Darwin's Children

  “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 per
cent 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.

  Around the room, she smelled the other girls on their bunks and heard them moving quietly in the bars and shadows of moonlight. Some of them moaned. One and then another coughed and softly called out her friends' names.

  Celia rolled out of the bottom bunk and stood up beside Stella. Her eyes were large in the dim light, her face a moving blob of paleness framed by wild black hair. “Did you feel that?” she whispered.

  “Shh,” Stella said.

  Felice's face joined Celia's beside Stella's bed.

  “I think it's okay,” Stella said, almost too softly for them to hear.

  “We're getting-KUK our first periods,” Celia said.

  “All together?” Felice asked, squeaking.

  Someone in another bunk heard and giggled.

  “Shh,” Stella insisted, wrinkling her face in warning. She sat up and looked along the rows of bunks. Some of the younger girls—a year or more younger—were still asleep. Then, her back tingling, Stella looked up at the video cameras mounted in the rafters. Moonlight reflected from the linoleum floor glinted in their tiny plastic eyes.

  Four girls left their bunks and padded into the bathroom, walking bowlegged.

  Useless to hide it, Stella thought. They're going to know.

  And they would be even more frightened. She could predict that easily and with assurance. Everything different frightened the humans, and this was going to be very different.

  25

  OREGON

  Eileen set the Coleman lantern on a metal table and laid out the cold dinner: a nearly frozen loaf of white bread, Oscar Meyer bologna in a squat, rubbery cylinder, American cheese, and a chilled, half-eaten tin of Spam. A Tupperware box, yellow with age, contained cut celery stalks. She positioned two apples, three tangerines, and two cans of Coors beside this assortment. “Want to see the wine list?” she asked.

  “Beer will do. Breakfast of diggers,” Mitch said. The plastic roof of the hut over the long reach of the L-shaped excavation rattled in the wind rolling down the old riverbed.

  Eileen sat in the canvas seat of her camp chair and let out her breath in a sigh that was halfway to a shriek. But for them and the still-hidden bones, the excavation was empty. It was almost midnight. “I am dead,” she proclaimed. “I can't take this anymore. Dig ‘em out, don't dig ‘em out, keep your cool when the academics start to scrap about emergence violations. The whole goddamned human race is so primitive.”

  Mitch cracked his can and tossed back a long gulp. The beer, almost tasteless but for a prolonged fizz, satisfied him intensely. He put down the can and picked up a slice of cheese, then prepared to peel back the wrapping. He turned it into a grand gesture. Eileen watched as he lifted the slice, rotated it on tripod fingers, and then, using his teeth, delicately lifted and pulled off the intercalary paper. He glanced at her with narrowed eyes and raised one thick eyebrow. “Expose ‘em,” he said.

  “Think so?” Eileen asked.

  “Give me that old-time revelation. I'd rather see them personally than trust future generations to do it better. But that's just me.” The beer and exhaustion both relaxed Mitch and made him philosophical. “Bring them into the light. Rebirth,” he said. “The Indians are right. This is a sacred moment. There should be ceremonies. We should be appeasing their troubled spirits, and our own. Oliver is right. They're here to teach us.”

  Eileen sniffed. “Some Indians don't want their theories contradicted,” she said. “They'd rather live with fairy tales.”

  “The Indians in Kumash gave us shelter when Kaye was pregnant. They still refuse to hand their SHEVA kids over to Emergency Action. I've become more understanding of anybody the U.S. government has repeatedly lied to.” Mitch raised his beer in toast. “Here's to the Indians.”

  Eileen shook her head. “Ignorance is ignorance. We can't afford to hang on to our childhood blankies. We're big boys and girls.”

  Mostly girls, Mitch thought. “Are anthropologists any more likely to see what's under their noses?”

  Eileen pursed her lips. “Well, no,” she said. “We've already got two in camp who insist these can't possibly be Homo erectus. They're creating a tall, stocky, thick-browed variety of homo sap on their laptops even as we speak. We're having a hell of a time convincing the
m to keep their mouths shut. Ignorant bitches, both of them. But don't tell anybody I said so.”

  “Absolutely,” Mitch said.

  Eileen had finished assembling a Spam and American cheese sandwich, with two stalks of celery sticking out like lunate Gumby feet from the pressed layers of perfect crust. She bit into a corner and chewed thoughtfully.

  Mitch wasn't particularly hungry, not that he minded the food. He had eaten much worse on previous sites—including a meal of roasted grubs on toast.

  “Was it another SHEVA episode?” Eileen mused. “A massive leap between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens?”

  “I wouldn't think so,” Mitch said. “A little too radical even for SHEVA.”

  Eileen's speculative gaze rose beyond the rattling plastic roof. “Men,” she said. “Men behaving badly.”

  “Uh-oh,” Mitch said. “Here it comes.”

  “Men raiding other groups, taking prisoners. Not very choosy. Gathering up all the females with the appropriately satisfying orifices. Females only, whomever and whatever they might be.”

  “You think our absent males were raiders and rapists?” Mitch asked.

  “Would you date a Homo erectus? I mean, if you weren't at the absolute bottom of any social hierarchy?”

  Mitch thought of the mother in the cave in the Alps, more than a lifetime ago, and her loyal husband. “Maybe they were more gentle.”

  “Psychic flower children, Mitch?” Eileen asked. “I say these gals were all captives and they were abandoned when the volcano blew. Anything else is pure William Golding bullshit.” Eileen was pushing the matter deliberately, playing both proponent and devil's advocate, trying to clear her head, or possibly his.

  “I suppose the Homo erectus members of the group might have been slaves or servants—captives,” Mitch said. “But I'm not so sure social life was that sophisticated back then, or that there were such fine gradations of status. My guess is they were traveling together. For protection, maybe, like different species of herd animals on the veldt. As equals. Obviously, they liked each other enough to die in each other's arms.”