Black Milk

by Robert Reed

  I waited a long while, and Dr. Florida merely stared at me. I could hear him taking slow breaths. He moved in his chair like someone terribly weak. He wasn’t the man who had stood on the pasture. He wasn’t even the despairing man sitting beside me with the surf pounding at the beach, his voice raging about the preciousness of life, and so on. This particular Dr. Florida glanced at Lillith, and he said, “Why don’t we drive? Someone might notice us sitting.”

  Lillith touched an intercom, telling the guard to drive through the area—in a natural fashion.

  Then Dr. Florida asked, “Are you surprised to see me, Ryder?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re a bright fellow,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  He touched a control panel, changing the image on the large screen. For a long while he did nothing but stare at the moon’s moon as it rose over a crater wall—a darkish lump now flaring with blue-white electrical light—and then he said, “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you blame me? For these terrible things?”

  I said, “No,” and paused. “They were accidents…”

  Lillith touched my shoulder. I was sitting on a small chair, and I could feel her long fingernails through my shirt. I could smell her old perspiration. The truck was moving, turning every so often and going nowhere; and I had to ask myself what was so important that Dr. Florida had gone to this much trouble on this particular day—

  “Accidents,” he said. “Accidents?” He seemed to weigh the word on his tongue, then he shook his head. “I really meant nothing but the best, Ryder. You believe me. Don’t you?”

  I kept quiet. I wanted to believe—

  “I wanted lifeless places to bloom. I told you that much when we talked last time…and it’s the absolute truth. Anything else you hear is wrong. Simply and totally wrong.”

  Lillith said, “Aaron,” as if to bolster him somehow.

  “You were helping life,” I said. I wished Mom could be here to hear his explanations. I wondered what she would say if she witnessed his deep sincerity for herself.

  “But it is my fault, Ryder. If I hadn’t started this insanity, none of this would have happened.” He breathed and looked at me, and his eyes came wide open for the first time. He seemed alert and clear-headed for the first time. “People are dead, Ryder.”

  “Tragedies happen,” Lillith told him. “You can’t carry the weight yourself, Aaron,” and she pulled her hand from my shoulder.

  “How many dead?” he wondered. “So far?”

  “And how many richer and happier because of you?” she asked.

  “Lillith,” he explained, “is my most loyal fan.” He smiled without joy or humor. “The fact of the matter is that whatever happens, good or awful, people will say certain things about me. And for a long, long while they’ll talk. Damning me for an eternity, I should think—”

  “Aaron?” said Lillith. “You don’t know that.”

  He blinked and told me, “I kept everything secret. Particularly once the hounds were loose…for as long as physically possible, I kept it hidden.” He breathed and said, “Ryder? Do you know why I worked so hard—why all of my people worked so hard—keeping the truth invisible?”

  I remembered what they had said on TV, about cowardice—

  “There was a rationale behind the deceit, son.”

  “A good rationale,” snapped Lillith.

  I waited.

  Dr. Florida smiled and sighed. He told me, “For fifty years, without pause, I’ve been enlarging the public’s consciousness. As bright as you might be, Ryder, I think you’re too young and naive to appreciate how fast people have come to accept tailoring. I did it with plants, then animals, and then people themselves. The larger part of the struggle hasn’t been scientific. Oh, no. We’ve always been able to do much, much more than the public believes possible. No, everything’s hinged on public moods and perceptions.” He shook his head. “I’ve labored long to build a society that could use and appreciate such special children as you.” He breathed deeply and lifted one hand to his face, examining it in an idle fashion. “Not that there aren’t wastes or injustices, no. And of course there are cruelties. Some of the tailored children are being scarred right now. I admit it. Troubles with their parents or their peers, and the scars will linger throughout their lives. Yes. Yes, it’s sad.” He breathed and said, “But growing up has never been easy, Ryder. Not in my time. Not in any. There are always days when it seems impossibly hard—”

  “Aaron?” said Lillith. “Aaron.”

  “Pardon me,” he offered. Then he grinned. “I’m rambling like an old fool, I fear.”

  I kept silent.

  “Imagine, dear boy. What would have happened had the world learned about the spark-hounds too soon? Do you sense my point? There are limits, strict and unbridgeable limits, as to what the average person accepts. Synthesize a unique organism, a virtual alien, and you’ve crossed those limits. I knew that when I started the project, and that’s why I maintained secrecy from the outset. And when the hounds were running free in some old tunnels, deep inside ‘Florida’s hell,’ I couldn’t very well make public announcements. The reasons for secrecy were just too enormous. You see?”

  “You had no choice,” said Lillith. Her expression was passionate and utterly convinced. “None.”

  He said, “The hounds were a mistake,” and he nodded. “I was old and mortal and rather obsessed with life and its sanctity. That’s why I made them in the first place. I didn’t believe anyone would ever occupy my position again—the money, the prestige, and so on—and so of course I had to be the pioneer. What government or corporation would have had the imagination to attempt such a feat—injecting life, robust and elegant, into a wild, empty world? It was my duty and my risk. Let this world debate my worth when I was dead, I decided. Damn me or make me sit on God’s right hand. Either way—”

  “But people adore you,” Lillith told him. “Even now.”

  “She means there have been no major backlashes, Ryder. Yes. People are generally holding their breath and expecting the best.”

  I said, “Shouldn’t they?” We? Me?

  He said nothing. I felt very cold when I saw him looking at me, his mouth closed and his hands wringing one another. Then Lillith said, “He’s devastated, Ryder. You must believe—”

  “In the best of all possible worlds,” he told me, “there will be an ugly backlash. There’s no escaping it. The dust will settle and a large number of adults will think for two minutes, maybe three, and then claim it’s wrong to tinker with life, for any reason and at any time.” He shook his head and said, “I can imagine the sorts of political and religious movements that will try to undo the good…and that’s in the best of all possible worlds, Ryder.”

  “Such a tragedy,” said Lillith.

  I looked at her, then at him, then I stared at the floor and listened to the purring of the truck’s engine.

  “My secrecy,” he admitted, “was a hopeless bid to protect you and your friends. And the billion-plus other children around the world.”

  “To protect us?” I whispered.

  “I was so afraid…afraid that if the world learned of the hounds, particularly if they weren’t beaten…well, I was sure hysteria and the fanatics would do worse things than shout and march. Much worse.”

  “We’ve been fortunate,” said Lillith. “No children have suffered. That we know of—”

  I’d never have guessed such a thing were possible. I said so.

  He said, “It is,” and shook his head. “There have been three maniacs, in three separate cities, who were making plans to assault schools and other places where ‘contaminated’ children could be found.” He sighed. “As sad as it seems.”

  Lillith touched me again. “We aren’t saying these things to scare you, Ryder. We want you to be informed.”

  I saw tears welling up in Dr. Florida’s eyes, and he leaned forward and grabbed
my hands. His own hands felt cool to the touch, like always, and they shook without strength. “In the best world possible, I promise you, I will care for everyone injured because of me and this business. I make that pledge to you just as I do to everyone I meet. Believe me.”

  I swallowed and asked, “What’s going to happen today?”

  No one spoke.

  “Are we going to win?”

  Lillith breathed, and Dr. Florida pulled away from me.

  “The soldiers are going to kill the hounds, aren’t they?” I asked. “Everyone says so!”

  And Dr. Florida explained, “Sometimes, Ryder…sad as it seems…public moods and public perceptions have no absolute worth. What happens, happens. I am sorry.”

  Once again he touched the controls and changed the image on the big screen. I saw the moon’s surface dissolve into salmon-colored clouds and the piercing wail of wind, and now the sun fell into view over the far horizon, tiny and bright in the soft bluish sky, and moving fast. I said, “Jupiter,” and he said, “Good,” and the camera tilted upwards, showing me the bulging clear plastic balloon—“Heated by laser light and the weak sunshine, Ryder”—plus the lightweight gondola encasing the camera itself. The wind shrieked and then paused, then it struck again, the gondola jerking and twisting with the impact. Then we looked down into those salmon-colored clouds, and somewhere in the back of my mind textbooks and science shows explained what I was seeing—the distances, the wind velocities, the mammoth proportions of the electrical blasts and the seething heat beneath everything. Jupiter seemed so very vast and beautiful, and Dr. Florida apparently read my mind. He said, “A shame it’s all empty, all this loveliness and no admirers,” and I started to cry.

  “Now don’t,” he warned. “Please?”

  I blinked at my tears. I felt so sick and sad, wishing everything were different. Clearing my throat, I said, “I’m scared. Sir.”

  He was crying too. He used the backs of his long hands to dry his cheeks, and he told me, “I’m terrified, Ryder. I wouldn’t want to lie to you or pretend otherwise.”

  Lillith seemed impatient. She touched my wrist and said, “Tell him.”

  I swallowed and waited.

  “About what’s happening today,” he said. “You should know one thing.”

  I said, “We won’t win,” with a flat, defeated voice.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I don’t think so, no.”

  “The eggs,” said Lillith. “Explain the eggs.”

  “What eggs?”

  A strange slender grin broke out on his face. He told me, “When I knew the secret would leak out—before that first explosion by several days, Ryder—I brought the high U.N. officials into the picture. I told them the story, and do you know what happened? They took the secret for their own. Yes, they did. They began to apply the governmental tricks used to control people’s attitudes. And they put shrouds over certain ugly facts.” He paused, then he asked, “Have you heard or seen anyone on TV, on any of the networks, discussing spark-hound eggs? In these last weeks?”

  I remembered nothing.

  “And do you know why? Because that’s part of the plan. They’ve obscured the eggs from the start.” He glanced at Lillith, then he told me, “Remember my lecture on Jupiter, if you will. All right? All that heat below, and the enormous pressures?”

  I said, “All right,” and glanced at the bright screen.

  “And you’re seeing it now. Here.” He tapped the screen with one knuckle lightly and said, “Enormous sheer winds and downbursts and vast turbulences that would rip apart the strongest hound nests. In time. It’s an abusive environment, Ryder. Even for the hounds. There are no close comparisons on the earth, but a pounding surf has similarities. Think of a beach. Water shifts and the winds blow, no good cover anywhere. And the native animals are prolific out of need. They need tough bodies and tough abundant eggs, all of the elements wanting them dead—”

  “For us,” said Lillith, “the eggs are the greater danger.” Her eyes were exhausted and sincere. “World governments are aware of the danger, and each is preparing its defenses—”

  “If we can’t sterilize the moon’s moon in one stroke,” said Dr. Florida, “then there’s a likelihood of infection. For us.”

  “We can’t count all the eggs,” said Lillith.

  “Not that we’re helpless, of course. And maybe with good shooting…well, we’ll see.”

  I started to cry again. I had to blow my nose, and I hunted for something to use but nobody paid attention to me. The two of them sat upright and motionless, and I found an old napkin stinking of mustard, blew hard and looked at Jupiter again. I listened to its raging winds and felt a chill, and I blew my nose again and folded the napkin over the wet warmness and tucked it into my pocket, out of sight. I said, “They’ll kill all of us, won’t they? Right?”

  “The hounds?” he responded. “If they arrive now, I don’t know how we could fight them.” He seemed to think for a moment, then he declared, “My labs are working nonstop trying to find a synthetic virus, any form of contagion, to cause epidemics. The problem is that the hounds are the most rigorously designed organisms of all time. From the first DNA strand we have kept them devoid of weaknesses. Believe me.”

  Lillith told me, “The eggs can tolerate enormous heat and pressure, you see. More than the adults, by several factors.”

  Dr. Florida nodded. “The eggs are buoyant and full of energy. They’ve got big super-loop yolks that can power a youngster until it and its fellows have a nest built.” He said, “Our simulations of hounds on the earth are sobering. Small nests lifted by warm air would drift on the wind, and the larger ones would settle and form hill-sized mounds, the mounds dotting a broiled, organic-impoverished landscape.”

  “Eggs don’t die easily,” said Lillith.

  “Nuclear fire will do the trick,” Dr. Florida told me.

  She said, “We can’t know how many eggs are in the moon’s moon. A hundred thousand? A million? We just don’t have the information.” Then she paused, adding, “Of course lasers and neutron beams will help—”

  “Absolutely!” he said. “Don’t count us out yet, Ryder!”

  But then their sudden courage was gone. They fell silent, and I felt the truck rolling and thought hard for a long while. Lillith called the driver on the intercom. She asked about people tagging along behind us, or anything else suspicious.

  The driver’s hard voice said, “Nothing. We’re clear.”

  I felt hollow now. Drained.

  Dr. Florida fixed his eyes on me. Then he put his hands on the arms of his chair, squeezing hard and asking me, “Do you ever ask yourself why I’m telling you secrets, Ryder? Have you ever wondered what I want?”

  “I do,” I admitted.

  “All of the time, I bet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well,” he said, “quite a long time ago, even before I saw you for the first time, I realized just how badly things might turn out. In the end. So I started drawing up a worst-case plan. And when I did happen to meet you and your friends—by the purest chance—I realized something at once. Without hesitation.”

  I waited.

  “This is a grave secret,” he said. “Let’s both hope you can keep it to yourself for years and years, maybe for the rest of your long life. Okay? Maybe everything will work out, every last hound and egg killed, and just maybe I can die with a shred of my dignity intact—”

  “We have an outlet,” said Lillith. “An escape.”

  “Exactly.” He sighed and said, “I won’t explain the details, but we’ve come today to tell you that we’re thinking of you and that you and your friends need not be terrified for your own lives.”

  “Everything’s ready,” said Lillith.

  “I wish there hadn’t been this need for a sudden assault,” he confided to me. “The soldiers aren’t ready. And we’re struggling to make ready. What I was planning to do…if the attack happened in a week or so…was come to yo
u and your folks. No need for this drama, this camouflage,” and he lifted his hands, gesturing at our surroundings. “What with the chaos of the moment, I felt I owed you some explanations. And some warning—”

  “We’ll still come talk to your parents,” said Lillith. “If there’s any need.”

  I swallowed and managed to say, “I don’t understand.”

  “These friends of yours?” he said. “They’re your very best friends in the world, aren’t they? You rely on them for countless things, and the five of you are a unit. A team. Isn’t that so?”

  Lillith said, “You’re all quite talented. We’ve seen your records, and we’re certain that you merit the honor.”

  “Honor?” I asked. I started to move in my chair.

  Dr. Florida said, “We’re making ready for the worst possible end, Ryder. That’s all I can tell you now.”

  “Don’t mention this to anyone,” said Lillith.

  “Not even to your parents,” Dr. Florida warned.

  “Or anyone,” Lillith added. She pressed at me with one hand, not wanting me to move.

  I tried standing anyway. I said, “Don’t. Please.”

  “We don’t wish to seem cruel,” said Dr. Florida, “but the chances are good that we’ll see you again. You must try to prepare yourself mentally. Ryder? You’re the perfect candidate, Ryder.”

  I was weeping again, pushing at Lillith’s arm.

  “This isn’t going well,” she admitted.

  “Try concentrating, Ryder. Be brave, for God’s sake.”

  “You’ll be safe,” Lillith assured me. “Whatever happens—”

  “And your friends too,” Dr. Florida said. “Plus other children.”

  “Many others, Ryder.”

  “I want out,” I muttered. “Please? Now?”

  Dr. Florida glanced at Lillith, his eyes saying that this wasn’t as he’d imagined it. But he said, “Fine. We’ll take you straight home.”

  “Now!” I cried. “Let me go now!”