Darwin's Children d-2

by Greg Bear

  “Shovel-shaped,” Eileen said.

  Mitch rubbed his limp hand to still the tingling and looked at the others as if all of them might be crazy. “Gertie is much too early. She looks like Broken Hill 1. She’s Homo erectus.”

  “Obviously,” Fitz said with a sniff.

  “They’ve been extinct for more than three hundred thousand years,” Mitch said.

  “Apparently not,” Eileen said.

  Mitch laughed and stood back with a snap as if he had been leaning over a wasp that had suddenly taken flight. “Jesus.”

  “Is that it?” Eileen asked. “Is that the most you can say?” She was kidding, but her tone had an edge.

  “You’ve had longer to get used to it,” Mitch said.

  “Who says we’re used to it?” Eileen asked.

  “What about the fetus?”

  “Too early and too little detail,” Fitz said. “It’s probably a lost cause.”

  “I’m thinking we should drive a tube, take a thin core sample, and PCR mitochondrial DNA from the remaining integuments,” Merton said.

  “Dreamer,” Fitz said. “They’re twenty thousand years old. Besides, the lahar cooked them.”

  “Not to mush,” Merton countered.

  “Think like a scientist, not a journalist.”

  “Shh,” Eileen said in deference to Mitch, who was still staring at the rolled-out screen, mesmerized. “Here’s what we have on the central group,” she said, and paged through another set of ghostly images. “Gertie and Charlene are outliers. These four are Hildegard, Natasha, Sonya, and Penelope. Hildegard was probably the oldest, in her late thirties and already racked with arthritis.”

  Hildegard, Natasha, and Sonya were clearly Homo sapiens. Penelope was another Homo erectus. They lay entwined as if they had died hugging each other, a mandala of bones, elegant in their sad way.

  “Some of the hardliners are calling this a flood deposition of unassociated remains,” Fitz said.

  “How would you answer them?” Eileen challenged Mitch, reverting to his teacher of old.

  Mitch was still trying to remember to breathe. “They’re fully articulated,” he said. “They have their arms around each other. They don’t lie at odd angles, tossed together. This is in no way a flood deposit.”

  Mitch was startled to watch Fitz and Eileen hug each other. “These women knew each other,” Eileen agreed, tears of relief dripping down her cheeks. “They worked together, traveled together. A nomadic band, caught in camp by a burp from Mount Hood. I can feel it.”

  “Are you with us?” Fitz asked, her eyes bright and suspicious.

  “Homo erectus. North America. Twenty thousand years ago,” Mitch said. Then, frowning, he asked, “Where are the males?”

  “To hell with that,” Fitz fumed. “Are you with us?”

  “Yeah,” Mitch said, sensing the tension and Eileen’s discomfort at his hesitation. “I’m with you.” Mitch put his good arm around Eileen’s shoulders, sharing the emotion.

  Oliver Merton clasped his hands like a boy anticipating Christmas. “You realize that this could be a political bombshell,” he said.

  “For the Indians?” Fitz asked.

  “For us all.”

  “How so?”

  Merton grinned like a fiend. “Two different species, living together. It’s as if someone’s teaching us a lesson.”

  23

  NEW MEXICO

  Dicken showed his pass at the Pathogenics main gate. The three young, burly guards there—machine pistols slung over their shoulders—waved him through. He drove the cart to the valet area and presented the pass for his car.

  “Going for a drink,” he told the serious-faced middle-aged woman as she inspected his release.

  “Did I ask?” She gave him a seasoned, challenging smile.

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Don’t tell us anything,” she advised. “We have to report every little thing. Vodka, white wine, or local beer?”

  Dicken must have looked flustered.

  “I’m joking,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She returned driving his leased Malibu, adapted for handicapped drivers.

  “Nice setup, all the stuff on the wheel,” she said. “Took me a bit to figure it out.”

  He accepted the inspection pass, made sure it was completely filled out—there had been some trouble with such things yesterday—and slipped it into a special holder in the visor. The sun was lingering over the rocky gray-and-brown hills beyond the main Pathogenics complex. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Enjoy,” the valet said.

  He took the main road out of the complex and drove through rush hour traffic, following the familiar track into Albuquerque, then pulled into the parking lot of the Marriott. Crickets were starting up and the air was tolerable. The hotel rose over the parking lot in one graceless pillar, tan and white against the dark blue night sky, proudly illuminated by big floodlights set around stretches of deep green lawn. Dicken walked into a low-slung restaurant wing, visited the men’s room, then came out and turned left to enter the bar.

  The bar was just starting to crowd. Two regulars sat at the bar—a woman in her late thirties, looking as if life and her partners had ridden her hard, and a sympathetic elderly man with a long nose and close-set eyes. The worn-down woman was laughing at something the long-nosed man had just said.

  Dicken sat on a tall stool by a high, tiny table beside a fake plant in an adobe pot. He ordered a Michelob when the waitress got around to him, then sat watching the people come and go, nursing his beer and feeling miserably out of place. Nobody was smoking, but the air smelled cold and stale, with a tang of beer and liquor.

  Dicken reached into his pocket and withdrew his hand, then, under the table, unfolded a red serviette. He palmed the serviette over the damp napkin on the table, also red, and left it there.

  At eight, after an hour and a half, his beer almost gone and the waitress starting to look predatory, he pushed off the stool, disgusted.

  Someone touched his shoulder and Dicken jumped.

  “How does James Bond do it?” asked a jovial fellow in a green sport jacket and beige slacks. With his balding pate, round, red Santa nose, lime green golf shirt bulging at the belly, and belt tightened severely to reclaim some girth, the middle-aged man looked like a tourist with a snootful. He smelled like one, too.

  “Do what?” Dicken asked.

  “Get the babes when they all know they’re just going to die.” The balding man surveyed Dicken with a jaundiced, watery eye. “I can’t figure it.”

  “Do I know you?” Dicken asked gravely.

  “I’ve got friends watching every porthole. We know the local spooks, and this place is not as haunted as some.”

  Dicken put down his beer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Is Dr. Jurie your peer?” the man asked softly, pulling up another stool.

  Dicken knocked his stool over in his haste to get up. He left the bar quickly, on the lookout for anyone too clean-cut, too vigilant.

  The balding man shrugged, reached across the table to grab a handful of peanuts, then crumpled Dicken’s red serviette and slipped it into his pocket.

  Dicken drove away from the hotel and parked briefly on a side street beside a used car lot. He was breathing heavily. “Christ, Christ, Cheee-rist,” he said softly, waiting for his heart to slow.

  His cell phone rang and he jumped, then flipped it open.

  “Dr. Dicken?”

  “Yes.” He tried to sound coldly professional.

  “This is Laura Bloch. I believe we have an appointment.”

  Dicken drove up behind the blue Chevrolet and switched off his engine and lights. The desert surrounding Tramway Road was quiet and the air was warm and still; city lights illuminated low, spotty cumulus clouds to the south. A door swung open on the Chevrolet and a man in a dark suit got out and walked back to peer into his open window.

  “Dr. Dicken?�
�

  Dicken nodded.

  “I’m Special Agent Bracken, Secret Service. ID, please?”

  Dicken produced his Georgia driver’s license.

  “Federal ID?”

  Dicken held out his hand and the agent whisked a scanner over the back. He had been chipped six years ago. The agent glanced at the scanner display and nodded. “We’re good,” he said. “Laura Bloch is in the car. Please proceed forward and take a seat in the rear.”

  “Who was the guy in the bar?” Dicken asked.

  Special Agent Bracken shook his head. “I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea, sir.”

  “Joke?” Dicken asked.

  Bracken smiled. “He was the best we could do on short notice. Good people with experience are kind of in short supply now, if you get my meaning. Slim pickings for honest folks.”

  “Yeah,” Dicken said. Special Agent Bracken opened the door and Dicken walked to the Chevrolet.

  Bloch’s appearance was a surprise to him. He had never seen pictures and at first he was not impressed. With her prominent eyes and fixed expression, she resembled a keen little pug. She held out her hand and they shook before Dicken slid in beside her on the rear seat, lifting his leg to clear the door frame.

  “Thank you for meeting with me,” she said.

  “Part of the assignment, I guess.”

  “I’m curious why Jurie asked for you,” Bloch said. “Any theories?”

  “Because I’m the best there is,” Dicken said.

  “Of course.”

  “And he wants to keep me where he can see me.”

  “Does he know?”

  “That NIH is keeping an eye on him? No doubt. That I’m speaking with you, now, I certainly hope not.”

  Bloch shrugged. “Matters little in the long run.”

  “I should get back soon. I’ve been gone a little too long for comfort, probably.”

  “This will just take a few minutes. I’ve been told to brief you.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Mark Augustine said you should be prepped before things start happening.”

  “Say hello to Mark,” Dicken said.

  “Our man in Damascus,” Bloch said.

  “Beg your pardon? I don’t get the reference.”

  “Saw the light on the road to Damascus.” She regarded Dicken with one eye half closed. “He’s being very helpful. He tells us Emergency Action is soon going to be forced to do some questionable things. Their scientific underpinnings are coming under severe scrutiny. They have to hit pay dirt within a certain window of public fear, and that window may be closing. The public is getting tired of standing on tiptoes for the likes of Rachel Browning. Browning has put all her hopes on Sandia Pathogenics. So far, she’s keeping the Hill off her back by appealing to fear, national security, and national defense, all wrapped in tight secrecy. But it’s Mark’s belief that Pathogenics will have to violate some pretty major laws to get what they want, even should it exist.”

  “What laws?”

  “Let’s leave that open for now. What I’m here to tell you is that the political winds are about to shift. The White House is sending out feelers to Congress on rescinding Emergency Action’s blanket mandate. Cases are coming up in the Supreme Court.”

  “They’ll support EMAC. Six to three.”

  “Right,” Bloch said. “But based on our polling, we’re pretty sure that’s going to backfire. What’s the science look like so far, from the Sandia perspective?”

  “Interesting. Nothing very useful to Browning. But I’m not privy to what’s going on with all the samples brought in from Arizona—”

  “The Sable Mountain School,” Bloch said.

  “That’s the main source.”

  “Goddamned bastard is consistent.”

  Dicken sat back and waited for Bloch’s face to clear an expression of angry disgust, then concluded, “There’s no evidence that social interaction or stress is causing viral recombination. Not in SHEVA kids.”

  “So why is Jurie persisting?”

  “Momentum, mostly. And fear. Real fear. Jurie is convinced that puberty is going to do the trick. That, and pregnancy.”

  “Jesus,” Bloch said. “What do you think?”

  “I doubt it. But it’s still a possibility.”

  “Do they suspect you’re working with outside interests? Beyond NIH, I mean?”

  “Of course,” Dicken said. “They’d be fools not to.”

  “So, what is it with Jurie—a death wish?”

  Dicken shook his head. “Calculated risk. He thinks I could be useful, but he’ll bring me into the loop only when it’s necessary and not a second before. Meanwhile, he keeps me busy doing far-out stuff.”

  “How do the others feel about what Pathogenics is doing?”

  “Nervous.”

  Bloch clenched her teeth.

  Dicken watched her jaw muscles work. “Sorry not to be more helpful,” he said.

  “I will never understand scientists,” she murmured.

  “I don’t understand people,” Dicken said. “Anybody.”

  “Fair enough. All right,” Bloch said. “We have about a week and a half. Supreme Court is scheduled to release their decision on Remick v. the state of Ohio. Senator Gianelli wants to be ready when the White House is forced to cut a deal.”

  Dicken fixed her gaze and raised his hand. “May I have my say?”

  “Of course,” Bloch said.

  “No half measures. Bring them down all at once. Tell the big boys Department of Health and Human Services needs to revoke EMAC’s blanket national security exception to 45 CFR 46, protection of human subjects, and exceptions to 21 CFR parts 50 and… amended, what is it, 312? 321? Informed consent waiver for viral national emergency,” Dicken said. “Are they going to do that?”

  Bloch smiled, impressed. “21 CFR 50.24 actually applies. I don’t know. We’ve got some institutional review boards coming over to our side, but it’s a slow process. EMAC still funds a boatload of research. Get us whatever you can for ammunition. I don’t want to sound crass, but we need outrage, Dr. Dicken. We need more than just pitiful bones in a drawer.”

  Dicken tugged nervously on the door handle.

  “We’re on the knife edge of public opinion here. It could go either way. Understand?” Bloch added.

  “I know what you need,” Dicken said. “I’m just disgusted that it’s gone this far, and we’ve become so difficult to shock.”

  “We don’t claim any moral high ground, but neither the senator nor I are in this for political advancement,” Bloch said. “The senator’s approval rating is at an all-time low, thirty-five percent, twenty percent undecided, and it’s because he’s outspoken on this issue. I’m beginning to take a dislike to our constituents, Dr. Dicken. I really am.”

  Bloch offered him her small, pale hand. He paused, looking into her steady black eyes, then shook it and returned to his car.

  Special Agent Bracken closed his door for him and leaned down to window level. “Some friends in the New Mexico State Police tell me that citizens around here aren’t happy about what’s going on at Sandia,” he said. “They—the police, and maybe the citizens—plan to engage in some civil disobedience, if you know what I mean. Not much we can do about it, and damned few details. Just a heads up.”

  “Thanks,” Dicken said.

  Bracken tapped the roof of the car. “Free to go, Dr. Dicken.”

  24

  ARIZONA

  Stella awoke before dawn and stared at the acoustic tile ceiling over her bunk. She was instantly vigilant, aware of her surroundings. The dormitory was quiet but she smelled something funny in the air: an absence. Then she realized she couldn’t smell anything at all. A peculiar sensation of claustrophobia came over her. For a moment, she thought she saw a pattern of dark colors form a circle over her bunk. Little flashes of red and green, like distant glowing insects, illuminated the circle, became tiny faces. She blinked, and the circle, the lights, the faces faded into
the shadowy void of the ceiling tiles.

  Stella felt a chill, as if she had seen a ghost.

  Her thighs were damp. She reached under the covers with her hand and brought up her finger, curling it to keep the sheet clean. The finger was tipped with a smudge of black in the moonlight shining through the windows. Stella made a little sound, not of fear—she knew what it probably was, Kaye had explained it years ago to her—but of deeper recognition.

  Just that afternoon, she had seen spots of blood on a toilet lid in the bathroom. Not her own; some other girl’s. She had wondered if somebody had cut herself.

  Now she knew.

  With a sigh, she wiped the blood on her nightgown, beneath the fabric of her short sleeve, then thought for a moment, and touched the finger to the tip of her tongue. The sensation—taste was not really the right word—was not entirely pleasant. She had done something that seemed to violate her body’s rules. But slowly her sense of smell returned. The sensation on her tongue lingered, sharp with an undertone of mystery.

  I’m not ready, she thought. And then remembered what Kaye had told her: You won’t believe you’re ready. The body propels us.

  She lifted the sheets with her knees and then let them drop, wafting her own scent through the small gaps around her midriff. She smelled different, not unpleasant, a little sour, like yogurt. She liked her earlier smell better. She recognized it. This new smell was not welcome. She did not need any more difficulties.

  I don’t care. I’m just not ready.

  She shivered suddenly, as if a ropey loop of emotion had been pulled, rasping, through her body, then felt a sudden contraction of muscles around her abdomen, a cascade of unexpected pleasure. The tip of her tongue seemed to expand. Her entire body flushed. She did not know whether she was dreaming or what was happening.

  Stella kicked back the covers, then rolled on her side, wincing at the stickiness, wanting to get up and get clean, wash away the new smell. Slowly, as the minutes passed, she relaxed, closed her eyes. Natural stuff. Not so bad. Mother told me.

  Her nostrils flared. Currents of slow air moved around the dormitory, propelled by drafts through the doorways, cracks in the ceiling; at night, it was possible sometimes for girls to scent and communicate, reassure each other, without getting out of bed. Stella was reasonably familiar with the circulation patterns of the building at different hours and with the wind outside coming from different directions.