Darwin''s Radio

  Something had occupied his mind all day, however, even through the wedding ceremony. He had flubbed his simple lines of declaration, provoking mild laughter in the front rows in the chapel.

  Babies were being born alive. In the quarantine hospitals, in specially appointed Taskforce community clinics, and even in private homes, new babies were arriving.

  The possibility that he was wrong had occurred to him lightly, in passing, a kind of itch, until he heard that Kaye Lang’s baby had been born alive, delivered by a doctor working from emergency bulletins issued by the Centers for Disease Control, the very same epidemiological study team that had been put in place at his orders. Special procedures, special precautions; the babies were different.

  So far, twenty-four SHEVA infants had been dropped off at community clinics by single mothers or parents the Taskforce had not been tracking.

  Anonymous, alive foundlings, now under his care.

  The reception line came to an end. Feet aching in the tight black dress shoes, he hugged his bride, whispered in her ear, and motioned for Florence Leighton to join him in the main house.

  “What did Allergy and Infectious Diseases send us?” he asked. Mrs. Leighton opened the briefcase she had carried all day and handed him a fresh fax page.

  “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity,” she said. “The president called earlier, sends his best wishes, and wants you at the White House sometime this evening, earliest convenience.”

  Augustine read the fax. “Kaye Lang had her baby,” he said, looking up at her, eyebrows peaking.

  “So I heard,” Mrs. Leighton said. Her expression was professional, attentive, and revealed nothing.

  “We should send her congratulations,” Augustine said.

  “I’ll do that,” Mrs. Leighton said.

  Augustine shook his head. “No, you won’t,” he said. “We still have a course to follow.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Tell the president I’ll be there by eight.”

  “What about Alyson?” Mrs. Leighton asked.

  “She married me, didn’t she?” Augustine answered. “She knows what she’s getting into.”

  89

  Kumash County, Eastern Washington

  Mitch supported Kaye by one arm as she walked and waddled from one side of the room to the other.

  “What are you going to call her?” Felicity asked. She sat in the room’s single blue vinyl chair, rocking the sleeping baby gently in her arms.

  Kaye looked up at Mitch expectantly. Something about naming her child made her feel vulnerable and pretentious, as if this was a right even a mother did not deserve.

  “You did most of the work,” Mitch said with a smile. “You have the privilege.”

  “We need to agree,” Kaye said.

  “Try me.”

  “She’s a new kind of star,” Kaye said. Her legs were still wobbly. Her stomach felt slack and sore, and sometimes the pain between her legs made her feel a little ill, but she was improving rapidly. She sat on the side of the bed. “My grandmother was named Stella. That means star. I was thinking we’d name her Stella Nova.”

  Mitch took the baby from Felicity. “Stella Nova,” he repeated.

  “Sounds bold,” Felicity said. “I like it.”

  “That’s her name,” Mitch said, lifting the baby close to his face. He smelled the top of her head, the moist rich heat of her hair. She smelled of her mother and much more. He could feel cascades of emotions like tumbling blocks falling into place inside, laying a firm foundation.

  “She commands your attention even when she’s asleep,” Kaye said. Half-consciously, she reached up to her face and removed a dangling piece of mask, revealing the new skin beneath, pink and tender, with a radiance of tiny melanophores.

  Felicity walked over and bent to examine Kaye more closely. “I don’t believe I’m seeing this,” she said. “I’m the one who should feel privileged.”

  Stella opened her eyes and shuddered as if in alarm. She gave her father a long and puzzled look, then began to cry. Her cry was loud and alarming. Mitch quickly handed Stella to Kaye, who pulled aside her robe. The baby settled in and stopped crying. Kaye again savored the wonder of her milk letting down, the sensual loveliness of the child at her nipple. The child’s eyes surveyed her mother, and then she turned her head, tugging the breast with her, and peered around the room at Felicity and Mitch. The tawny gold-flecked eyes made Mitch’s insides melt.

  “So advanced,” Felicity said. “She’s a charmer.”

  “What did you expect?” Kaye asked softly, her voice taking on a faint warble. With a small shock, Mitch recognized some of the baby’s tone in her mother’s.

  Stella Nova warbled lightly as she suckled, like a small sweet bird. She sang as she nursed, showing her contentment, her delight.

  Mitch’s tongue moved behind his lips in restless sympathy. “How does she do that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kaye said. And it was evident that for the moment she did not care.

  “She’s like a baby of six months, in some ways,” Felicity said to Mitch as he carried the bags in from the Toyota to the trailer. “She seems to be able to focus already, recognize faces . . . voices . . .” She hmmed to herself, as if avoiding the one thing that really separated Stella from other newborns.

  “She hasn’t spoken again,” Mitch said.

  Felicity held the screen door open for him. “Maybe we were hearing things,” she said.

  Kaye laid the sleeping child in a small crib in the corner of the living room. She arranged a light blanket over Stella and straightened with a small groan. “We heard right,” she said. She went to Mitch and lifted a patch of mask from his face.

  “Ow,” he said. “It’s not ready.”

  “Look,” Kaye said, suddenly scientific. “We have melanophores. She has melanophores. Most if not all of the new parents are going to have them. And our tongues . . . Connected to something new in our heads.” She tapped her temple. “We’re equipped to deal with her, almost as equals.”

  Felicity appeared baffled by this shift from new mother to objective, observing Kaye Lang. Kaye returned her look with a smile. “I didn’t spend my pregnancy like a cow,” she said. “Judging from these new tools, our daughter is going to be a very difficult child.”

  “How so?” Felicity asked.

  “Because in some ways she’s going to run rings around us,” Kaye said.

  “Maybe in all ways,” Mitch added.

  “You don’t mean that, literally,” Felicity said. “At least she wasn’t born mobile. The skin color—the melanophores, as you call them—may be . . .” She waved her hand, unable to finish her thought.

  “They’re not just color,” Mitch said. “I can feel mine.”

  “So can I,” Kaye said. “They change. Imagine that poor girl.” She glanced at Mitch. He nodded, then explained to Felicity their encounter with the teenagers in West Virginia.

  “If I were in the Taskforce, I’d be setting up psychiatric stations for parents whose new children have died,” Kaye said. “They might face a new kind of grieving.”

  “All dressed up, and no one to talk to,” Mitch said.

  Felicity took a deep breath and held her hand to her forehead. “I’ve been in pediatrics for twenty-two years,” she said. “Now I feel like I should give up and go hide in the woods.”

  “Get the poor lady a glass of water,” Kaye said. “Or would you like wine? I need a glass of wine, Mitch. I haven’t had a drink in over a year.” She turned to Felicity. “Did the bulletin mention no alcohol?”

  “No problems. Wine for me, too, please,” Felicity said.

  Kaye put her face close to Mitch’s in the small kitchen. She stared at him intently, and her eyes lost their focus for a second. Her cheeks pulsed fawn and gold.

  “Jesus,” Mitch said.

  “Get that mask off,” Kaye said, “and we’ll really have something to show each other.”

  90

&nbs
p; Kumash County, Eastern Washington

  June

  Let’s call it a Brave New Species party,” Wendell Packer said as he came in through the screen door and handed Kaye a bouquet of roses. Oliver Merton followed with a box of Godiva chocolates and a big smile and eagerly darted his eyes around the inside of the trailer.

  “Where’s the little wonder?”

  “Asleep,” Kaye said, accepting his hug. “Who else is here?” she called out, delighted.

  “We smuggled in Wendell and Oliver and Maria,” Eileen Ripper said. “And, lo and behold . . .”

  She swung out her arms to the dusty old van sitting on the gravel drive under the lone oak tree. Christopher Dicken was climbing down from the front passenger side with some difficulty, his legs stiff. He took a pair of crutches from Maria Konig and turned to the trailer. His one good eye met Kaye’s and for a moment she thought she was going to cry. But he lifted a crutch and waggled it at her and she smiled.

  “It’s bumpy out here,” he called.

  Kaye ran past Mitch to gingerly hug Christopher. Eileen and Mitch stood together as Kaye and Christopher talked.

  “Old friends?” Eileen asked.

  “Probably soul mates,” Mitch said. He was glad to see Christopher, as well, but could not help feeling a little twinge of masculine concern.

  The living room was too small to hold them all, so Wendell braced his arm against the cabinet in the hall and looked down on the rest. Maria and Oliver sat together on the couch under the picture window. Christopher sat in the blue vinyl chair, with Eileen perched on one arm. Mitch came in from the kitchen with bouquets of wine glasses in each fist and a bottle of champagne under each arm. Oliver helped set them down on the round table beside the couch, and carefully popped the corks.

  “From the airport?” Mitch asked.

  “Portland airport. Not as big a selection,” Oliver said.

  Kaye brought out Stella Nova in a pink bassinet and placed her on the small, scuffed coffee table. The baby was awake. Her eyes moved sleepily around the room and she blew a tiny bubble of spit. Her head wobbled a bit. Kaye reached down to adjust her pajamas.

  Christopher stared at her as if she were a ghost. “Kaye . . .” he began, his voice breaking.

  “No need,” Kaye said, and touched his red-scarred hand.

  “There is a need. I feel like I don’t deserve to be here with you and Mitch, with her.”

  “Shush,” Kaye said. “You were there at the beginning.”

  Christopher smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

  “How old is she?” Eileen whispered.

  “Three weeks,” Kaye said.

  Maria reached out first and tucked her finger into Stella’s hand. The baby’s fingers closed tightly around it, and she tugged gently. Stella smiled.

  “That reflex is still there,” Oliver said.

  “Oh, shut up,” Eileen said. “She’s still a baby, Oliver.”

  “Yes, but she looks so . . .”

  “Beautiful!” Eileen insisted.

  “Different,” Oliver persisted.

  “I don’t see it much now,” Kaye said, knowing what he meant, but feeling a little defensive.

  “We’re different, too,” Mitch observed.

  “You both look fine, even stylish,” Maria said. “It’s going to be all the rage once the fashion magazines see you. Petite, beautiful Kaye . . .”

  “Rugged, handsome Mitch,” Eileen said.

  “With squid cheeks,” Kaye finished for them. They laughed, and Stella jerked in her bassinet. Then she warbled, and again the room fell silent. She honored each of the guests in turn with a second, lingering look, her head wobbling as she tracked them around the room, coming full circle to Kaye and then jerking again as she saw Mitch. She smiled at Mitch. Mitch felt his cheeks flush, like warm water running beneath his skin. The last of the skin masks had fallen away eight days before, and looking at his daughter was something of an experience.

  Oliver said, “Oh, my God.”

  Maria stared at all three of them, her jaw open.

  Stella Nova sent waves of fawn and gold over her cheeks, and her pupils dilated slightly, the muscles around her eyes and eyelids drawing the skin down in delicate and complex curves.

  “She’s going to teach us how to talk,” Kaye said proudly.

  “She is absolutely stunning,” Eileen said. “I’ve never seen a more beautiful baby.”

  Oliver asked permission to get closer and leaned in to examine Stella. “Her eyes really aren’t that large, they just look large,” he said.

  “Oliver thinks the next humans should look like UFO aliens,” Eileen said.

  “Aliens?” Oliver said indignantly. “I deny that statement, Eileen.”

  “She’s totally human, totally now,” Kaye said. “Not separate, not distant, not different. She’s our child.”

  “Of course,” Eileen said, blushing.

  “Sorry,” Kaye said. “We’ve been out here for too long, with too much time to think.”

  “I know about that,” Christopher said.

  “She has a really spectacular nose,” Oliver said. “So delicate, yet broad at the base. And the shape—I do believe she’s going to be a spectacular beauty.”

  Stella watched him soberly, her cheeks colorless, then looked away, bored. She tried to find Kaye. Kaye moved into the baby’s field of view.

  “Mama,” Stella chirped.

  “Oh, my God,” Oliver said again.

  Wendell and Oliver drove out to the Little Silver store and bought sandwiches. They all ate at a small picnic table behind the trailer in the cooling afternoon. Christopher had said very little, smiling stiffly as the others spoke. He ate his sandwich on a patch of straw-dry lawn, sitting in a rickety camp chair.

  Mitch approached and settled down beside him on the grass. “Stella’s asleep,” he said. “Kaye’s with her.”

  Christopher smiled and took a sip from a can of 7UP. “You want to know what brings me all this way out here,” he said.

  “All right,” Mitch said. “That’s a start.”

  “I’m surprised Kaye was so forgiving.”

  “We’ve gone through a lot of changes,” Mitch said. “I must say it seemed you abandoned us.”

  “I’ve gone through a lot of changes, too,” Christopher said. “I’m trying to piece things back together. I’m going down to Mexico day after tomorrow. Ensenada, south of San Diego. On my own.”

  “Not a vacation?”

  “I’m going to look into the lateral transmission of old retroviruses.”

  “It’s bullshit,” Mitch said. “They made it up to keep the Taskforce going.”

  “Oh, something’s real enough,” Christopher said. “Fifty cases so far. Mark’s not a monster.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.” Mitch stared grimly at the desert and the trailer.

  “But I am thinking it may not be caused by the virus they’ve found. I’ve been looking over old files on Mexico. I found similar cases from thirty years ago.”

  “I hope you set them straight soon. It’s been nice here, but we could have done a lot better . . . under other circumstances.”

  Kaye came out of the trailer holding a portable baby monitor. Maria handed her a sandwich on a paper plate. She joined Mitch and Christopher.

  “What do you think of our lawn?” she asked.

  “He’s looking into the Mexican illnesses,” Mitch said.

  “I thought you quit the Taskforce.”

  “I did. The cases are real, Kaye, but I don’t think they’re directly related to SHEVA. We’ve been through so many twists and turns on this—herpes, Epstein-Barr. I guess you got the bulletin from the CDC on anesthesia.”

  “Our doctor did,” Mitch said.

  “We might have lost Stella without it,” Kaye said.

  “More SHEVA babies are being born alive now. Augustine’s got to deal with that. I just want to level the field a little by finding out what’s going on in Mexico. All the cases are down
there.”

  “You think it’s from another source?” Kaye asked.

  “I’m going to find out. I can walk a little now. I’m hiring an assistant.”

  “How? You’re not rich.”

  “I’ve got a grant from a rich eccentric in New York.”

  Mitch’s eyes widened. “Not William Daney!”

  “The same. Oliver and Brock are trying to put together a journalistic coup. They thought I could gather evidence. It’s a job, and hell, I believe in it. Seeing Stella . . . Stella Nova . . . really brings it home. I just didn’t have the faith.”

  Wendell and Maria walked over from the oak tree and Wendell pulled a magazine out of a paper sack. “Though you might like to see this,” Maria said, handing it to Kaye.

  She looked at the cover and laughed out loud. It was a copy of WIRED, and on the brilliant orange cover was printed the black silhouette of a curled fetus with a green question mark across the middle. The log line read “Human 3.0: Not a Virus, but an Upgrade?”

  Oliver joined them. “I’ve seen that,” he said. “WIRED doesn’t have much clout in Washington these days. The news is almost all grim, Kaye.”

  “We know,” Kaye said, brushing back a wisp of hair as the breeze picked up.

  “But here’s some good. Brock says National Geographic and Nature have finished peer review on his piece on the Innsbruck Neanderthals. They’re going to publish jointly in six months. He’s going to call it a confirmed evolutionary event, a subspeciation, and he’s going to mention SHEVA, though not prominently. Did Christopher tell you about Daney?”

  Kaye nodded.

  “We’re going to make an end run,” Oliver said, his eyes fierce. “All Christopher has to do is track down this virus in Mexico and out-think seven national laboratories.”

  “You can do it,” Mitch said to Christopher. “You were there first, even before Kaye.”

  The visitors were packing up for their long trip through the northern badlands and out of the reservation. Mitch helped Christopher into the passenger seat and they shook hands. As Kaye held a sleepy Stella and hugged the others, Mitch saw Jack’s pickup rolling down the dirt road.