Daryl Gregory - The Devil's Alphabet

“It just seems so much worse than what I remember from the Changes,” Pax said. “Our Changes.”

“It’s a lot more people,” she said.

“Yeah, there’s that. But it’s just that this time I know what’s coming, you know?” He’d seen Deke and Jo and his father transform. He’d watched his mother die. In the space of a few months he’d attended the funerals of dozens of friends and relatives.

“So this is bringing it all back to you. The trauma.”

“What? No.” He shook his head. “Look, I’m not saying it wasn’t terrible. People in Lambert screaming at us, and then when those boys were murdered… but it didn’t wound me for life or anything. I moved on, even if other people couldn’t let it go. A year after it all I’d still catch my cousins looking at me all misty-eyed-oh, the poor boy from Switchcreek.”

“You sound awfully pissed for a guy who’s over it.”

“Well, yeah. It annoyed me. It wasn’t me they should be sorry for-I came through fine. It was like they wanted to feel bad. Like all these reporters, glomming onto us. They want somebody to break down on camera.”

“And clearly that won’t be you,” she said.

He looked up. He could never tell when she was being sarcastic.

“So,” she said. “Doreen. She didn’t make another pass at you, did she?”

“Not exactly,” he said. He told her about Doreen and Clete and Travis grabbing him at home, then attempting to kidnap his father and rob Rhonda. When he got to their ten-point plan Dr. Fraelich stood and moved across the room. She crossed her arms, uncrossed them, then picked up a pen.

“Rhonda wouldn’t let that happen,” she said.

“Everett-her driver, bodyguard, whatever he is-stopped them,” Pax said. “Then we were interrupted by the news about Ecuador.”

“Where are they now?” she asked.

“Doreen and them? I don’t know. I stayed in my father’s room. Rhonda left to go downtown. When I finally went home, the lobby was cleaned up, there was nobody there but the security guard, Barron.”

“You didn’t ask him?”

“I was a little freaked out. I thought… I don’t know what I thought.” Pax breathed in, then exhaled shakily. “I was hoping you’d heard from Doreen.”

“Damn it.” She went to her desk, took out a pack of cigarettes. “I’m going outside for a minute.”

He followed her out and she didn’t object. They walked around to the side of the building, where a plastic patio table and a couple of chairs were hidden from the highway by a row of bushes. She didn’t sit down. She reached into her pocket and came up with a book of matches. He liked that she carried matches. The smokers he knew-and in the restaurant business, that was pretty much everybody-only used lighters.

“You think she killed them?” he said.

“No,” she said. Then, “Probably not.”

“Jesus,” he said. “You think she could do it. Kill someone.”

“We’re all capable of killing, Paxton.” She lit the cigarette, then waved out the match and flicked it into a small garbage can. “Did you tell the Chief about this?”

“No, I just…” Why hadn’t he called Deke? He should have at least called him. But there was something shameful in having to run to him for protection yet again. Deke, somebody hurt me! Beat them up now!

Pax shook his head. “I don’t know. Like I said, I was freaked out.”

He tried to decide if he cared if Rhonda had murdered them. Didn’t they deserve it? The three chubs had abducted him, tried to kidnap his father, and held them all at gunpoint. If they’d succeeded in getting Pax and his father to St. Louis it probably would have been only a matter of time until the idiots killed them both-through incompetence if nothing else.

“Explain something to me,” Pax said. He sat on one of the chairs and looked up at her. “The male charlies are the ones who are tolerant of it. It’s the women who go crazy for it, right? But Rhonda gives it to the males, like payment. She calls it the bonus. Why not just sell it to the girls?”

“It’s complicated, Paxton.”

“Humor me.”

Dr. Fraelich inhaled, blew out a stream of smoke. “Have you ever been in love?”

He blinked. “Probably not.”

“Not even with Jo?”

“I-I don’t know. We were kids. What do you know about me and Jo?”

“How about your parents? You must have loved them when you were small. All children do.”

“Sure.”

“And they loved you. Why? They had no choice. Especially your mother. When she was in labor, a part of her brain was flooded with chemicals: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. The same flood occurred every time she nursed you. Other parts of her brain-the areas responsible for cravings, goal-oriented behavior, ecstasy-were also swamped in dopamine. Over time-”

“What does this have to do with the chubs?”

“Chubs is crude, Paxton. Pay attention. Over time, that association-baby equals pleasure-becomes burned into the brain. There are a couple of structures on each side of the brain called the caudate nuclei, each about the size of a cocktail shrimp. That’s where behaviors get turned into habits, and skills become things that are second nature, not even conscious. With each little hit of baby-ecstasy the brain makes that bond a little more permanent. Your mother’s brain rewired itself to love you-you, specifically. She became addicted. That’s what bonding is, Paxton. Evolution’s chemical cocktail to make mothers obsessively care for the bundle of next year’s genes.”

“All right, fine,” he said. “So the vintage contains-what? Dopamine? The oxytocin stuff?”

“Not that we’ve found so far. Mostly it’s water and blood and dead cells. But there are also long chains of amino acids we’ve never seen before, and some of those are probably psychotropic. Judging from the way charlie males act, I’d bet money on it.” She shook her head. “We do know that the vintage does something to them. The serum triggers production of testosterone and adrenaline and all kinds of byproducts, including carrier compounds similar to MHC. It’s those carriers the charlie women pick up on-and what triggers the bonding cascade. It’s not a general aphrodisiac; they bond to that particular male. They feel empathy for him, like they’re one person.”

“Mirror neurons,” Pax said. At her look he said, “Doreen mentioned them.”

“When, during the kidnapping?”

“I didn’t know what she was talking about, though.”

“If you see someone laughing and you smile even though you don’t know what’s funny, those are mirror neurons firing. If someone yawns and you yawn, or you see someone get kicked in the balls and you wince-see, I just talked about it and you made a face.”

“I’m not seeing what this has to do with my father or the other old men. If this stuff is such a love potion, why aren’t the young, uh, charlie boys producing it themselves?”

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s too expensive for young males to both create it and do everything else they have to do. Maybe it’s a way for the older men to keep control of the tribe. In the animal kingdom this happens all the time-alpha males and alpha females control reproduction in the group, either through intimidation or chemical means. Elder bull elephants keep the young males in line by suppressing the youngster’s musth.”

“Must ?”

“With an ‘h’ at the end. It’s a period where the males go a bit crazy from horniness, rage. When older males are around, however, they don’t go into it.” She seemed to find the look on his face humorous. “Just watch the Discovery Channel for a couple days.”

“I don’t think I can buy the idea of my father as a bull elephant,” he said. “Okay, maybe he’s as big as one, but he’s sure not in charge of the tribe.”