Greg Bear - Darwin's Children

Augustine introduced them.

Kelson pointed a knobby gloved finger at Dicken. “You are my witness, Dr. Dicken. The infirmary filled first. It’s down this way. We’re removing bodies by the hundreds. You should see. You should see.”

PENNSYLVANIA

Mitch tended to Stella in the bedroom’s dim light. She would not hold still. He used all the gentle phrases and tones of voice he could muster; none of them seemed to get through to her.

George Mackenzie watched from the doorway. He was in his early forties and beyond plump. He had a young face with inquiring eyes, his forehead overarched by a styled shock of premature gray hair, and his lip sported a light dust of mustache.

“I need an ear or rectal thermometer,” Mitch said. “She might convulse and bite down on an oral one. We’ll have to hold her.”

“I’ll get one,” George said, and was gone for a moment, leaving Mitch alone with the tossing child. Her forehead was as dry as a heated brick.

“I’m here,” Mitch whispered. He pulled the covers back completely. He had undressed Stella and her bare legs looked skeletal against the pink sheets. She was so sick. He could not believe his daughter was so sick.

George returned holding a blue plastic sheath in one hand and the thermometer in the other, followed by the women. Kaye carried a basin of water filled with ice cubes, and Iris held a washcloth and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. “We never bought an ear thermometer,” George said apologetically. “We never felt the need.”

“I’m not afraid now,” Iris said. “George, I was afraid to touch their little girl. I am so ashamed.”

They held Stella and took her temperature. It was 107. Her normal temperature was 97. They frantically sponged her, working in shifts, and then moved her into the bathroom, where Kaye had filled a tub with water and ice. She was so hot. Mitch saw that she had bleeding sores in her mouth.

Grief looked on, dark and eager.

Kaye helped Mitch take Stella back to the bed. They did not bother to towel her off. Mitch held Kaye lightly and patted her back. George went downstairs to heat soup. “I’ll put on some chicken broth for the girl,” George said.

“She won’t take it,” Kaye said.

“Then some soup for us.”

Kaye nodded.

Mitch watched his wife. She was almost not there, she was so tired and her face was so drawn. He asked himself when the nightmare would be over. When your daughter is gone and not before.

Which of course was no answer at all.

They ate in the darkened room, sipping the hot broth from cups. “Where’s the doctor?” Kaye asked.

“He has two others ahead of us,” George said. “We were lucky to get him. He’s the only one in town who will treat new children.”

OHIO

The infirmary was on the first floor of the medical center, an open room about forty feet square meant to house at most sixty or seventy patients. The curtained separators had been pushed against the walls and at least two hundred cots, mattresses, and chair pads had been moved in.

“We filled this space in the first six hours,” Kelson said.

The smell was overwhelming—urine, vomit, the assaulting miasma of human illness, all familiar to Dicken, but there was more to it—a tang both sharp and foreign, disturbing and pitiful all at once. The children had lost control of their scenting. The room was thick with untranslatable pheromones, vomeropherins, the arsenal and vocabulary of a kind of human communication that was, if not new, at least more overt.

Even their urine smelled different.

Trask took a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his already masked mouth and nose. Augustine’s Secret Service agent took a position in the corner and did the same, visibly shaken.

Dicken approached a corner cot. A boy lay on his side, his chest barely moving. He was seven or eight, from the second and last wave of SHEVA infants. A girl the same age or a little older squatted beside the cot. She held the boy’s fingers around a tiny silvery digital music player, to keep him from dropping it. The headphones dangled over the side of the bed. Both were brown-haired, small, with brown skin and thin, flaccid limbs.

The girl looked up at Dicken as he came near. He smiled back at her. Her eyes rolled up and she tipped her tongue through her lips, then dropped her head on the cot beside the boy’s arm.

“Bond friends,” DeWitt said. “She has her own cot, but she won’t stay there.”

“Then move the cots together,” Augustine suggested with a brief look of distaste or distress.

“She won’t move more than a few inches away from him,” DeWitt said. “Their health probably depends on each other.”

“Explain,” Dicken said softly.

“When they’re brought here, the children form frithing teams. Two or three will get together and establish a default scenting range. The teams coalesce into larger groups. Support and protection, perhaps, but mostly I think it’s about defining a new language.” DeWitt shook her head, wrapped her masked mouth in the palm of one hand, and gripped her elbow. “I was learning so much…”

Dicken took the boy’s chin and gently turned it: head flopping on a scrawny neck. The boy opened his eyes and Dicken met the blank gaze and stroked his forehead, then ran his rubber-gloved finger over the boy’s cheek. The skin stayed pale.

“Capillary damage,” he murmured.

“The virus is attacking their endothelial tissues,” Kelson said. “They have red lesions between the fingers and toes, some of them vesicular. It’s goddamned tropical in its weirdness.”

The boy closed his eyes. The girl lifted her head. “I’m not his perf,” she said, her voice like a high sough of wind. “He lost his perf last night. I don’t think he wants to live.”

DeWitt knelt beside the girl. “You should go back to your cot. You’re sick, too.”

“I can’t,” the girl said, and again lay down her head.

Dicken stood and tried desperately to clear his mind.

The director tsked in pity. “Absolute confusion,” Trask said, voice muffled by the handkerchief. His phone rang in his pocket. He apologized, lowered the cloth, then half turned to answer it. After a few mumbled replies, he closed the phone. “Very good news. I’m expecting a truck filled with supplies from Dayton any minute, and I want to be there. Dr. Kelson, Ms. Middleton—I leave these people with you. Dr. Augustine, do you want to work from my office or would you prefer to stay here? I imagine you have many administrative duties…”

“I’ll stay here,” Augustine said.

“Your privilege,” Trask said. With some astonishment, they watched the director toss a nonchalant, almost dismissive wave and make his way around the rows of cots to the door.

Kelson rolled his milky eyes. “Good fucking riddance,” he murmured.

“The children are losing all social cohesion,” DeWitt said. “I’ve tried to tell Trask for months that we needed more trained observers, professional anthropologists. Losing bond friends—sometimes they call them perfs—do you realize what that means to them?”

“Diana’s their angel,” Kelson said. “She knows what they’re thinking. That may be as important as medicine in the next few hours.” He shook his head, jowls jiggling beneath his chin. “They are innocents. They do not deserve this. Nor do we deserve Trask. That state-appointed son of a bitch is in on this, I’m sure of it. He’s squeezing profits somewhere.” Having said his piece, Kelson looked up at the ceiling. “Pardon me. It’s the goddamned truth. I have to get back. The medical center is at your disposal, Dr. Dicken, such as it is.” He turned and walked down a row of cots, through the door on the opposite side of the infirmary.