Darwin's Radio d-1

by Greg Bear

  “We’re having an early supper,” the man said. “Who wants her?”

  “Kaye Lang. Dr. Lang.”

  The man mumbled something, then called out “Luella!” and a few seconds passed. More voices. Luella Hamilton picked up the phone, her breath briefly pounding on the mouthpiece, then familiar and calm. “Albert says this is Kaye Lang, that right?”

  “It’s me, Mrs. Hamilton.”

  “Well, I’m at home now, Kaye, and don’t need no checking up on.”

  “I wanted to let you know I’m no longer with the Task-force, Mrs. Hamilton.”

  “Please call me Lu. Whyever not, Kaye?”

  “A parting of the ways. I’m heading west and I was worried about you.”

  “There’s nothing to be worried about. Albert and the kids are all right and I’m just fine.”

  “I was just concerned. I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”

  “Well, Dr. Lipton gave me these pills that kill babies before they’re very big, inside. You know about the pills.”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t tell anybody, and we thought about it, but Albert and me, we’re going ahead. He says he believes some of what the scientists say, but not all, and besides, he says I’m too ugly to be messing around behind his back.” She let out a rich, disbelieving laugh. “He don’t know us women and our opportunities, does he, Kaye?” Then, in an undertone, to someone beside her, “Stop that. I’m talking here.”

  “No,” Kaye said.

  “We’re going to have this baby,” Mrs. Hamilton said, coming down heavy on have. “Tell Dr. Lipton and the folks at the clinic. Whatever he or she is, he or she is ours, and we’re going to give him or her a fighting chance.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Lu.”

  “You are, huh? You curious, too, Kaye?”

  Kaye laughed and felt her laughter catch, threaten to reverse to tears. “I am.”

  “You want to see this baby when he comes, don’t you?”

  “I would like to buy you both a present,” Kaye said.

  “That’s nice. Then why not go find yourself a man and get this flu, and we’ll visit together and compare, you and me, our two fine youngsters, all right? And I’ll buy you a present.” The suggestion carried not a hint of anger, absurdity, or resentment.

  “I might do that, Lu.”

  “We get along, Kaye. Thanks for caring about me and you know, looking at me like I was people and not a lab rat.”

  “May I call you again?”

  “We’re moving soon, but we’ll find each other, Kaye. We will. You take care.”

  Kaye walked down the long corridor from the rest rooms. She touched her forehead. She was hot. Her stomach was unsettled, as well. Get this flu and we ‘II visit and compare.

  Mitch stood outside the restaurant with his hands in his pockets, squinting at the passing cars. He turned and smiled at her as he heard the heavy wood door open.

  “I called Mrs. Hamilton,” she said. “She’s going to have her baby.”

  “Very brave of her.”

  “People have been having babies for millions of years,” Kaye said.

  “Yeah. Piece of cake. Where do you want to get married?” Mitch asked.

  “How about Columbus?”

  “How about Morgantown?”

  “Sure,” Kaye said.

  “If I think about this much longer, I’m going to be completely useless.”

  “I doubt it,” Kaye said. The fresh air made her feel better.

  They drove to Spruce Street, and there, at the Mononga-hela Florist Company, Mitch bought Kaye a dozen roses. Walking around the County Magistrates Building and a senior center, they crossed High Street, heading toward the tall clock tower and flagpole of the county courthouse. They stopped beside a spreading canopy of maples to examine the inlaid and inscribed bricks arranged across the courthouse square.

  “ ‘In loving memory, James Crutchfield, age 11,’ “ Kaye read. The wind rustled through the maple branches, making the green leaves flutter with a sound like soft voices or old memories. “ ‘My love for fifty years, May Ellen Baker,’ “ Mitch read.

  “Do you think we’ll be together that long?” Kaye asked.

  Mitch smiled and clasped her shoulder. “I’ve never been married,” he said. “I’m nai’ve. I’d say, yes, we will.”They walked beneath the stone arch to the right of the tower and through the double doors.

  Inside, in the Office of the County Clerk, a long room filled with bookshelves and tables supporting huge, scuffed black and green volumes of land transactions, they received paperwork and were told where to get their blood tests.

  “It’s a state law,” the elderly clerk told them from behind her broad wooden desk. She smiled wisely. “They test for syphilis, gonorrhea, HIV, herpes, and this new one, SHEVA. A few years ago, they tried to get the blood test removed as a requirement, but that’s all changed now. You wait three days, then you can get married at a church or by a circuit court judge, any county in the state. Those are beautiful roses, honey.” She lifted her glasses where they hung on a gold chain around her neck and scanned them shrewdly. “Proof of age will not be required. What took you so long?”

  She handed them their application and test papers.

  “We won’t get our license here,” Kaye said to Mitch as they left the building. “We’ll fail the test.” They rested on a wooden bench beneath the maples. It was four in the afternoon and the sky was clouding over swiftly. She laid her head on his shoulder.

  Mitch stroked her forehead. “You’re hot. Something wrong?”

  “Just proof of our passion.”

  Kaye smelled her flowers, then, as the first drops of rain fell, held up her hand and said, “I, Kaye Lang, take you, Mitchell Rafelson, to be my wedded husband, in this age of confusion and upheaval.”

  Mitch stared at her.

  “Raise your hand,” Kaye said, “if you want me.”

  Mitch swiftly realized what was required, clasped her hand, braced himself to rise to the occasion. “I want you to be my wife, come hell or high water, to have and to hold, to cherish and to honor, whether they have any room at the inn or not, amen.”

  “I love you, Mitch.”

  “I love you, Kaye.”

  “All right,” she said. “Now I’m your wife.”

  As they left Morgantown, heading southwest, Mitch said, “You know, I believe it. I believe that we’re married.”

  “That’s what counts,” Kaye said. She moved closer to him across the broad bench seat.

  That evening, on the outskirts of Clarksburg, they made love on a small bed in a dark motel room with cinder block walls. Spring rain fell on the flat roof and dripped from the eaves with a steady, soothing rhythm. They never pulled back the bedcover, lying instead naked together, limbs for blankets, lost in each other, needing nothing more.

  The universe became small and bright and very warm.

  68

  West Virginia and Ohio

  Rain and mist followed them from Clarksburg. The old blue Buick’s tires made a steady hum on wet roads pushing and curling through limestone cuts and low round green hills. The wipers swung short black tails, taking Kaye back to Lado’s whining little Fiat on the Georgian Military Road.

  “Do you still dream about them?” Kaye asked as Mitch drove.

  “Too tired to dream,” Mitch said. He smiled at her, then focused on the road.

  “I’m curious to know what happened to them,” Kaye said lightly.

  Mitch made a face. “They lost their baby and they died.”

  Kaye saw she had touched a nerve and drew back. “Sorry.”

  “I told you, I’m a little wacko,” Mitch said. “I think with my nose and I care what happened to three mummies fifteen thousand years ago.”

  “You are far from being wacko,” Kaye said. She shook her hair, then let out a yell.

  “Whoa!” Mitch cringed.

  “We’re going to travel across America!” Kaye cried. “Across t
he heartland, and we’re going to make love every time we stop somewhere, and we’re going to learn what makes this great nation tick.”

  Mitch pounded the wheel and laughed.

  “But we aren’t doing this right,” she said, suddenly prim. “We don’t have a big poodle dog.”

  “What?”

  “Travels with Charley,” Kaye said. “John Steinbeck had a truck he called Rocinante, with a camper on the back. He wrote about traveling with a big poodle. It’s a great book.”

  “Did Charley have attitude?”

  “Damn right,” Kaye said.

  “Then I’ll be the poodle.”

  Kaye buzzed his hair with mock clippers.

  “Steinbeck took more than a week, I bet,” Mitch said.

  “We don’t have to hurry,” Kaye said. “I don’t want this to ever end. You’ve given me back my life, Mitch.”

  West of Athens, Ohio, they stopped for lunch at a small diner in a bright red caboose. The caboose sat on a concrete pad and two rails off a frontage road beside the state highway, in a region of low hills covered with maples and dogwood. The food served in the dim interior, illuminated by tiny bulbs in railway lanterns, was adequate and nothing more: a chocolate malt and cheeseburger for Mitch and patty melt and bitter instant iced tea for Kaye. A radio in the kitchen in the back of the caboose played Garth Brooks and Selay Sammi. All they could see of the short-order cook was a white chef’s hat bobbing to the music.

  As they left the diner, Kaye noticed three shabbily dressed adolescents wandering beside the frontage road: two girls wearing black skirts and torn gray leggings and a boy in jeans and a travel-stained windbreaker. Like a lagging and downcast puppy, the boy walked several steps behind the girls. Kaye seated herself in the Buick. “What are they doing out here?”

  “Maybe they live here,” Mitch said.

  “There’s just the house up the hill behind the diner,” Kaye said with a sigh.

  “You’re getting a motherly look,” Mitch warned.

  Mitch backed the car out of the gravel lot and was about to swing out onto the frontage road when the boy waved vigorously. Mitch stopped and rolled down the window. A light drizzle filled the air with silvery mist scented by trees and the Buick’s exhaust.

  “Excuse me, sir. You going west?” the boy asked. His ghostly blue eyes swam in a narrow, pale face. He looked worried and exhausted and beneath his clothes he seemed to be made of a bundle of sticks, and not a very large bundle.

  The two girls hung back. The shorter and darker girl covered her face with her hands, peeping between her fingers like a shy child.

  The boy’s hands were dirty, his nails black. He saw Mitch’s attention and rubbed them self-consciously on his pants.

  “Yeah,” Mitch said.

  “I’m really really sorry to bother you. We wouldn’t ask, sir, but it’s tough finding rides and it’s getting wet. If you’re going west, we could use a lift for a while, hey?”

  The boy’s desperation and a goofy gallantry beyond his years touched Mitch. He examined the boy closely, his answer snagged somewhere between sympathy and suspicion.

  “Tell them to get in,” Kaye said.

  The boy stared at them in surprise. “You mean, now?”

  “We’re going west.” Mitch pointed at the highway beyond the long chain-link fence.

  The boy opened the rear door and the girls jogged forward. Kaye turned and rested her arm on the back of the seat as they jumped in and slid across. “Where are you heading?” she asked.

  “Cincinnati,” the boy said. “Or as far past as we can go,” he added hopefully. “Thanks a million.”

  “Put on your seat belts,” Mitch said. “There’s three back there.”

  The girl who hid her face appeared to be no more than seventeen, hair black and thick, skin coffee-colored, fingers long and knobby with short and chipped nails painted violet. Her companion, a white blond, seemed older, with a broad, easygoing face worn down to vacancy. The boy was no more than nineteen. Mitch wrinkled his nose involuntarily; they hadn’t bathed in days.

  “Where are you from?” Kaye asked.

  “Richmond,” the boy said. “We’ve been hitchhiking, sleeping out in the woods or the grass. It’s been hard on Delia and Jayce. This is Delia.” He pointed to the girl covering her face.

  “I’m Jayce,” said the blond absently.

  “My name is Morgan,” the boy added.

  “You don’t look old enough to be out on your own,” Mitch said. He brought the car up to speed on the highway.

  “Delia couldn’t stand it where she was,” Morgan said. “She wanted to go to L.A. or Seattle. We decided to go with her.”

  Jayce nodded.

  “That’s not much of a plan,” Mitch said.

  “Any relatives out west?” Kaye asked.

  “I have an uncle in Cincinnati,” Jayce said. “He might put us up for a while.”

  Delia leaned back in the seat, face still hidden. Morgan licked his lips and craned his neck to look up at the car’s headliner, as if to read a message there. “Delia was pregnant but her baby was born dead,” he said. “She got some skin problems because of it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kaye said. She held out her hand. “My name is Kaye. You don’t have to hide, Delia.”

  Delia shook her head, hands following. “It’s ugly,” she said.

  “I don’t mind it,” Morgan said. He sat as far to the left-hand side of the car as he could, leaving a foot of space between himself and Jayce. “Girls are more sensitive. Her boyfriend told her to get out. Real stupid. What a waste, hey.”

  “It’s too ugly,” Delia said softly.

  “Come on, sweetie,” Kaye said. “Is it something a doctor could help with?”

  “I got it before the baby came,” Delia said.

  “It’s okay,” Kaye said soothingly, and reached back to stroke the girl’s arm. Mitch caught glimpses in the rearview mirror, fascinated by this aspect of Kaye. Gradually, Delia lowered her hands, her fingers relaxing. The girl’s face was blotched and mottled, as if splattered with reddish-brown paint.

  “Did your boyfriend do that to you?” Kaye asked.

  “No,” Delia said. “It just came, and everybody hated it.”

  “She got a mask,” Jayce said. “It covered her face for a few weeks, and then it fell off and left those marks.”

  Mitch felt a chill. Kaye faced forward and lowered her head for a moment, composing herself.

  “Delia and Jayce don’t want me touching them,” Morgan said, “even though we’re friends, because of the plague. You know. Herod’s.”

  “I don’t want to get pregnant,” Jayce said. “We’re really hungry.”

  “We’ll stop and get some food,” Kaye said. “Would you like to take a shower, get cleaned up?”

  “Oh, wow,” Delia said. “That would be so great.”

  “You two look decent, hey, real nice,” Morgan said, staring up at the headliner again, this time for courage. “But I have to tell you, these girls are my friends. I don’t want you doing this just so he can see them without their clothes on. I won’t put up with that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Kaye said. “If I were your mom, I’d be proud of you, Morgan.”

  “Thanks,” Morgan said, and dropped his gaze to the window. The muscles on his narrow jaw clenched. “Hey, it’s just the way I feel. They’ve gone through enough shit. Her boyfriend got a mask, too, and he was really mad. Jayce says he blamed Delia.”

  “He did,” Jayce said.

  “He was a white boy,” Morgan continued, “and Delia is partly black.”

  “I am black,” Delia said.

  “They were living in a farmhouse for a while until he made her leave,” Jayce said. “He was hitting her, after the miscarriage. Then she was pregnant again. He said she was making him sick because he had a mask and it wasn’t even his baby.” This came out in a mumbled rush.

  “My second baby was born dead,” Delia said, her voice distant. “He only
had half his face. Jayce and Morgan never showed him to me.”

  “We buried it,” Morgan said.

  “My God,” Kaye said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It was hard,” Morgan said. “But hey, we’re still here.” He clamped his teeth together and his jaw again tensed rhythmically.

  “Jayce shouldn’t have told me what he looked like,” Delia said.

  “If it was God’s baby,” Jayce said flatly, “He should have taken better care of it.”

  Mitch wiped his eyes with a finger and blinked to keep the road clear.

  “Have you seen a doctor?” Kaye asked.

  “I’m okay,” Delia said. “I just want these marks to go away.”

  “Let me see them up close, sweetie,” Kaye said.

  “Are you a doctor?” Delia asked.

  “I’m a biologist, but not a medical doctor,” Kaye said.

  “A scientist?” Morgan asked, interest piqued.

  “Yeah,” Kaye said.

  Delia thought this through for a few seconds, then leaned forward, eyes averted. Kaye touched her chin to steady her. The sun had come out but a big panel truck growled by on the left and the wide tires showered the windshield. The watery light cast a wavering gray pall over the girl’s features.

  Her face bore a pattern of demelanized, teardrop-shaped dapples, mostly on her cheeks, with several symmetrical patches at the corners of her eyes and lips. As she turned away from Kaye, the marks shifted and darkened.

  “They’re like freckles,” Delia said hopefully. “I get freckles sometimes. It’s my white blood, I guess.”

  69

  Athens, Ohio

  MAY 1

  Mitch and Morgan stood on the wide white-painted porch outside the office of James Jacobs, MD.

  Morgan was agitated. He lit up the last of his pack of cigarettes and puffed with slit-eyed intent, then walked over to a rough-barked old maple and leaned against it.

  Kaye had insisted after a lunch stop that they look up a family practice doctor in the white pages and take Delia in for a checkup. Delia had reluctantly agreed.

  “We didn’t do anything criminal,” Morgan said. “We didn’t have no money, hey, and she had her baby and there we were.” He waved his hand up the road.