Greg Bear - Darwin's Children

Stella hiccupped in surprise and crossed her arms. Will stood sideways, like a fencer expecting a strike, and Stella saw his hands shake.

“They don’t look mean,” Stella said, but she thought of the red truck and Fred Trinket and his mother who had cooked chicken, back in Spotsylvania County.

“We do need a ride,” Will admitted.

The minivan backed up slowly and stopped about twenty feet away. The woman leaned her head out of the right side window. Her hair was salt-and-pepper gray and she had a square, strong face and direct eyes. Her arm, elbowing out, was covered with freckles, and her face was heavily wrinkled and pale. Stella saw she had lots of big silver rings on the fingers of her left hand, which rested on her forearm as she looked back at them.

“Are you two virus kids?” the older woman asked.

“Yeah,” Will said, hands shaking even harder. He tried to smile. “We escaped.”

The older woman thought about that for a moment, pursing her lips. “Are you infectious?”

“I don’t think so,” Will said, and stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

The older woman turned back to the man in the driver’s seat. They shared a glance and reached a silent agreement possible only to a couple who had lived together a very long time. “Need a ride somewhere?” the woman asked.

Will looked at Stella, but all Stella could sniff was the thick fume of oil. The man was at least ten years older than the woman. He had a thin face, bright gray eyes, and a prominent nose, and his hands, on the wheel, were also covered with rings—turquoise and coral and silver, birds and abstract designs.

“Sure,” Will said.

The minivan’s side door popped and slid open automatically. The interior stank of cigarette smoke and hamburgers and fries.

Stella’s nose wrinkled, but the smell of food made her mouth water. They hadn’t eaten since the morning of the day before.

“We’ve been reading about kids like you,” the old man said as they climbed in. “Hard times, huh?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “Thanks.”

FORT DETRICK, MARYLAND

Kaye stared into Mrs. Rhine’s darkened living room. The furniture had been rearranged in bizarre ways; a couch overturned, covered with a sheet, the bumps of its legs pointing into the air and pillows arranged in a cross on the floor around it; two wooden chairs leaning face-forward against the wall in a corner as if they were being punished.

Small white cardboard boxes covered the coffee table.

Freedman tapped the intercom button. “Carla, we’re here. I’ve brought Kaye Lang Rafelson.”

Mrs. Rhine walked briskly through the door, took a chair from a corner, swung it into the center of the room, two yards from the thick window, and sat. She wore plain blue denim coveralls. Gauze covered her arms and hands and most of her face. She wore a kerchief, and it did not look as if she had any hair. The little flesh that showed was red and puffy. Her eyes were intense between the mummy folds of gauze.

“I’ll turn my lights down,” she said, her voice clear and almost etched over the intercom. “You turn yours up. No need to look at me.”

“All right,” Freedman said, and brightened the lights in the viewing room.

The lights in Mrs. Rhine’s living room darkened until they could see her only in silhouette. “Welcome to my home, Dr. Rafelson,” she said.

“I was pleased to get your message,” Kaye said.

Freedman folded her arms and stood back.

“Christopher Dicken used to bring flowers,” Mrs. Rhine said. Her movements were awkward, jerky. “I can’t have flowers now. Once a week I have to go into a little closet and they send a robot in here to scrub everything. They have to get rid of all the little house-dust things. Fungus and bacteria and such that might grow from old flakes of skin. They can kill me now, if they build up in here.”

“I appreciated the letter you sent me.”

“The Web is my life, Kaye. If I may call you Kaye.”

“Of course.”

“I seem to know you, Christopher has spoken of you so often. I don’t get too many visitors now. I’ve forgotten how to react to real people. I type on my clean little keyboard and travel all around the world, but I never go anywhere or touch or see anything, really. I thought I had gotten used to it, but then I just got angry again.”

“I can imagine,” Kaye said.

“Tell me what you imagine, Kaye,” Mrs. Rhine said, head jerking.

“I imagine you feel robbed.”

The dark shadow nodded. “My whole family. That’s why I wrote to you. When I read what happened to your husband, to your daughter, I thought, she’s not just a scientist, or a symbol of a movement, or a celebrity. She’s like me. But of course you can get them back, someday.”

“I am always trying to get back my daughter,” Kaye said. “We still search for her.”

“I wish I could tell you where she is.”

“So do I,” Kaye said, swallowing within the hood. The air flow in the stiff isolation suit was not the best.

“Have you read Karl Popper?” Mrs. Rhine asked.

“No, I never have,” Kaye said, and arranged a plastic wrinkle around her midriff. She noticed then that the suit was patched with something like duct tape. This distracted her for a moment; she had heard that funding had been cut, but she had not fully realized the implications.

“… says that a whole group of philosophers and thinkers, including him, regard the self as a social appurtenance,” Mrs. Rhine said. “If you are raised away from society, you do not develop a full self. Well, I am losing my self. I feel uncomfortable using the personal pronoun. I would go mad, but I… this thing I am…” She stopped. “Marian, I need to speak with Kaye privately. At least let me believe nobody is listening or recording us.”

“I’ll check with the technician.” Freedman spoke briefly with the safety technician. She then moved gingerly out of the viewing room, the umbilical coiling behind her. The door closed.

“Why are you here?” Mrs. Rhine asked in a low voice, barely audible. Kaye could see the reflections in the woman’s eyes from the brighter lights behind the glass.

“Because of your message. And because I thought it was time that I meet you.”

“You’re not here to reassure me that they’ll find a cure? Because some people come through here and say that and I hate it.”