They all laughed, thinking it a joke. Which made Abner think again. Nefer had laughed too, which meant that sopaths could appreciate humor. Which meant in turn that humor was not connected to the soul. He hadn’t thought about it before. Thinking it was funny when a fat man slipped on a banana peel and fell on his bottom required no empathy, no real feeling for the man, who might be hurt. Humor could be cruel, as when bullies joked at a victims’ expense. Most humor was innocent, as this was, an oddity of names.
“No joke,” Abner said. “Those really are the names. Sweetpea formed around a large diabetes treatment complex.”
There was silence, so Bunty explained. “Diabetes is an illness affecting the metabolism of sugar. The body uses insulin to metabolize sugars, and diabetics either lack insulin or are unable to use it effectively. So sugar accumulates in the blood. To reduce it, the body gets extremely thirsty and produces a lot of urine, which can be quite sweet because of the sugar. The larger picture is more complicated than that, but that explains the name.”
There was a pause as the children figured it out. “Pee!” Clark said. “They pee a lot!”
“And it’s sweet from the sugar,” Dreda said.
“Sweetpea,” Nefer concluded. “It is a joke.”
“In origin, yes,” Abner agreed. “But diabetes can be lethally serious. Today, with more effective treatments, most sufferers get by tolerably well. Some take daily or hourly insulin shots, while some can get by on diet and exercise.”
“Type One and Type Two,” Clark said. “Now I remember. I had an uncle with it. He took shots.”
“Most Type Ones need shots,” Abner agreed. “Most Type Twos don’t. The complex was for type ones. At any rate, that’s in the past. In due course the complex moved elsewhere, and the town foundered economically but kept the name. Later a madman with a machine-gun mowed down half the remaining population before someone shot him to death. It was the worst tragedy to strike that part of the country. We don’t know whether that history is relevant to the current phenomenon.”
“Something’s going on,” Dreda said wisely. “A mystery.”
“A mystery that relates to Pariah,” Clark agreed.
“Yes,” Abner agreed. “It is this: there are no sopaths there. None are born.”
Now Nefer took note. “How can they be sure? Some sopaths are pretty good at hiding their nature. I’m one. I can always spot another sopath, but most soulers can’t.”
“Pariah has investigated,” Abner said. “Quietly, of course. But they’re sure. They think it was a sopath who gunned them down—he was just a child—but that’s the last one reported. Pariah wants to know why. Did the massacre shock the survivors into taking action to stop it from ever happening again? If there’s a secret to eliminating sopath births despite the shortage of souls, we really want to know it. That’s part of my mission: to ascertain the reason, if I can. Without alerting others to my investigation.”
“That’s going to be tricky,” Nefer said. “For one thing, how can you organize Pariahs if there are no sopaths? No sopaths means no sopath survivors. You have no connections.”
“Exactly,” Abner agreed, impressed again by her insight. “It’s likely to be difficult. But I understand there are survivors there, who have moved in from elsewhere. I may have to pose as an amateur researcher writing a book, a history of odd towns, gathering all the obscure information I can. Hoping that somewhere in there is the answer.”
“What about Sauerkraut?” Clark asked. “What’s its history?”
“It was settled by a semi-religious outfit as a commune. They believed in being fruitful and multiplying, trying for ten or more children per mother. It was really a fertility cult, and the suspicion is that many of the children were fathered by the cult leader. Its population expanded rapidly and it was a thriving community. They evidently had plenty of money to support their population. Then the commune abruptly moved to a distant location, leaving their facilities to be sold off relatively cheaply. It was a mystery why. There were rumors of a curse on the premises. But bargain hunters soon moved in, obtaining nice residences at dirt-cheap prices. It became a viable town again.”
“Where’s the catch?” Dreda asked.
“It was that curse. There were a number of bad accidents, and some whole families got wiped out. Nothing they could pinpoint, just extremely bad luck. More folk moved in, but they too were soon dogged by mischief as the curse caught up with them. Before long there was a mass exodus. A number of families moved to neighboring Sweetpea. But others moved in, because of the bargain houses. So Sauerkraut is a violent place, in contrast to Sweetpea, with especially violent children.”
“Sopaths!” Nefer exclaimed. “Sauerkraut has sopaths!”
“That would explain it,” Abner agreed. “But why would sopaths be born there, and not at nearby Sweetpea? That’s the current mystery.”
“Sweetpea didn’t share their secret,” Clark suggested.
“But the two towns get along very well. Shipments from outside, such as fuel, food, and building materials, come to central warehouses in Sweetpea, which then shares them with Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut workers go to Sweetpea for employment. There’s considerable economic and probably social exchange.”
The children were thoughtful. “Sopaths in one town, none in the other, but they work together,” Clark said. “That’s funny.”
“Not funny,” Dreda said. “Odd.”
“That’s what I meant, twerp.”
“Sweetpea has to know about the sopaths,” Nefer said. “And maybe lets them work there, if they behave. They can behave if they have reason to.” She herself being an example.
“But nobody wants more sopaths,” Clark said. “Except maybe sopaths themselves.”
“Sopaths don’t want more sopaths either,” Nefer said. “They can’t be trusted.”
“Not even you?” Dreda asked her.
“I don’t want more sopaths,” Nefer said. “They’re nothing but trouble. And you know the only reason I’m behaving is because I want to stay close to Abner and maybe some day get him into my pants. You can’t trust me to look out for anyone’s interest but my own.”
Clark looked at her. “What would you do if he did?”
Nefer paused thoughtfully. “If he fucked me? I mean, had sex with me?” She glanced quickly at Bunty. “Indulged me? I’d want him to do it again and again. I don’t think I’d ever get enough of it.”
Which was exactly what Bunty had said. Trust a woman to know the nature of such passion.
“So we could still trust you,” Dreda said, neither surprised nor shocked. “Because you’d have to keep behaving to get him to keep doing you.”
Nefer seemed surprised. “I guess so. I’m hooked. But I’m a rare case. Few sopaths ever get to know a souler well enough to fall in love, and few soulers would even give them the chance. You can’t trust any other sopaths.”
Abner and Bunty let the dialogue run its course. It actually was relevant to their mission, and it was confirming their prior judgment of Nefer’s motives.
“And Sweetpea must know not to trust them,” Clark said. “Unless there’s something just as big to make them behave. Maybe not love, but something else.”
“Fear,” Nefer said. “We value our own hides.”
“How could Sweetpea make them afraid?” Dreda asked.
“Beats me,” Nefer said.
“They must have something,” Abner said.
Dreda got a bright idea. “No sopaths in Sweetpea, because maybe they can wipe them out, and the sopaths know it, so they’re afraid.”
Nefer glanced at Abner. “Are they afraid?”
“There’s no indication of that,” Abner said. “It must be subtle, and sopaths aren’t much for subtlety.”
“The stupid ones aren’t,” Nefer said. “But smart ones can appreciate subtlety. I do. It’s smart sopaths you have to be wary of.”
“Yet the two towns get along well,” Bunty said. “That doesn’t seem like f
ear. More like respect.”
“Sopaths respect only love and power,” Nefer said. “Mostly power.”
Clark struggled to work it out. “If sopaths don’t want more sopaths born, and Sweetpea knows how to stop them, why doesn’t Sweetpea share?”
“And why isn’t Kraut mad if they don’t?” Dreda asked.
Nefer spread her hands. “Beats me,” she repeated.
The three looked at Abner. “So what’s the answer?” Clark asked.
“That is what we are going there to find out,” Abner said. “Because it could have global implications. I will need all of us to contribute to our effort. Someone may say something in the presence of a child, not thinking the child is listening or will understand.”
“We’ll do it,” Dreda said confidently.
“Focus on two things,” Bunty said. “Is there a way to stop sopaths being born? And is there a way to control sopaths without violence? We get along as a family, but as Nefer says, that’s unlikely to work on the scale of two towns. We are surely not going into a paradise of love.”
“What about sex?” Nefer asked. “We sopaths like sex and have no shame. Is Sweetpea a brothel?”
“Again, there is no evidence of that,” Abner said. “They don’t seem to have a red-light district.”
“So there’s something weird going on,” Clark concluded. “We’ll figure it out.”
“A caution,” Abner said. “There may be danger. The secret, whatever it may be, has been well kept. We have to appear as a naïve, innocent family. We don’t want them to catch on that Nefer isn’t a souler.”
“I can play the part,” Nefer said. “But I can tell a sopath when I see one. They’ll probably have smart sopaths who will recognize me regardless.”
“An alternative may be to let them believe that we don’t know your nature, as your family didn’t,” Bunty said.
Nefer nodded. “That could work. Sopaths infiltrate regular families all the time. We aren’t all destructive. Smart ones know they need the families.”
“Then I think we are done,” Abner said. “We can go about our family routine.”
They did. Nefer kept watch, while the other children went to bed. Bunty and Abner went to bed too. They made quiet love, knowing Nefer was tuning in on it, but inured to it. Nefer seemed not to be jealous; she merely wanted to seduce Abner to have his ultimate attention, and to prove she could do it. She knew that any hostility to Bunty on her part would turn him off and get her in instant trouble.
Abner slept. They had agreed to one hour shifts for the children, two hours for the adults. That would carry them through a seven hour night.
He woke later to find Nefer settling down beside him, having taken Bunty’s place in the shift change. Her bed was whichever one was unoccupied. She was unlikely to try anything, because Bunty was alert, being on watch, and because she knew Abner would reject it. But she did do one thing.
“Will you hold my hand, Abner?”
He smiled, took her hand, and returned to sleep. He hoped it would continue this easy, but suspected it would not.
Two hours later Bunty returned, having awakened Clark. The children had insisted on taking their turns rather than being coddled. Nefer went to take Clark’s bed. “Thanks, Abner,” she whispered as she departed.
“Welcome,” he answered, bemused.
“She never slept,” Bunty murmured. “She lay there thrilling to your touch. I believe she feels your soul, and that contact is like a drug, making her high.”
“Damn, this is dangerous,” he said. “As I said, I’m beginning to feel something for her.”
“She knows it. That’s what keeps her in line.”
“But Bunty, this can’t lead anywhere we want to go.”
“Would you ever knowingly be seduced by a sopath, even if she was mature and breathtakingly lovely?”
“No!”
“Or a child?”
“No.”
“Even one with a superlative singing voice?”
“No.”
She was silent. She had made her case. His emotions might be tempted by Nefer, but his logic would always triumph. The real danger would be when Nefer herself came to that conclusion. In that sense his guilty slight temptation was an advantage, because she picked up on it, underestimating the formidable restraints, and continued her courtship. But it still bothered him.
In the morning they handled the early routine and got back on the highway. All of them were pleased: they had successfully navigated their first night on the road.
The children took turns sitting up front with Abner as he drove. The first was Dreda. “I never saw her so happy,” she said. There was no need to clarify whom she meant. “She almost glowed in the dark.”
“I held her hand while I slept,” he said.
“I think she’d rather do that than get you into her pants, daddy.”
And here he was discussing sex with his five-year-old daughter. But the world had changed, and she had learned about sex the hard way. “Why?”
“‘Cause sex is over soon, but hands last.”
Could that be true for the sopath? Nefer surely knew that if he had sex with her, he would lose interest in sex for several hours thereafter, as any man did. But they could hold hands continuously, even while he slept. For her, that might well be preferable. That would be marvelous. “That much I can give her.”
CHAPTER 7
One of the perks of the position was constant contact with the national Pariah organization. Abner had a special cell phone that sent an automatic signal, tracking him. If that signal stopped, they would treat it as an emergency call and investigate immediately. He also used it to make ongoing reports, which he knew were recorded. Pariah wanted a complete record. No mysteries, secrets, or problems. Like the black box on airplanes, that record would help them fathom whatever might go wrong. When dealing with sopaths, as Pariah did, things were almost expected to go wrong.
“We have spent our first night on the road,” he reported during a rest stop. “No problems.”
The family and Nefer knew about the phone and record, but tuned them out. No one outside their family was supposed to know. If Abner was for any reason unable to carry the phone, one of the others would have to take it and make the reports. Even Nefer, ironically.
Their first stop was at a neighboring town that had a loose Pariah chapter but it wasn’t well organized. Their members were vaguely stigmatized, they were having trouble coping with the constant influx of new survivors, and they were horrified by the prospect of encountering more sopaths.
“You need a leader who can establish relations with the local police,” Abner said. “They will help you, if you learn to deal with sopaths.”
“But we don’t want any contact with sopaths!” their spokesman protested.
“By dealing with them I mean killing them,” Abner said bluntly. “You have already done it or you wouldn’t be survivors. It is the only way to be rid of them.”
“We just can’t do that,” the man said.
How well he understood. It was an expected answer. They had not had his military experience. His approach was intended as a kind of shock treatment. “Then avoid them as well as you can, and set up a school for survivors that has no sopaths in it. Set up a nondenominational church service too; you are apt to be excluded from conventional churches.”
The spokesman nodded appreciatively. “That we can do.” The man might have balked at the formidable task, but after appreciating the hell of killing children, he was glad to have an alternative.
“Another prospect is to form temporary families of survivors, so that the children are properly cared for and not discriminated against.”
“Families?”
“My family was killed by my sopath child, until I killed her. Here is my Pariah wife Bunty: her family was similarly killed. We came together not from love but necessity: I needed a woman in the house and she needed economic support. Soon enough it became love, but for your pur
pose that is not necessary. We took in two sopath-orphaned children, Clark and Dreda, here, and we love them too. We do not deny or forget our original families, but now we are functioning as a composite family.” He did not mention Nefer, who had remained to guard the motor home.
“From four real families?”
“Yes. Now we are a real family too. We never went through the paperwork of marriage or adoption, only a Pariah commitment, but we really are a family. You can do the same. It will be better for the children, and probably for the adults too. You all will have a common bond of understanding, as we do.”
“A family,” the man said. “But I may ask, what of, um--”
“We do make love,” Bunty said. “That is part of the commitment. We fill the complete roles we have assumed.”
“They sure do,” Clark said. “It gets disgustingly mushy.”
“And we have to go to our rooms,” Dreda said.
The assembled members of the chapter exchanged glances, realizing the prospects. They could recover much of what they had lost, without having to struggle to relate to those who had never had the devastating experiences they had had. Without formally marrying or adopting. On an ad hoc basis, to get by in this time of loss and confusion.
“It doesn’t have to be permanent,” Abner said. “A temporary family will do.” That would facilitate it, by allowing them to pool resources and take care of children without feeling that they were betraying their lost spouses or children. Functioning family units and a good, safe school would make this chapter far more viable, and the people far less miserable.
There were of course many details, and Bunty and the children helped relate to the women and children there. Everyone could see how much like a “real” family they seemed, and it didn’t hurt that they freely showed love to each other. It was a viable alternative to the grief-stricken chaos these folk otherwise faced. The semblance of families would soon enough become practical reality, as they had discovered themselves. The common bond of sopath horror, and their need for mutual support, would solidify it rapidly.