Darwin's Children

  Kaye shaded her eyes against the sun and looked up at bloated gray clouds advancing shoulder to shoulder along the southern horizon. The air smelled sullen and jumpy.

  If Stella had planned this, she would have run off after Mitch left for Washington. Mitch had left between six and seven. That meant her daughter had at least an hour's head start. That realization shoved an icicle down Kaye's spine.

  Calling the police was not wise. Five years ago, Virginia had reluctantly acquiesced to Emergency Action and had begun rounding up the new children and sending them to camps in Iowa, Nebraska, and Ohio. Years ago, Kaye and Mitch had withdrawn from parent support groups after a rash of FBI infiltrations. Mitch had assumed that Kaye in particular was a target for surveillance and possibly even arrest.

  They were on their own. They had decided that was the safest course.

  Kaye took off her slippers and ran barefoot back to the house. She would have to think like Stella and that was difficult. Kaye had observed her daughter as a mother and as a scientist for eleven years, and there had always been a small but important distance between them that she could not cross. Stella deliberated with a thoroughness Kaye admired, but reached conclusions she often found mystifying.

  Kaye grabbed her handbag with her wallet and ID, pulled on her garden shoes, and exited through the back door. The small primer gray Toyota truck started instantly. Mitch maintained both their vehicles. She ground the tires down the dirt driveway, then caught herself and drove slowly along the country lane.

  “Please,” she muttered, “no rides.”

  8

  Walking along the dirt margin of the asphalt road, Stella swung the plastic Gatorade bottle, rationing herself to a sip every few minutes. An old farm field plowed and marked for a new strip mall stretched to her right. Stella tightrope-walked a freshly cured concrete curb, not yet out of its mold boards. The sun was climbing in the east, black clouds stacked high in the south, and the air spun hot and full of the fragrances of dogwood and sycamore. The exhaust of cars going by, and a descending tail of carbon from a diesel truck, clogged her nose.

  She felt at long last that she was doing something worthwhile. There was guilt, but she pushed aside concern for what her parents would think. Somewhere on this road she might meet someone who would not argue with her instincts, who would not feel pain simply because Stella existed. Someone like herself.

  All her life she had lived among one kind of human, but she was another. An old virus called SHEVA had broken loose from human DNA and rearranged human genes. Stella and a generation of children like her were the result. This was what her parents had told her.

  Not a freak. Just a different kind.

  Stella Nova Rafelson was eleven years old. She felt as if she had been peculiarly alone all her life.

  She sometimes thought of herself as a star, a bright little point in a very big sky. Humans filled the sky by the billions and washed her out like the blinding sun.

  9

  Kaye swung left just beyond the courthouse, turned the corner, drove half a block, and pulled into a gas station. When she had been a child, there had been little rubber-coated trip wires that caused a bell to ding whenever a car arrived. There were no longer any wires, no bell, and nobody came out to see what Kaye needed. She parked by the bright red-and-white convenience store and wiped tears from her eyes.

  She sat for a minute in the Toyota, trying to focus.

  Stella had a red plastic coin purse that held ten dollars in emergency money. There was a drinking fountain in the courthouse, but Kaye thought Stella would prefer something cold, sweet, and fruity. Odors of artificial strawberry and raspberry that Kaye found repugnant, Stella would wallow in like a cat in a bed of catnip. “It's a long walk,” Kaye told herself. “It's hot. She's thirsty. It's her day out, away from mom.” She bit her lip.

  Kaye and Mitch had protected Stella like a rare orchid throughout her short life. Kaye knew that, hated the necessity of it. It was how they had stayed together. Her daughter's freedom depended on it. The chat rooms were full of the agonized stories of parents giving up their children, watching them be sent to Emergency Action schools in another state. The camps.

  Mitch, Stella, and Kaye had lived a dreamy, tense, unreal existence, no way for an energetic, outgoing young girl to grow up, no way for Mitch to stay sane. Kaye tried not to think too much about herself or what was happening between her and Mitch, she might just snap, and then where would they be? But their difficulties had obviously had an effect on Stella. She was a daddy's girl, to Kaye's pride and secret sadness—she had once been a daddy's girl, too, before both her parents had died, over twenty years ago—and Mitch had been gone a lot lately.

  Kaye entered the store through the glass double doors. The clerk, a thin, tired-looking woman a little younger than Kaye, had out a mop and bucket and was grimly spraying the counter and floor with Lysol.

  “Excuse me, did you see a girl, tall, about eleven?”

  The clerk raised the mop like a lance and poked it at her.

  10

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  A tall, stooped man with thinning white hair sauntered into the office carrying a worn briefcase. Gianelli stood up. “Congressman, you remember Mitch Rafelson.”

  “I do, indeed,” Wickham said, and held out his hand. Mitch shook it firmly. The hand was dry and hard as wood. “Does anybody know you're here, Mitch?”

  “Dick snuck me in, sir.”

  Wickham appraised Mitch with a slight tremor of his head. “Come over to my office, Mitch,” the congressman said. “You, too, Dick, and close the door behind you.”

  They walked across the hall. Wickham's office was covered with plaques and photos, a lifetime of politics.

  “Justice Barnhall had a heart attack this morning at ten,” Wickham said.

  Mitch's face fell. Barnhall had consistently championed civil rights, even for SHEVA children and their parents.

  “He's in Bethesda,” Wickham said. “They don't hold out much hope. The man is ninety years old. I've just been speaking with the Senate minority leader. We're going to the White House tomorrow morning.” Wickham laid his briefcase down on a couch and stuck his hands in the pockets of his chocolate brown slacks. “Justice Barnhall was one of the good guys. Now the president wants Olsen, and he's a corker, Mitch. We haven't seen his like since Roger B. Taney. A lifelong bachelor, face like a stoat, mind like a steel trap. Wants to undo eighty years of so-called judicial activism, thinks he'll have the country by the balls, six to three. And he probably will. We're not going to win this round, but we can land a few punches. Then, they'll lash us on the votes. We're going to get creamed.” Wickham stared sadly at Mitch. “I do love a fair fight.”

  The secretary knocked on the door jamb. “Congressman, is Mr. Rafelson here?” She looked right at Mitch, one eyebrow cocked.

  Gianelli asked, “Who wants to know?”

  “Won't use her name and sounds upset. System board says she's on a disposable cell phone using an offshore line. That's no longer legal, sir.”

  “You don't say,” Wickham said, looking out the window.

  “My wife knows I'm here. No one else,” Mitch said.

  “Get her number and call her back, Connie,” Wickham said. “Put it on the puzzler, and route it through, oh, Tom Haney's office in Boca Raton.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wickham gestured toward his desk phone. “We can link her line to a special scrambler for congressional office communications,” he said, but tapped his wristwatch. “Starts and ends with garbage, and unless you know the key, it all sounds like garbage. We change the key every call. Takes NSA about a minute or so to break it, so keep it short.”

  The secretary made the connection. Mitch stared between the two men, his heart sinking, and picked up the receiver on the desk.

  11

  SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY

  Stella sat in the shade of an old wooden bus shelter, clutching her book to her chest. She had been sitting there for a
n hour and a half. The Gatorade bottle was long since empty and she was thirsty. The morning heat was stifling and the sky was clouding over. The air had thickened with that spooky electric dampness that meant a big storm was brewing. All of her emotions had flip-flopped. “I've been really stupid,” she told herself. “Kaye will be so mad.”

  Kaye seldom showed her anger. Mitch, when he was home, was the one who paced and shook his head and clenched his fists when things got tense. But Stella could tell when Kaye was angry. Her mother could get just as angry as Mitch, though in a quiet way.

  Stella hated anger in the house. It smelled like old cockroaches.

  Kaye and Mitch never took it out on Stella. Both treated her with patient tenderness, even when they clearly did not want to, and that made Stella feel what she called steepy, odd and different and apart.

  Stella had made up that word, steepy, and lots of others, most of which she kept to herself.

  It was tough to be responsible for a lot, and maybe all, of their anger. Hard to know she was to blame for Mitch not being able to go dig up pottery and middens, old garbage dumps, and for Kaye not being able to work in a lab or teach or do anything but write articles and books that somehow never got published or even finished.

  Stella knit her long fingers and raised her knee, filling the hollow of the fingers and tugging her arms straight. She heard a vehicle and pushed back into the shadow of the enclosure, lifting her feet into the gloom. A red Ford pickup drove slowly by, clean, new, with a smooth white plastic camper on the back. The camper had a square shiny little door made of smoky plastic in the rear. It looked expensive, much nicer than the little Toyota truck or Mitch's old Dodge Intrepid.

  The red truck slowed, stopped, shifted smoothly into reverse, and backed up. Stella tried to squeeze into the corner, her back pressed against splintery wood. She suddenly just wanted to go home. She could find her way back, she was sure of it; she could find it by the smell of the trees. But car exhaust and pretty soon rain would make that harder. The rain would make it much harder.

  The truck stopped and the engine switched off. The driver opened his door and got out on the side away from Stella. She could only see a little bit of him through the truck's tinted windows. He had gray hair and a beard. He walked slowly around the truck bed and camper, the shadows of his legs visible under the frame.

  “Hello, Miss,” he said, stopping a respectful four or five yards from where she was trying to hide. He put his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts. In his mouth he clenched an unlit pipe. He adjusted the pipe with one hand, removed it, pointed it at her. “You live around here?”

  Stella nodded in the shadow.

  His goatee was all gray and neatly trimmed. He was potbellied but dressed neatly, and his calf-high socks and running shoes were clean and white. He smelled confident, what she could smell behind thick swipes of deodorant and the rum-and-cherry-scented tobacco tamped into the pipe.

  “You should be with your family and friends,” he said.

  “I'm heading home,” Stella said.

  “Bus won't come by again until this evening. Only two stops a day here.”

  “I'm walking.”

  “Well, that's fine. You shouldn't take rides with strangers.”

  “I know.”

  “Can I help? Make a phone call to your folks?”

  Stella said nothing. They had one secure phone at home, strictly for emergencies, and they bought disposable cell phones for occasional use. They always used a kind of family code when they talked, even with the disposables, but Mitch said they could identify your voice no matter how much you tried to change it.

  She wanted the man in shorts to go away.

  “Are your folks at home, Miss?”

  Stella looked up at the sun peeking through the clouds.

  “If you're alone, I know some people who can help,” he said. “Special friends. Listen. I made a recording of them.” He dug in his back pocket and pulled out a small recorder. He pressed a button and held out the machine for her to listen.

  She had heard such songs and whistles before, on TV and on the radio. When she had been three, she had heard a boy sing songs like that, too. And a few years ago, in the house in Richmond, the big brick house with the iron gate and the guard dogs and four couples, nervous, thin people who seemed to have a lot of money, bringing their children together to play around an indoor swimming pool. She vividly remembered listening to their singing and being too shy to join in. Sweet interweaves of tunes, like meadowlarks singing their hearts out in a berry patch, as Mitch had said.

  That was what she heard coming from the recorder.

  Voices like hers.

  Big drops of rain left crayon-jabs of wetness on the road and in the dirt. The sky and trees behind the man with the goatee flared icy white against the charcoal gray of the sky.

  “It's going to get wet,” the man said. “Miss, it isn't good to be out here by yourself. Heck, this shelter could even attract lightning, who knows?” He pulled a cell phone from his back pocket. “Can I call someone for you? Your mom or dad?”

  He didn't smell bad. In fact, he did not smell of much at all except for the rum-and-cherry tobacco. She had to learn how to judge people and even take chances. It was the only way to get along. She made a decision. “Could you call?” Stella asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “Just tell me their number.”

  12

  LEESBURG

  Mark Augustine placed his hand on the back of Rachel Browning's chair. The room was quiet except for the hum of equipment fans and a faint clicking noise.

  They were watching the plump man in khaki shorts, the red truck, the lanky, awkward girl that was Kaye Lang Rafelson's daughter.

  A virus child.

  “Is that your stringer, Rachel?”

  “I don't know,” Browning said.

  “A good Samaritan, maybe?” Augustine asked. Internally, he was furious, but would not give Browning the satisfaction of showing it. “He could be a child molester.”

  For the first time, Browning revealed uncertainty. “Any suggestions?” she asked.

  Augustine felt no relief that she was asking his advice. This would simply involve him in her chain of decisions, and that was the last thing he wanted. Let her hang herself, all by herself.

  “If things are going wrong, I need to make some calls,” he said.

  “We should wait,” Browning said. “It's probably okay.”

  The Little Bird hovered about thirty feet above the red truck and the bus stop, the paunchy middle-aged man and the young girl.

  Augustine's hand tightened on the back of the chair.

  13

  SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY

  The rain fell heavily and the air got darker as they climbed into the truck. Too late Stella noticed that the man had stuffed waxed cotton up his nose. He sat on the bench seat behind the wheel and offered her a mint Tic-Tac, but she hated mint. He popped two into his mouth and gestured with the phone. “Nobody answers,” he said. “Daddy at work?”

  She turned away.

  “I can drop you at your house, but maybe, if it's okay with you, I know some people would like to meet you,” he said.

  She was going against everything her parents had ever told her, to give him the house number, to sit in his truck. But she had to do something, and it looked as if today was the day.

  She had never walked so far from home. The rain would change everything about the air and the smells. “What's your name?” she asked.

  “Fred,” the man answered. “Fred Trinket. I know you'd like to meet them, and they surely would like to meet you.”

  “Stop talking that way,” Stella said.

  “What way?”

  “I'm not an idiot.”

  Fred Trinket had clogged his nose with cotton and his mouth sang with shrill mint.

  “Of course,” he said reasonably. “I know that, honey. I have a shelter. A place for kids in trouble. Would you like to see some pictures?” Trinket
asked. “They're in the glove box.” He watched her, still smiling. He had a kind enough face, she decided. A little sad. He seemed concerned about how she felt. “Pictures of my kids, the ones on the recorder.”

  Stella felt intensely curious. “Like me?” she asked.

  “Just like you,” Fred said. “You're sparking real pretty, you know that? The others spark the same way when they're curious. Something to see.”

  “What's sparking?”

  “Your freckles,” Fred said, pointing. “They spread out on your cheeks like butterfly wings. I'm used to seeing that at my shelter. I could call your house again, see if somebody's home, tell your daddy or mama to meet us. Should I?”

  He was getting nervous. She could smell that much, not that it meant anything. Everybody was nervous these days. He did not want to hurt her, she was pretty sure; there was nothing horny about his scent or his manner, and he did not smell of cigarettes or alcohol.

  He did not smell anything like the young men in the convenience store.

  She told herself again she would have to take chances if she wanted to get anywhere, if she wanted anything to change. “Yes,” she said.

  Fred pushed redial. The cell phone beeped the tune of the house number. Still no answer. Her mother was probably out looking for her.

  “Let's go to my house,” Fred said. “It's not far and there are cold drinks in the ice chest. Strawberry soda. Genuine Nehi in long-necked bottles. I'll call your mama again when we get there.”

  She swallowed hard, opened the glove box, and pulled out a packet of color photos, five by sevens. The kids in the first photo, seven of them, were having a party, a birthday party, with a bright red cake. Fred stood in the background beside a plump older woman with a blank look. Other than Fred and the older woman, the kids at the party were all about her age. One boy might have been older, but he was standing in the background.

  All like her. SHEVA children.

  “Jesus,” Stella said.