by Greg Bear
For Stella. For Mitch.
When she could stand it no more and sleep was stealing the last of her thoughts, she ordered the light to turn off, rolled over in bed, and moved her lips, Thank you. I hope.
You are hope.
But she could not help asking one more question. Why are you doing this? Why talk to us at all?
She stared at the wall opposite the bed, then dropped her focus to the cover rising with her knees above the bed. Her eyes widened and her breath slowed. Through the shadowy grayness of the cover, Kaye seemed to look into an infinite and invisible fount. The fount poured forth something she could only describe as love, no other word was right, however inadequate it was; love never-ending and unconditional. Her heart thudded in her chest. For a moment, she was frightened—she could never deserve that love, never find its like again on this Earth.
Love without condition—without desire, direction, or any quality other than its purity.
“I don’t know what that means,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Kaye felt the vision, if that was what it was, withdraw and fade—not out of resentment or anger or disappointment, but just because it was time to end. It left a mellow, peaceful glow behind, like candles thick as stars behind her eyes.
The wonder of that, the awesome wonder, was too much for her. She laid her head back and stared into the darkness until she drifted off to sleep.
Almost immediately, it seemed, she dreamed of walking over a field of snow high in the mountains. It did not matter that she was lost and alone. She was going to meet someone wonderful.
17
OREGON
The high desert morning was warm and it was barely seven o’clock. Mitch walked across the motel parking lot, swung his bag into the battered old truck’s side seat and shielded his eyes against the sun over the low, gray eastern hills. An hour to the Spent River. Half an hour to the outlying camp. He had his instructions from Eileen, and one more warning: Don’t breathe a word to anyone. No students, no wives, no girlfriends, no dogs, no cats, no guinea pigs: Got it?
He got it.
He pulled out of the Motel 50 parking lot, scraping his bumper on the way. The old truck was on its last few thousand miles; it smelled of singed oil and was starting to cough blue smoke on the grades. Mitch loved big old trucks and cars. He would be sad to see the truck die.
The motel’s red sign grew tiny in his mirror. The road was straight and on either side lay rolling brown terrain daubed with greasewood and sage and low, stubby pines and an occasional sketchy line of fence posts, leaning and forlorn, the wire broken and coiled like old hair.
The air got cooler as the truck climbed the gentle grade into the high country. The Spent River was not on the itinerary of most tourists. Surrounded by forest, in the long shadow of Mount Hood, it consisted of a winding, flat sandy bed cutting through black lava cliffs, leaving tufty islands and curving oxbows. The river itself hadn’t flowed for many thousands of years. It was not well known to archaeologists, and with good reason; the geological history of alternating floods—gravel beds filled with pebbly lava and rounded bits of granite and basalt—and periodic eruptions of lava made it hellacious to dig and disappointing to those who did. Indians had not built or stayed much in these areas over the last few thousand years.
Out of time, out of human interest, but now Eileen Ripper had found something.
Or she had looked into the sun too long.
The road mesmerized him after a while, but he was jounced to full alertness when it started to get rough from washouts. The land had taken on a five o’clock stubble of trees and grass. The asphalt switched to gravel.
A small state sign came and went: spent river recreation area: three miles. The sign looked as if it had been out in the sun for at least fifty years.
The road curved west abruptly, and as he turned, Mitch caught a gleam about a mile ahead. It looked like a car windshield.
The old truck barked out blue smoke as he took a short grade, then he spotted a white Tahoe and saw a stocky figure standing up and waving from the open driver’s door. He pulled over to the side of the road and draped his arm out the window. Enough grip remained in his hand to clutch the door frame and make the gesture look casual.
Eileen had gone completely gray. Her clothes and skin and hair had weathered to the color of the land out here.
“I recognized your taste in trucks,” Eileen said as she walked across the gravel shoulder. “God, Mitch, you’re as obvious as a sailor with a stack of two-dollar bills.”
Mitch smiled. “You’re a regular Earth mother,” he said. “You should at least wear a red scarf.”
Eileen pulled a rag from her pocket and draped it from her belt. “Better?”
“Just fine.”
“How’s your arm?” she asked, patting it.
“Limp,” Mitch said.
“We’ll put you on toothbrush detail,” she said.
“Sounds good. What have you got?”
“It’s dishy,” Eileen said. “It’s grand.” She did a little jig on the gravel. “It’s deadly dangerous. Want to come see?”
Mitch squint-eyed her for a moment. “Why not?” he said.
“It’s just over there,” she said and pointed north, “about ten more miles.”
Mitch scowled. “I’m not sure my truck will make it.”
“I’ll follow and scoop up parts.”
“How can you tell me when to turn?” Mitch asked.
“It’s a game, old friend,” Eileen said. “You’ll have to sniff it out, same as I did.” She smiled wickedly.
Mitch squinted harder and shook his head. “For Christ’s sake, Eileen.”
“Older than Christ by at least eighteen thousand years,” she said.
“You should wear thicker hats,” he said.
Eileen looked tired beneath the bravado. “This is the big one, Mitch. In a couple of hours, I swear to God you won’t even know who you are.”
18
ARIZONA
At eleven in the morning, Stella walked with all the girls from their barracks through a gate in the razor wire fence to the open field, attended by Miss Kantor and Joanie and five other adults.
Once a week, the counselors and teachers let the SHEVA children mingle coed on the playground and under the lunch table awnings.
The girls were uncharacteristically quiet. Stella felt the tension. A year ago, going through the fence to socialize with the boys had been no big deal. Now, every girl who imagined herself a deme maker was plotting with her partners as to which boys would be best in their group. Stella did not know what to think about this. She watched the demes form and disintegrate and reform in the girl’s dorms, and her own plans changed in her head from day to day; it was all so confusing.
The sky was sprinkled with broken clouds. She shaded her eyes and looked up and saw the moon hanging in the pure summer blueness, a wan face blankly amused by their silliness. Stella wondered what the moon smelled like. It looked kindly enough. It looked a little simple, actually.
“Single file. We’re going to South Section Five,” Miss Kantor told them all, and waved her hand to give them direction. The girls shuffled where she pointed, cheeks blank.
Stella saw the boys come through their own fence line from the opposite rows of barracks. They were more touching heads and weaving and pointing out the girls they noticed. They smiled like goofs, cheeks brown at this distance with indistinguishable color.
“Oh, joy,” Celia said listlessly. “Same old.”
The sexes would be allowed to mingle with heavy supervision for an hour.
“Is he here?” Celia asked. Stella had told her last night about Will.
Stella did not know. She hadn’t seen him yet. She didn’t think it likely. She indicated all this with a low whistle, a few desultory freckles, and a twitch of her shoulders. “My, you’re-KUK touchy,” Celia said. She bumped shoulders with Stella as they walked. Stella did not mind.
“I don’t know what
they expect us to do in an hour,” Stella said.
Celia giggled. “We could try to-KUK kiss one of them.”
Stella’s brows formed an uneven pair of curves and her neck darkened. Celia ignored this. “I could kiss James Callahan. I almost let him hold my hand last year.”
“We were kids last year,” Stella said.
“What-KUK are we now?” Celia asked.
Stella was looking down a line of boys drawn up in the sun beside the lunch table awnings. The tallest she recognized immediately.
“There he is,” she said, and pointed him out to Celia. Three other girls moved in and followed her point, all smelling of aroused curiosity—smoke and earth.
Will stood, looking at the ground with shoulders slumped and hands stuck firmly in his pockets. The other boys seemed to be ignoring him, which was to be expected; boys didn’t cloud as quickly with newcomers as girls did. It would take Will a few days to form tight bonds with his barracks partners.
Or maybe not, Stella thought, watching him. Maybe he never would.
“He’s not very pretty,” said Felice Miller, a small, brown-haired girl with thin, strong arms and thicker legs.
“How do you know?” asked Ellie Gow. “You can’t smell him from here.”
“He wouldn’t smell pretty, either,” Felice said disdainfully. “He’s too tall.”
Ellie winced. She was known for her sensitivity to sounds and a preference for talking while lying under a blanket. “What’s that got to do with a cat’s fart?”
Felice smiled tolerantly. “Whiskers,” she said.
Stella paid no attention to them.
“Someone you met when you were young can exert a profound influence,” Felice continued.
“I didn’t see him for very long,” Stella admitted.
Celia quickly told them the story of Stella and Will, speaking in her halting double, while the counselors and teachers huddled and arranged the rules of the confab. The rules changed week to week. Today, on the outskirts of the field, three men stood watching them with binoculars.
Nine months ago, Stella had been taken aside and driven to the hospital with five other girls after such a meeting. They had all given blood and one, Nor Upjohn, had suffered other indignities she would not describe, and afterward she had smelled like a mildewed orange, a warning scent.
The girls made their formation, four long columns of fifty each. The counselors did not try to stop them from talking, and Stella saw that some of them—possibly all—had turned off their nosies.
Will looked across the brown grass and gravel at the lines of girls. His brows drew into a narrow straight line and he seemed to be sucking on something sour. His matted hair was cut jagged and his cheeks were hollow pits, as if he had lost some teeth. He looked older than the others, and tired. He looked defeated.
“He’s not pretty, he’s ugly,” Felice said, and with a shrug turned her attention to the other boys they had not seen before. Stella had counted the new arrivals on the bus: fifty-three. She had to agree with Felice. Whatever her memory of Strong Will, this fellow was no one’s idea of a good deme partner.
“You want to cloud with him?” Celia asked in disbelief.
“No,” Stella said, and looked away with a sharp pang of disappointment.
The woods were far away now for both of them.
“What’s anything got to do with toad skin?” Ellie asked nervously as the teachers started to shoo the rows and columns toward each other.
“Crow on the road,” Felice replied.
“What’s that have to do with apple feathers?” Ellie riposted by reflex.
“Oh, just-KUK grow,” Celia said. Her face wrinkled like a dried peach in a sudden despair of shyness. “Grow big and hide me.”
The lines drew up before the concrete lunch tables and the boys were pushed to go and sit, three to one side, leaving the opposite side of each table empty.
“What’ll we say?” Ellie asked, hiding her eyes as their turn approached.
“Same thing we always say,” Stella said. “Hello and how are you. And ask how their demes are growing and what they’re doing on the other side of the wire.”
“Harry, Harry, quite contrary,” Felice sang in an undertone, “how does your garden grow? Pubic hairs and wanton stares, making the hormones flow.”
Ellie told her to shush. Miss Kantor walked in front of the rows from their barracks. “All right, girls,” she said. “You may talk, you may look. You may not touch.”
But the nosies are turned off, Stella thought. The girls fanned out from the lines. Stella looked up at the cameras mounted on the long steel poles, swinging slowly right and left.
Ellie’s turn came and she ran off to join a table of boys whom, as far as Stella knew, she had never visited before. So much for shyness. Stella’s turn came, and of course whatever she had thought earlier, she moved toward the table where Will sat with two smaller boys.
Will hunched over the table, looking at the old food stains. The two smaller and younger males watched her approach with some interest and freckled each other. She thought she heard some under, difficult to be sure at this distance, and Will looked up. He did not seem to recognize her.
Stella was the only girl to sit at their table. She said hello to the two boys, and then focused on Will. Will rested his cheeks in the palms of his hands. She could not see his patterns, though she saw his neck darken.
“He’s in our barracks,” said the boy on the right, strong but short, Jason or James; the boy to the left of Will was named Philip. Stella had sat with Philip three weeks ago. He was pleasant enough, though she had learned quickly she did not want to cloud with him. Neither Jason/James nor Philip smelled right. She freckled Philip a butterfly greeting, friendly but not open, meaning no offense, etc.
“Why did you sit here?” Philip asked with a frown. “Doesn’t somebody else want to sit here?”
“I want to talk to him,” Stella said. She was not very good at dealing with the boys, but then few of the girls were. There were unspoken, unwritten rules, rules yet to be discovered, but this way of doing things was never going to make the rules any plainer.
“He doesn’t talk much,” Jason/James said.
“Girls play games,” Philip said resentfully.
“Nothing like human girls,” Will murmured, and looked up at her. The glance was brief, but Stella knew he remembered their last meeting. “They cut you like knives and you never know why.”
“Right,” Philip said. “Will lived among the savages.” Jason/James giggled at this, and made a gesture of tangled fingers Stella could not interpret.
“I passed,” Will said.
“Was it the woods?” Stella asked, hope flickering like a small ember.
“What?” he asked.
“They scrubbed him before he came to our barracks,” Philip said, just being informative. “His skin was red from soap.”
“Did you stay with your parents?” Will asked. He looked up and let her see his cheeks. They were blank, dark and raw. Most of Will’s neck and face were red and rough. Stella inhaled, only what was polite under the circumstances, and could still smell the Lysol and soap on his skin and clothes.
“Only for a few days,” Stella said. “I got sick.”
“I missed out on getting scabs,” Will said, touching between his fingers. The SHEVA kids referred to the disease that had killed so many of them as “scabs” or “the ache.”
“We’re going to another table,” Jason/James and Philip said, almost in unison.
“You two should be alone,” Philip added brusquely. “We can tell.”
Stella wanted to ask them to stay, but Will shrugged, so she shrugged as well. “They’re breaking the rules,” she said after they were gone.
“They can find a table with not enough boys,” Will suggested. “They’re making up rules in the barracks. Something about demes. What are demes?”
“Demes are families,” Stella said. “New families. We’re trying to f
igure out what they’ll look like when we’re grown up.”
Will looked directly at her once more, and Stella looked away, then covered her own cheeks. “It doesn’t matter,” Will said. “I don’t care.”
“I came over to say hello,” Stella said. He could not know what his words had meant to her. “You must have got away.” She watched him eagerly, hoping for his story.
“We’re talking human talk. Do you know the under and the over?”
“Yes,” Stella said. “Do you speak it the same way?”
“Not the way they do in the barracks,” Will admitted with a twitch of one arm. “Out on the road… It’s different. Stronger, faster.”
“And in the woods?” Stella asked.
“There are no woods,” Will said, face crinkling as if she had spoken some obscenity.
“When you got away, where did you go?”
Will looked up at the sky. “I can eat lots here,” he said. “I’ll get better, stronger, learn the smell, talk the two tongues.” He balled up his hands and bounced them lightly on the table, then against each other, thumb to thumb, as if playing a game. “Why are they letting us get together, boy-girl?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes they draw blood and ask questions.”
Will nodded.
“Do you know what they’re doing?” Stella asked.
“Not a clue,” Will said. “They teach nothing, like all the schools. Right?”
“We read some books and learn some skills. We can’t cloud or scent or we’re punished.”
Will smiled. “Stupid blanks,” he said.
Stella winced. “We try not to call them names.”
Will looked away.
“How long were you free?” Stella asked.
“They caught me a week ago,” Will said. “I’ve lived on my own and with runaways and street kids. Covered my cheeks with henna tattoos. Neck, too. Some human kids mark their faces to look like us, but everyone knows. They also claim to read thoughts and have better brains. Like they think we do. They say it’s cool, but their freckles don’t move.”