Darwin's Children

  “No way/ too young,” Stella said.

  “You were angled at my age/ hypocrite.”

  “Look what happened to me.” Not emphasized, but standing alone, no under.

  “He's a total cheer-fly,” Luce said with a musing glance. “Our bodies like each other.”

  “What's that got to do with a cat's fart?” Stella asked, irritated. “You're moth. You need to rise to bee.” Moth and bee were names for two levels of menarche in the Shevites. Women passed through three stages: the first, moth, receptive to sexual overtures but not to actual intercourse; the second, bee, sexually active but infertile—and this was still a guess, even to the Sakartvelos—to allow more subtle hormonal and pheromonal samplings and communications; and the third, wasp, total fertility, leading to sexual activity with prospects of pregnancy. Shevite females could actually fall back into bee stage if a deme broke up or an angling failed.

  Males started puberty at bee and from there went straight to wasp, sometimes within hours.

  “Lemon and Lime are old notion about that,” Stella added. Lemon and Lime were the fundamentals of the Sakartvelos. “They think you should wait.”

  “You didn't,” Luce said.

  “It was different,” Stella said, and freckled a warning that she did not like thinking about this, much less talking.

  “Lemon and Lime support you,” Luce said testily.

  “They didn't have much choice, did they?”

  A ten-year-old male named Burke walked to the end of the table and stood there shyly, hands folded in front of him, rocking on his heels.

  “What?” Stella snapped, facing him with cheeks flashing full gold.

  Burke backed off. “Lemon and Lime are down at the gate with some others. There's humans down there.”

  “So?”

  “They say they're your parents. Another brought them, the numb-nose delivery guy.”

  Stella slapped her hands on the table, then drummed them, shaking her head, making the plates rattle. Heads turned in the cafeteria, and two stood in case intervention was the consensus.

  Luce pushed back, never having seen her friend this disturbed.

  “It's not them,” Stella said, and swung her legs around on the bench, then got to her feet. “Not now.” She approached Burke, face and pupils ablaze in full accusative query, as if she wanted to punish him.

  “The woman smells like you!” Burke wailed, and then others surrounded them and prodded Stella aside with gentle elbow nudges. Touching with angry hands was considered very bad. Burke ran off, crying.

  “Go see,” Luce suggested, her own color flaring. Nobody was a better persuader than Luce. “If they're not your parents, they'll smoke them out of here and they'll forget everything. If they are your parents, you have to go.” She held out her spit-damp palms, as did others who had formed a circle around the table, but Stella refused them all.

  “I don't want to know!” she wailed. “I don't want them to know!”

  4

  Albert V. Bryan United States Courthouse

  ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

  Senator Laura Bloch greeted Christopher Dicken in the hall outside the courtroom. Dicken was dressed in his usual excuse for business wear, brown tweed jacket and corduroy pants with a wide tie completely out of fashion. Senator Bloch was dressed in a navy blue suit and carried a small briefcase. Behind her stood a younger balding man and a lone, harried-looking middle-aged woman, both wearing suits and carrying their own briefcases.

  “She's going to get off,” Bloch declared curtly. “She's painting herself as the cop on the beat who protected us all.”

  Dicken was not much on punishment, and did not look forward to having to testify.

  “I wonder what Gianelli would think,” Bloch added softly, staring at the benches, the lines of lawyers and witnesses waiting to be allowed into the courtroom to sit and wait until called.

  The sound of Mark Augustine's cane was unmistakable. Dicken and Bloch turned to see him making his way down the hall toward the courtroom. He nodded to his attorneys, spoke to them for a few seconds, eyes turning to Dicken, then broke away and stepped gingerly toward them.

  “Dr. Augustine,” Bloch said, and extended her hand.

  “Senator, pleasure to see you.” Augustine smiled and shook her hand, but kept his eyes on Dicken. “Sorry duty, eh, Christopher?”

  Dicken nodded. “How are you, Mark?”

  “Steep learning curve for us all,” Augustine said.

  Dicken nodded. He felt no triumph, only a hollow sensation of unfinished business.

  Augustine pursed his lips and took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. “Two items of news,” he said. “First, I've got Sumner's chief of staff, Stan Parton, on board for a reconciliation joint session. We're going to have a select few children in the House chambers, at the president's invitation. The vice president will be there.”

  “That's great,” Senator Bloch said, her eyes brightening. “Dick would have loved to hear that. When?”

  “Could be months. The other news is bad.”

  The last thing the group wanted was bad news. Bloch sighed and rolled her prominent eyes.

  “Let's have it,” Dicken said.

  “Mrs. Rhine slipped into a coma at six thirty this morning. She died at eleven fifteen.”

  Dicken felt his breath hitch.

  “She had been in pain for years,” Augustine said.

  “A blessing, really,” Bloch said.

  Dicken asked where a restroom was on this floor, then excused himself. In the echoing hollowness, he closed the door to a stall. No tears came. He did not even feel numb.

  “Funny world,” he whispered, and looked up at the ceiling, as if Mrs. Rhine might be listening. “Funny old world. Wherever you are, Carla, I hope it's better.”

  Then he stepped out of the stall, washed his hands, and returned to stand with Bloch and Augustine outside the courtroom.

  Rachel Browning and her attorneys had arrived and now huddled in a tight cluster about twenty feet from Augustine and Bloch. Her face had become deeply lined, pale as if cast in plaster, a death mask. She nodded to the tune of the attorneys' back-and-forth. One stopped to whisper in her ear.

  “I'm sorry for her,” Dicken said, vulnerable to the point of charity.

  “Don't be,” Augustine primly advised. “She'd hate that.”

  The court clerk opened the doors.

  “Let's go, gentlemen,” Bloch said. She placed her hands on their elbows and escorted them, three abreast, into the courtroom.

  5

  LAKE STANNOUS, CALIFORNIA

  Mitch held Kaye's hand as a group of more than twenty youths tightened its gyre around them. Morgan had been drawn aside and now stood surrounded by three young men. He held out his hands and smiled nervously, face flushed, windbreaker pulled off one shoulder. He looked surprised.

  Several other adolescents and a female in her late seventies were searching Morgan's truck, looking, Mitch guessed, for communications or tracking equipment. They were all quiet and serious.

  “We're trying to find a girl named Stella Nova,” Kaye repeated. The air was thick with persuasion. Mitch felt woozy and confused already, despite the nose plugs they had manufactured in the motel bathroom out of toilet paper and vanilla-scented lip balm.

  An older male, also in his seventies, with ruddy cheeks and an unruly halo of reddish hair shot with gray, came through the gyre and reached to take Mitch's and Kaye's hands in his. He wore a denim jacket with brass buttons. Except for his round face and SHEVA features, he might have been an itinerant farmworker. “There was no need for you to come,” he said pressing their hands to his chest.

  “We're her parents,” Kaye said, eyes pleading. “We've been looking for her for years.”

  “She isn't here.” The old man's cheeks freckled in rapid patterns, unreadable, and his emerald green irises sparkled with yellow and brown. His accent was mild but Mitch could still detect a hint of eastern European. Mitch tried to thin
k clearly, tried to resist the onslaught. Any minute now, he was certain, they would all get back in the truck and drive away, sure they had made a mistake—no matter what Morgan would tell them had happened.

  For the first time, Mitch felt frightened, being among his daughter's people.

  The old woman stood beside the old man and spoke a stream of over-under in another language.

  “Georgian,” Kaye said to Mitch. Mitch and Kaye tried to pull their hands back, but the old man was strong and would not release them and Mitch did not want to start any kind of struggle. They stood in a tight triangle with the old man, who was no longer looking at them, but had focused on the old woman and the adolescents.

  “They're your friends!” Morgan shouted, struggling against the clasping arms, his voice breaking with anger and frustration. “I wouldn't bring no enemies here, you know that. She's famous! She's been on Oprah!”

  The old man let their hands go, but still the gyre of youths, red-headed, strawberry blond, sandy brunette, all colors—Mitch had never seen so many varieties of SHEVA child—stayed close and fever scented the air.

  Mitch doubted he would ever enjoy chocolate again.

  Kaye stammered a few words of Georgian, then asked the old couple, in English, “When did you come here? Where are you from?”

  “Stella!” Mitch shouted at the buildings adjoining the turnaround.

  The old man touched his finger to Mitch's lips. Mitch bent his head like a submissive dog and fell silent.

  “Please,” Kaye pleaded. Mitch supported her as her legs gave way.

  “Go home,” the old man said.

  “Go home,” the children said in many voices, over and under, a rising, singing, all-too-convincing and reasonable murmur in the late afternoon warmth.

  Mitch saw something from the corner of his eye. He raised his head and stood on tiptoes to look over the crowd. A face he knew, like Kaye's, like his mother's, moved steadily toward the gyre from the direction of the gray buildings. He tried to keep the young woman in sight through the bobbing heads and singing mouths and gold-flecked eyes. She wore a baggy pair of black pants and clogs and a white sleeveless blouse. Her shoulders were narrow, like Kaye's, and her arms were tanned to a reddish bronze, like a statue in a park. Her cheeks formed a butterfly pattern that Mitch recognized instantly, the complicated expression revealing both surprise and uncertainty, and then unwitting greeting.

  “She's here!” Mitch said, choking.

  Kaye saw Stella and stood up straight and tried to shove her way out of the circle. The youths crowded in to stop her.

  Stella stopped outside the gyre, arms crossed, looking this way and that as if she had not found what she had come looking for, or did not want to see it.

  Kaye beat at the young people to get free, using no words, just grunts and shrieks.

  Stella suddenly dashed forward and grabbed at the members of the gyre.

  The old man lifted his hands, the woman did the same, and the gyre dropped back, leaving Kaye and Mitch and Stella at the center of a loose and expanding crowd.

  A breeze whispered through the trees and across the gravel turnaround and dispelled the scent. Stella hugged her mother, then reached around Kaye's shoulder and grabbed Mitch's arm and pulled him in, as well.

  Other youths arrived, curious, waiting to join in and do whatever was necessary.

  “See!” Morgan shouted triumphantly. “Would I shit you? Man, let them be! They're family!”

  They said good-bye and thanks to Morgan, and Mitch shook his hand. Morgan was sternly told by the old Shevite man that he was not to return again, ever.

  “Hey, it was worth it,” Morgan said defiantly. He waved farewell as Stella led Mitch and Kaye to a small meeting room at the back of the old bowling alley.

  “They're unhappy that you're here,” she said, pulling out chairs around a battered wooden table. She motioned for them to sit. The window at the back of the room was dark; night had fallen. “They don't want us to be found.”

  “Who are they?” Kaye asked, too sharply, but she could not help herself. “Cult leaders? What are their names, Bo and Peep?”

  “I don't know what you mean,” Stella said.

  “They wouldn't talk with me,” Kaye said, trying to control her agitation. “Do they hate us so much?”

  Stella shook her head, unable to answer for the moment. She could not easily explain how complicated an answer to that question might be.

  “I sympathize with all of you,” Kaye said. “We both do, Stella. They have a marvelous story, I'm sure of it, but we have been looking for so long, we were so afraid!” She pounded the table hard enough to make the floor vibrate and the window rattle.

  Mitch placed his hands over hers. “We've both been searching.” He watched Stella with alternating expressions of relief and anger.

  “I'm sorry,” Stella said. “Will and I came here after the bus accident. It was for the best.”

  “Will?” Mitch asked. “Was he the boy?” John Hamilton had told them about putting Stella and Will in the car with Jobeth Hayden. Hayden had been arrested by state police in Nevada and turned over to the FBI, but she had never been charged with anything.

  She had had no idea where the children might have gone. Piles of crumpled paperback pages had been found in her car.

  “You saw him in Virginia, in the long building where you found me. Where the girl died,” Stella said.

  “I don't remember much about him,” Mitch said.

  “He was my friend,” Stella said. She turned to Mitch, examining his face with shy, flicking glances, her own face turning dark and her pupils dropping down to pinpricks. Mitch had never seen his daughter looking so down, so discouraged.

  “Was?”

  “He's dead.”

  “How did he die?” Kaye asked.

  Stella shook her head and looked away.

  “Did he fit in, here?” Kaye asked cautiously.

  Stella shook her head once more. “He lived with humans too long. They hurt him. They made him wild. He couldn't fit with any deme, not even mine.”

  “You've lived with humans,” Kaye said softly.

  “Not the same.”

  “Stella, are you pregnant?” Mitch asked, and Kaye jerked as if kicked.

  “Yes,” Stella said.

  Kaye's jaw clenched. Mitch moved his hand to Stella's shoulder. “Will?”

  “Yes,” Stella said.

  Kaye moaned, then wrapped her hands around her mouth and jaw. Stella stared at the window, unwilling to witness her mother's anguish.

  “He's the father,” Mitch said.

  “I went to wasp so quickly,” Stella said. “It seemed so right, and he was sweet and gentle, with me, when he was away from the others.”

  “Did they kill him?” Mitch asked.

  Stella shook her head and her cheeks went a lovely shade of sienna, which, Mitch knew, signified a very unlovely emotion: grief. Her cheeks had taken a similar color when they had found Shamus huddled dead in the kudzu, years ago. Lifetimes away. “He stopped eating. Nobody could force him. Nobody would. I don't know why; we can do so much with some who are ill. I stayed with him. We played games. It was his decision. He said he did not fit. He was in such pain, he became so far away.”

  Kaye laid her head on the table. Mitch saw glints of tears falling from her eyes, darkening the scarred wood.

  “He couldn't be with us, and he couldn't be anything he wanted to be away from us. Something was broken inside of him. He knew he would never be right with us or anybody else. Yevgenia and Yuri—our hosts—they tried everything they knew.”

  “There is so much to learn,” Kaye murmured, and turned her head toward her daughter.

  “He did not want to live, at the end,” Stella said. “We buried him in the woods.” She shook her head vigorously. “No more talk about Will.”

  Kaye got up and stood behind her daughter. “Can we stay for a while?” she asked Stella. “Be with you? Help around here, maybe?”

/>   “I don't know,” Stella said.

  “Do you want us to stay?” Mitch asked.

  Stella stroked Kaye's fingers where they rested on her collarbone. “Yes,” she said.

  “Are we the first . . . from the old kind of people, to come here, to visit?” Kaye asked.

  “No,” Stella said. “There are four more. An old man and three old women. They lived at Oldstock when Yevgenia and Yuri bought the place, and they stayed. The man does maintenance and they all work in the cafeteria.”

  “So it wouldn't be unprecedented. Maybe they can explain some things to us,” Kaye suggested.

  “I'd like you to be here when the baby comes,” Stella said. “That would be good.”

  Kaye lay her cheek on the crown of Stella's head. “I would be so proud,” she said. “Is there a doctor here?”

  “Yevgenia and Yuri were doctors in Russia,” Stella said. “Mine will be the first baby born here.”

  “Like mother, like daughter,” Mitch said with a hint of his old reluctance. “Pioneers.” His wife and Stella ventured smiles.

  “You could sing to the baby, like you did to me,” Stella said. “You have a good voice, for babies.”

  “She's right,” Kaye said. “What if it's a boy?”

  “It is,” Stella said. “I can smell him. He smells like Will, inside me.”

  6

  SPENT RIVER, OREGON

  Some said the turning point had come. Kaye was not so sure. After all the years of struggle she could hardly imagine a time of reconstruction, of engagement and change. As she sat with her husband and the three girls in the back of the long passenger van, jouncing along the rutted trails beneath the white glare of Mount Hood, what she felt inside was a kind of frozen patience.

  She held her husband's arm and stared between the driver and the Secret Service agent sitting up front. Then she turned to look back at Stella and Celia and LaShawna, and John Hamilton behind them. The girls—young women now—were stiff as dolls, their eyes large. They had watched the landscape change from high arid brush to farms and pear orchards and then to thin forest; saying little, pushed close together on the bench seat. John was looking out the back window at where the long line of vans and cars had been.