A Catch in Time
Page 37
Both Josiah and George Chang watched the girls watching each other. Both knew this meeting was momentous.
Josiah, in enlisting his professor’s aid, had told him everything he knew about Laura’s epiphany, including her feeling that her daughter, gestating within her at the time of the blackout, was somehow special, invulnerable to its effects. Su Ling, too, had been in the womb during the blackout, Chang had revealed. Her mother had died giving birth, and Chang had hidden his precious child during the widespread purgings of those first years following the blackout.
When Josiah had heard Su Ling utter a clump of words in the midst of a remark to her father, his first thought had been, Just like Lily. He’d been amazed. Confounded. And immediately aware that Lily’s odd way of speaking wasn’t merely a quirk.
Standing next to Chang as they watched the rapt faces of the two children appraising each other, Josiah could almost swear he felt a frisson of charged awareness pass between the girls. He bent his lips to Chang’s ear. “Laura thinks Lily’s a deliberate mutation. There’s something new here, George. And it looks like Su Ling’s part of it.”
George Chang caught his breath at the sight of his daughter’s face. Always beautiful, his Su Ling now glowed. He glanced at Lily and saw her matching inner spirit similarly reflected. He blinked hard, several times. Was it just Su Ling’s happiness he was seeing, or was it something else? Like Josiah, he could almost swear something palpable had passed silently between them.
Josiah, George, Laura, and Mohammed quietly discussed Su Ling and Lily.
“Even though there’s no way for us to understand how they’re perceiving it,” Laura said, “what they may be perceiving is a sense of self, how we each see ourselves.” While with us, she thought, our very conduits for sensing the world are also barriers to really knowing each other. She glanced at Kate, wishing Kate could know how she saw her. The subtle rift between them would never have become a fracture.
“Lily and Su Ling always get true first impressions of people,” she continued, grasping Josiah’s hand in hers. “What will that mean for love?”
Would Lily truly love everyone, she wondered, love them in the way she herself loved Josiah? Or, maybe, love as the rest of them knew it was but the precursor to Lily’s sixth sense, allowing only glimpses of another person’s sense of self.
If Catherine had succeeded in fixing the path, then Lily and Su Ling were only the first of many like them. Human evolution would pass to the next phase.
“If one could know a person through their own eyes,” said Dr. Chang, “it would be impossible to maintain prejudice. War becomes unthinkable.” He shook his head wonderingly. “The world would indeed change.”
“Katie.” John Thomas tugged on her sleeve. They were sitting close together on the couch, across the room from the others.
“What, honey?”
He turned his face to hers, his eyes flat, dismal. “I shot Lucas.”
“He was Shaitan, baby, you had to.” She tenderly cupped his face, puzzled over his seemingly delayed reaction. “You did right, you hear? He wasn’t a person, he wasn’t really your brother—he never was.”
“But Laura said Catherine went to fix the Path. Maybe it worked. Maybe whatever she did would have fixed Lucas, too. If I hadn’t shot him, then he—”
“No.” Kate looked deep into the eyes of the child she had come to love so completely, the boy who trusted her so implicitly. For his sake, she suddenly knew, she had to relinquish the defenses embedded solidly within her. She had to diminish them, scale them, and reach for the glimmer of hope she might use to help heal John Thomas. But she could not knowingly deceive him. The hope had to be real.
Taking a deep breath, something seemed to settle inside her. But it was more than a settling, it was also a letting go. And it felt good. “Lucas was from the dark, John Thomas,” she said firmly. “Shaitan from before the blackout. He came by glitch, and there’s no glitches on the Path. You see what I mean? Glitches can’t be fixed.”
Eyes full of trust, John Thomas nodded. Clasping his hand in hers, Kate drew him with her to join the others. John Thomas met Lily and Su Ling in the corner, where they sat on Lily’s piles of blankets, and he let Lily pull him down beside her.
Kate stopped behind Laura and tapped her on the shoulder. “What say we rustle up a meal for this crew, kiddo?”
Laura smiled hesitantly. Was this a truce? Or something more meaningful? Kate nodded, smiled widely. The answer filled Laura with peace.
At her side, Josiah nuzzled her hair. “A yen for your thoughts,” he whispered.
Laura could only shake her head, her heart too full for words.
EPILOGUE
THE FAMILY HAD GROWN. OR PERHAPS NOW IT WAS A new family.
And the world had changed.
Mohammed was gone. The boy, now a man, had decided to return to his homeland. It would be a long and arduous journey, filled with danger and excitement, but one he felt ready to undertake. Catherine’s passing had indeed shifted life back on its course. No more Shaitan were born—at least, not into everything. Only the occasional glitches, like those that had conveyed Lucas and others like him into the world, still existed, as they always had.
As for those who remained together, Lily and Su Ling spent every waking moment communicating in ways none of the rest could understand.
Dr. George Chang and Kate had begun a fledgling relationship. Others in the family marveled, for it was the first time anyone had seen her sit and listen quietly, almost reverentially, to anyone, her freckled cheeks sometimes glazing with rose-tinted blushes.
Josiah and Laura were lost together, hidden in plain sight, speaking a language everyone knew, but in which none could participate.
And they all found themselves missing Catherine, recalling the fundamental guidance and indomitable spirit she had contributed, at one time or other, to everyone. Kate, especially, was fond of Catherine stories.
As for John Thomas, his world was full, his heart complete, no matter which small group he joined. Though he belonged exclusively to no particular pair, he fit well with them all. He could not know that this was the training he would need to become the leader he was destined to become. He looked forward to each day with a joy he could not explain.
If he could have explained it, he might have said that what he was experiencing was a new family, a new world. A new hope.
Want to know what’s going on with
your favorite author or what new releases
are coming from Medallion Press?
Now you can receive breaking news,
updates, and more from Medallion Press
straight to your cell phone, e-mail, instant
messenger, or Facebook!
Sign up now at www.twitter.com/MedallionPress
to stay on top of all the happenings in and
around Medallion Press.
Be in the know on the latest
Medallion Press news by becoming a Medallion
Press Insider!
Joining is easy. Just visit our Web site at
www.medallionpress.com and click on the
Medallion Press Insider tab.
medallionpress.com