by Steve Shear
Chapter Five
Over the following several months, Hitch spent as much time as possible trying to avoid his daughter while Edna spent most of her time consoling her, neither a surprise to either of them. Then one afternoon while he stood on his back porch overlooking the Potomac River, shirtless, and pumping out curls with forty-pound dumbbells in front of a full-length standing mirror, Edna stuck her head out the back door, clearly upset.
“Kitten called. She has an appointment tomorrow with Christopher’s pediatrician and asked if we could be there. She wouldn’t say why but I’m afraid…”
Hitch looked over questioningly.
“Oh, never mind.” She disappeared without giving Hitch a chance to respond.
He knew what Edna was about to say, but then continued curling, successfully blocking the same thoughts from preoccupying his mind. “Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five.” After reaching one hundred curls, he carried the dumbbells to his exercise room and went to the bathroom to dry down and wash his face and hands. In the mirror he could see the V-Mark on his forearm; what looked like a multi-pointed starburst, the size of a quarter, uniformly Indian red in color. Without thinking, he touched it. He hadn’t recalled doing that since…well since OJ. Not surprising, it was smooth, more like a tattoo than a birthmark, which is what he thought it was as a child. Most kids considered them birthmarks since they were vaccinated at birth. That was the law according to the Vaccine Assurance and Management Agency. All human inhabitants on Earth were to be vaccinated against the ERAM virus, and each human inhabitant carried the V-Mark on either the left arm or the right arm. VAMA was everywhere to make sure that happened. Their black hearse-looking vehicles floated over a roadway of air and displayed VAMA in bright yellow on both sides as well as down the back.
The following afternoon, Hitch, Edna, and Kathy squeezed together in a small examination room watching Dr. Ralph Delahunt inspect Christopher’s V-Mark. Even from where he sat, Hitch could see how bumpy and dark red it was. Chills ran down his spine.
“Well, young man, you have been very cooperative,” Dr. Delahunt said as he rolled down Christopher’s sleeve and patted him on the back. Meanwhile, he looked at Hitch and Edna. “Maybe one of you can take him to the waiting room. The receptionist has several choice selections of candy waiting to be retrieved.”
Before Hitch had a chance to do as the doctor asked, Edna volunteered, leaving her husband and daughter to face Dr. Delahunt, who already held Kathy’s hand. “I’ve always been candid with you, sweetheart. The roughness and discoloration on his V-Mark along with the blood work… I’m so sorry.”
Kathy went limp and began sobbing. Hitch tried to put his arm around her. She flinched, causing him to drop it. He moved to the door left open by Edna and stared into the waiting room where Christopher was unwrapping a piece of candy.
“I’m afraid I’ll need some blood work from you, Oliver,” Hitch heard Dr. Delahunt say.
He swung around. “Me?”
“You’re a Beater. And, well you know, first OJ, now…”
Hitch held both hands up, as if to surrender, and shortly thereafter was in the lab area having his blood drawn. Two days later, in the afternoon, he and Edna were back in the doctor’s office, without Kathy and Christopher this time. Ralph Delahunt sat across from them studying the lab report, nodding his head and shrugging.
“Well,” he said as he handed them the report. “Two Preemies in one family does not appear to be coincidental.”
“Are you saying it’s because of…” Edna started to say without looking at the report.
Delahunt nodded at the report, as if the answers were there, and he didn’t want to compound the pain by repeating the reasons aloud. All the time Hitch was studying the report and knew exactly what Ralph didn’t want to verbalize. He was a carrier of the virus, of the plague. He was the fucking reason one grandson was dead and the other…
“Edna, Oliver, I’m so very sorry,” Ralph said as Hitch tried to control himself, as he stared at the words in front of him, as he felt Edna’s hand caress his shoulder. She meant well, he knew, but uncontrolled anger welled up.
“Don’t be,” Hitch said. “The Click is the will of God. Is it not? If you were the grandparent of two Preemies would you continue to believe that shit?” He crushed the report in his fist and stormed out. Twenty minutes later he was at Hooligan’s drinking all by himself.
Two hours later he found himself knocking at a door. The door opened slowly. “I’m surprised you waited this long,” Janine Rousseau said.
****
Over the next several months, Edna saw little of her husband. Instead, she spent much of her time with her daughter, taking care of her and Christopher. She knew better than anyone how devastated Kathy was to lose OJ, and now even the thought that the only child she had left was in jeopardy made her… Edna couldn’t finish the thought. She was there, close up, all those years Kathy tried to get pregnant but couldn’t.
Her daughter was a lesbian, a lesbian in hiding, since being gay was a serious crime in the twenty-third century. This was made so by Smotec Innocent II, the Black Smotec, who Edna regarded with scorn ever since she left the Ecclesian Church as a young adult. Nevertheless, Kathy and her partner wanted children, so she secretly resorted to IVF, in vitro fertilization—secretly because IVF procedures were also seriously illegal. All those evangelists and the Black Smotec won that battle many years earlier after the Cūtocracy took political control of government after government. Edna knew her history.
Eight attempts at IVF all failed. As a last resort, Kathy went through the black market and hired a surrogate using her eggs and sperm from a black-market sperm bank. The combination produced OJ. A week after OJ’s birth, Kathy’s partner died in an automobile accident. After several years of grieving, she decided to have a second child, Christopher, the same way.
Edna and Kathy were in the kitchen one afternoon, spreading chocolate frosting on a cake they had baked earlier, when Christopher came bounding down the stairs from his bedroom. He rushed into the kitchen with a box of birthday candles. “Grandma, here. It’s your birthday tomorrow. I remembered.” He handed her the box. “How many candles should I put on it?”
Mother and daughter froze, but Edna quickly shook herself out of the anxiety that flooded her entire body, and hugged Christopher. “That’s so sweet of you, my darling.” He of course didn’t know this was to be her seventy-fifth, a birthday no one celebrated. Nevertheless, she took seven candles from the box and had Christopher put them on the cake.
The following evening, after the family had dinner, Kathy brought out the cake, and Christopher helped his grandfather light the candles. Christopher sang Happy Birthday with total joy while his mother and grandfather followed along, trying to smile as best they could.
That day and for several months to follow, Edna neither heard nor felt the Click. Maybe it won’t come, she thought on a number of occasions, but dared not voice those hopes believing they would jinx her. Maybe she, like her husband, was destined to beat the Click. She wasn’t aware of two Beaters in the same family, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. After all, they had two Preemies in the same… Even the beginning of that thought made her knees buckle and caused her to put the whole idea out of her mind.
Then one night, hours after she and Oliver retired, she screamed out, “Enough!” causing him to practically fall out of bed. “I’ve had it, Oliver. I can’t take the waiting.”
Less than a month later, they were meandering down a path in the park. Edna suddenly stopped. Her hands flew up to her temples. Click, Click, Click. Oliver led her to a bench nearby. They sat. Their eyes met and shared a deep gloom. Oliver grabbed his wife’s hands and squeezed. The clicking, more like the intermittent winding of a grandfather clock, subsided. She had so hoped to beat it, not for her sake, but for Kathy’s and Christopher’s. They were all so close, and she wasn’t entirely sure Oliver would always be there for them.
That night and
for many to follow she went to bed terrified she would not wake up. Then one night several weeks after hearing the Click the first time, she knew the end was near. It was around midnight. She looked to her left. Oliver was fast asleep. Her eyes remained opened, wide, staring at him, then the ceiling. Just when she decided to roll over and try to sleep, she felt it coming. Seconds later, Click, Click, Click, Click. She reached over and shook her husband of almost fifty years. He knew. She could see it in his eyes. He held her tight. Click, Click. She felt her body dissolve into a heap of nothingness with each note in God’s final song of silence. She trembled. She felt Oliver tremble. In her mind’s eye she could see the hands approaching midnight! She peered beyond Death’s final goodbye and saw nothing. No road to salvation as the Church of the Ecclesia had promised, no second chance in the greater world beyond, no singer of songs. Her final plea was to her husband.
“Oliver, make Christopher well. Promise me you’ll make Christopher…”
She died in his arms hearing him promise he would do everything within his power. She also heard him cry. That made her happy and sad as she took her last breath on Earth.
Chapter Six
The only people Oliver Hitchcock had left were Kathy and Christopher. Nevertheless, Edna’s memorial service at the cemetery, not long after her ashes were buried, overflowed with friends and neighbors—not surprising considering she and Oliver lived in the same city, in fact the same house, for over forty years. A number of Hitch’s old colleagues were also in attendance.
Had the Hitchcocks been good Ecclesians and contributing members of the Church, the family and the others in attendance would have been invited there to celebrate Edna’s life with the entire congregation. That was common Ecclesian practice whenever a believer died naturally—that is, according to God’s clicking clock. Hitch and Edna were not good Ecclesians or even believers for that matter. As a result, once the crowd dispersed and Hitch sent his daughter and grandson home, he crouched down before Edna’s headstone and placed fresh flowers into an adjacent vase he had partially buried earlier.
“I promise to do what I can,” were the only words that seemed to be appropriate, as the tears ran down his cheeks. He then turned his attention to OJ’s headstone, wiped his tears, and stared at the engraving—He died too young. He would do better for Christopher, he insisted as the tears returned.
He thought he was alone, but the feel of a hand on his shoulder caused him to recoil. He looked up and saw Rajiv Nadu, who had come all the way from Delhi to attend the service. He and Hitch were in India, in the covert service of their respective agencies, forever it seemed to Hitch, and they became inseparable friends.
“All those years together, the three of us. I will miss her deeply,” Rajiv said in his thick Indian accent, standing tall, almost as tall as Hitch but twenty-five years younger. He pulled his old friend up and the two hugged. They spent several days together talking about the old times, about family, about friends, and about their many escapades hiding behind stereotypical trench coats and government supplied aliases. They talked about OJ and the fact he died a Preemie. Rajiv was traveling at the time and couldn’t make it to the States to comfort his good buddy. He was surprised to hear how OJ died. Hitch hadn’t told him, and now Hitch felt bad. Rajiv’s reaction seemed, cautious, guarded, as if the Click and Preemies weren’t topics he wanted to explore.
For many weeks to follow, just about every night, Oliver Hitchcock woke up at some point recalling Edna’s plea, please make Christopher well. It was as if she were in bed next to him whispering in his ear—please make Christopher well. Promise you’ll make Christopher well, promise, promise, promise. It was the echoing of those words, of his promise, and something Rajiv said that drove him to his study at three o’clock one morning along with a bottle of bourbon and a glass. Rajiv’s voice rose within him. In my country there’s a…an old wives’ tale, I believe you say here. Somewhere, someone knows how to combat God’s death sentence. One just needs to know where to look for it. If only that were true.
Those words stayed with him as he grabbed his scud and tapped it in a certain way, then set it down, causing a large holographic screen of scientifically focused light containing a holographic keyboard to project upward in front of him. With two hands he pulled the weightless keyboard to him and began typing. The letters E-R-A-M-V appeared on the screen after a series of taps and then, as if by magic, the full phrase he was looking for, ERAM Virus. He typed some more and a full page appeared. Earth’s Revenge Against Mankind—The Killer Virus. Below the title—The Coalition United for Theocratic Oversight races to develop a cure. Will the Cūtocracy succeed? Hitch studied the title, then his finger flipped page after page in the same way he had moved the keyboard, studying each page carefully. Just when he thought he was getting nowhere, a link popped up—Properties of the ERAM vaccine. He touched the link wondering what the properties of the vaccine were and whether knowing that might give him a clue where to start. Start what? He couldn’t imagine but he couldn’t sleep either. Rajiv’s words rang in his ears once again. Then suddenly—This page has no content. His fingers continued to flip the pages. Research. He touched the link. Archives, then Mutations and Cell Divisions, then… Classified – Submit Authorized Code.
Hitch continued, seeing the same roadblock, time after time, until finally he sat back in his chair and merely stared at the hologram in front of him. It gave off enough light for him to easily find the bottle of bourbon and empty glass. He looked at the clock on his desk. It was now approaching four o’clock. He poured himself a drink and quickly downed it, then began typing once again, and again. Dissidents claim Click’s a fraud jumped out from the hologram, as if it had a mind of its own, and grabbed him by the eyeballs. Higher Clearance required. Content removed. Each time he returned to the dissidents—the same result—Link Broken, Higher Clearance Required, or Content Removed, Content Removed, Content Removed. “What the hell?” Frustrated, he grabbed the empty glass and flung it across the room, through the hologram. Smack. It shattered against the wall and caused the hologram to flutter, shaking away any feelings of hope.
By seven that morning, with at most a few hours of fitful sleep under his belt, he showered, shaved, ate, and was on the way to his old stomping grounds with Dissidents claim Click’s a fraud flashing through his thoughts. He still had certain privileges at the CIA allowing him to easily access the building that housed the library. He hurried up the marble stairs, like a man who had a good night’s sleep, two steps at a time, a man on a quest, a man who thought he was onto something. In no time at all, he reached the outside of a frosted glass door with Julian Iscar, Chief CIA Librarian silkscreened across its face.
He stepped quietly into a cozy space thick with carpet and soft amber lighting, a reading room not very large but furnished with several comfortable reading sofas, three rectangular tables surrounded by upright chairs, and a half-dozen stations. All the stations overflowed with computation shells lined up along one side of the room. Each station also defined a soundproof booth large enough for two plus a holographic screen twice the size produced by a scud. Behind the stations stood an equal number of government-issued metal gray steel floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with reading tablets and all types of reading material, both audio and visual, for use with portable discs. The shelves were separated by sound insulated listening booths and plug-in terminals. Authorized users had access to both the stations and booths and could listen to, watch, and search just about anything from the Earth’s Spider Room Servers, and just about everything ever printed or in digital form anywhere. There were Spider Room Servers in just about every country on earth and each one was in communication with all the protolytes in space. In this way, data passed from one scud and computation shell to another.
Directly across from the entry door and reading room, Hitch eyed a raised counter and the back of a portly looking man bent over in front of it. He was short and bald and wore red suspenders over a long sleeve white shirt. Had Oliver Hi
tchcock not known that short, bald man, he could well have wondered what a seemingly harmless librarian with but a single arm could be doing in the most powerful library in the world. As he approached the counter, Hitch made a coughing sound, causing the librarian to turn around.
Julian Iscar’s face lit up upon seeing his old friend of so many years. His deep blue-green eyes gave him away. He was anything but harmless. Hitch knew that well. They spent more than a day or two in trenches hidden from view, clandestine trenches only visible through classified glasses, and sometimes not even then. Before Hitch left “the Company,” as it had always been called, the Special Operations Task Force had been formed and Julian was its leader. From time to time he would turn to Hitch for help in difficult matters. SOTF, or merely Special Ops, knew everything there was to know and how to deal with each and every contingency. With the exception of the CIA Director and the president of the United States, and those within its secret ranks, nobody knew it existed. All its operatives had other positions within the Company. Many were innocuous positions such as Chief Librarian, and Julian reported to the Director.
A few minutes later Julian and Hitch were sitting around a small rectangular table in a private reading room behind the counter. A pot of coffee and a bowl of chocolate covered almonds sat next to a number of CIA LIBRARY mugs, packets of sugar, and a jar of powered dairy creamer on a credenza along one wall.
“Please help yourself,” Julian said, pointing to the credenza, “and tell me what brings you to my modest abode? Surely you have better things to do than continue associating with the likes of us?”
For the next few minutes Hitch explained why he was there, something personal that required some information he couldn’t get elsewhere. He wasn’t ready to divulge the real reason he was there. He needed to learn as much as he could about the Click, from a scientific standpoint. Why were some people Beaters and other Preemies, and was there a connection between Preemies and Beaters? But again, he wasn’t ready to share all that with Julian, at least not yet.