted his tie in the old, patchy mirror in the dingy motel room. His face looked comical in the reflection, tinted yellow around his left eye, spotted black near his right cheek, a crack separating neck and chin. The mirror told him he was old and worn out and coming apart, but he smiled anyway. He would be seeing his wife for the first time in two weeks, and he was looking forward to spending time alone with her. He did not care about his appearance because he knew Kaye did not care much, either. So he wore the suit, because all his other clothes were dirty and he had not had time to take them down to the little outbuilding and plug dollar coins into the washing machine.

The rumpled queen-sized bed was scattered with half-folded maps and charts and pieces of paper with phone numbers and addresses, an imposing pile of clues that so far had gotten him nowhere. In the last three years of searching across the state, and finally zeroing in on Lone Pine, it seemed no one had seen Stella, no one had seen any youngsters traveling, and most certainly no one had seen any virus children playing hooky from school.

Stella had vanished.

Mitch could locate with stunning insight a cl.u.s.ter of men who had died twenty thousand years ago, but he could not find his seventeen-year-old daughter.

He pinched the tie higher and grimaced, then turned out the bathroom light and went to the door. Just as he opened the door, a young-looking man in a sweatshirt and gray windbreaker, with long blond hair, pulled back a knocking fist.

"Sorry," the man said. "Are you Mitch?"

"Can I help you?"

"The manager says maybe I I can help can help you you." He tapped his nose and winked.

"What's that mean?"

"You don't remember me?"

"No," Mitch said, impatient.

"I deliver hardware and electrical supplies. I can't smell a thing, never have, and I can't taste much, either. They call it anosmia. I don't like the taste of food much, and that's why I stay skinny."

Mitch shrugged, still at a loss.

"You're looking for a girl, right? A Shevite?"

Mitch had never heard that word before. The sound of it-a right right sound-gave him gooseflesh. He reappraised the thin young man. There sound-gave him gooseflesh. He reappraised the thin young man. There was was something familiar about him. something familiar about him.

"I'm the only one my boss, Ralph, will send to deliver supplies, because all the other guys come back confused." He tapped his nose again. "Not me. They can't make me forget to pick up the money. So they pay us, and since I treat them with respect, they pay well, with bonuses. See?"

Mitch nodded. "I'm listening."

"I like them," the young man said. "They're good folks, and I don't want anybody to go up there and make trouble. I mean, what they do is sort of legal now, and it's a big business around here." He peered off into the bright morning sunshine heating up the small asphalt parking lot, the gra.s.sy field, and the scattered pines beyond.

"I'm interested in any information," Mitch said, stepping out onto the porch, careful now not to spook the man. "She's my daughter. My wife and I have been looking for her for three years."

"Cool," the man said, shuffling his feet. "I have a little girl myself. I mean, she's with her mother, and we're not married-" He suddenly looked alarmed. "I don't mean she's a virus kid, no, not at all!"

"It's okay," Mitch said. "I'm not prejudiced."

The man looked strangely at Mitch. "Don't you recognize me? I mean, okay, it's been a long time. I thought I remembered you, and now that I see you, it's all as clear as yesterday. Strange, how people come back together, isn't it?"

Mitch made little motions of shoulder and head to show he still wasn't clued in.

"Well, it might not have been you . . . but I'm pretty sure it was, because I saw your wife's picture in the paper a few months later. She's a famous scientist, isn't she?"

"She is," Mitch said. "Look, I'm sorry . . ."

"You picked up some hitchhikers a long time ago. Two girls and a guy. That was me, the guy." He pointed a skinny finger at his own chest. "One of the girls had just lost a baby. They were called Delia and Jayce."

Mitch's face slowly went blank, with both astonishment and memory. He was surprised, but he remembered almost everything, perhaps because it had taken place in another small motel.

"Morgan?" he asked, stooping as if his arms were dragged down by weights. he asked, stooping as if his arms were dragged down by weights.

The man broke into the broadest grin Mitch had seen in months. "Bless you," Morgan said. There were actually tears in his eyes. "Sorry," he said, shuffling his feet and backing off into the sunshine. He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. "It's just, after all these years . . . I'm sorry. I'm acting stupid. I am really grateful to you guys."

Mitch reached out to save Morgan from falling off the curb. He pulled Morgan gently back into the shadow, and then, spontaneously, two men who had been through a lot over the years, they hugged. Mitch laughed despite himself. "G.o.dd.a.m.nit, Morgan, how are you?"

Morgan accepted the hug but not the profanity. "Hey," he said. "I'm with Jesus now."

"Sorry," Mitch said. "Where's my daughter? What can you tell me? I mean, sounds like you've run into a group of people who don't want to be found." He felt the questions lining up, refusing to be slowed, much less stopped. "SHEVA people. Shevites, is that what you called them? How many? A commune? How did you find out I was looking for my daughter?"

"Like I said, the manager in the motel, he's my girlfriend's uncle. I deliver hardware to the garage he runs up on North Main. He told me. I wondered if it was you. You made some impression on me."

"You want to take me out there, just in case I can't be trusted?"

"I'm pretty sure you can be trusted, but . . . it's hard to find. I'd like to take you there, just in case it is your daughter. I don't know who she is, understand? But if she is out there . . . I'd like to return a favor."

"I understand," Mitch said. "Would you like to take my wife along, too? She's the famous one."

"Is she here?" Morgan asked, preparing to be stunned and shy again.

"She'll be here in a couple of hours. I'm picking her up at the airport in Las Vegas."

"Kaye Lang?"

"That's her."

"Wow!" Morgan said. "I've been watching the Senate hearings, the court stuff. When I'm not working. You know, I saw her on Oprah? That was a long time ago, I was still just a kid. But I really can't promise anything."

"We'll go on faith," Mitch said, happier than he had been in he did not remember how long. "Had some breakfast?"

"Hey, I earn my keep now," Morgan said, straightening and sticking his finger tips into the pockets of his jeans. "I'll buy you you breakfast. What goes round, comes round." breakfast. What goes round, comes round."

In the room, Mitch's data phone rang. He half-closed the door as he loped to pick it up from the bed. Mitch pinched open the phone's display door. The call was from Kaye. "h.e.l.lo, Kaye! Guess-"

"I'm on the plane. What an awful, awful morning. I really need to hold someone," Kaye said. Her image in the little screen looked pale. He could see a high seat back and people sitting behind her. "I need some good news, Mitch."

He held back for a second, hand trembling, knowing how many times there had been false hopes. He did not want to add yet another disappointment.

"Mitch?"

"I'm here. I was just going out the door."

"I just couldn't stand not talking to you. Flight's half full."

"I think we've got something," Mitch said, his voice rough and throat tight around the words. You know it's right. You know this is it. You know it's right. You know this is it.

"Is that Dr. Lang? Say 'hi!' " Morgan called brightly from the motel porch outside the door.

"What is it?" Kaye tried to make out Mitch's expression on the little screen. "Is it a detective? Do we have that kind of money left?"

"Just get here safe. I've found an old friend. Or, rather, he's found me."

3.

Lake Stannous NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.

The air fell away from the heat of the afternoon. Through the pines Stella Nova could see thunderheads rising in silent, self-involved billows over the White Mountains. The woods were dry and full of the fragrances of lodgepole, spruce, and fir.

She had finished doing her share of the laundry in the big old concrete washhouse near the center of Oldstock. Now she sat on an empty oil drum beside the long lines hung with sun-drenched linens and underwear and some diapers and work clothes, smelling the laundry soap and bleach and steam, sipping a black cherry soda-a rare luxury here, she allowed herself only one a week-and thinking, kicking her feet back and forth, scuffing the concrete slab around the washhouse with her clogs.

From where she sat, she could see the gravel turnaround beside the old abandoned bowling alley, painted gray decades ago, the paint now peeling; three long dark redwood-stained dormitories that used to house seminary students and pilgrims and a few tourists; and up north of that, the fuel cell and solar station that ran the medical center and nursery. Beyond the station and an old fenced-in compound for storing mining equipment stretched a debris field dominated by a small mountain of tailings. The mountain marked the old mine and made that end of the camp a no-man's-land of heavy metals and cyanide. No one walked there unless they had to; sometimes after a heavy rain she could smell the poison in the air, but it wasn't bad enough to make them sick, unless they did something stupid.

In the middle of the last century, humans had mined copper and tin and even some gold at Oldstock, and built a little town-that was where the bowling alley and the seminary buildings had come from. South of town, just off the main road down to the sh.o.r.e of Lake Stannous, you could find weed-grown streets and concrete foundations where houses had once stood, built by Condite Copper Company to house miners' families. In the woods Stella had come across old refrigerators and washing machines and piles of bottles and bigger junk, abandoned steam and diesel engines like big iron s.p.a.ceships, squat dark hopper cars, stacks of iron rails orange with rust, and creosote-dipped cross ties glistening with black beads from years in the sun.

Oldstock was a designated Superfund site, located on the north end of Lake Stannous, where fishing was poor, and that combination kept most humans away. But Oldstock was beautiful, and as long as it did not rain too much, the tailings did not wash out into the lake and the village's water was fine. So far, they had been lucky. The weather had been dry for twenty years, ever since Mr. and Mrs. Sakartvelo had bought the place from a Lutheran church group.

Sakartvelo was not their real name. They had been immigrants from the FSU, the Former Soviet Union, the part now called the Republic of Georgia. The name they had adopted was the name of their country the way the natives said it. They had been hiding here for almost twenty years, knowing others would arrive eventually.

Five years ago, the others had started arriving, and the town had slowly come alive once more.

Mr. and Mrs. Sakartvelo were in their sixties. Physically, they were obvious Shevites. They said others like them-not many-went back over two hundred years in Georgia and Armenia and Turkey. Stella Nova saw no reason not to believe them. Mitch had talked about such things.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, turning her face like a flower to soak up more sun before it dipped behind the trees. She listened for red-winged blackbirds and jays, mockingbirds and robins. Her cheeks freckled with b.u.t.terflies of contentment.

A game for the younger kids was Rawshock-freckling up in symmetrical patterns and guessing what they meant. It trained them at cheek flashing. Some came to Oldstock freckle-dumb, freckle-dumb, with no knowledge of how to communicate with their own kind. Slowly, they learned. Stella and others taught the young ones. with no knowledge of how to communicate with their own kind. Slowly, they learned. Stella and others taught the young ones.

The woods had been full of ticks this summer-and deer, as well-but ticks and even mosquitoes did not bother them much. The Sakartvelos taught them how to use fever-scenting to keep biting insects away, and also how to soothe animals-black bears in particular-that they might encounter. The two hundred Shevites in Oldstock were the only inhabitants for ten miles, and the woods were wild.

And of course, the Sakartvelos had taught the children how to keep Oldstock a secret, and trained them in what to do if humans came looking for them.

They had been taught well. No one had ever been taken away, and no one had ever been hurt-by animals or humans. Life had been pretty good, and Stella had started to forget the bad times and even the times with Mitch and Kaye, the good times, though sad. She had started to believe there was a life to live, rooted and real, among her own kind.

Then, Will had gone wrong.

Some still had nightmares of the schools and of living among humans. Stella did not dream about such things. Will had not been so lucky. He had hidden many things from all of them, things he had experienced, that had happened to him.

There were no radios or televisions in Oldstock, no telephones except for a single satellite phone in the main meeting hall, kept locked in a cabinet. It had not been used since Stella and Will had arrived, and probably not for a long time before that.

A breeze made the sheets and diapers flap. Stella wiped sweat from her forehead, got up, and started taking down and folding the dry pieces. She stacked them in a plastic tub and scented the tub by touching the ball of her thumb behind her ear and rubbing the handle.

Randolph-the only Randolph in Oldstock, so she did not know his human last name-came up and sparked a greeting. Randolph was four years younger than Stella, what some called an off-born, not part of the Waves. Those born during the three big Waves were called boomers, she did not know why. They talked with just their faces for a while as they plucked and folded pillowcases and dungarees and diapers. They exchanged pleasantries and imitated the scents of others, a kind of joking gossip that pa.s.sed the time.